Page 72 of The Cake Fairies
It was now or never. Amber Magnolia was right. This would be one of their most treacherous cake drops to date; a deposit with the potential to ruin the entire show, and get the cousins shown the door, potentially even the much more daunting doors of a police cell. And yet something had to give. Gut instinct had had its merry way with Polly in Llandudno on the pier, and today it seemed that its date was with Annabelle.
She carefully unboxed the heavy ten-layer peppermint chocolate cake, with its prestigious Bendicks shards and fresh mint topping, scrambled to her feet, and stood on the sweaty brown plastic school chair she’d paid an eye-watering fifteen pounds to affix her buttocks to.
“Erm… what are you doing?” Polly gasped.
But Annabelle couldn’t waste a second being persuaded this was a bad idea. She already knew it was. Her hand worked fast to dig into the beauty they’d spent more than eight hours putting together. And now she was putting it about. Quite literally. There was no way anyone would relinquish their technology for even the politest Wedgewood plate and serviette circulation … unless this cake struck them on the back of the head/fell into their lap/cascaded down their top.
Annabelle didn’t dare look down at Polly, who was now yanking her trousers with such brute force that she was in even greater danger of toppling face first into the outstretched cake. She’d work her way through the top – a quick nibble on a mint chocolate square for sustenance – sit a while and assess the progress. Then back to the bulk of the sponge if circumstance dictated.
It took a while for folk to catch on. The play had started, after all, and it was of utmost keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ importance that Francesca and her sequined flapper dress were filmed at every angle by Mummy, Daddy, and every family hanger-on, as she belted outMy Name is Tallulah. And Drew’s pitch perfectNoo Yawklines must be documented for future posterity when he became a Hollywood film star (Annabelle had committed these kids’ names to memory, having had little else to do but study the programme six times from back to front before the curtain finally lifted). The elbowing, ribbing and nudging of the myriad shapes and sizes of the audience took its time to peter out.
But eventually, filming hands and fingers faltered; heads bald, ponytailed, and frizzy turned in alarm, registering something was most certainly afoot, wondering where on earth the sticky chunks of lurid green and brown had come from. Was it part of the show? Annabelle guessed a lot of these new-age performances were jam-packed full of spontaneous and unexpected showerings of props – she thought back to the special effects of the flying green witches in theWickedposter she’d seen at the entrance to Oxford Street Underground – and couldn’t stop tittering as she slunk back into her seat. It was that or wet herself. This was too flipping hilarious.
“What the devil are you up to?”
Annabelle could even make out the red capillaries of her cousin’s eyes in the semi-darkness of the school hall, such was Polly’s shock.
“Will you just chill!” she whisper-hissed, keen to remain undercover. “Nobody has as much as registered it’s us.”
“That’s because it’syou,” Polly bit back breathlessly.
“Nah.” Annabelle shook her head. “We’re in this together. Besides, I could tuck the cake beneath the seat in front of me and they wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow, then we could scarper.”
“That’s got to be the best idea you’ve come up with all millennium,” Polly spat.
Oh, so Polly was going to play it like that? It was all right for Prim Polly to let her hair down once in a blue moon, but when Annabelle decided to get a little impetuous, she got the Spanish Inquisition.
The realisation was the kick up the backside Annabelle needed; the pull of temptation too great. Her hands turned into JCB claws and she ferreted away at what remained of the cake construction at her feet. At times like this she wished she had bigger paws, for she could root herself to this seat and furtively hurl these gifts until not a crumb or a mint sprig remained. And no, not even Polly’s fervent eye-rolling or the notion of her cold shoulder until September, and home time, could stop her. Annabelle was a woman possessed.
“I don’t see it working any other way than to initiate a food fight… so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Annabelle, no! We’ve got away with it so far. This is crazy. Sometimes you have to leave things be.”
But Annabelle was firing on all cylinders. Cake clumps hurtled through the air with an impressive scattergun effect, showering everyone in their midst, no matter how much the lady to her side did protest, causing audience members to abandon their phones and seek immediate revenge on the perpetrator.
“All right. You’ve made your point already,” said Polly. “This is one school play they won’t need the aid of a recording device to remember. Now let’s run!”
