Page 73 of The Cake Fairies
Chapter Thirty-Three
POLLY
“I
still can’t get my head around it. This place hasn’t changed a bit since I was an eighteen-year-old. That tree over there,” Nigel pointed to a non-descript dot on the horizon, and Polly resisted the urge to ask if it was a one-thousand-year-old oak. “That was where I took my first and last puff on a spliff. Beer forever more from that day forth. And I swear that was the hedgerow I pulled Mick Jagger out of… my as-useful-as-a-chocolate-kettle big brother in tow and unwilling to sully a fingernail.”
Polly was sure he meant teapot.She exchanged a puzzled look with Annabelle and Nigel shook himself out of his trip down memory lane.
“So anyway, Sir Michael Eavis has cleared it for us to bypass all of this lot. I was chatting with security just before I lowered my trusty secret-guarding glass partition to relay all of this to you. I’ll drop you off at the next lay-by. It’s almost a mile’s trek, but short of finding a helicopter – and you’re important but on this fertile land, sadly you’re notthatimportant – it’s the best I can do. And don’t forget your backpacks, although the boss says your VIP caravan in the VIP field is kitted out with everything VIP anyway. In other words, you’re basically on yet another holiday while some of us have work to do.”
Never mind the blessed backpacks, how were they supposed to carry and divvy out the giant cardamom pistachio carrot cake – all six layers of it – to the Glastonbury Festival revellers queuing (some more patiently than others) in their cars?
Within moments they were standing in the aforementioned lay-by and watching in disbelief as Nigel abandoned them, turning his back on the bumper to bumper traffic and heading in the direction of the town; the direction of Middle Ham.
“Should we?”
Annabelle read her thoughts.
“No. No way. We can’t.”
But it was beyond tempting. Polly didn’t know if she could stop her legs from carrying her back to their little village. If for no other reason than to check that the bakery was still intact. Oh, but that could be quite weird. What if they were still living there, and bumped into older versions of themselves? Worse still, what if they walked past the church and were drawn like magnets to the cemetery next door, where they might find they hadn’t quite made it to the ripe old age of eighty after all?
The very thought made Polly shiver to the bone. Much as this jaunt to the future had been – mostly – enjoyable, overlooking the L word, overlooking the fleeting notion of the letter Z, there were certain things in life that Polly felt that you weren’t meant to know. She’d never been one to partake in Ouija boards or tarot cards (and normally she would say fortune tellers’ tents and their crystal balls), better to let life unfold as intended.
“We could probably hitch a lift,” Annabelle pleaded.
“We’re already in the future,” Polly whispered frantically to her cousin. “We’ll fuck up everything if we get impulsive.” There. That had to tell her. She never effed and jeffed.
A horn honked at them. “Need a lift? You’re looking bogged down. We’ve got loadsa room in the back. Jump in!” shouted a dreadlocked man from the front passenger seat of some kind of mini tractor and trailer combo. Naturally one of his hands was gripped around a phone.
“Oh, how very kind.” Annabelle had already checked out the piercing blue of his eyes. He wouldn’t have looked out of place on a surfboard. Just maybe after a scrub with a loofah and some industrial-strength soap. Polly cast her eye to the back of their vehicle only to see they were towing hay bales, upon which sat a cast of typically festival-clad characters in a variety of rainbow colours and tie-dyes. Mercifully, just one of them further donning a gadget in his hand.
“That would be great. But we’ve one more favour to ask of you first…”
***
“Can you believe it? She’s given us everything but the kitchen sink – actually that’s a lie, we have one of those – but not the all-important festival programme! How can we work out where best to leave our cakes, unless we know who’s playing, where, and when?”
“I’m sure we can beg, steal, or borrow a programme. That’s the easy bit. The thing that concerns me is how the flip do we make ‘raw cake’? I’m more than happy to play chef once we’ve sussed that, and you can deliver. Crowds have never really been my thing. And it’s not like there’ll be any decent music.”
“You’d be surprised. Apparently, Paul McCartney did a solo act here a few years back.”
“No way!”
Things were definitely looking up, in fact, so far so good. The teens on the hay bales had jumped at the chance to play waiter to the ever-patient motorists and their glued-to-their-screens passengers, after sampling a wedge of the spicy cardamom cake themselves.
“First thing we’ve eaten all day,” they chanted in unison, pupils enlarging, eyes glazing over so that Polly and Annabelle were left in no doubt that it certainly wasn’t the first thing they’dimbibedall day.
And with that, they’d used some of their own camping equipment to help slice and distribute the edible marigold-topped cake; working at lightning speed to cover an impressive serpentine bend of cars, vans, and a token unicycle, stretching as far as the eye could see. It reminded Polly of Cecil relaying Carmen’s words about the loaves and fishes (churros) saga. She couldn’t ignore the electric current of good shivers that reverberated up and down her spine.
“Well, if you’re sure you’re okay here,” Annabelle’s voice lured her back to the present. “I’ll head to the stall area to see if there’s somebody selling programmes. I hear the noodles are pretty badass here too… ooh, and they have wine vans!”
“Go,” Polly giggled.
It’d been a while since she’d seen Annabelle this animated. It’d been a while since things had felt so relaxed between them; the Cheltenham school play food fight fiasco providing more than enough cause for their own tiff – with or without words. Polly could still feel the nagging stitch after their sprint from the school grounds, no matter that her runner bean legs had never let her down on school sports day. Nigel had been most unhelpfully otherwise engaged at the opposite end of town, placing bets on horses while the cousins had probably out galloped every filly on Gloucestershire’s illustrious racecourse.
“But promise me you won’t be long. Today’s tasks are monumental – even if they don’t require an oven!” Polly scratched her head again as she watched her cousin skip into the distance, amidst the made-modern-to-look-old VW campers and Winnebagos.
