Page 61 of The Cake Fairies
“Pfft. It’s a busman’s holiday at best,” he sniped, ignoring the invitation to manual labour. “Do you honestly think your boss covers my annual salary? I’ve had to book up my evenings ferrying students about to nightclubs to cover the fares I’m losing from London. I’d much rather be loafing about on the sofa watching the local news, you know. Especially the ending-on-a-happier-note segments with their bright and breezy community reportage. You don’t know what you’ve been missing.” He gave them a mysterious wink through his driver’s mirror.
All right then.
Polly could only cringe at the idea that Nigel and his impatience might have invaded their creative hub. She was glad he’d declined. But how she wished Ivy and – okay, she’d admit it, Alex – were about. And now she felt guilty for the way she’d snubbed their teamwork on Day One. It’d given them the kick-start of dreams, as it turned out. She doubted they’d have lasted this long without it.
Guilty and lovelorn.
That was when the strangest sensation washed over her. So fleeting, that to capture it was like waking from a dream whose fragments slipped between the fingers like soap in a bath tub; never to be retrieved again beneath the bubbles.
Why hadn’t she insisted Annabelle show her how to use the mobile phone?
But no. She trusted her cousin implicitly.
Annabelle had thrown Alex into her path with such force, after all, setting Polly up in the kind of dream scenarios that could have,shouldhave led to marriage and two-point-four kids – or at the very least a passionate kiss.
And all they’d produced was a paltry peck on the hand.
Nice as it was, as she’d concluded already, he was an actor, and that was that. She was probably one of his weekly experiments. He must do this all over London, bragging back home to his Pernille with his updates:
‘Got another one not so much nibbling asravagingthe carrot dangle! Isn’t it funny? Yeah, I know. Need to keep you on your toes, gorgeous. A year apart is a loooong time!’
She cast her eye sideways at Annabelle, who was now swigging back contentedly on her fizz, and resolved to do the same. There was still the best part of a year laid out before her, to find an alternative letter Z. And today really had been a good one. Their naked rainbow layer cake had gone down a storm at the hairdressing salon they’d picked from a whole bunch of raffle ticket-style locations. They kept them in an empty Cadbury’s Roses tin from one of the cottage’s cupboards. It was the quickest, and seemingly fairest, way to make their daily decisions, and the mainly elderly clientele had gasped at their generosity and talent; the salon owners taking slightly longer to come around to the baffling offering.
“Forgot to say, I’ve had a message from Ivy,” said Annabelle.
Was Annabelle telepathic or what? “Show me!”
“You really don’t need to see it,” Annabelle frowned, lightly shaking her head as if Polly were an overambitious child who’d asked to make a roast dinner all by herself. “All youdoneed to know is she’s going to join us wherever we end up for the Christmas hols. Isn’t that just ace?”
“Certainly is,” Polly replied, swallowing down her gut instinct that Annabelle was keeping more than just her spending habits secret.
She knocked back the plonk a little too fast and let out one of her customary-when-tipsy hiccoughs.
All they had was each other. She couldn’t second guess her cousin like this, Polly decided. Even back in Middle Ham, Annabelle had always had Polly’s back, her best interests at heart; she’d conjured up ways to expand the business, she’d shunned dates because she felt sorry for Polly. Oh, of course Polly had known. But it was easy to let Annabelle be her crutch. For, the moment Annabelle left her unsupported, Polly Williams knew that she’d have to come clean about the real reason she could never really let a man into her life… at which point her world would come tumbling down.
