Belinda Missen - A Recipe for Disaster

BELINDA MISSEN is a reader, author, and sometimes blogger. When she’s not busy writing or reading, she can be found travelling the Great Ocean Road and beyond looking for inspiration. She lives with her husband, cats, and collection of books in regional Victoria, Australia.

A Recipe for Disaster

An Impossible Thing Called Love

Lessons in Love

One Week ’Til Christmas

Accidentally in Love

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Belinda Missen 2018

Belinda Missen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008296957

Version: 2019-11-13

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author About the Author Coming Soon About the Publisher BELINDA MISSEN is a reader, author, and sometimes blogger. When she’s not busy writing or reading, she can be found travelling the Great Ocean Road and beyond looking for inspiration. She lives with her husband, cats, and collection of books in regional Victoria, Australia.

Title Page A Recipe for Disaster BELINDA MISSEN

Also by the Author Also by Belinda Missen Coming Soon About the Publisher A Recipe for Disaster An Impossible Thing Called Love Lessons in Love One Week ’Til Christmas Accidentally in Love

Copyright HQ An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018 Copyright © Belinda Missen 2018 Belinda Missen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. E-book Edition © September 2018 ISBN: 9780008296957 Version: 2019-11-13

Dedication For Hannah, Nadine, and Shane – in no particular order.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Acknowledgements

Coming Soon

About the Publisher

For Hannah, Nadine, and Shane – in no particular order.

Wedding cakes have always fascinated me. When I was a young girl, they’d be the centrepiece of any drawing I fashioned up in school. Big ones, small ones, plain white ones with that awful marzipan icing, or the ornate beauty of a royal fairy tale. I marvelled at television programmes that featured cakes; each one of them a work of art. Someone had spent hours toiling away in a kitchen, hair in a net, poring over finer details of lace, ganache, height, and taste.

Now that job was mine.

As a baker, it was almost a shame to see your work sliced and served in greasy paper bags at the end of a long night. I’d woken after countless events to find a squashed slice of chocolate mud in the bottom of my handbag. I hated to think of wedding cakes ending their life like that, but I also loved seeing them enjoyed.

The history of the wedding cake was simple, stretching back to the time of Arthur and Camelot. Wealth, prosperity, fertility, and good luck were all said to come from consuming said baked delight. For me? It was all about the art. Was the icing set? Did I get that flower just right? What about the topper? Is the cake even cooked? Never mind the brides they were designed for.

Today, my bride was Edith. Keeper of chickens and knitter of ugly sweaters, she lived exactly four houses away from me in our not always quiet country town of Inverleigh, ninety minutes south-west of Melbourne. It was home to exactly one pub, one general store – which served as bank, post office, chippy, and advice line – a restaurant that closed twelve months earlier, and a football team. In two hours’ time, Edith was marrying Barry – a not-so-handsome football player with a thrice-broken nose and a penchant for homebrew strong enough to blind even the most seasoned of drinkers.

‘Are you listening?’ Edith’s screech verged on delirium.

‘I am absolutely listening,’ I said, hearing her bridesmaids cluck away in the background. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready?’

‘I am ready – I’ve been ready for hours.’ She yawned. ‘Is the cake still all right?’

The night before had been a last-minute panic over the cake being “too naked”, and whether I couldn’t “just add some more flowers”. I’d been at the florist at first crack of the door lock to get extra coverage, before dashing home to fill the gaps and please the bride. A quick dozen photo messages confirmed everything was in order, even if that cake now looked like it had sprouted a pubic region somewhere towards its front.

‘It’s beautiful.’ I smiled.

Sitting on the turntable in front of me were three layers of white chocolate and citrus mud deliciousness. A semi-nude cake, it was iced in soft lemon-gelati-flavoured meringue buttercream, and adorned with a selection of native flowers. Pink waratahs sat with golden wattle, grey-green eucalypt leaves and their gumnuts. I stood back and admired it again to the soundtrack of a grumbling tummy. Perfect.