Katie Fforde - Wedding Season

‘I can even distress the concrete pot for you.'

‘Oh, James, you're such a star. I've been really worried about the technical side of it. Now I know we can really make this work.’

He smiled slightly. 'I haven't been part of a "we" for ages.’

A breath of sadness touched the atmosphere, and suddenly Bron felt the urge to give him a comforting hug. She knew it would be the wrong thing to do and so said, 'It's not always all it's cracked up to be.’

Then she realised she'd sounded cynical, not comforting, and she wished she had hugged him. He was so lovely! 'What are you cooking for supper?' she said quickly, to change the mood as much as anything.

He blinked. The mood-changing thing had obviously worked. 'Nothing much. An omelette probably. As usual.'

‘Why don't we walk to the pub? I've got nothing much in either,' she said, crossing her fingers that he'd say yes.

‘So you haven't got a date tonight, then?’

For a moment Bron didn't know what he was talking about. 'No, why?'

‘Nothing. It's just you're usually out in the evenings.’

She laughed. He'd noticed – was that a good sign or not? It probably said more about the summer television schedules than it did about his interest in her.

‘Oh, I'm not going on dates. I'm doing people's hair! My older clients – who gather in flocks at each other's houses, quite often – take up my days. But I've got a few working women, or women who have children and want their hair doing when they've got someone to look after the children, who I do in the evenings.'

‘I see. I thought you had a hectic social life.’

Still shocked at his mistake, she said, 'Not at all. I've only just left Roger. I'm conserving my energy.’

Later, when they walked to and from the pub, she was still wondering how he felt about her. They'd had a lovely evening, chatted easily, she'd even laughed at his jokes, but she still had no idea if he saw her as anything more than the girl next door he was giving a helping hand to. He was not only a very attractive man under his scruffy clothes and too-long hair (which he hadn't taken her up on her offer to cut yet) but, despite being quite easygoing, he was also completely inscrutable. And she'd never found it easy to understand men. Perhaps it had been this that had stopped her realising what Roger was really like until too late. She sighed. At least she'd get to see a bit more of James now he'd agreed to help her with the cake.

Having ascertained how, with James's help, she was going to make the structure, Bron knew it was time to begin the trial run. Veronica, the owner of the officially-approved-ofkitchen had a Cash and Carry card and Bron arranged to meet her so she could buy some ingredients. Although in theory she was confident her cake would work, she wanted to give herself lots of time to practise. They met up in the car park of the huge warehouse.

‘Hello, dear!' said Veronica, waving as she locked her car. 'This is such fun!'

‘But you must come here often! You're always making cakes!'

‘But not for celebrities – that's quite different. Oh, and your friend Sarah asked me to make the cake for her sister as we're doing the catering anyway. Apparently the family friend who was going to do it can't, for some reason. I hope you don't mind.'

‘Not at all. Why should I?'

‘I didn't want you to think I was muscling in on your new career as a cake-maker.’

Bron shook her head. 'I promise you, I have more than enough on my plate as it is.'

‘So the freelancing's going well?'

‘Yes, I'm really busy. And I like it much more than I thought I would. I was worried I'd miss working with other people, but going to people's homes is much more fun. I sometimes do whole families. The book work is a bit of a nightmare though, I must say.'

‘Is it?'

‘Well… not really, I suppose, but Roger always dealt with the finances so it's a bit of a learning curve for me doing it.' She'd always rather resented him taking charge all the time but now she realised that could be quite a useful quality sometimes.

‘I'm quite used to book-keeping after making cakes for the WI stall for so long.' Veronica paused. 'Sarah said with things like flour and butter and margarine, which will go into both cakes, we should buy ingredients together. Then I'll work out how much of them went into Lily's cake.’

Bron shook her head. 'And I thought my books were complicated!'

‘I should think it will work out about equal. Your cake is much bigger, but mine will be full of expensive fruit and brandy and stuff.'

‘Whatever you think, Veronica. I'm sure you and Sarah can work it out between you. I just want my cake not to drop to the floor in a heap of crumbs!’

Veronica chuckled. 'We can use my business credit card. Now, have you made a list of what you need?'

‘I think so. This isn't for the final cake, though, only a practice one. I want to make sure I can get the icing to stay on OK. It would be so awful if it dropped off.’

Veronica found a cart that to Bron seemed more suited to shifting planefuls of luggage than packets of flour and sugar.

‘I can't believe we need anything that big,' she said as she followed her friend through the doors into the building. Once through she stopped. 'This place is huge! Like an aircraft hanger.’

Plastic-wrapped blocks of food were stacked from floor to ceiling, only accessible by fork-lift truck. They created tower blocks of tins, packets, bottles – anything that contained food. To Bron it seemed like a combination of the largest DIY store she had ever seen and a cut-price supermarket, where the products were left in their cartons and not displayed.

But it didn't only stock the everyday items on Bron's list. Her cake was destined to look fabulous but the ingredients were simple enough. When she saw what was available in this monster store, a sort of buying rush swept over her and she wanted everything, in mammoth quantities.

‘Oh look! Liquorice pipes by the box! I must get some for my dad for when I next go over.' She put a box on the trolley. 'And it's all so cheap!'

‘You need to remember that the prices are shown without the VAT,' said Veronica, gently touching Bron's arm. 'I can claim it back but you have to pay it upfront.’

Bron refused to be cast down. 'I'll keep the things that are for me separate. I can't have Carrie paying for Dad's liquorice pipes. Oh, and look at that! Boxes and boxes of Dairy Milk – imagine never running out!’

Veronica chuckled. 'You don't want to risk your lovely figure eating too much chocolate. They'll tempt you terribly if you buy them.'

‘Mm. I suppose so.' She put back the lifetime's supply of chocolate she had heaved on to the trolley. 'I'd better get out my list.'

‘And try to stick to it, or you'll end up spending a fortune and not have the things you need. Believe me, I know!’

Bron was very pleased with her haul. She hadn't deviated from her list too badly and when she had, she'd been able to justify it. When they got back to Veronica's large and officially hygienic kitchen, she had some huge baking tins, enough foil to line a large room, almost as much silicone paper, baking sheets, cooling racks, sackfuls of silver balls and other decorative bits she thought might be useful as well as kilos and kilos of butter, flour and sugar. Several trays of eggs topped the stack of ingredients on the floor. She could collect the crystals from Elsa once she knew what she was doing.

‘Shopping in such huge quantities is exhausting!' she said, helping Veronica in with a huge pack of flour. 'Everything is so enormous.'

‘And you walk so far because the place is so huge,' said Veronica. 'It's a mile between the cornflakes and the porridge oats. I reckon I don't need to do any other exercise if it's a Cash and Carry day. My upper body strength is very impressive these days.’