Ernestine Lavinski narrowed her eyes, while the room held its breath. ‘Yes.’
Bridget made another attempt to get the professor to sit down. She might as well have asked him to offer his congratulations to a well-deserving colleague.
‘Match one couple, using your own method, give them a blind-date wedding, and if they’re still successfully married by next year’s dinner, I’ll present you with this award myself.’
The room erupted into chatter, quickly shushing to await the response. Knowing that there was no way he could decline with his pride intact.
‘And by what method will success be determined?’
Ernestine smiled, teeth glinting like a shark’s. ‘The renowned Lavinski evaluative tool for determining relationship health and satisfaction.’
Her rival let out a bark of laughter. ‘Challenge accepted. Please proceed with your speech.’
* * *
Twenty minutes later, having manhandled her boss into the back of a taxi, Bridget found Cooper collecting his coat. ‘Phone.’ She waggled her fingers in the direction of his jacket pocket. ‘Quick. Paolo’s picking me up any second.’
Knowing it was a terrible idea, he handed over his phone. After all, what was a phone when he’d already handed her his heart?
‘Usual passcode?’ Not bothering to wait for an answer, she unlocked the phone, added in her number and then sent herself a message. ‘Now get in touch, soon.’
Handing it back, she nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve really missed you, Cooper.’
He ducked his head – a giveaway move for all the behavioural scientists milling around, but it was better than collapsing in a swoon into the cloakroom queue. Or wrapping his arms around her and kissing her. Especially seeing as Paolo had just stepped into the foyer. ‘I sort of missed you, too.’
‘Promise you’ll message me!’ She started to back away, hurrying towards Paolo once she’d spotted him waving, and almost instantly disappearing into the crowd of people by the door.
Cooper blinked at the polished floorboards for a few moments, giving his vision time to readjust to normal, non-Technicolor levels of beauty and brightness.
He shrugged into his coat, checked his pocket for the key to the Airbnb shack he was renting, and headed out into the rain, dragging the leftovers of his shredded heart behind him.
4
Emma
Monday morning, I woke up to late February sunshine poking through the cracks in my bedroom blind. I’d painted the room a soft grey, with bright white trim on the Victorian coving and huge sash window. Most of the furniture I’d scavenged from my parents’ farmhouse, using the space in Dad’s old workshop to strip, sand and repaint the wardrobe and drawers in white, and my old bookcase mustard yellow. With matching cushions, a pretty blind covered in tiny yellow and grey flowers, and a whole wall of photographs depicting my life from birth until Annie’s wedding, my room was a perfect haven. On sunny days like this one, I could almost pretend it belonged to the quaint little cottage I hoped to buy one day. But if that dream was ever going to happen, I needed to stop daydreaming and get out of bed.
I downed a mug of coffee in between throwing on running gear, smoothing my dark blonde hair into a ponytail and sidestepping Bridget, slumped at the kitchen table prodding a bowl of porridge.
‘See you later, Young One. Have a great day.’
‘Mmph,’ she replied, which after twenty-five years I knew translated as, ‘Stop interacting with me, freak, no one should be this cheerful at 7 a.m.’
I set off on the four-mile run to the Cakery kitchen, located a short stroll from Wollaton Park. One of the advantages of having our premises in my business partner’s converted outbuilding was that she always let me use her huge, guaranteed-to-be-hot-for-as-long-as-you-wanted-it, digital eco shower. Given that one of the disadvantages of owning a cake business was the constant need to consume sugar and fat in above-recommended levels, I ran to work most mornings, so the shower was pretty much essential.
Now dressed in my work uniform of black chef’s trousers and matching jacket, I found Nita in the design room. As well as a design room, the building included a larger room for consultations and tasting sessions, with a counter where we also sold our off-the-shelf celebration cakes to walk-in customers. Behind that were the kitchen, store rooms and pantry. Thanks to a very generous loan from Nita’s husband, the kitchen was state-of-the-art, exquisitely designed and perfectly equipped to create works of culinary art. Because I needed order, organisation and a clutter-free working environment, I chose to set up my office space in one corner of the kitchen. Because Nita, God bless her, needed spontaneity and inspiration in the form of mountains of scraps of material and vision boards, torn-out pages from magazines, dried flowers, branches and endless random oddments she’d found in car boot sales, she got the design room.
I didn’t mind. The kitchen smelled like heaven, and two of the walls were full of giant windows overlooking her vast back garden. Without having bumped into Nita at a wedding fair three years ago, I’d still be whipping up cakes in the cramped confines of my apartment. I might have been unfortunate in my original, failed choice of life partner, but when it came to business partner, I couldn’t have done any better.
‘Morning.’ I pushed the design-room door open with one elbow, carrying two mugs of tea, and sidestepped a pile of old apple crates, a stack of yellowed bridal magazines from the eighties and assorted baby shoes.
‘Morning, boss.’ Nita accepted the tea gratefully, glasses perched on the end of her delicate nose. Calling me boss was how Nita got away with leaving all the organisational and administrative side of the business to me. I plucked a stray purple feather out of her enormous black bun, and had a look at the sheet of paper she’d been sketching on.
‘Baby shoes? Are these to go on top of a cake, or is the whole cake a big shoe?’ If so, I’d have to think carefully which baking tin to use.
‘No, we had an enquiry after you left on Saturday for a baby naming ceremony. They want to give everyone a cookie with the baby’s name written on it. When I suggested a dummy shape she nearly had a fit. She is apparently “not that type of a mother”.’
I winced in anticipation of hearing how Nita responded to that, but before I had a chance to ask, she rolled her eyes.
