Lucie’s Vintage Cupcake Company

‘Lucie…’

Lucie slowly lowered herself down onto one knee and stared deep into his silver eyes, trying to send him a silent message filled with the extent of her adoration.

‘Alexander James Morgan… I love you with all of my heart and soul. Will you marry me?’

Chapter Two

Silence spread into every corner of the room and reverberated back into her ears. She wobbled on her knee as Alex let go of her hand and averted his eyes, his mouth twisting in discomfort. He ran his fingertips through his blond quiff and they came to rest on his lips. They were shaking. She’d never seen cool, calm, controlled Alex look so uncomfortable.

What was happening? a small voice in her head queried.

She shot a glance over Alex’s shoulder to Yolande. Only when she saw the smile drain from her lips and her cheeks acquire a faintly reddening hue did the answer came crashing down around her like a shower of ice. Her stomach dropped like a slab of concrete down a well and raced back up to lodge painfully in her throat. She opened her mouth to say something but a strange croaking sound was all she could manage.

‘Alex?’

‘Mmm…?’

‘Alex, say something.’

‘Erm… let me help you up.’ He reached for her arm and drew her to standing, but let go of her immediately, as though touching her skin had scalded his flesh. He slotted his hands into his suit pockets and began to flap his elbows, a sure sign he was mortified and keen to extricate himself from the awkward situation as quickly as possible.

‘Alex, I’ve just asked you to marry me. This is the part where you hug me, kiss me and tell me how excited you are! Aren’t you even going to answer me?’

‘Lucie, I’m… erm… well, I’m flattered…’ He glanced nervously over his shoulder to where Greg had tucked his arm around Yolande’s waist and guided her to a cabinet of jewel-encrusted carriage clocks, mumbling exclamations of interest, clearly embarrassed.

‘Flattered? You’re flattered?’

Her voice came out an octave higher than she’d expected and she could feel her cheeks glowing with the fiery heat of mortification.

The sales assistant peeled away from Brett Coulson and went to assist Greg and Yolande, nervously recounting the features of the pieces they were browsing. Brett caught her eye and stepped forward, smooth and unruffled, as though this sort of thing happened at Tiffany’s every day.

‘Miss Bradshaw, Mr Morgan, perhaps you would like to avail yourselves of one of our private consultation rooms. If you’ll just follow…’

‘No! Thank you.’ Lucie gulped back the pressing tsunami of tears. She turned to Alex. ‘You don’t want to marry me, do you?’

‘Look, Luce, I think we need to talk about such a serious commitment before we make any promises, you know… It’s a bit sudden, that’s all.’ Then, to her amazement, he lowered his voice and leant towards her, gesturing over his shoulder. ‘Why on earth did you have to invite them?’

‘Is that all you can say? Your girlfriend has just arranged for Tiffany’s to stay open late so she could propose to you on the precise spot she met you and all you can think of to say is that you wish I hadn’t invited Greg and Yolande?’

Tears gathered along her lower lashes as the truth became crystal-clear and a metal vice began to crush the air from her lungs. Her peripheral vision seemed to recede and then rush back at her and she reached out to grasp the display counter to steady herself. She hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath and the lack of oxygen had caused her head to feel fuzzy. As the tears trickled down her cheeks, she surveyed the man she loved with every cell of her body – in a matter of seconds he had morphed into a total stranger.

‘So your answer is no, then?’

‘I didn’t say that, Lucie,’ Alex said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

‘But you didn’t say yes.’

And in his silence her whole world crumbled. Seeing the embarrassment on Alex’s face was almost more than she could bear. An involuntary sob escaped from her throat. She clutched her stomach with her arm and doubled over as a slash of pain hit her squarely in the solar plexus.

‘Lucie, I’m sorry. If I’d known you were planning… well, all this…’ He swung his palm around her personal idea of retail paradise, still unable to meet her eyes.

‘Go away. Just leave me alone,’ she spluttered more harshly than she’d intended, her eyes narrowed and her teeth clenched.

Alex stepped away from her as though he’d been slapped and Lucie felt even worse. She saw the discomfort written boldly on his handsome features. He was terrified she was about to cause a scene in front of his boss. That was something Alex abhorred – women who showed their emotions in public were to be pitied. She saw him flash a hand gesture to Yolande and after that her senses became muddled. She felt Yolande link arms with her, mutter an incomprehensible but soothing stream of random words into her ear and watched as Alex disappeared from her life without a backward glance. She vaguely heard Yolande politely thank Brett for his assistance before steering her into the darkness of the street outside to allow the manager to lock the door behind them.

The fresh air hit her brain but her body still endured a cauldron of emotions – mortification and embarrassment at her public rejection, shock and confusion at Alex’s reaction, and pain, a sharp raw pain coursing through her veins, sparkling out to her fingertips before jettisoning back up to her chest where it gathered in a heavy armour of lead weight.

She was grateful for Yolande’s support, physical and emotional, as they waited at the kerb for a taxi. Her mind was so crowded with unanswered questions she was unable to formulate speech, either to ask for her opinion on what had just transpired or to thank her for her kindness. She was vaguely aware of being bundled into the back of a cab, but not before she noticed, incongruously, that it had stopped raining and the sky had taken on a smooth, infinite mantle of black silk which pressed down onto her shoulders and wrapped its fabric around her body, inducing a feeling of claustrophobic panic.

‘Here.’ Yolande handed her a packet of fragrant tissues and enveloped her hands with her own. ‘I’m so sorry, Lucie. So, so sorry that happened to you. I don’t know what Alex was thinking. Perhaps it was the surprise; perhaps when he’s had chance to think things through...’

Lucie stared at Yolande, at her carefully made-up face creased in genuine concern, and found her voice at last. ‘He doesn’t love me. If he did, he would have said yes straightaway, wouldn’t he?’

Sadness now took the place of shame and descended like a tepid shower. Yolande didn’t reply and they sat in silence until the taxi drew up in front of the building that housed the apartment she shared with Alex. The windows on the third floor were in darkness – just like her world. She glanced at her watch and was astonished to see that less than an hour had passed since she’d left the restaurant, her life on an upward spiral, consumed with happiness and excitement for her future. How was she going to explain what had happened to Gino, Antonio and Sofia? She knew Francesca wouldn’t care as long as it didn’t affect her ability to create culinary artistry.

Why did life have to toss such random grenades into the path of the unsuspecting? What was she going to do? She couldn’t continue to live with Alex after what had happened. But she knew there would be a sofa for her at Steph and Hollie’s flat in Wimbledon. And there was always Jess in Richmond if she could endure the commute and being mauled on a daily basis by her two young nephews. She’d better start packing.

‘Want me to come up with you?’

Lucie liked Yolande, but even in her pain-infused state she caught the tremor of dread in the woman’s voice. ‘No, but thanks for… well, for bringing me home.’

‘Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?’

‘I’m fine…’

‘I’ll get Greg to talk to Alex… Perhaps if…’

‘No, please don’t do that. Greg is Alex’s boss. It’s better to keep this between the two of us. I don’t want it to affect Alex’s chance at partnership.’

‘Well, if you’re sure…’

‘Bye, Yolande.’

Lucie slammed the door and the cab sped away, its red tail lights shimmering like cat’s eyes growing smaller and smaller until they disappeared round the corner. She had a feeling of absolute certainty that she would never see Yolande, or Greg, again.

Would her premonition extend to Alex, too?

Chapter Three

‘Hey, Lucie, are you planning on serving chargrilled torta di ricotta to our customers this evening?’ chuckled Antonio, grabbing a cloth to remove her ricotta pie from the oven and setting it down to smoulder on a wire rack.

Because it was Friday, the busiest night of the week, Lucie, like Gino and Antonio, had arrived at the restaurant early to prepare her ingredients and bake her most popular desserts for the evening’s service. The torte she’d spent the last hour creating had the additional aura of silver smoke and an intense aroma of burnt caramel.

‘Oh, God! Sorry, sorry!’

Gino paused in his task of separating zucchini flowers from their stems and swept his palm over his dark hair as he turned to look at Lucie, his face wreathed in anxiety. ‘You okay, Lucie?’

Gino and Antonio were treating her like a delicate piece of Venetian glass to be bundled up in cotton wool, dipped in love and affection and dispatched home. While it was a welcome relief to know she was loved, and surrounded by such genuine concern for her well-being, all she really wanted to do was bury herself in a busy shift – the busier, the better – so that her brain had something else to focus on other than the painful memory of her rejection and broken heart.

Once they’d settled into the familiar routine of the daily preparations, Gino strode over to Lucie and enveloped her in an Aramis-infused bear hug. ‘Alex is an imbecille. You want that me and Antonio take our meat cleavers over to Pimlico and surprise the hell out of him on his commute to work?’

Tempting though it might have been to authorise such a foray, she knew it wouldn’t solve anything. And, more worryingly, she knew both Gino and Antonio had large extended families in Italy with accompanying whispers of connections to the Mafia. She was sure it was a wind-up by Antonio, but who knew?

She scrutinised the handsome head chef’s features. Anyone meeting him for the first time couldn’t fail to guess at his Italian ancestry – his Mediterranean-hued complexion, those dark curled lashes. He could be described by some as stocky but there wasn’t a spare inch on him, and when he cooked he exuded such a force of energy he made the onlooker exhausted just from watching him.

However, Gino’s most endearing trait was his infinite capacity to make everyone feel special. He possessed the enviable ability to recall the names of their regular diners like an ageless elephant. He had grown up above his parents’ restaurant on the outskirts of Milan, helping out with the service from the time he could toddle around the tables with the bread basket. Lucie loved him – all the staff at Francesca’s did – and he was the reason she had forced herself to slap on a mask of make-up and return to work. Friday nights were always manic, but the kitchen staff worked in formation like a professionally choreographed ballet troupe. Well, under usual circumstances they did – that day she had been cast in the role of the clumsy, flat-footed clown.

Next it was Antonio’s turn to grab her shoulders and deposit a noisy kiss on each cheek before declaring she was too good for the tight-arsed, stuck-up lawyer and should stick to dating red-blooded, passionate Italian sous chefs instead of dallying with wet, cowardly corporate suits. Lucie smiled her gratitude at the Italian Adonis who had girls reserving the same table every Saturday night to ogle the fruits of his obsession with the gym. Sicily’s loss had been their gain throughout the winter season, but the women would be sobbing into their Prosecco rosé when he returned to Palermo in July to help his uncle out at his pizzeria for the summer.

Yet, as Lucie chopped, sliced and grated the stack of ingredients she would be using in her desserts that evening, she had to admit Gino and Antonio did have a point. Alex still hadn’t returned any of her calls. Even her friend Steph had tried to corner him one morning at the County Court but he’d scuttled away with his client into a conference room. Steph had declared herself disgusted at his spineless attitude.

‘Damn!’

Lucie took a sharp step backwards as an almost empty bottle of extra virgin olive oil, which Francesca’s brother had sent over from his hill farm in Tuscany, slithered from her fingertips. Then she was forced to watch in horror as Francesca herself appeared in the kitchen doorway and bent down to retrieve a piece of the broken glass, her sharp hazel eyes narrowed and her brow creased into parallel lines of concern.

‘I should deduct this breakage from your salary, but I’m prepared to make an exception on this occasion.’ Francesca leaned in a little closer to scrutinise Lucie, running her eyes from her tangle of bird’s-nest-inspired hair to the scuffed toes of her ankle boots. A blast of her heavy perfume lingered in the air between them. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Lucie, you look like you’ve been flattened by a runaway steamroller and waited while it reversed to make sure the job was done properly.

‘Of course, I understand that you’ve just endured the most tremendous shock but you must resist bringing your personal difficulties into the kitchen. If you are unable to do so, you should take the rest of the day and this evening off when you’ve completed your desserts. However, I should remind you that indulgence in your relationship problems will most certainly have to be accounted for. I don’t want you to make a habit of it. And if Antonio’s tip-off is correct, and we are to be visited by the celebrity blogger from Anon. Appetit, then tonight of all nights I will need my staff to be at the top of their game.’

‘Really, Fran, I’m fine. I’m sorry, I know how important tonight is and…’

‘Well, if you insist on staying, I want the same attention to detail I demand from all my staff every night of the week no matter what personal triumph or disaster has befallen them that day.’

Francesca paused in the habitual tailspin of energy she used to control every aspect of her trattoria, then walked over to the preparation bench where Lucie had started to murder a mango she was supposed to be slicing. Strangely enough, an imprint of Alex’s features had appeared in the speckles on its skin. She stopped her attack as Francesca rested her palm on her forearm, forcing her to let go of the knife.

‘We can’t allow our standards to slip. Do you understand?’ Francesca allowed her eyes to linger on Lucie’s to ensure her message hit home before flouncing out of the kitchen to check on the alignment of the cutlery.

‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ Lucie repeated to no one in particular.

When she saw how Gino was looking at her, she decided to steer the conversation away from the elephant in the room she had brought to work with her that afternoon.

‘Anyway, does anyone know who the Anon. Appetit food critic – who may or may not be gracing us with his royal presence tonight – actually is? How can one person have so much influence over London’s ravenous diners that one word from him brings them flocking to the tables or sends them fleeing from the trattorias?’

‘There’s no photograph of the guy – understandable, I suppose; he needs to remain anonymous in his pursuit of gastronomic excellence – but his blog apparently became an internet sensation after he recorded and uploaded his forcible eviction from a French restaurant over in Soho at Christmas when he dared to question the provenance of their black truffles,’ explained Antonio as he chopped up a forest of fresh basil for his pesto sauce.

‘One thing there was a photograph of was the bruise the irate chef gave him after he pursued him into the street armed with a wooden rolling pin and a frying pan of fury. Ever since that crazy incident, every chef the length and breadth of London craves and fears an Anon. Appetit review in equal measure. A five-star review is like sprinkling fairy dust on their cuisine and is enough to jettison the restaurant and the chef’s reputation into the upper echelons of gastronomic preference. André Michelin – take a back seat! Of course, the reverse is also true.’

‘Exactly!’ declared Francesca who had reappeared unnoticed as they listened to Antonio’s story. ‘This is why I insist that we must continue to strive for the pinnacle of our talents every single night of the week! For we will never know whether this food critic is eating at one of our tables. If it’s not tonight, it could be tomorrow or next week, or the week after that, and we must be ready. A favourable review could be the catalyst not only to an upswing in bookings but the fulfilment of my dream to expand this little slice of Italian paradise and the security of your employment.’

Everyone was aware of Francesca’s dream to take over the lease of the vacant shop next door. She intended to open an authentic Italian deli that would serve espressos and fresh Parma ham snacks for those patrons too squeezed of the luxury of time to indulge in the full sit-down experience.

‘Whoever this food critic is, he knows his stuff – that much is clear. As it says on his website banner – the pen is mightier than the spatula. But we have nothing to fear if you all concentrate on what you are employed to do and produce your best dishes consistently. But if it is tonight, I do hope you’re up to it.’

Francesca’s eyes lingered for a second longer than necessary on Lucie, who she clearly saw as the weakest link in her culinary empire, before spinning round on her four-inch stilettos and returning to prowl around the dining room before the evening’s diners descended.

Lucie exhaled a long sigh of anxiety. Ever since the celebrated Anon. Appetit blog had burst onto the scene last summer, she had made a conscious effort to avoid reading the reviews, but she’d heard plenty of outraged and indignant analysis of what was published from Gino, Antonio and Sofia. It had gained a huge following in a short amount of time, with diners scrambling to add their own views to the food critic’s posts, thereby perpetuating the effect of his opinion, whether positive or critical.

Needless to say, the negative reviews – some so caustic Antonio insisted on reading them out in disbelief – were the most popular. Lucie could never understand why readers enjoyed seeing hard-working people trashed, for while the food blogger stuck religiously to reviewing the actual food, his readers often made their comments personal.

She remembered a conversation she’d had only a few weeks ago with Gino and Antonio.

‘The scumbag food critic who hides behind the Anon. Appetit blog has rubbished my cousin Leonardo’s pizzeria. He said it wasn’t up to his exacting cordon bleu standards. It’s a pizzeria, for Christ’s sake.’ Gino had waved his kitchen knife in the air in a gesture of what he’d like to do to the celebrity reviewer.

‘Leonardo is devastated – his takings are down by twenty-five per cent and he’s talking about selling up and going back to Florence. I told him these morons make their living from regaling potential diners with witty observations and comedic asides. They have to continually seek out establishments and chefs to belittle and ridicule to ensure their observations remain in the spotlight. Yet these people who don’t know a roux from a roulade tend to forget what diners really enjoy – the comfort of a delicious and satisfying meal served by a friendly waiter at a reasonable price, safe in the knowledge that there will be no part of their meal adorned with snails’ vomit or distilled rats’ urine.’

If she ever came face-to-face with the author who encouraged such vitriol, like Gino she would certainly have something to say to him, too – she just hoped Antonio’s informant had got it wrong and that Mr Anon. Appetit would have the good sense to steer clear of Francesca’s that evening.

Her fingers started to tremble as she sliced a lemon for her crostata al limone. The day was beginning to feel as long as War and Peace.

‘Good grief, who rattled Francesca’s cage?’ asked Sofia as she strode into the kitchen, her eyebrows disappearing into her fringe in consternation as she helped herself to a jug of water to replenish the fresh flowers on each of the tables.

Gino broke away from his task of pulverising a steak to exchange a mischievous smirk with Lucie.

‘If she’s not careful, I think our boss might spontaneously combust! We will do what we always do and cook, cook, cook and every diner in here tonight cannot fail to have an awesome experience – I know it. Are we not the maestros of minestrone, the virtuosos of veal, the connoisseurs of cannoli and cartellate? They’ll all be blown away by our offerings, especially your desserts, Lucie, whichever one they choose to indulge their taste buds in.’

Lucie turned up the corners of her lips, but her smile didn’t register as far as her eyes as she continued absently with the preparation of a Sicilian cassata. As she chopped, whisked and sifted, her mind drifted, inevitably, back to Alex. She fervently wished she could join in with the burbling roulade of kitchen gossip that always preceded a busy evening, but all she felt was numbness creeping from her stomach to her chest and clouding her mind of any pleasure.

Was Francesca right? Should she take the night off after she’d finished preparing her desserts?

But the subject uppermost in her mind was where Alex was at that precise moment. It was just after five o’clock. She knew he would be making his way to the local bar with Greg to perform verbal surgery on the tactical brilliance of his beloved Chelsea. But where would he be spending the rest of the evening when his friends left to take their partners out to dinner? And more to the point, who with? The thought of him dating so soon after their break-up hit her in the chest like a whip of fire. Had he even been seeing someone else when she’d proposed? Was that the reason behind his refusal?

Yes, that had to be the answer – someone else was involved! Why hadn’t she thought of that? Who was it? Probably someone he worked with in that soaring glass shard of a law firm; some corporate lawyer, perhaps, with whom he could discuss the finer details of the government’s current taxation policy over a late-night infusion of caffeine at his desk? Yes, she could picture it now; they hadn’t realised the time, they were exhausted from the mentally challenging work, so they retired to a local wine bar for a nightcap before they…

A blade of renewed pain scythed through Lucie’s brain and her temples throbbed as though they were being squeezed of their last drop of energy in a wine press. A headache threatened – yet another consequence of the agony caused by Alex’s shock refusal of her proposal. The whisk she was using to whip up one of her signature zabagliones clattered from her hand to the floor as she struggled to rein in her emotions.

‘You okay over there, Lucie?’ enquired Gino, his eyes filled with sympathy. ‘Don’t take any notice of Francesca. She has the heart of an ice queen. Ever since Antonio mentioned the dreaded blogger her preoccupation with perfection has spiralled out of control. We don’t even know for sure that he’ll be here tonight.’

‘I’m okay, thanks, Gino.’ And Lucie returned to her internal meanderings.

As always, it was her friends’ overt expressions of sympathy and kindness that tended to set her off. A week ago, Steph and Hollie had welcomed her and her suitcases into their home with love, understanding and the administration of that trio of female solace – wine, chocolate and a good gossip. Yet her brain was still as befuddled with circulating confusion as it had been that dreadful night, and her aching heart was a ghost town without even the tumbleweed to break the monotony of loneliness. Alex’s casual rejection in the space of a moment had been so unexpected she couldn’t quite believe it had happened. She still expected him to call her to arrange a Saturday brunch date, or walk through the restaurant door to declare that it had all been a ruse – that he’d planned to propose to her himself and of course he wanted to marry her.