Wish Upon a Star

On one side of the window was a large cone with pink and white macaroons stuck all over it, the sort of thing I’ve seen before at parties. On the other, to my amazement, was a tall pyramid of caramel-dipped choux buns, the wonderful French wedding cake called the croquembouche or pièce montée. Of course, like the macaroon pyramid, it was a model, but they were both very realistic.

‘Cakes,’ Stella said, admiring the macaroons.

‘They’re special macaroon biscuits really, darling, like the ones I made the other day.’

‘I didn’t like those,’ she said, my own little food critic. ‘These look prettier.’

She had a point: the colours were certainly a lot brighter. ‘See that big pyramid of buns?’ I said, pointing to the croquembouche. ‘It’s a French wedding cake.’

‘And there are gingerbread piggies.’

‘No, I don’t think there are—’ I began, then broke off, following the line of her pointing finger, and found she was quite right, there was a tray of gingerbread pigs at one side of the window, with raisin eyes and curly iced tails.

Then something made me look up and my eyes met and locked with those of a man standing behind the window display. My first thought was that he looked like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, since he had the same angular sort of face and he’d tied a black scarf pirate-style over his hair, presumably instead of one of those little white hats bakers usually wear. The second thought was that his eyes were of a very unusual soft, light caramel brown, fringed with long black lashes … and impossible to remove my gaze from …

Then suddenly we both smiled simultaneously and the trance was broken.

Stella had clambered out of her pushchair and now tugged at my hand and asked if she could have a gingerbread pig and when I looked up again a moment later, he’d vanished.

‘Of course you can, darling,’ I told her, so pleased she’d shown an interest in something to eat that I would happily have bought her a hundred gingerbread pigs … and anyway, I wanted to ask the pirate baker a few questions to add to my ‘Cake Diaries’ article.

He was standing behind the counter as if waiting for us, his smile warm. ‘Hello,’ he said, his voice as caramel as his eyes. ‘Has our window display lured you in?’

‘We were admiring the croquembouche,’ I told him. ‘Or at least, I was. I’m afraid Stella only had eyes for the gingerbread pigs.’

‘Piggies with raisin eyes and curly-wurly tails,’ agreed Stella.

‘It’s not everyone who recognises a croquembouche; they’re still a bit of a novelty, especially up here,’ the man said.

‘I’m a cookery writer, specialising in cake – I have a page in Sweet Home magazine and a Sunday supplement,’ I explained. ‘I love cake.’

‘Mummy made me a pink princess cake for my birthday,’ Stella piped up.

Jago’s interpretation of this as some kind of Barbie princess cake was written clear across his expressive face, but instantly dispelled when I said, ‘It was a Swedish prinsesstårta – you know, those domed sponge and confectioner’s cream cakes, with a marzipan covering? It’s my party piece.’

‘Wow! Now it’s my turn to be impressed.’

‘Oh, I’m sure they’re nowhere near as fiddly as the croquembouche, just time-consuming. Yours needs real skill, not only to make the choux buns, but to put it all together.’

As I spoke to him I was increasingly sure that we’d met before, for there was something very familiar about him. He was in his mid-thirties like me, I guessed, with a light olive skin and treacle-dark hair showing under the black bandanna.

‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’ he asked, obviously feeling the same way. ‘Didn’t you come to Gilligan’s Celebration Cakes, when I worked there?’

‘Of course, that’s it. I’ve been racking my brains wondering where I’d seen you before. I did an article about wedding cakes … but I don’t remember seeing the croquembouche.’

‘I think you only wanted to feature the traditional cakes,’ he said. ‘I helped with those as well, but the croquembouche is my speciality. We weren’t introduced, but I’m Jago Tremayne.’

‘That sounds very Cornish?’

‘It is – that’s where my father’s family came from.’

‘I’m Cally – Cally Weston.’

We shook hands across the glass display cabinet and he asked curiously, ‘What’s Cally short for?’

I grinned, because I get that a lot. ‘Nothing. My mother just had a thing about an old TV series called Blake’s 7 and called me after one of the characters. And this is my daughter, Stella.’

‘I’m nearly four and I’m a star,’ Stella told him.

‘You certainly are,’ he agreed.

‘And I want a piggy,’ she added, seeming to feel we’d lost the point of why we were there.

‘Of course.’ Jago lifted out the tray of gingerbread pigs so that Stella could select her own, which was obviously going to involve a lot of deliberation.

‘So … are you visiting the area?’ he asked me. ‘I suppose in your line of work, you need to be London-based.’

‘We did live in London, but we’ve recently moved to live with my mother in Sticklepond, a village a few miles from here. It’s about as far from the bright lights as you can get, so it was quite a surprise to find a specialist shop like this in Ormskirk.’

‘It was my friend’s idea to open it here and I came to help,’ he told me, then added as a slim, fair man appeared from the back room to serve a noisy gaggle of students who’d just come into the shop, ‘that’s David.’

‘Oh – right. I wanted to mention the shop in an article for “The Cake Diaries”, though it probably won’t come out for months – do you think that would be all right? They’ll send a photographer.’

‘I’m sure David will be delighted. All publicity welcome. Look, here’s his business card with his email address on, so you can send him any questions.’

‘Thank you, that’s great,’ I said, pocketing it.

‘I want that pig,’ Stella said, having made her mind up and pointing at the one with the biggest curly icing tail.

‘Please,’ I prompted.

‘Please,’ Stella repeated and Jago put the chosen pig into a little paper bag and gave it to her. She took it straight out again and bit off its nose.

I paid him and he handed me a little silver box with my change. ‘These are a couple of macaroons for your mum to try,’ he explained to Stella. ‘It’s the bait to lure you both back in again.’

‘I don’t think you’ll be able to keep us out anyway,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to come here to the hospital most Thursdays, so this can be our special treat afterwards, can’t it, Stella?’

She nodded, her mouth full of gingerbread.

‘I don’t know why it is, but the head always tastes better than the rest,’ Jago said gravely and Stella nodded again, very seriously.

‘It’s wonderful to see her eating something voluntarily,’ I thought, then realised I’d said it aloud, and Jago was looking sympathetically at me with his soft, light brown eyes.

Of course, I’d often made her gingerbread men, but obviously they didn’t have the magic of the shop-bought pigs.

I drove back to Sticklepond with Stella fast asleep in her seat in the back of the car. In one hand was clutched the limp rear end of the gingerbread pig, saved for Grandma.

It was odd how I’d felt an instant connection with Jago when our eyes met through the shop window, though I supposed that was partly because I’d previously met him, even though I hadn’t remembered at first. And how could I have forgotten those unusual eyes?

He seemed very nice and I think we simply instantly recognised each other as kindred spirits and perhaps were destined to become good friends? That was all I needed from a man these days, all I had the spare time and emotion left over for …

I checked again on my frail sleeping child in the rear-view mirror, turning over in my mind what they’d said to me at the hospital after Stella’s check-up, about the country air soon putting some roses into her cheeks and improving her appetite, searching for any faint crumb of comfort.

When we got home and Stella, revived, had gone to present Grandma with the soggy gingerbread pig’s bottom, I put Toto in the car for five minutes to hoover up the crumbs: dogs have a multitude of uses.

Jago

When Cally and Stella left the shop, Jago had the strange feeling that they’d taken all the May sunshine with them.

He’d liked everything about Cally: her no-nonsense manner, her pretty face with wide-apart harebell-blue eyes, the disarming sprinkle of freckles across her nose and her dishevelled, silky, pale gold curls.

‘Pretty woman,’ David said, since he’d finished serving the customers and there was a temporary lull. Then he added hastily, ‘Not as in the film Pretty Woman, of course. I’m not insinuating she’s a hooker.’

‘I should think not! And she is pretty, though she’s obviously under a lot of strain. I think it must be about the little girl, because she mentioned she would be having regular hospital check-ups and she looks as if a puff of wind would blow her away.’

‘Poor little thing,’ David said kindly, but somewhat absently, arranging a fresh batch of macaroons into neat rows of pink, red and green. Then he looked up curiously at his friend and grinned.

‘You found out a lot in a short space of time.’

‘She’s on the same wavelength as us, that’s all – and anyway, we’ve both seen her before at Gilligan’s, don’t you remember? She’s Cally Weston, a cookery writer, and she was researching an article about traditional wedding cakes.’

‘Really? No, I can’t say I do remember that, but of course I’ve seen her articles,’ he said, though his friend obviously had remembered her. Since this was the first hint of real interest in another woman Jago had shown since his fiancée ran off to Dubai to be with that sports car salesman she’d had a fling with, he thought it was a healthy sign.

‘She wants to write you and the Happy Macaroon up in her “Cake Diaries” page in the Sunday supplement, so I gave her your card so she can email you questions,’ Jago said. ‘The paper will probably send a photographer.’

‘Great, I’m all for free publicity,’ David said enthusiastically. ‘I like her even more!’

Chapter 9: The Blue Dog

I went back into Ormskirk on the Saturday morning to do the big supermarket shop while Ma minded Stella … or perhaps that was the other way round? Anyway, they intended going to the studio to paint and Hal had promised to come over later with an old wasp’s nest as big as a football to show her, so it looked like being a red-letter day.

I only hoped Ma would remember the sandwiches I’d left them for lunch and not just share endless cups of sweet tea and biscuits with Stella. I wanted her to have more energy, but not a permanent sugar high!

Somehow I found my steps taking me past the Happy Macaroon, but this time Jago Tremayne wasn’t looking out of the window, probably because it was so busy in the shop that the queue came right out of the door.

For the first time I noticed a sign for the Blue Dog Café next door to it and went up a steep, narrow flight of stairs into a busy room humming with conversation and the rattle of cutlery. It was obviously very popular and after I’d looked about fruitlessly for a vacant table I was just about to give up and go away again when suddenly I spotted Jago Tremayne sitting at a table in the far corner. He looked up and waved, smiling warmly, and I looked round to see if someone else had followed me up: but no, he was waving at me, so I made my way across.

‘I just spotted you – do please join me,’ he said, nudging out the chair next to his. Then he looked at me diffidently. ‘I mean – you do remember me, don’t you? It’s Jago, from the bakery next door.’

‘Of course I remember you, and it’s very kind of you to let me share your table. I was just about to give up and go away again.’

I sat down and he handed me the menu. ‘It’s all cold food apart from the soup of the day, but they do a great beef sandwich with horseradish sauce.’

‘Sounds good to me – I’ll have that,’ I said, as the waitress came to take my order, ‘and a large Americano with some cold milk.’

I felt guilty spending any money on myself like this, when it might go into Stella’s fund, but Celia had made me promise to be nicer to myself after I told her I’d been taking a flask of coffee out with me everywhere to save money. She said treating myself to coffee and a bun once in a blue moon might mean the difference to my staying sane or completely losing it, so it would be worthwhile in the long run. She was probably right, but it still felt a bit guilt-inducing.

‘Stella not with you today?’ Jago asked.

‘No, I’ve left her at home with my mother and come in to do the big supermarket shop on my own. She tires easily, but she hates sitting in the trolley and I can’t carry her and push it at the same time. Ma would rather keep an eye on her than shop, but she’s an artist, so when she’s wrapped up in her work she tends to be a bit forgetful …’

‘I’m sure Stella will be all right,’ he said reassuringly. ‘She seems like a child who’ll say if she wants anything.’

‘Oh, yes, she can be a real bossy boots – and she was certainly determined to get one of those gingerbread pigs, wasn’t she? And she ate most of it. I offered to make her some, but no, she says yours are special, so I suppose I’d better take one back with me today.’

‘I’ll send you the recipe, if you give me your email address?’ he suggested.

‘I’d love the recipe, but I don’t think even then I can compete with the lure of yours.’

‘I’ve left David in charge of the shop while I have my lunch,’ Jago said. ‘It’s really busy on Saturdays, but his fiancée, Sarah, comes for the weekends to help out. In fact, I tend to feel a bit of a spare part and I’ll feel even more so when Sarah gives up her job and moves into the flat over the shop with us permanently.’

‘I suppose three is a crowd, even if they don’t mean to make you feel left out.’

‘It doesn’t help that I got disengaged about the same time David proposed to Sarah,’ he said, and his thin, handsome face became gloomy. ‘Very disengaged.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said sincerely.

‘Don’t be, because she went off with another man a couple of weeks before the wedding, so it was better she did it then than after we were married.’

‘That’s true, I suppose, though it doesn’t stop it hurting, does it? I was engaged before I had Stella, but my fiancée signed up for a second long contract abroad without telling me and then dumped me for someone else he’d met out there.’

Jago raised his coffee cup. ‘Here’s to a fresh start for both of us, then,’ he said, and smiled at me. His mouth went up a bit at the left corner when he smiled and so did the corner of his eyebrow on that side. I found myself smiling back.

‘So, how did the Happy Macaroon come about?’ I asked. ‘I’ve only just emailed David my questions for the article.’

‘It was literally a stroke of luck. We both worked for Gilligan’s, as you know, and we were in the lottery ticket syndicate when our numbers came up.’

‘Wow!’ I said enviously.

‘It wasn’t millions, nothing like that, but our shares were enough to change our lives, if we wanted them to. Some of the older members of the syndicate just paid off their mortgages and took holidays, or bought new cars, but David and I decided we wanted to get out of London and set up our own businesses.’

‘Great idea.’

‘David found his premises first, so I came up to help him start off and fell in love with the area. Now I’m hoping to find somewhere nearby to run my croquembouche wedding cake business, and the sooner the better. We thought it would take quite a while to get the Happy Macaroon off the ground, but actually business took off like a rocket from the first day.’

‘But what made him choose Ormskirk? When I heard about the shop, it seemed the most unlikely place – yet I can see it’s a huge success.’

‘David comes from Southport and fell for the old bakery after he spotted it on the internet, and luckily there was an empty flat above it, too. What about you,’ he asked tentatively, ‘why did you move up here?’

‘I sold my flat near Primrose Hill and we moved in with my mother because I needed to raise some capital quickly to fund treatment for Stella.’ I took a sip of coffee, which was strong and good. ‘Perhaps you noticed how small and frail she looks for her age?’

He nodded, his eyes soft and sympathetic.

‘It’s because she was born with a heart condition, a serious and complicated one.’

‘Hence the hospital appointments you mentioned? I’m so sorry – it must be an enormous worry to you and she’s such a bright, lovely little girl.’

‘Yes, it is,’ I confessed. ‘The hospital here has taken over monitoring her progress, but they’d really like her to put on some weight before she goes to America in autumn for an operation … It’s very risky, you see, experimental surgery, but without it the consultant in London said that eventually her organs would begin to suffer under the strain of coping.’

I don’t know what came over me, but I found myself describing in detail Stella’s problems and what the consultant said, just as if I’d known Jago for ever. It felt that way.

‘But surely she could have the operation here, on the NHS?’ he demanded. ‘You shouldn’t have to go abroad for it.’

‘They can do so much these days with surgery, but in Stella’s case, they’d reached the end of the road over here. But Celia and I – that’s my best friend – researched on the internet and found a surgeon who’d pioneered the operation she needed in Boston, but he’s the only one who can help. I got the hospital in London to send him all the X-rays and her notes and stuff, and he’s willing to do it, but of course it’ll cost an absolute fortune.’

‘So you sold the flat and moved here? I see …’

‘We thought we’d have longer to raise the money, but Stella was ill back in January and they advised us to move the operation date forward to this autumn, so I put the flat on the market. I’ve put the profit I made into the charitable fund that Celia and her husband, Will, helped me to set up and run, called Stella’s Stars. Donations are coming in all the time, though not big ones – people are so kind, even strangers.’

‘Stella’s Stars? That’s a good name.’

‘She’s my little star,’ I said, feeling better for telling him all about it. ‘Some of the people I know in London have fundraised, but even after selling the flat I’m still around twenty thousand pounds short, even though the surgeon has generously offered to waive his fee for doing the operation. But the operation is booked for the start of November and we need to fly over at the end of October, so I’ll have to find the rest of the money quite quickly somehow.’

I smiled at him ruefully. ‘It looks like we’ve both taken a gamble in moving up here – you and David on the success of your new businesses and me on being able to raise the rest of the money.’

‘Your gamble is much more important than mine … but couldn’t Stella’s father help?’ Jago asked tentatively.

‘Stella’s father is my ex-fiancée that I told you about. He’d left me by the time I found out I was pregnant and he wasn’t remotely interested in being a father when I told him. In fact, he suggested I have an abortion, and when I refused, he cut off all contact with me – changed his email address and everything. He was back in the Antarctic by then, which made him even more uncontactable.’

‘The Antarctic?’

‘Yes, he was working out there as a marine biologist. I don’t know where he went after that. He could still be there, for all I know.’

‘He doesn’t sound much of a loss.’

‘No, I think he probably comes under the heading of “lucky escapes”.’

‘That’s pretty much what David said when my fiancée ran off with someone else,’ he said wryly. ‘Sarah works in a Mayfair hair salon so she’d heard lots of gossip about my ex, Aimee, and she was pretty blunt about telling me what she thought of her. Aimee organised events for her rich friends for a living, and she was beautiful, smart, classy and connected – way out of my league, but I did think she loved me …’

They sounded an unlikely combination: a rich social butterfly and a hard-working baker, even if the said baker was the quietly handsome sort that you might pass in the street, but then turn round and go back to have another look at.

He shook off his fit of abstraction. ‘Well, at least the lottery winnings gave me the chance of an exciting new start somewhere where I’ll never come across Aimee again.’

‘Stella had already turned my life upside down before I moved here. I had this idea that babies just slotted into your life, especially if like me you do most of your work at home. But even if she hadn’t been born with so many health problems, everything would have changed once she’d arrived anyway, I can see that now.’

‘Children do have a way of turning lives upside down,’ Jago agreed. ‘But I’m sure you’ve never regretted having her for an instant.’

‘No, my only regret is that she has to suffer the effects of the heart problems – and even if I manage to raise the money for the operation, there’s no guarantee of success … so I worry about that, too: but it’s her only hope of living a normal life.’

I finished off my very excellent sandwich and Jago ordered two madeleines to go with another cup of coffee, which he said was his treat.

‘They do perfect madeleines. I don’t think I’ve tasted such good ones outside Paris.’

‘I used to make them years ago, but had sort of forgotten about them,’ I said, distracted as usual, even if only temporarily, from Stella’s problems. ‘I still have a madeleine baking tray, though …’

‘I’ll send you my recipe for them, if you like?’ he offered. ‘It’s a genuine French one and usually turns out well. I worked for a year in Paris, that’s where I learned how to make the croquembouches.’

When they came, we dunked our madeleines in the coffee, companionably.

‘Madeleines would be a really good thing to feature in one of my articles,’ I mused. ‘I’m trying to stockpile as many as possible, to leave me free for several months later in the year. I’ve been thinking about doing a feature on proper Eccles cakes for “The Cake Diaries”, too.’

‘It must be difficult constantly coming up with ideas when all the Stella stuff is going on?’

‘It is, but I have to keep them coming and bringing in the money – and anyway, I find baking cakes a sort of a comfort … and eating them too.’

‘Yes, so do I,’ Jago agreed.

‘At least yours hasn’t hit your hips,’ I said wryly. ‘I must have put on stones in the last couple of years.’

‘I think I’m just the type who burns it off. And you don’t look overweight to me, but just right.’

I’m sure that was a kind lie, but even so, I warmed to him even more.

‘So, have you had any more ideas for fundraising the rest of the money you need?’ he asked.

‘Nothing major. The Sticklepond vicar visited us the other day and when I told him about Stella he said he was sure the whole village would get together and help me, and he’d think of how best to organise it and get back to me … and you know,’ I added ruefully, ‘I suddenly seem to have gone from being one of the most buttoned-up women in the world, to one who tells everyone her whole life story on first meeting. I’m so sorry to unload on you, when you just wanted a quiet lunch.’

‘I’m glad you did.’ He laid his warm hand momentarily over mine on the table and squeezed it. ‘I want to know all about you, because the moment I saw you, I felt as if we’d known each other for ever. We’re obviously on the same wavelength and I hope we’ll become good friends.’