30
That was five months ago, and a whole lot of stuff has changed since then. Dad started work with the Santa Claus guy, managing the rocking-horse workshop, and things went well – really well. He’s doing a job he loves, learning fast, expanding the business. Orders are flooding in, and still the waiting list grows.
These days, my dad doesn’t look worn out and grey-faced and hopeless. He looks like a man with a dream, a dream that might just come true this time.
Mum started work with Karen at the cafe – they were a great team, but keeping that cafe afloat was tough. All those cupcakes and melt-in-the-mouth meringues, the cream slices and luscious chocolate cakes… they tasted good, but they just didn’t bring in enough cash.
In April, Karen took the decision to close.
‘I’ll miss the cafe,’ Ringo said, breaking into song again. ‘Imagine there’s no Heaven…’
We rolled our eyes, laughing, but imagining no Heaven… well, it was hard.
The cafe closed, and the builders came, and when it opened up again it was a shop, not a cafe. The kitchen is bigger and there’s an office part too, where Mum and Karen run the new website. There are sofas and comfy chairs and a catalogue of beautifully designed cakes for special occasions, so that customers can leaf through and decide which one they want for their wedding or birthday or business function. While they choose, they can drink lattes and eat frosted cupcakes for free, and that usually convinces them that they’ve come to the right place, so the orders keep on coming.
The shop’s called Angel Cake.
‘Ever noticed that all the people who hung around this place seemed to get a happy ending?’ Dan commented. ‘Weird, huh? Think it was something in the cake mix?’
Well, maybe. The Lonely Hearts Club was a success, anyhow. Ringo got his girlfriend, and Frankie’s mum her new guy… but it wasn’t until Angel Cake’s big opening party that we worked it out. Ringo’s girlfriend was Frankie’s mum.
Frankie nearly fainted with horror when she saw them walk in together, Ringo in his orange satin coat and Mrs McGee in a lime-green minidress. Things like that can scar you for life, but Frankie’s a tough cookie.
She’s used to it now. ‘It’s like Ringo says,’ she told me recently. ‘All you need is love…’
Dan got his happy ending too – he went into school on the first day of the January term with Karen in tow, and asked to see Mr Fisher. Dan filled the head teacher in on everything that had happened with his mum and dad and all the reasons he’d been feeling so angry, so close to the edge. ‘I’ll change,’ he told Mr Fisher. ‘I promise!’
Well, maybe. Dan has a rebellious streak a mile wide, but he is also stubborn and determined and smart. In three short months he has turned his school career around. Miss Matthews has stopped backing away whenever he comes into a classroom, and that has to be good, right?
Frankie and Kurt are still together. Frankie has got into the whole healthy-eating thing big style, encouraged by Kurt, of course. She is vegetarian now, and more likely to be seen snacking on tofu and beansprout salad than scarfing down a plate of chips.
She’s lost some weight, and she looks fantastic.
Kurt’s gone full-on goth, and last week had a detention from Mr Fisher for wearing black nail varnish in class. True to his word, he found a new home for Cheesy, somewhere the little rescue-rat is loved and fussed and cared for.
Cheesy lives with Lily Caldwell now.
I know that doesn’t sound too promising, but trust me, Lily’s changed. She’s through with boys, and that includes the scally-gang Dan used to hang out with. ‘Boys are rats,’ she told us, shooting dark looks at Dan, who never actually noticed most of the time. But then, he never noticed when she was shooting him mushy, slushy looks, either, so maybe that’s OK.
Anyhow, it was the ‘rats’ comment that got Kurt thinking, and Cheesy lives in a state-of-the-art rat mansion now, at Lily’s place. She’s even stopped smoking, because she says it’s bad for Cheesy’s health. I know – seriously.
She said I could come and visit Cheesy whenever I wanted. She even smiled when she said it, and last week she sat with Frankie, Kurt, Dan and me at lunch and didn’t insult anyone, or flutter her spider’s-leg lashes at anyone either. She was OK.
‘That’s rats for you,’ Kurt said wisely. ‘They have a civilizing effect on almost everyone. A few more weeks, and Lily will probably be joining the school choir and helping old ladies to cross the road.’
I guess you never know.
*
We’re moving, and although I said I never wanted to again, this time I think it might be OK.
We are not going back to Krakow. We’re moving to Lark Lane, to the flat above Angel Cake, a flat with three bedrooms and a big living room and a kitchen where the sink doesn’t leak and the cupboard doors all work. There are new carpets and clean, pale, painted walls and the radiators are new and efficient, not rusty and rattly.
The flat above the shop has been empty since the end of April, when the last tenants moved out. Karen offered it to us, and Dad started work pretty much right away, painting the walls, putting up shelves. Mum made new curtains for the windows, a rag rug for the fireplace.
It’s not exactly like the whitewashed cottage I pictured in my mind, but still, it feels like home.
Dad is still shifting boxes and bin bags, with help from Ben and Nate and Tomasz. Tomasz has a removals business now, but this is one move he isn’t charging for.
Kazia and I have the attic bedrooms, up above the main bedroom and the living area. I let Kazia pick first, and I end up with the one at the back, with a soft blue carpet and a pine chest of drawers and a single bed with a bright blue duvet. I put my suitcase down and drift to the window, and my heart flips over.
There’s a back garden, a secret hideaway, green and lush and slightly overgrown. All that time I’ve spent at the cafe and I never realized…
I run down to the living room. ‘There’s a garden!’ I exclaim. ‘A proper garden!’
Dad laughs. ‘Good surprise, huh? I will grow vegetables and your mother will grow flowers, and all of us will have some green space, somewhere to relax.’
Downstairs, tucked in behind the staircase, I find the back door. I turn the key in the lock, step out on to a crooked gravel path and walk through towering clumps of greenery starred with blue and pink and gold. The spring sun warms my face, and as I look up I see the first swallows of the year swooping around the eaves, whirling and looping through the air like acrobats.
‘Swallows!’ I breathe.
When I turn back to the house, I see that the back door is painted a glossy red, like in the cottage I once imagined, and an unruly climbing rose is twining its way around the doorframe, its green and white buds still tightly furled, but ready, sometime soon, to open and flower. Dreams have a way of coming true, after all.
Karen and Dan appear in the doorway, carrying wine and lemonade and cake boxes. ‘C’mon, Anya!’ Dan says. ‘Flat-warming! Are you gonna show us around?’
On the path at my feet there is a single white feather, soft enough and pure enough to have fallen from an angel’s wing. I pick it up, smiling, and go inside.