Chapter 19
C lem wanted to call Lucas but she’d never done that before, and her palms became sticky whenever she thought about it.
It was already a warm evening, the sun sinking and turning the living room of the cottage shades of terracotta.
Clem was sitting on the rug on the floor, playing with Misha with a dangly toy: a stick with a tweeting bird on the end.
She flicked the stick up, the bird sailing high, and Misha leaped into the air and performed a pirouette like a ballerina, making Clem laugh.
‘I have no idea how you do that without breaking your back!’ Clem marvelled, flicking it in the air again and watching Misha dive, ramrod straight, into the air. She caught the bird between her paws and pinned it to the rug, claws extended.
Clem glanced at her phone. Lucas still hadn’t messaged her and she’d been sitting with this sickly, gut-wrenching anxiety that something might be wrong.
Both her parents were in good health – albeit she didn’t speak to her dad much, since he lived at the bottom of the country with his new partner and her children.
She’d be awfully upset if either of them ended up hospitalised. She hoped Lucas’s dad was okay.
She swirled the dangly toy around the rug and the wooden flooring, and Misha leaped forward, dangerously close to piercing Clem’s bare legs with her claws as she caught it roughly.
Her phone buzzed on the coffee table. Clem moved so quickly, she banged her knee on the corner and hissed through her teeth. She dropped Misha’s toy and grabbed the phone.
It was Lucas. She pulled open the message at once.
Sorry I left suddenly. Wanted you to know all’s okay.
She tapped out a reply.
I thought something awful happened. Is your dad okay?
His response took a good five minutes to come through. Misha sat assessing Clem, her tail swishing as if demanding more play. Clem absently ran the toy in a loop around the rug, springing the cat into action and sending her charging around in a semi-circle. Finally, he replied.
Lucas: Yes, he had a fall but he’s not too badly hurt. Thanks for asking. We should probably talk
Clem: I was going to say that too. I didn’t want to bother you with your dad being in hospital
Lucas: Yeah. Listen, that kiss, I know it took both of us. I kissed you back. But maybe I shouldn’t have. I have a lot going on. I like you but I don’t know if I’m ready for a relationship. I’m sorry. I should have said that before. I didn’t mean to lead you on or anything
Clem’s ears were roaring, and even though Misha was uttering little squeaks beside her, wanting her to flick the toy in the air again, she sat stock-still. A burning sensation was creeping over her skull and neck, hot and full of shame. She wanted the rug to swallow her up.
She’d planned to do as Emmie suggested: to tell him she didn’t regret kissing him but maybe they should see how things were after the contest, because doing anything more right now would be too hard for her under the watchful eyes of internet strangers.
Plus, she wanted to be sure she could trust him – though she hadn’t planned to tell him that part.
But here he was, closing the book on things for good.
Not just postponing them. Ending them before they could start.
Her hands shaking, she typed out a reply, having to go back and correct typos three times. Then she deleted it, because she hated conflict and didn’t want to sound confrontational. Lucas sent another message.
Lucas: I’m sorry. I think this hospital thing made things clear
Clem: What do you mean?
Lucas: My family have to come first. I have to look out for them. I’m really sorry, Clem
Tears sprang into her eyes. She forced out another message:
Clem: We shouldn’t be teaming up. Bread, cake, whatever it is. We shouldn’t help each other
Lucas: Yeah
Clem chucked her phone onto the sofa.
She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid.
Kissing him had been a huge mistake. They were competing – they weren’t meant to be locking lips.
There had been so many jokes about cat versus dog, about them being rivals.
She was starting to think that was the best way to think about Lucas Bowen: as her rival, and nothing more. It would hurt much less.
*
Clem was in the main café room at Catpurrcino, staring down at another batch of failed kitten buns sitting on the counter.
Emmie was standing beside her. The rolls didn’t look bad, necessarily – they were shaped like cat heads, with tiny paws, as they should be, but they were smaller, less voluminous than they were meant to be.
Clem huffed out a sigh, wedging her hands onto her hips.
It was early evening, and she’d stayed at Catpurrcino after closing time to practise the bread.
Emmie had no plans tonight and had offered to come downstairs and observe, keep her company.
It was only eight o’clock but Emmie was already dressed in a pair of fluffy toadstool slippers and a set of pink Princess Peach pyjamas.
Almost all of the cats were sleeping in various spots around the room – most of them on cat towers, but Salem was curled on the window seat across the room, a black splodge with no visible face.
Binx was giving them the side-eye from a nearby chair.
‘They shouldn’t be this small,’ Clem complained, jabbing a finger in the direction of the kitten buns.
‘Let’s taste them,’ Emmie suggested.
They each pulled off a kitten bun – the buns were designed to be tear-and-share – and popped it into their mouths, chewing slowly. Clem winced – still dense and claggy. She swallowed reluctantly, unhappy with the result.
‘The same as before,’ Emmie said, and she continued to chew.
Clem groaned. ‘It’s meant to be extremely soft, with a feathery texture – wispy.’
‘So it’s definitely too thick.’
‘Yes. Lucas has to have lied to me. His advice was a load of rubbish.’
A creased line appeared on Emmie’s brow, and she leaned her elbows on the countertop. ‘You really think he did that? That he’s purposefully sabotaging you?’
‘Why else would it keep failing? I followed the recipe exactly, but tweaked it and took on board his suggestions.’
‘You should try it without them. It might give you an answer.’
‘I never got it right when I did it by myself, either, though. Something kept going wrong and I couldn’t figure out why.
Although . . .’ Clem whipped out her phone.
‘I could ask someone. I was googling it all the time before, trying to figure it out, but too many different recipes came up. I got mine from a book and it’s really specific. ’
‘Who will you ask?’ said Emmie.
Clem smirked and tapped at her phone. Her increased following had intimidated her before – but maybe she could use it for something she needed. ‘The internet. Just in a slightly different way. There are loads more bakers following me now.’
She tapped out a post quickly – one that would disappear in twenty-four hours – talking about the recipe and what was going wrong. She set it up as a Q&A for people to leave answers.
‘People might have suggestions,’ Clem told Emmie, ‘and I can also throw out Lucas’s suggestions, to see if he was being genuine, or if he lied.’
The answers came in faster than she was expecting, the notifications popping up within five minutes, while she and Emmie were getting themselves a pot of tea.
Some people were doing some extreme mathematics to try to help, though she thought that was going too far.
She decided to implement the easiest suggestions first: using a stand-mixer instead of kneading by hand.
And she’d go back to her original recipe, without the suggestions from Lucas.
‘I’m going to try again,’ she told Emmie.
‘Right now? Can I eat these ones?’ Emmie asked, with a grin, pointing at the kitten buns.
‘Of course. But you can go back to your flat, you know – you don’t have to hang around down here.’
‘Why wouldn’t I hang around when I get access to your leftovers?’ said Emmie, tearing off a hunk of bread. ‘I should have brought Jared too. There’s no way I can save him any of these – it tastes too good. They’ll be gone in minutes.’
Clem laughed. ‘I’m glad it won’t go to waste, even if the texture’s off. I’ll be in the kitchen.’
She left Emmie with the tear-and-share bread – confident she’d eat the entire thing herself – and retreated into the kitchen.
Donning a cat-print apron, she looked around at the shiny silver surfaces, the shelving units, the industrial oven gleaming at her, as if winking, letting her in on a secret.
‘Right,’ she said, tying her apron string. ‘Let’s go again.’
Clem knew the recipe off by heart, but she pulled it up on her phone – she’d taken a photo of the page in the book where she’d found it – and scanned through it anyway. She had to be sure everything was perfect.
She made the tangzhong paste first, whisking together the flour and water in a pan before moving on to the heating stage.
The paste never went wrong, even though it had to be at a specific temperature – she had a thermometer to keep tabs on that.
When she was done with it, she left the paste to chill in the freezer and moved on to the dough.
This was where she had to be careful. She slowed down, double- and triple-checking the recipe as she warmed milk, melted butter, and added sugar and salt.
Every step, every word of the instructions, followed meticulously, until she had a ball of dough to work with.
She’d normally start hand-kneading now, on a floured surface, until the dough was smooth but slightly tacky.
Instead, she went straight to the stand mixer.
‘We’ll see if you’re right, Lucas,’ she muttered, when she’d set it up and was watching it swirl around, mixing the dough. Part of her hoped Lucas was right, but she had a sinking feeling in her gut he hadn’t told her the truth.
*
It was another few hours before Clem returned to the Cat Lounge, where she found Emmie with her legs up on the leather sofa, with a games console in her hands chiming happily.
Lilian was curled in her lap, fast asleep, but she looked up when Clem stepped inside, sniffing the air, catching the scent of the sweet bread and baking Clem brought with her.
Clem had practically been vibrating in the kitchen as she shaped the dough balls, because she’d known something was different – the size had seemed more correct, even after she’d proved them, and once baked, they looked beautiful: light amber-gold, not burnt like last time.
They were fully cooled now. She’d decorated them in a rush, because she’d been buzzing with the knowledge that Lucas was wrong .
The sensation was still scoring her skin.
‘Ready to taste-test?’ she said to Emmie, voice quaking slightly. ‘They’ve already come out better.’
Emmie sat up, and Lilian leaped away from her, hopping down onto the floor and stretching herself into a C-shape, tail high in the air.
‘So that means . . .’ Emmie said, swinging her legs over the side of the sofa. Lilian toddled away, jumping onto the armchair opposite instead, where she settled down to wash her paws and face.
‘Yep,’ Clem ground out, taking a seat beside Emmie, the leather sofa deflating beneath her. ‘He was wrong. Here, let’s try them. But I’m pretty sure they’re good now.’
Clem set the new tray down next to the old one – Emmie had demolished most of it but a few buns were still left. ‘To save room for the best,’ Emmie told her, grinning. She tore off a bun from the new batch, and Clem followed her example.
‘Cheers,’ said Emmie, and they knocked their buns together like glasses of wine.
Together, they took a bite. It was instant – the texture was perfect.
Soft, fluffy, a tender crumb. Cloud-like, exactly how it was meant to be.
As she chewed, Clem pulled apart the rest of the bread to take a peek at the middle.
Inside, it was gorgeously springy and soft.
Jess appeared through the cat flap, as if sensing food was being doled out, and sat at their feet expectantly.
Emmie sighed happily. ‘Oh my God, this is heavenly,’ she said. Her happy expression faded as she looked up at Clem. ‘But surely he didn’t lie to you on purpose? He probably made a mistake. Got mixed up.’
Had he? Clem didn’t know. He’d rushed off to the hospital shortly after. Was it possible he’d made a mistake, given the circumstances? Or was he trying to make her mess up? Was that why he’d offered to help her in the first place?
‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘He offered to help me way before his dad ended up in hospital. I know I sound awful. I know he’s going through a bad time, but . . .’
‘You don’t sound awful,’ said Emmie, polishing off the last of her bun and dusting off her fingers on her pyjamas. Jess was watching her every move. ‘You had a bad experience with Genie, so I understand why you’re suspicious.’
‘You know . . .’ said Clem in a small voice.
Her throat was as thick as her early batch of bread as she thought of her recent exchange with Lucas.
‘He told me recently he doesn’t want a relationship.
’ She swallowed down the hard lump that was building inside her throat.
‘Said his family come first. He doesn’t want to get to know me better.
Not anymore. And I told him we shouldn’t bother helping each other. ’
Emmie scootched closer to Clem on the sofa and put her arm around her. ‘I’m sorry, Clem.’
‘What should I do?’ Clem asked her. ‘I was going to follow your advice last time, to see what happened in the contest. See if there was something between me and Lucas, afterwards. But now . . .’
Emmie’s tone turned fierce. ‘You know what I think you should do? You should win .’