‘I can’t take time off,’ she insisted to him yet again as the nurse typed notes into the computer.
‘I don’t think you’ll have much choice in the matter,’ said Linc. ‘And I’ll pick up the prescription for your painkillers before we go home.’
‘I don’t need pills.’
‘I’ll get them just in case.’ She’d winced in discomfort enough times as she was examined. ‘And you heard the advice – you need to rest that ankle. And I don’t much fancy carrying you up the stairs to your flat every day; I’ll get you home but once you’re up there, carrying you down again to go to the tea rooms risks one or both of us doing a whole lot worse than you’ve done already. You’ll have to take the time to heal, it’ll be worth it.’
The nurse gave Etna crutches and had her practise using them a couple of times before sharing a look with Linc that said she’d seen Etna’s type before – resistant to stopping their routine, oblivious to how much ignoring the advice would be worse in the long term. It was up to him to make sure Etna did as she was told.
‘Now look who’s being bossy,’ she sighed as he led her out to the car slowly while she tried to master use of the crutches.
‘It runs in the family,’ he smiled.
Chapter Six
Jade welcomed a day away from the Cove to attend day three of a professional skills course she’d signed up to and started a couple of months ago. She and Celeste had been so busy with bakery orders over the last few days that they’d not seen many people at all apart from Harvey and Linc as they worked away in the bakery and Patricia in the tea rooms when they went to get coffees. Patricia had told them that Etna had had a fall and hurt her ankle and so Jade had handed a box of glazed doughnuts to Linc to pass on to Etna, who hadn’t been quite up to visitors that day. He hadn’t had a chance to stop and talk either though, since he and Harvey were busy with the cabinetry and trying to meet their own deadline.
Celeste was happy to manage the fort in the Cove today and keep their bakery business going by delivering bread orders to some of the locals – five loaves would go to the Heritage Inn, a selection of loaves and rolls would be delivered to the pub, and then she had a list of baked goods to deliver to other addresses dotted around the village. She’d also deal with any pop-ins when residents hadn’t placed an order but would come to the cottage on the off-chance there was anything going. The girls didn’t keep much pre-baked given the small space they were operating in compared to usual, but sometimes the caller would get lucky. The day before yesterday Tilly had come in wanting something sweet and Jade was just finishing spreading icing along a batch of freshly made finger buns. The order was for six, to go to the White Clover charity organisation situated on the outskirts of Heritage Cove for their afternoon staff meeting, and so Tilly grabbed the couple remaining, taking one for her and one for her assistant Dessie at Tilly’s Bits ’n’ Pieces.
Now, it felt good to get away from the renovations and focus on the cake part of the business, the side Jade was keen to develop further. And she wanted to do it before she launched into her own personal plan that had nothing to do with The Twist and Turn Bakery, as the girls had finally decided to call it. She only hoped Celeste would be as on board with this plan as she was with anything to do with the bakery.
Both Celeste and Jade were what you might call jolly bakers – they loved what they did – but as Jade arrived today in a professional environment with a talented instructor, she felt a tiny burst of pride and energy that the odd cake commission had led to plenty more and that she had the drive to get even more serious about the art of cake decorating. She wanted to get better, she wanted to do more, and the fit-out would mean more space for her to work, to display cakes, to store the ingredients and the tools she needed. She and Celeste had been under one another’s feet some days, containers had been crammed into storage spaces that were impossible to search through with any speed when she wanted to find a particular tool, but the renovations would mean much smoother operations, with dedicated cupboards and drawers as well as a separate oven for this aspect of the venture.
Today’s course would also put Jade one step closer to gaining a qualification in cake decorating. Some thought she didn’t need it – last Christmas her cakes had been so popular she’d had a write-up in the local paper – but she knew she’d only made a dent in the learning she could do and she was eager for more. It wasn’t so much about the qualification per se, although that would be good to put on their website and social media pages as well as display in certificate form in the bakery; it was more about tapping into the invaluable knowledge base and experience that this course brought with it. Nancy, the host who had been there every day, had twenty years of cake making under her belt and could pass on plenty of tricks of the trade. So far, they’d gone through baking the cake itself – in a few varieties – they’d covered marzipan techniques, layering and filling, ganache, and flawless covering. They’d discussed stacking cakes, edible bows, they’d practised shaping sugar flowers by rolling fondant, trying out roses, anemones, peonies, they’d made wired leaves and cherry blossoms.
The first thing Jade and the one other attendee did today was make a cake of their choice. Nancy was there to offer guidance but Jade worked methodically and confidently and soon found herself lost in the process. When Barney and Lois had sampled the cakes she’d taken them a week ago, both of them had readily agreed that the lemon-elderflower was the one. And they’d decided that even before Jade told them the cake had been flavoured with the cordial sourced from Harvey’s place. Jade hadn’t missed the emotion in Barney’s voice when he concluded that that completely sealed the deal because using something that came from Harvey’s home made the cake all the more meaningful. Harvey had been like a son to him for many years with his and Daniel’s father being someone who didn’t share a whole lot of love. That day, Jade had grabbed her notebook and sketched out a rough design for the happy couple, noting down details they envisaged. Most of her cake commissions were done in the same way, just on paper, and thankfully Jade had never had anyone disappointed with the end result. But today was a first, because she’d be making a prototype for Barney and Lois.
Jade made the lemon-elderflower sponge, slightly nervous in a different kitchen, anxious to master an oven she wasn’t used to and have everything she needed to hand. She left the cake to cool, cleared her workstation and then it was back to Nancy’s work area, where the host showed techniques for making sugar flowers and gave advice on piping dots, beading, ruffles and pleats.
‘Who’s the cake going to be for?’ Nancy asked, standing at Jade’s workstation. She was as sweet in nature as the sugary designs she perfected with ease.
‘It’s for two very special people,’ Jade explained before recounting Barney and Lois’s story and the rocky road they’d had up until they’d finally got together again after all those years.
‘It sounds as though your heart will be in this, which leaves me in no doubt over how stunning the finished cake will be.’
Jade blushed beneath the praise as Nancy moved on to ask the other attendee about his cake. It turned out he was baking for his younger brother’s wedding as they couldn’t afford a professional cake baker, and the guy seemed all kinds of nervous that he’d mess it up. Nancy soon had him at ease before she began the next demo to show them both the best way to make buttercream flowers.
‘You’ll both get plenty of time to practise,’ Nancy assured them, ‘and you can use what you’ve learnt to decorate your cakes. Just remember, these aren’t the finished products, so relax and enjoy the process.’
Up until now, Jade had made a few vague attempts at fashioning buttercream flowers on her cakes but mostly she stuck with ordering pre-made blooms or attempting basic sugar flowers. Nancy took them through which nozzles to select and when, the consistency the buttercream needed to be, how to make the leaves and how to achieve a curve in the petal. Her advice was to not make every single rose the same. ‘Think about real flowers,’ she said, pulling over the vase of gorgeous cream roses she had at one side of the kitchen. ‘Look at these: none of them are the exact same size, the petals vary in shape – some curl in places whereas others stand up stiff and straight – some are fully open, some have only just begun to unfurl.’
At last, it was time for them to have a go themselves and with the cake safely out of the way, Jade started to practise. She squirted a piece of buttercream onto the square of parchment on the rotating cake stand and then onto that she put the base for the delicate yellow rose she was about to create. She filled one half of a piping bag with buttercream and added the tiniest drop of yellow colouring to achieve the desired shade, then, using the teardrop-fashioned nozzle as Nancy had demonstrated, she began to work on the rose petals.
‘Relax a bit, enjoy it, and gently pipe as you turn the stand,’ Nancy advised, inspecting her work. ‘The layers will look natural if you have a bit of a wobble, don’t worry.’
Jade could feel the tension as she tried to pipe, the board turning, and added petals at each rotation. ‘It doesn’t look like yours.’
‘Years of practice,’ Nancy laughed. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got all afternoon and by the time you leave here you’ll be happy with a beautiful selection of roses.’
Jade wasn’t so sure. The first rose she’d created looked like a load of layers of buttercream lumped together and nothing like the delicate flower she’d wanted to make. And it most definitely wasn’t wedding-like.
After a couple more hours, however, Jade began to relax and enjoy it, and before long she actually had what looked a lot more like the yellow roses she’d envisaged. She gently lifted them from their parchment and positioned them on top of the cake and Nancy showed her how to add the yellow centres and pipe green leaf details between the flowers.
‘The best thing about the leaves being piped around your roses,’ Nancy informed them, ‘is that they hide a multitude of sins. See the bottom of this rose…’ She pointed to the one Jade was least happy with.
‘Not my best work,’ Jade frowned. The petals overlapped nicely up the flower but the base was jagged and didn’t look natural at all.
‘So, add a few leaves…’
