PLEASE READ CAREFULLY AND THOROUGHLY!!!!!

We do accept shop-bought cakes but home-made cakes are preferred. I know that we lead busy lives but a small amount of effort makes all the difference, don’t you think?

The cakes must be delivered to the Junior School reception by 2.30 p.m. AT THE LATEST. My helpers and I will need thirty minutes to cut and display the cakes and late delivered cakes will mean the overall presentation will be affected.

Absolutely NO NUTS! (I know you are all aware of the implications for pupils with a nut allergy but we all need a little reminding sometimes.)

Provide a label for your cake so that we know what it is (some of the ones we were given last year were undetectable, even after a taste test – ha ha!) A plain hand-written label is perfectly acceptable but if you have time to design and make a more eye-catching name card that would be super. If you need inspiration, I am making flags from coloured paper and cocktail sticks with my daughter for the cakes we are making.

Thanks in advance to everyone who is making a cake. Remember that all funds from the bake sale will go towards new cushions for the school library.

Happy baking!

Melissa x

Making a bloody cake. The cost of the ingredients was more than the profit generated by fifty pence a slice. Last time, Kate had forgotten until the night before and had had to go to the twenty-four-hour Tesco for ingredients, then sit up late while the damn thing cooked. Luke had gone to bed shaking his head. ‘Why don’t you just give them a tenner and say you bought and ate your own cake?’

This time she’d make her dad’s old favourite: pineapple cake. It involved chucking all the ingredients into a pan until they melted and then sticking it into the oven for forty-five minutes. Easy. Her dad had always enjoyed cooking as long as everything went into the same pan.

Tim had offered to visit her dad the second time she’d bumped into him in the hospital corridor, but she’d declined. It would have been too weird. Her dad still hadn’t forgiven Tim for ‘stringing you along all those years’. Plus, he was a very proud man and wouldn’t want Tim seeing him in bed in his pyjamas. It had been kind of Tim to offer, though. Maybe that’s why she’d agreed to go and get a coffee with him in the hospital canteen instead.

Chapter Four

Laura

Photographs of other people’s children made Laura anxious.

She tapped her fingernails on the counter whilst she waited for a coffee. She didn’t usually get them manicured but had thought a perfect finger to point at her PowerPoint would make her feel more confident. Who was she trying to kid? I missed my target but don’t my nails look pretty? Idiot.

The woman sitting opposite her back there had seemed perfectly nice with her short mum bob and smiling face, but the pictures of her children smiling up from the phone screen had twisted something inside Laura. The woman – Kate? – had said she was forty-one, and her oldest child looked about six. Therefore, she must have been about thirty-five when she had her first child, which meant she fell pregnant when she was thirty-four. That gave Laura three years. Which sounded a long time. But wasn’t.

There was a display card on the counter advertising the free Wi-Fi on the train. Laura entered the lengthy password on her mobile; it looked like the coffee machine might take a while to regurgitate her drink. A circular icon spun around and around as her email tried to connect, and she issued another silent prayer. Please don’t cancel the order. Please don’t cancel the order.

A WhatsApp message rolled up her screen. Her mother.