Cupcake Couture Read Online Free PDF Page A

yellow line on the edge of the platform.
    ‘This one is for Monument via Percy Main and Byker,’ he said, ‘where are you going?’
    I swallowed and blinked at him, my jaw frozen.
    ‘
Stand clear o’ the dooors please,’
said the heavily accented Geordie train announcement.
    I had heard it every day for years and had never paid much attention before, but today it was as if the voice was talking directly to me.
    ‘
You there in the pinstripe shirt and swanky suit, where the hell do you think you’re going trussed up like that? Stand clear o’ the dooors please and let the good working folk of Newcastle get to their jobs
.’
    ‘I’m… I’m not going anywhere,’ I croaked.
    A buzzer sounded and the doors slid shut between us, barring me from entering the going-to-work club. The train slowly departed, taking Malachy Doyle’s brother, whoever he was, with it.

CHAPTER THREE
    1 ½ tsp baking powder
    Over the course of the day I visited every café in the village. Hugging endless cups of coffee, I spent long enough to pass the time, but not so long that I might be mistaken for someone with nowhere to go. Which of course I was, but I was not ready to admit it, even to myself. While passing the bakery, my stomach rumbled to let me know I had missed lunch. I paused and considered popping in for a comforting, hot, flaky sausage roll, until Shirley spotted me while she was busy scraping frozen chewing gum from the front step.
    ‘Ee look out, Janice, here comes Her Ladyship,’ she hollered through the open door over the heads of the people in the queue, ‘better get the twelve-tiered sponge out of the gold plated oven, pet.’
    I stalked proudly past her into the adjacent mini mart where I proceeded to spend around twenty minutes staring at the dog food.
    A lady reached past me for a bag of Pedigree croquettes.
    ‘What sort is yours?’ she asked brightly.
    Her black coat was covered in a fine layer of cream fur like a light snowfall.
    ‘Pardon?’
    ‘Your dog. What breed is it?’
    ‘Oh I don’t have a dog, I don’t like the hair everywhere,’ I replied without thinking.
    Her face contorted as if I had just said – ‘I only like dog in my chow mein’ – and she clutched the bag of dry food protectively to her furry chest.
    I shuffled away without making a purchase and I wandered back out onto Front Street. I glanced at my watch. It was just before three o o’clock and I had run out of cafés, which meant I could either work my way back through them or go home, neither of which appealed. If I went back to the same places, the staff would realise I was at an end so loose it had started to fray. If I went home I would be entering the realm of daytime TV. Worse still, mid-afternoon TV, a world I was wholly unfamiliar with. I had it on good authority from Roxy, who could have a PhD in the debates of the
Loose Women
, that daytime television had improved since
Doctor Quincy
and
Take the High Road
. However, I was not ready to accept I had joined the ranks of the nine to five sofa surfers. Hence I found myself teetering on the edge of a precipice, quite literally. At the very end of Front Street were high vertical cliffs supporting the ruins of the Tynemouth Priory. I stood on the edge and stared down at the angry ocean crashing against the rocks far below.
    When my family first moved North and I had no friends to occupy my time, I would spend hours after school sitting on the cliffs staring out at the distant horizon across the vast North Sea, which was the colour of oxtail soup. I would try to work out how far away it was and whether I could swim there. This was usually while my artist parents were off painting a depiction of their souls or protesting against public funds being allocated to schools and hospitals rather than to an art installation made entirely of rabbit droppings, or other such creative drivel that occupied ninety-nine percent of their waking thoughts. I’d like to think the remaining one