Jade invited the kickboxers. Cake felt a little uneasy in the large nightclub. The party was the usual affair with people separated into their individual little groups. Jade could see that Cake looked uncomfortable and out of place, like a lost puppy. She left her group of hairdressing colleagues and went over to him. Cake stood alone with a bottle of Bacardi Breezer looking at the crowded dance floor.
“Glad you could make it,” Jade shouted above the noise of the music.
“Thanks for inviting me,”
There was an awkward silence between the two as music blasted out. Neither knew what to say next and both stared at each other for several moments, until Jade asked, “You smell nice, what’s that you’ve got on?” referring to Cake’s aftershave.
Cake looked thoughtful, smirked, and replied, “A hard, but I didn’t think you could smell it,” he laughed.
Jade looked confused and then figured it out. That broke the ice and Jade giggled and said, “Well it would be a shame to waste a good hard.” She took the bottle from his hand and placed it on a table.
“Let’s get out of here and go somewhere quieter,” she said, and suggested, “Let’s go to my place.”
The couple walked hand in hand out of the nightclub, with the kickboxers cheering them on.
Jade was a few years older than Cake, with brown wavy hair, brown eyes, and impish features. She resembled a smaller, muscular, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Cake marvelled at her feminine, well-defined body as they lay entwined, naked in each other’s arms on a cold Christmas morning in Jade’s single bed at her flat above the hair salon.
Cake felt nauseous by the overpowering smell coming from the chemicals in the salon, which he also could smell on Jade, but thought she smelt a lot better than female cooks did.
It was the first serious relationship for both of them. Cake and Jade became inseparable, spending all their free time together. Cake told Jade about his heightened olfactory senses, informing her he wasn’t being a cheeky twat by saying he couldn’t stay the night at the salon because it stank. The smell of ammonia in the hair dye made him retch.
Although they both had good incomes, with the astronomical price of property in London, Cake entered baking competitions to make purchasing an apartment possible.
The couple raised a sizeable deposit and took out a mortgage on a swanky apartment, midway between the Avalon and Jade’s salon in Knightsbridge.
Madly in love, they enjoyed their life together; planning to marry when they both felt settled enough to start a family.
However, for the time being, they were content living in the limelight of the Pâtissier Phenom, with Cake winning every competition he entered.
Jade surprised Cake frequently. She was a successful hairstylist with a wicked sense of humour and a strange interest in horror, as Cake found out when she wrote a novel about a cocaine addict, who sniffed the ashes of an unknown disintegrated vampire and turned into Keith Richards, which she had published.
Cake had now been working at the Avalon for three years, and built a top-class reputation. When the owners announced they had sold out for a massive profit to a corporation. Cake, remembering his experience with the Savoy, decided it was now time for him to move on and handed in his notice shortly before The Baker of the Year Award.
Despite lucrative offers of employment from other top restaurants, and the Avalon’s offer of a generous pay increase. Cake, at the pinnacle of his profession, wanted to branch out with Jade and run a bakery business.
Cake now felt happy knowing it would be the last time he would attend The Baker of the Year Award or any more awards ceremonies as only sponsored chefs from top restaurants and hotels could enter. Cake always felt uncomfortable and realised he looked awful in a suit with his stocky body balancing on thin spindly legs. Even though top class London tailors made his suits to measure, they hung off him as if a cack-handed blind person had made them. He’d always felt it unfair on his peers entering these competitions because of his heightened olfactory sense, perfect palate, and exceptional talent gave him an indisputable advantage over them. He now wanted to bring his flavours and delicacies from the South and its decadent clientele and make them available in the North. The couple had been together now for three years. They found premises in the Lincoln city centre and having it converted it into a bakery and pâtisserie, which had been Cake’s dream for a long time.
Jade wanted to venture north with Cake and help him in his endeavour. Although content with her life in London and would miss the money and adulation given to her around London by being with her cooking superstar fiancé, she knew Cake was unhappy working in large hotels. Jade’s job paid well and with Cake’s high salary along with the prize money from competitions, and bonuses, and although having to pay a mortgage in London, they scraped enough money together to finance their Lincoln venture, which was almost complete. Jade regularly commuted to Lincoln to check the building’s progress. Cake was finishing his job at the Avalon in a few weeks’, when he and Jade would then move to the Northern city.
The big day arrived when ‘CAKE’S Bakery & Pâtisserie’ opened its doors to the public. For Cake and Jade, it was now time to see if the fruits of their labour would pay off. They stood in the pâtisserie like proud parents waiting to show their new-born to the world.
“The place smells wonderful,” said Jade and kissed Cake, who had been preparing and baking with his two bakers since 5:00 am, sending heavenly aromas drifting through the pâtisserie.
Cake looked nervous and glanced over at the staff stood in front of the glass displays filled with decorative cakes and pastries. He looked at his two bakers through the glass partition of the bakery, and then looked at Jade, sighed, furrowed his brow, and asked, “Does everything look okay?”
Jade took his hand and said, “It looks perfect, don’t worry.”
“I can’t see any people queuing outside,” said Cake, looking through the windows. He glanced at the wall clock. “It’s 7: 45,” said Cake fidgeting.
Two men then knocked on the door
“About time they got here, “said Jade, unlocked the door, let the men in, and relocked the door
“Sorry we’re late,” said Kris Pinyoun, the Lincoln city FC goalkeeper, who arrived with a photographer from the Lincoln gazette to open the establishment.
Jade looked outside, sighed, and locked the door.
Cake, Jade, the serving ladies, and Kris went to the centre of the shop and stood around a Louis Vuitton patchwork cake on display. The photographer took pictures of Jade cutting the cake and handing a piece to Kris, who took a forkful off the plate. The photographer snapped away as Kris placed the small chunk into his mouth. His expression changed as the delicate cake dissolved in his mouth as he savoured the flavours.
‘Great acting,’ thought the photographer, who continued snapping away at the happy footballer.
“It’s now eight o’clock,” said Cake sounding anxious and again looking at the wall clock.
Jade smiled and instructed, “Okay, open the doors.”
Sarah opened the front door and the staff went behind the counters to their respective workstations.
Cake and Jade stood with their arms around each other
