and stared at Rose through his spectacles. He had no lips to speak of – it was as if the skin beneath his nose and above his chin just decided, at a certain point, to stop. “I am Mr Butter, and my muscular associate, whom you’ve already had the pleasure of meeting, is Mr Kerr.”
“Mostess, huh,” Rose said. She had heard of Mostess Snack Cakes, of course. Everyone had. They were the ones with the little white cow in the corner of the package.
At school, Rose’s friends sometimes pulled out packages of Mostess Snack Cakes at the lunch table – little chocolate cakes stuffed with marshmallow, black cupcakes covered in white dots, vanilla cakes stuffed with chocolate cream – each with different names that bore no resemblance to the cake itself, like Dinky Cakes, Moony Pyes, and King Things. Rose never thought to try a bite of her friends’ Dinky Cakes or King Things, because her mother always packed her a delicious homemade treat, and anyway, the snack cakes were gobbled and gone in two bites.
“Misters Butter and Kerr, of the Mostess Snack Cake Company,” Rose repeated. “Got it. Now I can tell the police who kidnapped me.”
Mr Butter opened his non-lips and let out a crisp ha-ha. “Kidnapped! Do you hear that, Mr Kerr? The poor thing thinks that we kidnapped her!”
Mr Kerr stared nervously at Rose. “Ha,” he replied.
“You carried me here in a flour sack,” Rose said. “Against my will.”
“Oh, you’ve misinterpreted the day’s events, Miss Bliss,” Mr Butter went on smoothly. “We haven’t kidnapped you, we’ve brought you here to offer you a job!”
Rose furrowed her brow. “A job? What kind of job?”
“We need help with our recipes,” Mr Kerr said bluntly, rubbing his hands over the smooth velour of his track suit.
Mr Butter glared at Mr Kerr a moment, then turned back to Rose, all smiles. “Yes, that’s the gist of it,” he said, tapping his fingers on the desk. “You see, Rose, we here at the Mostess Snack Cake Corporation were just as horrified as you were by the passage of the Big Bakery Discrimination Act. Of course, the law does happen to benefit our bakery, as we employ well over a thousand people. So we wanted to help a newly unemployed small-town baker like yourself by putting you to work for us.”
Gus fidgeted on her lap. It suddenly dawned on Rose that neither of them had seen a bathroom for hours.
“Think of it as an exchange programme,” Mr Kerr added matter-of-factly. His voice was so deep that it sounded like his throat was trying to swallow the words before they escaped. “Like you kids do in school.”
“Exactly,” said Mr Butter. “You see, Rose, we have something wonderful to offer each other.”
“We do?” Rose said.
“Mostess has the finest baking facilities in the world, thousands of square feet of floor space, the most cutting-edge machinery, and a staff of thousands of qualified baking professionals.” Mr Butter paused a moment to savour the thought of it. “That is what you lack. You, Rosemary Bliss, are a baker without a bakery.”
Rose hung her head. Mr Butter was wrong. The Bliss family had a bakery; they just weren’t legally allowed to operate it. She thought of last night, how cramped and hot the tiny kitchen had been, and how little they could really afford to support the town’s baked-goods needs. How exhausted she and her parents were. They couldn’t go on like that.
“What we lack is the kind of attention that you small-town bakers can afford to lavish on each loaf of bread, each crumpet, each swirl of cupcake frosting, each—”
“I understand,” Rose interrupted.
Mr Butter bristled. “You know as well as I do that a perfect dessert sweetens life like nothing else. People in every town, students at every school, from every walk of life, they all depend upon that little bit of goodness that they can find within, say, a Bliss tart. Or slice of cake.”
“Or a muffin,” Mr Kerr continued. “Or a croissant. Or clafouti. Or—”
“I get it,” Rose snapped.
Mr Butter cleared his throat and ran his fingers along the bald arches where his eyebrows should have been. “At the Mostess Snack Cake Corporation, we believe our snack cakes are nearly perfect, but our recent sales record has not reflected this. Our snack cakes can’t compete with the love and the … how do I describe it … the magic that you small bakeries provide.”
Rose eyed Mr Butter suspiciously and felt something flutter nervously in her stomach. Magic? she thought. He couldn’t possibly know about the magic.
“And shouldn’t every town have what Calamity Falls has? Readily available, forever fresh, fabulous, delicious gourmet treats?” Mr Butter went on. “Before your fortuitous arrival, we had—”
“You kidnapped me,” Rose said again. On her lap, Gus growled.
“—we had the assistance of a master baker who had very nearly perfected our recipes. Sadly, she competed in a baking contest in Paris, and after events there never returned.” Rose immediately knew there was only one person he could be talking about – her devious aunt Lily. “And that’s why we need you,” Mr Butter said. “To perfect the recipes. To make our snack cakes the best in the world. To finish what the previous director started but failed to finish.”
Rose looked down at Gus, who stared back at her with wide eyes, as if to say, Don’t you dare. The point of his tail flicked.
“Why me?” Rose asked. “Why not any of the other bakers at any of the millions of bakeries around the country that were just put out of business by that crazy new law?”
Mr Butter tapped his finger on the tip of his broad nose. “You come highly recommended.”
“By whom?”
“Well … Jean-Pierre Jeanpierre, of the Gala des Gâteaux Grands, of course. He selected you as the winner of the most prestigious baking competition in the world, didn’t he? Wouldn’t it make sense that we would seek your help above everyone else’s?”
Rose blushed. It was flattering, if highly suspicious. Apparently she was never going to live down that competition. “But you said before that you wanted the book instead of the cook. What book were you talking about?”
“We heard that at the Bliss Bakery you use a … special book that makes your treats magically delicious,” Mr Butter said. “That the secret of your success is thanks to—”
“Nope!” Rose lied. How could they know about the Booke? “No special book! We do all our baking from memory. Whoever told you about a special book was pulling your leg. Yanking your chain. Lying through their teeth—”
“And that is precisely why we brought you here,” said Mr Butter. “You are our only hope, Rosemary Bliss. We desperately need your help. Not just for us, but for the good of anyone who has ever turned for hope and happiness to a sweet baked good.” He removed his glasses and dabbed at his eyes with the corner of his handkerchief. “Will you help us in this, our time of greatest need?”
Mr Butter obviously cared about baking, Rose
