Christmas At The Cupcake Cafe by Jenny Colgan Read Free Book Online

talk was rarely a problem. Getting her to not talk when the cricket was on was usually far trickier.
    ‘Oh, nothing really. Same old.’
    Issy felt her face grow hot as the silence drew out between them. Austin, however, was waiting to cross a four-lane highway without being entirely sure of which way the traffic was coming, and was blind to minor emotional nuance. He thought she was cross with him for leaving Darny with her.
    ‘Look, Aunt Jessicasaid she’d be happy to take Darny …’
    ‘What?’ said Issy, exasperated. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me and Darny. He’s fine. Don’t worry about us.’
    ‘I’m not worried,’ said Austin, as a yellow taxi cab honked loudly at him for having the temerity to pause before crossing the road. ‘I was just saying. You know. It’s an option.’
    ‘I’m coming home every night after a full day’s work and managing to check his homework and make his supper. I think it’s fine. I don’t think I need options, do you?’
    ‘No, no, you’re doing brilliantly.’
    Austin wondered just when this conversation had started to drift out of his grasp so badly.
    ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to …’
    His phone was beeping. Another call was coming in.
    ‘Listen, I have to go,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you later.’
    ‘I’ll be in bed,’ said Issy, sounding more huffy than she meant to. ‘We can speak tomorrow.’
    ‘OK … all right.’

    Issy felt alarmingly frustrated when she hung up the phone. They hadn’t managed to talk at all, not about anything proper, and she’d no idea what he was up to or how it was going, apart from the definite sense she’d got from talking to him that he was having a really good time.
    She told herself she wasbeing stupid; this was a big fuss about nothing. She was getting all wound up for no reason. Her last boyfriend had been very emotionally distant, and had treated her like dirt, so she was finding her new relationship sometimes very difficult to manage. With Graeme, she couldn’t say anything at all or he would coldly close up; she knew Austin was very very different, but wasn’t sure exactly how far she could go. Men – no, not just men, everybody – shied away from neediness. She didn’t want to look needy. She wanted to be warm, casual, breezy, reminding him that they were building a loving home, not defensive and shrewlike.
    Issy sighed and looked back down at the fruit she was mixing.
    ‘No,’ she said, feeling a bit self-conscious and daft. ‘You can’t have negative thoughts when you’re making the Christmas cake. It’s unlucky. DARNY!’ she hollered up the stairs. ‘Do you want to come and drop twenty pees in the cake mix?’
    ‘Can it be two-pound coins?’
    ‘NO!’

    Austin sighed. He didn’t want to worry Issy, but sometimes it was easy to do. He’d been called in just before he left. Kirsty Dubose, the primary headmistress, had always been very soft on Darny in the past, knowing his background. Plus, unbeknown to Austin, she had had the most enormous crush on him. Mrs Baedeker, Darny’s new head at secondary, had absolutely no such qualms. And Darny’s behaviour really was appalling.
    ‘We’re looking at whatyou might call a last-chance situation,’ Mrs Baedeker had barked at Austin, who sometimes found it difficult in school situations to remember he was meant to be a grown-up.
    ‘For answering back?’ protested Austin.
    ‘For persistent class-disrupting insubordination,’ Mrs Baedeker said.
    Austin’s lips had twitched.
    ‘It’s not funny,’ she added. ‘It’s stopping others from learning. And let me tell you this. Darny Tyler might be clever and sharp and well-read and all the rest of it, and he may well turn out noisy and fine and all right.’ She hit the desk with her palm to make her point. ‘But there are a lot of kids at this school who don’t have what Darny’s got, and do need good teaching and organised lessons and proper discipline, and he’s stopping that