A Spoonful Of Sugar: A Novella. Kerry Barrett

smiled uncertainly.

      ‘Nice,’ she said. ‘And have you seen Ronald’s?’

      I hadn’t but I followed Amelia’s eyeline. He was topping his cupcakes with sleeping babies – a round head poking out of an icing blanket – and he’d made a tiny wooden crib to arrange them all in. I was WAY out of my league here. Way out.

      ‘You’ve got forty-five minutes left,’ Peter said, wandering over and staring in disappointment at my cooling cakes. They did look a bit sorry for themselves, I had to admit.

      ‘What are you topping them with?’

      I gave him a fake beaming smile.

      ‘Question marks,’ I said with a confident toss of my hair.

      There was a pause.

      ‘Question marks,’ Peter repeated.

      ‘Amelia’s doing ducks,’ I said, desperate for him to leave me alone. It worked. He gave me a steely glance and headed over to Amelia’s bench instead.

      ‘I must get these babies in the fridge,’ Ronald muttered. ‘I don’t want melted blankets.’

      He’d arranged his tiny snoozing tots on a tray and I peeked at them as he went past. They were really very good.

      ‘Back in a mo,’ he said, as he strode off down the bunting-strewn path towards the café.

      I carried on dolloping icing on top of my cakes. I’d iced the pink cakes with blue icing, and the blue ones with pink. They looked okay. I’d have been pleased with them if I’d made them for a friend’s baby shower but I suspected they wouldn’t be good enough for Lizzie and Peter.