There's More To Life Than Cupcakes: A heart-warming and hilarious must-read

By Poppy Dolan

A funny, feel-good novel about baking, relationships and babies, perfect for fans of Sue Watson and Mhairi McFarlane.

For Ellie, life is good. Her husband, Pete, is fantastic, she has great friends and an okay job at a food magazine. But according to the rest of the world there’s one thing missing: a baby.

Ellie knows Pete would make a brilliant dad and his not-so-subtle hints confirm he is keen to become one. For Ellie it’s more complicated. Babies are cute and squishy and lovely. They also mean giving up boozy nights, Sunday lie ins and any chance of kicking her career into gear.

In search of a distraction, Ellie joins a baking class where she meets Joe – handsome, single and a dab hand with a whisk. But when a bit of harmless flirting causes big problems for Ellie she needs to decide where her heart really lies. Soon she discovers there’s no such thing as a perfect recipe for life…

‘Poppy Dolan is simply unputdownable.’ Claudia Carroll

‘Poppy Dolan's fabulous take on family, friendships and finding the right time is a rival to even the best chocolate brownie. This is warm, funny, feel-good fiction at its very best. Can I lick the spoon, please?’ Victoria Fox

‘Fresh, funny and full of baking deliciousness, There's More to Life Than Cupcakes will take you on a heart-warming journey with Ellie, a heroine you won't forget. Poppy Dolan's style is addictive and this novel marks her out as a writer to watch.’ Abby Clements

‘An engaging read that tackles a serious issue with sensitivity, humour, and wit.’ Talli Roland

‘Witty and stylish, it's a fabulous novel from new writer Poppy Dolan. We loved it! Highly recommended!’ Hot Brands, Cool Places

‘This book is a must read for chick lit fans. I loved everything about it, from the gorgeous cover to the perfect ending.’ Fairytale Ending Book Reviews

‘An immediate love-at-first-read! I loved Poppy's writing style and sense of humour and felt a genuine rapport with the characters, especially Ellie.’ Room for Reading

‘What a fantastic book! I really can't even do it justice! I cried, I laughed, I cheered (not even silently), I ate cake. I just genuinely adored everything about this book.’ Tishy Lou's World

‘A sweet (and delicious!) little tale of one woman’s absolutely mental journey in deciding whether or not she’s ready for motherhood. I enjoyed it tremendously.’ judgingcovers.co.uk

‘Funny, full of feeling, honest, warm and heartfelt. A book I didn't want to say goodbye to.’ Victoria Loves Books

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Feb 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781911591245

Poppy Dolan

Poppy Dolan lives in Berkshire with her husband, where she is a keen baker and crafter as well as a prolific author of many laugh-out-loud romantic comedies, including the bestselling The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp. You can get in touch with Poppy on Twitter @poppydwriter and on Facebook at PoppyDolanBooks. She doesn't bite. Unless you are a dark chocolate digestive.

Book preview

you.

Chapter One

It all started on my thirty-first birthday. You think you’re going to have those ‘What does it all mean?!’ wobbles when you hit the big three-oh but my thirtieth birthday actually went by in a lovely whoosh of rum, ear-ringing karaoke and two different Ryan Gosling calendars as gifts. I was too busy trying not to throw up cocktails to really take stock of where my life was going. But that’s because being thirty has a certain cute ring to it, a sort of shiny novelty. It’s heralded in by numbered balloons and special presents and everyone making you feel awesome, which definitely helps. Turning thirty-one has none of that cuteness. The fact that you’re in a whole other decade of your life has had 365 days to sink in. You know the tick boxes on forms, the ones that ask if you’re eighteen to twenty-five, or twenty-five to thirty-five? You catch yourself worrying that before you know it, neither of those boxes will be your tick buddies.

I’m not complaining about this year’s birthday, far from it. I had had a tops day in the pub, a nice clean and cosy one where our friends with babies could come in the daytime and the friends who still had lie-ins could then come after and sink cider till very late. I drank rum again, I was given great presents again (sadly no Ryan G this year. Had I grievously offended these people?!), I had funny and gorgeous and kind people around me. But something was different.

A more sensible Ellie would have paced herself on the drinks front. A more mature Ellie would have let go of the fact she had no Ryan Gosling filth in her hands. And an Ellie with any kind of heart would have been delighted by Pete’s present, rather than slightly horrified by it.

---

There was that lovely flash in his eyes that he gets when he’s excited and the crinkles that form just above his cheeks when he smiles really hard.

‘Don’t even try. You’ll never guess.’ After he handed over my present, Pete nudged elbows with my oldest mate Jules and she matched his grin.

It was beautifully wrapped in midnight-blue paper and with a gold ribbon knotted pretty sternly around the middle. I had to use my house keys to saw it off, all the while running through my mind: This is definitely a book. Is there a new Jamie out? Are Pete and I already at the couples’ stage where we just buy each other cookbooks? Maybe I should spice up my underwear collection or something.

And when I tore back the paper, I saw a book that was strangely familiar. But at the same time, not quite.

It was an A4 hardback with that maroon marbled-effect paper you always used to see at school. I turned the first page and saw in big block letters:

ELLIE REDFORD’S TWENTIES LEAVER’S BOOK

Say goodbye to your twenties and hello to the rest of your life!

I looked hard at Pete. I don’t think I was capable of blinking at that point.

‘Do you get it?’ He plonked down next to me on one of the pub’s trendily battered sofas. ‘I’m just kicking myself that I didn’t think of it in time for last year. But you know when we were clearing out the random drawer months ago, you pulled out your Sixth Form Leavers’ book and something clicked. We should do a leavers’ book for your twenties! Everyone helped with the pictures, see?’ He reached his arm around me to turn the pages.

There I was on nights out, holidays, hen dos, picnics, uniformly with my sandy hair pulled back into a doubled-over ponytail and with smiling cheeks forcing my eyes into a squinty line. Some really bad uni fashions – I took too long to accept that flares do NOT balance out your bum – one regrettably short fringe, but all memories I was very happy to relive on the printed page. I got a big thumping hit of warmth behind my chest. Pete was bloody great at presents.

I settled further back into the sofa and Jules and some of my other mates crowded round to have a nose as Pete explained the pages. I leafed through them slowly in smug pleasure and awe.

‘Now this bit, this is great. Like a time capsule, sort of.’ He pointed to a double-page spread titled THEN AND NOW… On the left hand was a copy of my actual Sixth Form Leavers’ book: the future aspirations bit. I had a dusty memory of sharing a plastic seat with Jules in the cafeteria, scribbling self-involved dreams. It started ‘When I’m thirty…’ and you had to fill in five blanks, predicting your own future. It had felt so far away then, but as I sat on the creaking leather sofa, Jules’s face peering over my shoulder like I was holding the 1999 Heat annual, it could have been yesterday.

So this is what I’d written.

When I’m 30…

…I’ll have a massive penthouse flat in London, overlooking the Thames

…I’ll be a kick-ass executive doing something really creative!

…I’ll have been to New York a million times

…I’ll still be best mates with Jules, Stacey and Cherry!!!

…I’ll have a gorgeous husband and three children. Maybe a dog!

And then Pete, bless his M&S socks, had filled in on the opposite page:

And now you’re 31…

…You rent a flat in one of South London’s most fancy boroughs. A deli on every corner in East Dulwich! With a house deposit building up nicely.

…You hold Crumbs magazine together with your amazing talents at work. They’d be printing it with potato shapes if it wasn’t for you.

…You’ve been to New York (though just the once – so far) and even had a snog on the Brooklyn Bridge, like that Sex and the City thing

…Jules is still one of your besties. Stacey made a nuisance of herself when she moved to Australia and we all know why no one speaks to Cherry any more.

…TOP MARKS for gorgeous husband. Nailed it on that one. The children bit won’t be far off, hopefully!!!!

I felt each and every one of Pete’s exclamations. Like you feel those early stomach cramps before you realise you’ve got food poisoning. Pete’s an accountant; he’s more likely to declare love via an Excel spreadsheet than he is to use effusive punctuation.

But I knew what was hidden under that seemingly jaunty clutch of exclamation marks. It’s the pregnant elephant in the room that neither of us knows how to mention, and just like a pregnant elephant, it’s been like this for a while now. Pete wants to know whether Ellie-at-thirty-one still wants what Ellie-at-eighteen clearly did. And if so, why is she taking so long about it?

Do I want a baby?

Exactly.

I felt something constrict in my throat, closed the book carefully and went to the bar.

Chapter Two

Maybe I wasn’t in the best mood before I even got to the pub that night. I should put my hand up for that one. Pete and I had been to see my parents earlier in the day, for a lovely lunch in my favourite gastro pub. Mild-mannered parents paying for three courses of fancy sweetbreads, foams and confited business, with a handsome husband by my side. What kind of grumpy guts can’t enjoy that? I’m a foodie; and I mean I’m really a foodie. I have more cookbooks than novels on my shelves. I bake a Bakewell, well. For the love of Delia, I’ve even ended up working on a foodie magazine – albeit a small one with a bonkers CEO and I only sell ad space. But stick a big fork in me and you’ll have to seriously compress the wound to stop all the salted caramel sauce that will spurt out.

So the birthday lunch is delicious, the chatter all so merry, Pete is doing a good job – as he has for the last six years – of pretending golf doesn’t make him want to recall all the groin strain injuries he’s ever had, just to feel some sort of emotional stimulation. But then, when we go back to theirs for coffee, they give me a Magimix food processor. It’s so substantial and shiny it looks like it could enter orbit.

There I was, cooing over the instruction booklet, outlining the three (yes, three) different super-sharp chopping blades, how the dough hook worked, the recipe for the perfect aïoli, as happy as a fox with a bin bag. I was in a conservatory in Buckinghamshire with my husband and I was giddy over a Magimix. Yes, I am absolutely aware that that is the most middle-aged, middle-class sentence ever constructed. But actually, I’d long ago embraced being a food geek and it certainly wasn’t news to Pete or the extra inch at his waistline. There’s not much I can do about having a retired civil servant for a mother or a golf-playing dad. So the middle-aged, middle-class thing I could probably have let slide as my post-lunch carbs coma welcomed me snugly. What tipped the scales was Mum sneaking in The Conversation again.

Now and then, like a trolley dumped in a pond, The Conversation comes along and disturbs my sense of calm with a clunk.

It usually goes like this:

Mum: How are you feeling?

Me: OK.

Mum: OK?

Me: Ye-es. Why?

Mum: Well, it’s just that you didn’t have any wine with Sunday lunch that last time you came. And I thought…

Me: Mum! No! Come on. I was green to the gills with a hangover. Probably due to the seven cocktails the night before. If I was pregnant that baby would come out like an extra for Mad Men: liquored-up and slurring.

Mum: Drinking while pregnant is no joke. I saw an article—

Me: Ah, yes, is that the dishwasher beeping? Anyway, how’s Jean?

Because, you see, I’m over thirty, married, healthy, employed, female and alive: so according to my mum it’s half past have-a-baby-already.

This week’s Conversation came as part of the Magimix appreciation society around the wicker table.

My mum cleared her throat softly. ‘It’s great for purees. You know, soups, sauces, food for Baby.’

My mind sort of left my body and floated up to the glazed ceiling, butting against the wooden beams, as it tended to do when she pressed on the procreation issue. Who was this Baby? Had she, through the sheer will of her passive-aggressive hint dropping, managed to magic up a child for me, one I didn’t even know about? Was I going to be forced to take it home, along with my leftover birthday cake? And while I was sitting there having an out-of-body experience, Pete hadn’t so much as flicked his eyes away from the page about not overloading the feeding tube. It wasn’t weird to him that my mum was referring so confidently to this future hypothetical tot and its potential dinner menu.

Which makes it official: it’s just me who has the problem. Somewhere along the way from being an eighteen-year-old with dreams of a hot husband, a corner office and half a Von Trapp family band, I’ve hit thirty-one with an excellent bloke in the bag, but a lukewarm career and a slight chill in my bones about the whole baby business.

The thing is: I do love babies. And I do want a baby; I mean, especially with Pete. He’s tallish, handsome, kind, clever and understands the many uses of good quality olive oil. I could feasibly win a Nobel Prize for making more like him. But as much as I want a baby and I see that everything on paper looks peachy… I’m not sure. I want a baby but I’m not convinced I want to be a mum. Yes, I do understand that’s kind of part of the process and inevitable. I see the lovely, fluffy image of a baby in my mind – its wispy hair, its tiny shoes, its sleepy smell – but then comes swooping in the image of me as The Mummy: red raw eyes from no sleep, greasy hair from no shower in three weeks, diary covered in an inch of dust as my social life moulders, emails piling up from colleagues saying how comfy my replacement is getting at my desk… Not to mention the possibility that I could take a lovely, innocent bundle of joy and through bad choices, a short temper and my desire to watch a lot of telly, turn it into a rotten human being.

But I really need to sort out these wobbles. Because it’s not just my mum: it’s Pete. He’s bringing up his own version of The Conversation quite a bit: The I’m Just Wondering. ‘I’m just wondering whether I should get cracking clearing out that big cupboard in the spare room, just in case we need more storage space…’ ‘I’m just wondering whether we should RSVP to Phil’s wedding next summer in Greece now, or wait a bit. We don’t know where we might be in a year’s time…’ It all feels like a warm-up to ‘I’m just wondering when you should come off the Pill’.

It seems like that ‘one in the oven’ phrase is getting more and more appropriate to me. OK, so I have none in the oven right now, but the whole timing of getting preggo seems super crucial. Like a good cookie baking away at 180°C, you’ve got to know when to commit to whipping them out. Too early is a mistake, but leave it too late and you risk being all dried out like a Weetabix. So do I get my eggs mixed up with Pete’s… ingredients now – when it feels too soon – or do I play that dangerous game of hopping about in front of the oven, nervously biding my time and then leaving it all too late? I could be the dried husk of a cookie in a few years if I’m not careful. And that makes me shake in my trainers just to contemplate it. So the only thing I can do is nothing. I stop thinking about it, read a book, put the washing on, hope Pete won’t bring it up again till I’m totally mentally sorted on the issue. Because that’s bound to happen soon, right? In the meantime, I’ll just keep having my recurring dream about floating egg-shaped kitchen timers.

Chapter Three

The phantom Baby was following me round the pub that night and Pete’s gift – as thoughtful and inspired and amazing as it was – only served to make me a little bit twitchier about this child everyone was so sure I was having.

In a badly thought-out act of rebellion, I got stupid drunk. I’m the last of the original thinkers. When my lovely mate Lyds finally showed her face at elevenish, the first thing she said wasn’t ‘Happy birthday!’ or ‘Sorry I’m a bit late – I was at a silent disco and left my phone in the loos’ but, ‘Ooof, darling, you stink of Bacardi. Is it Back to School night or something?’

I gave her a full body hug. ‘Could be. Because I’m still young. We’re still young, right? I look like I did when you met me, right? I could pass for eighteen, yeah?’ Suddenly I was aware I was holding her by the shoulders.

Lyds squinted, most likely taking in my blood alcohol levels through the fact my eyeliner was now on my cheeks and that I was still digging my fingers into her leather bomber jacket.

‘Sooo, are you having a good birthday?’ she asked in a deadpan tone.

‘Yes! Especially now you’re here! My friend, my bestie, my Lydia Chlamydia. Oh, come here.’

I remember that she sidestepped my second hug and the fumes that followed it. ‘I am your bestie, right?’ Her eyebrows arched.

‘Of course! I wuv you.’

‘So you’d do me a favour, right?’

‘Anything for you. An-nee-thing.’

According to Lydia, this is when I agreed to go on an adult education baking class. For her.

---

The thing is, I can already bake pretty damn well. I get gasps of delight at my double-chocolate cookies. I get near-orgasmic grunts when a friend bites into my lemon drizzle. I’m not reinventing the wheel here, but I do myself proud in the baking department. But, as with most of Lyds’s cunning plans, me taking a baking class had very little to do with me baking.

After she’d sneaked the OK out of me on my birthday night, I tried to wriggle out of the deal, with the argument that I’d hardly been in sound body or mind. But I found myself having coffee with her instead a few days later as she makes her case over flaky pastry. Butter is like an addictive drug to me – I am powerless in its presence.

‘I refuse to believe that you found a hot, viable man in Beginner’s Textile Jewellery.’ She half-squinted as if preparing her rebuttal but I soldiered on, ‘I literally refuse to believe it.’ I held up my hands, palms out, as if the idea of this man was the muddy netball I was not interested in catching during Year Seven PE.

Lyds twiddled one bleached strand of her otherwise hazelnut hair. It was tinged with pink at the ends; a new colourful addition I guessed was down to her hairdresser housemate in Brixton. With a shake of the artfully tumbled curls, Lyds said, ‘No, I’m taking Textile Jewellery: Matilda and I are going to get a market stall!’ The Indian bracelets clacked and tinkled on Lydia’s wrists as she punched the air in excitement.

‘Mmm-hmmm.’ Over the eleven years of friendship with Lydia I had perfected the non-committal conversational segue sound. I think I used it the first time when she told me, during Freshers’ Week, that we should really sign up for the Windsurfing Society. At Sheffield University.

‘Yeah, so, this guy is actually taking Intermediate Baking – I saw him at the sign-up sheet. Tall, stubble in the right places. Nice smile.’

‘But baking?’

In many years of friendship with me, Lydia had developed a deflector shield eye roll that sent my sceptical frowns flying back into the atmosphere. It was how she got me to sign up for the Windsurfing Society. ‘Chuh. Homophobe much? A man can bake without… wanting to put his French stick in another man’s—’

I nodded vigorously. ‘Got it, thanks. Right, so what’s the plan?’ I picked up a biscotti crumb from the table top. ‘You could do with sorting out your shortcrust from your shortbread. Your eyes will meet over a pavlova and – poof – love at first bake.’

Lyds swung one long leg over the other under the cloudy glass coffee shop table. ‘Can’t do two classes, Ells, haven’t the time, money or revision capabilities.’ Suddenly I had a flashback of Lydia before her psychology finals, screeching, ‘WHERE is the frontal lobe again?’ and collapsing in a pile of ProPlus pills.

‘So what’s the plan of attack?’

‘You go.’

‘Hugo? Who’s Hugo?’

‘No, dear, you go. To the class. See what he’s like, if he’s any cop, then, if he is, bring him to the pub and I’ll just be there, casually chilling in my Topshop leather trousers and freshly made denim beads. And he will be mine.’ She cackled and tapped the tips of her fingers together. ‘It’s been months and I NEED it.’ Somewhere behind us, a barista dropped his saucer.

After clearing the green tea leaves from my throat, I croaked over our crumby plates, ‘All right, Dita Von Teese, don’t blow a gasket. That might be a fine plan in your world but I’m not just some smug married who has nothing better to do than play along with your seduction plans.’ If I’d ever known how to pout successfully, I would have done it just then.

‘Oh, love,’ Lyds tipped her head to one side and batted her Bambi lashes, ‘that’s not how I think of you at all. You have your life so sorted that you can help out a doofus like me. I don’t have a marvellous Pete at home, I just have an empty goldfish bowl, a half-knitted scarf and credit card bills as floor insulation. Take pity on meeeee.’ She clutched at my hands over the table and turned up the baby voice. ‘Pur-lese, Smelly Ellie. You are my bestest friend. In the whole wide world.’

I bit the inside of my cheek. I shook off her clammy clutches. I considered the five-year-old vow to join a night school and learn Italian I’d never so much as Googled into action. And I supposed I could do with furthering myself, meeting some new people. I considered all the things the eighteen-year-old me thought I would have achieved by now. OK, so perfecting a chocolate roulade was hardly on the same scale, but it was something to add to my patchy list of achievements.

‘OK, yes. But you’re buying all my ingredients and if you go off him in a week I can bail. If you get on him you can’t ignore me, either. I’m not having another summer like that awful one with Bob the Architect.’

Lydia patted her hands together in delight and then stuck out her tongue in good humour. ‘You went over the top, calling the police. I was fine!’

‘You holed up in your flat, shagging him solid for two weeks and didn’t return my calls! I thought you’d been chopped into bits or sex trafficked.’

‘Mmm, well we did do this one role play thingy where he’d come in with all the lights off and tie my—’

‘Okay-dokey, definitely time to catch the bus.’

And that was how I agreed to become Lydia’s covert culinary agent in dating warfare.

Chapter Four

Pete loosened his tie in that yummy coffee advert way he had, and exhaled slowly. ‘Numbers. I wish I could just leave them at work, in the spreadsheets, but they follow me home, every day: train platforms, Casio watches, bloody Sudokus. Gah.’ He opened a bottle of Becks against the kitchen counter and put the lid in the bin before he took his first sip. I had truly married the right man.

‘The curse of the accountant. You’re like a modern-day Midas. Sort of.’

Pete gave me a soft pat on the bum and took an exaggerated sniff over my head. ‘What’s that delicious smelling stuff? Magimixed anything nice? We haven’t julienned any carrots yet.’

‘Hah! Not tonight. Cod fillets with chorizo, and bean salad. Thank you very much.’ Pete and I lived and died by Nigella’s recommendations. ‘Saw Lyds for a coffee after work.’

Pete picked up a kidney bean with dexterous fingers. ‘Oh yeah? What’s her latest scheme? Rollerblading waitress? Lifestyle guru? Professional bodybuilder?’

Flipping the cod over in the pan, I thanked my lucky stars the skins held in one piece. The chorizo slices sizzled in their scarlet juices around the edge of the pan, giving off a delicious tangy scent.

‘Selling textile jewellery with her new flatmate. She’s going to take an evening course in it. And I think I might sign up for one, too.’ I looked at Pete sideways as the steam tickled my nose.

‘Good idea, babe. Right: Hairy Bikers.’

And without so much as asking what evening class I’d taken, or where or when, Pete strolled into the living room to start our quasi-cannibalistic evening of eating food while watching better food being cooked and dreaming of the food we’d eat tomorrow. My average Tuesday night.

---

So now here I am, standing outside the college, ten minutes early for my class and feeling like a plonker. It’s that weird kind of September when it can be flat and grey when you’re getting dressed and then, like a weather ninja, it’ll pull out a blade of red-hot sun and you’ll be sweating buckets and desperately stuffing one of your three layers into your book bag. So I have a red cardi in with my Lisa Jewell and a bit of time to kill to avoid first impressions of complete swottiness. I’m still a little surprised at myself for going along with another of Lyds’s evil schemes so readily, but a change is always as good as a rest, as my Gran used to say. Mind you they put her in a rest home, and she wasn’t too happy about that.

A smorgasbord of Londoners fill into the adult education building and I’m transfixed by the menu of people types: polished octogenarians in granny gangs, with floral two-pieces and cheeky smiles; shy-looking foreign language students with a whole host of accents and skin tones but mysteriously near-identical backpacks; your basic trendies in skinny jeans, waistcoats and thick-framed glasses, gender unknown; women probably my age in funky coloured tights and with sharp bobs, swinging their own book bags and speed-walking towards their class in heeled brogues. I have instant life envy and hope they are in my class.

---

‘That’s me, there. Eleanor Redford.’

I’m ticked off by a sweet little receptionist after I’ve wasted a socially acceptable ten minutes just shuffling my feet on the pavement and people-watching. Plumping for a middle row in the large Home Ec classroom, I feel all kinds of nostalgia for my schooldays. Funnily enough, I hated cooking when I was in secondary school and said very annoying and precocious things about one day paying someone ‘to do all this pants stuff for me’ when I was asked to crumb butter and flour for scones. Now I feel a mini burst of joy if I get an hour free of work stress or dealing with Pete’s work stress or doing my Davina workout DVD till my eyes pop out or swearing at the self-checkout in Sainsbury’s. If I have a free hour I’ll use it to bake. Something fattening that will cancel out my bottom toning with Big D (as I call her and like to believe she accepts fondly), something that I could have bought super easily at the supermarket but then it wouldn’t have been my own, my precious. I’ll bake and I’ll think about nothing. And then I’ll lick the bowl. Joy.

I’m not sure how bowl licking will go down in this class, so decide to rein myself in to start with. As I flop my bag onto a high stool, my phone buzzes.

From: Lydia Chlamydia

Have funnnnn, Smells! Remember, he’s tall, dark and hopefully single. Recon catch up later, yeah? THANKS AGAIN BABY x

I know when Lyds bothers to do something in caps that she really means it, so that’s nice. I just hope the whole class isn’t full of tall, dark, handsome men. Wait, no, actually I do. But can they please wear name tags? But not so much as one single hottie has turned up yet, so I fuss a bit to hide my impatient awkwardness.

I switch my phone to silent, after texting back, I’m in deep cover. He will be yours. X. I tie my hair up, put on my favourite Liberty pinny (no I didn’t dream of uttering that thought when I was eighteen, but then again I didn’t have clothes nice enough to risk ruining with beetroot juice then) and, as an afterthought, slip my wedding rings off and into the zippy pocket of my handbag. When Pete and I had first tentatively talked about getting hitched, he’d straightaway begged not to choose the ring. It was too much pressure for his male brain, and I was happy to save him the mental energy. Jewellery shopping; hello. But I’m not a blingy type, and our budget definitely wasn’t the blingy type, so my ring is a little bit different. It’s three grey pearls in a close row, with these tiny gold leaves tucked between them, like a metallic bouquet. I loved it on sight in a jewellery boutique, and Pete finally unclenched his buttocks when he realised it was way affordable.

But the sales girl had looked a bit panicked when I said it was our engagement ring.

‘It’s more of a fashion piece,’ she fumbled, ‘I don’t know how long it will last.’

‘Well, who knows how long the marriage will last!’ I joked gaily, feeling out of place in the swanky velvet-lined shop. (Pete sulked, quite rightly, for a good hour about that lame remark.)

‘The pearls are only… glued in place,’ she finished with a whisper. ‘Please try to avoid getting them wet, or having any contact with soap, so they don’t loosen.’

By this stage I was so droolingly in love with the ring I would have handed over the joint account card even if she’d said the pearls were cursed and I could only wear them on a full moon in a hay field, surrounded by virgins. But I did remember her Gremlins-style warnings and have been carefully sitting the ring on a little white tile left over from the bathroom refit, which itself sits on top of my favourite painted teacup, each time I shower or wash up or bake. Pete calls it The Shrine and sometimes gives it a mock-bow on his way to the fridge. But my pearls are still intact three years later, so I am a happy devotee. My actual wedding band is your bog-standard Ernest Jones job that is so thin I could probably use it as a washer should an appliance break down. Or it would be an excellent hula hoop for a bee. I still remember the gelled-up sales assistant who took out the tray of wedding bands hopefully, only for me to say, ‘No, the row below that one. No, down a bit more. Basically, the one right at the bottom on special offer.’ But to save hurting the skinny thing’s feelings, I let it sit on The Shrine too. Like the Queen lets Prince Phillip join in on things. He’s important, but you wouldn’t cry so much if he went down the sink.

So I’m prepped to bake, looking out for a friendly type to be my new course buddy. And in walks one of the bright tight ladies. She has a sheet of fine blonde hair, cut longer in the front, and a grey marl dress. I think grey marl speaks very highly of a person, like only reading the Daily Mail online for the showbiz news and slagging it off otherwise. Like putting back the cheese you suddenly don’t want in its right home in the supermarket, rather than leaving it to sweat to death in the biscuit aisle. I have a funny premonition she’d never leave a good cheese behind. So I catch her eye.

‘Hello!’ I chirrup, unnaturally perky. ‘I’m Ellie. Are you here for Intermediate Baking?’

There’s a horrible minute where she just blinks and I prepare myself for a cool girl’s blanking. It’s amazing the number of women you meet who are thirty-two going on seventeen when it comes to assessing who’s edgy enough to talk to. But luckily a polite smile breaks out.

‘Hannah.’ She puts forward a hand. ‘Is this it? Just the two of us? Good for teaching time, I suppose, but I should warn you, I can get competitive. If there’s some sort of ribbon in this class, I will pretty much bake to the death to win it.’

I knew I was going to like her.

‘Good to know. But don’t worry about a ribbon; they’ve already printed my name on it.’ I pull a jokey grimace to avoid coming across like a right knob. ‘So do you do much baking already? Are you up to croquembouche level?’

She laughs, and it’s pleasantly tinkly. ‘God no, I value the skin on my fingers too much to attempt hot caramel. I can find my way around a mixing bowl but I could do with polishing up. I actually teach not far from here, in Southwark, and the only Home Economics we can do is an after-school class. There’s no time in the curriculum. And there’s no budget to pay an actual expert. So I want to get some better skills