String of Fate

Chapter Eighteen

I couldn't wait to inherit the bakery that my parents owned and ran. I had always loved the cakes and treats that they produced for the customers and hoped to produce great works like theirs in the future. I just had one little problem – I couldn't bake anything to save my life. At all. It was like the gene that both my parents had for baking had just skipped me. Luckily, my parents had a baker who worked for them part time who I had managed to convince to teach me how to bake. Very reluctantly, he had agreed.

"What are you even doing? That is not what I told you to do. Stop wasting my time with these pointless lessons. You are never going to learn how to bake." Francis barked over my shoulder as I tried to put the mix of simple cupcakes into the baking tray. My mother glanced over at us from across the bakery kitchen. She knew that I had fancied Francis since he had started working here a few months ago, but he wasn't the friendliest of guys. Still, a girl could dream until her string appeared. "I am not teaching you until you learn how to bake the most basic of cupcakes. Please, leave the kitchen and stop wasting my time. I need to actually do my work for the store tomorrow."

"Yes, sir." I answered sadly, stepping away from the baking tray. Francis whisked the tray away before I could even attempt to clean up my mess. Francis pushed me from the kitchen before I could even leave myself and I had no choice but to go back up to the flat above the bakery, passing my dad serving the customers.

I changed out of my uniform that I had been wearing for my lesson and put a load of clothes to wash. I was glad that it was Friday, which meant that it was finally the weekend. Once I knew that the clothes were washing and that I had nothing else to do for my chores, I went to my room and grabbed my tablet, opening up the web browser and finding a simple cupcake recipe.

I needed to start small and work my way up. There was no point trying to bake something extravagant if I couldn't even make anything worth eating. I was honestly a terrible cook and I wanted to be a good baker. I needed to be a good baker.

Locking the tablet, I got off my bed and headed back out to the kitchen. I could give this whirl now while no one was home, and both my parents wouldn't finish in the store for at least another hour. I grabbed the ingredients from the cupboards and started the attempt at baking. I needed a good cupcake to at least convince Francis to teach me again.

I was running out of time. My birthday was tomorrow and I wanted to be able to make a cake by then. It probably hadn't been the best idea to give myself my own time limit, but I needed to have some sort of time period in which I could call it a success.

It took me four attempts for me to actually get them to look like cupcakes after coming out of the oven, some of the batches coming out burnt. It was another five until they tasted alright. At some point during the whole experience, my parents had come home and I had taken a little break from tea the two of them trying to give me encouraging words of advice, but I had to do it.

It was the early hours of the morning when I had finished with a decent cupcake batch, the twelve cupcakes looking decent and I tasted one of them, and it was a decent cupcake taste. I tried to simply decorate them with a piping back and managing some sort of swirl on top, and I dug out some little stars to sprinkle on top.

I popped them all into containers and decided that I would call it a night. I mean, my parents were already tucked up in bed, and had been for at least an hour. I tidied up the rest of the mess that I had made, making sure that all the dishes were done and put away, and headed to bed just before midnight, making sure everything was switched off.

I woke in the morning without an alarm, and instead, I had the sound of people talking in the kitchen. I couldn't recognise the voices fully, but I knew that at least one of them had to be my parents. When I reached for the phone to check the time, I noticed that there was now a string on my finger. The time was around midday, too, so, my parents had just closed the bakery for the day since it was only open between 9am and midday on a Saturday.