Piece of Cake [EBOOK]

<h3>Chapter 1</h3>
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Chiswick Park Academy was a hive of excitement. After a quiet summer housing only international boarding students with no plans to return home for the holidays, students had flooded back in a tsunami of chatter, shrieked reunions, and the clatter of hundreds of feet on ancient stone floors.
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The current eye of the storm was in the academy’s chapel. On this second week of September, the first week of the new term for those students that attended the academy, there had been a variety of special events arranged. Today was an exclusive harvest festival style event to showcase the best of the high-quality produce and artisan creators that this particular patch of Gloucestershire, England had to offer.
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From her display table in the chancel, Ginger Burnet watched with no small amount of amusement as George Harvey, the headmaster of the academy, blushed and stammered his way through an interview with the film crew from BBC South West.
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The academy, at the suggestion of several members of the faculty, had invited beloved local television personality Sarah Sontag to report on the event. She was well-known on both a local and national level as a vocal proponent of buying local and supporting independent small businesses. According to Ginger’s close art teacher friend Bonnie Natt, who was far more tapped into the gossip around the academy, Sarah had leapt at the chance to attend the event with a film crew in tow.
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“I wonder if Harvey thought he’d get dragged up in front of the cameras?” Bonnie asked, glancing up at the visibly uncomfortable headmaster while she helped Ginger arrange her display of stunningly beautiful and delicate cakes. “The way he’s sweating and the fact that he wore that tie he hates suggests he didn’t and also that he might be behind on laundry.”
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Ginger briefly delayed her chuckle of amusement. She narrowed her hazel eyes in concentration, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth slightly. With the most delicate movements, she finished placing the tiny marzipan sculpture of a sleeping field mouse into position.
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Stepping back, she admired the four-tier cake the academy had commissioned from her specially for the event, each of the tiers bearing a countryside tableau of creatures great and small, all lovingly crafted out of marzipan, fondant icing, or chocolate.
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“I think our dear headmaster was very much hoping to stay behind the scenes in this instance,” Ginger commented, carefully placing one of the several wheat stalks she had crafted out of melted sugar and edible paint around the sleeping mouse. “Poor George.”
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“Poor George indeed,” Bonnie echoed, stretching up on tiptoe as she finished assembling the large canvas backdrop of the rolling Gloucestershire countryside that she had painted for the cake of the rolling Gloucestershire countryside. “Amelia, can you please hook up that other side for me?”
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The sixteen-year-old, after a year of helping Ginger in the Melville House café on campus and attending Ginger’s classes the previous term, had become an unofficial apprentice at some point over the summer. Now, she looked up from where she was hand drawing a sign for the cake display using chalk paints, the warm yellow of her head wrap bringing out the flecks of gold in her amber eyes.
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Wiping off her hands, she quickly hurried over to the other side of the table, helping Bonnie attach the landscape painting onto the display frame to form the background for the cake.
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“That looks incredible,” commented the woman to Ginger’s left who, according to her charmingly rustic sign, made organic jams, preserves, syrups, and pickles using only local produce. “I keep expecting all the little creatures to start moving at any moment.”
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“Thank you.” Ginger beamed, shaking her soft chestnut bangs out of her face. “Seeing people enjoy it makes all the late nights of sculpting worth it.”
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“She’s been shut in her garage for the last week making the critters,” Bonnie pointed out, a note of pride in her voice. “I think her actual cats were starting to question if they were real with all these sugary impersonators around the house.”
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“I made one of the rabbits,” Amelia added proudly, turning to point to a slightly lumpy leporidae on the second, summer-themed tier.
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As she did so, her hip bumped the corner of the table, sending a jar of jam careening onto the floor. The sound of breaking glass, muffled wetly by the contents of the jar, caused several heads to turn. Even Sarah Sontag, over by the open doors of the chapel, glanced away from her interview with the specialist, organic, free range butcher who was catering the event.
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Amelia looked from the mess on the floor to Ginger, aghast.
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“I’m so sorry!” she said, sinking her teeth into the pillow of her lower lip. “I know that was the last of the cherry jam.”
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Ginger held up her hands calmingly. “It’s fine,” she said. “It was only for the taster cakes. I’ll go and find some more from the kitchen somewhere. You go and find someone to help clean up the glass and the jam, okay?”
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“There’s a bunch of cleaning stuff in a closet in the teachers’ lounge,” Bonnie said, leading a still apologising Amelia away, “I’ll let you in.”
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Carefully, Ginger crouched down and started gathering the larger shards of glass together in a pile.
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“Need a hand?” The woman from the next table hurried over, a newspaper and plastic bag in hand. “I have some things on hand for accidents like this. Kind of a hazard when I’m moving all these jams and pickles around.”
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“You’re an angel.” Using the paper, Ginger scooped up the worst of the glass-riddled jam. “Thank you so much…?”
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“Katrina,” the woman replied. “Katrina Blythe.”
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If Ginger had to guess, she would say that Katrina was somewhere in her fifties but looking very good. Her thin, straight blonde hair seemed far from silvered, and the weathered skin on her face and hands boasted that she still spent a great deal of time in the great outdoors.
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“Yes, I guessed Blythe might be in your name somewhere,” Ginger said, nodding to Katrina’s sign. “Blythe Spirit. Lovely name for your business. I’m still working on mine. Unfortunately, my surname isn’t an option since having Burnet in the name of your cake-making business doesn’t inspire confidence.”
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Katrina chuckled, laugh lines appearing around her thin-lipped mouth and around her eyes. “I’m sure you’ll find something perfect soon,” she said. “You’re Ginger, right? I think I stalked through your Instagram the other evening when I was looking up who else was invited to this thing.”
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“Gosh,” Ginger grimaced, tying the sticky bag shut. “You’re more prepared than I am. I only know who a few of these amazing vendors are because my mother goes to the big farmer’s market in Lambington every other week.”
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“Well, your photos look incredible,” Katrina said, her brown eyes warm with earnestness. “Do you take them yourself? Because I might have to ask you for some tips on how to make my jars of delicious, but not hugely appealing fruit and vegetable sludge really pop the way your cakes do.” She held up a finger before Ginger could answer. “Speaking of which.”
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Stepping away to her table, Katrina grabbed an already open jar of bright red jam and brought it over to Ginger.
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“It’s perhaps not the same as the jam you were planning to use,” she said, “but this is my summer berry conserve. Sweet, with a pleasant sharpness. Try some. See if it will work for your cakes.”
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Ginger dipped the tip of her pinky into the jar to take a taste. It was exactly as Katrina had said: sweet, with a lovely sharp twist at the end to stop it from being overwhelming.
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“Thank you so much,” she said, cutting little divots out of the cupcakes she had made to be taster cakes, filling the hole with a spoonful of jam and then putting the sponge “hat” back onto the cupcake. “And I’m afraid I wouldn’t be much help with photos. I’ve got a very talented associate behind the camera.”
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“I thought my ears were burning,” came the melodic Welsh accent of Rhys Morgan, History teacher and student-elected hunk of Chiswick Park Academy.