(Vegetables) Chapter Sixteen: Why It’s Always Vital To Read The Small Print

“Just what’s so special about this book anyway?” asked Felindre as she idly flicked through the pages. “Lots of pictures of fruit and veg, some instructions on how to grow them, and a pile of recipes, most of which look pretty old-fashioned to me. And the title’s got a grocer’s apostrophe in it. Actually, most of the recipes have grocer’s apostrophes in.”

“Probably why it was in the remainders store,” said Morwen, hands wrapped around a huge mug of tea. “A stupidly large number of people seem to want to get their hands on it though.”

“Thankfully they all seem a bit rubbish,” remarked Rosa, eating a biscuit.

“Yeah,” said Felindre. “It’s a shame you didn’t get the name of that policeman. I’d take great pleasure in re-educating him in the finer points of property law and the receipt of stolen goods.”⁴⁶

She looked fierce. Rosa smiled indulgently.

“Ah, there’s my fierce pedant,” she cooed.

“Shut up,” said Felindre, smiling.

Something had caught Morwen’s eye, and she pulled the book towards her. Underneath the title of each recipe was a faint line of grey text in italics. She flicked through the book until she found the recipe for leek, potato, root vegetable and ginger casserole.

“Look at this,” she said, and read out the recipe sub-title: “For provoking a temper.”

“And this;” she flicked to the page for carrot and orange fairy cakes.

“For weakening the will.”

“And this;” at the chocolate and beetroot cake.

“For encouraging loving feelings.”

The three girls stared at the page for a few minutes.

“Holy crap,” said Rosa. “It’s a book of magic recipes!”

“Don’t be daft,” said Felindre. “It’s a vegetable cookbook, with three recipes for cabbage surprise.”

“Three?” said Rosa, turning the pages.

“Yes,” said Felindre. “One recipe is for, um,” she scanned it quickly, “bubble and squeak, basically. Another is an entire dish made of cabbage.”

“That’s not much of a surprise,” said Morwen.

“I suppose the surprise is that it’s all cabbage,” replied Felindre.

“What’s the third recipe?” asked Rosa.

Felindre flicked though a few more pages.

“Chilli con carne,” she replied. “Strange, for a vegetable cookbook, but hardly magical.”

“No,” said Morwen. “Don’t you see, it makes sense. The leek, root veg, potato and ginger casserole – remember, everyone got all cross after just a taste.”

“That’s because it was horrible,” muttered Felindre.

Morwen pointedly ignored her.

“And the carrot and orange fairy cakes. Rosa, you were telling everyone who had one to buy more copies of the paper. And they did! And they listened to you, even in the middle of a food fight when you told them to stop. And when you yelled ‘run’ everyone did!”

A thought struck her, and her face fell.

“Oh bugger,” said Morwen.

“What?” asked Rosa, looking worried.

“I think I might have accidentally love potioned Richard with the chocolate and beetroot cake.”

“Nevermind,” said Felindre casually. “From the sounds coming out of your bedroom recently, he’s not complaining.”⁴⁷

Rosa burst put in giggles, and Morwen threw a biscuit⁴⁸ at Felindre, who dodged.

Rosa stopped giggling and looked thoughtful.

“I’ll bet we could make a menu from this book that’d win us Feasts with Friends,” she said.

Morwen and Felindre looked at each other in horror.

“Oh God, no!” said Felindre.

“But...” said Rosa.

“No,” said Morwen firmly. “And if you even think about putting our names in, I’ll make you live on your own cooking for a month.”

“Oh, alright,” said Rosa sulkily. “Still think it’s a good idea though...”

She trailed off, seeing the look on the other’s faces.

“More tea anyone?” she said brightly. “Or some more biscuits? I’ve got some fig rolls somewhere…”

___

⁴⁶ Felindre, as well as being a double bass playing, marital arts studying astrophysicist had a side obsession with the finer points of the law, to wit, what was legal when it came to certain… er… situations.
⁴⁷ As before, bleurgh.
⁴⁸ A rubbish one, not one of the chocolate ones. She does have principles.

(Vegetables) Chapter Thirteen: Reporting Back On A Curious Conversation With The Boss

Rosa was looking very green and worried going into work the next morning, so when Morwen got a text from her saying “Lunch? Important!!” she feared the worst.

They met at their usual place, a sandwich shop halfway between Rosa’s office and Morwen’s park. It was well situated, between a bakers and a greengrocers, both of which did a roaring trade.

Rosa was looking surprisingly calm, a fact which reassured Morwen no end. Sandwiches and cups of coffee in hand, they sat at a small table in the corner.

A gust of wind blew their receipt off the table and onto the road. Rosa grabbed it before it got too far. There was writing on the back of it, but Rosa scrunched it up into a ball without noticing it.

There was a sigh and a quiet pop from underneath the greengrocers shelves next door.

“It’s the damndest thing,” said Rosa, between bites of sandwich. “So there we all are, summoned into a meeting with Barbra at 9am precisely, no excuses, everyone has to be there. And we’re all looking at each other and thinking that that’s it, the paper’s going to be closed and we’re all going to be out of a job.

“And she walks in, and you can’t tell anything from her face, it’s like she’s completely frozen. And she looks at us all, and then she pulls this face. And it takes us all a good few minutes to realise that she’s actually, like, smiling.

“Turns out, even though we had a small riot on our hands on Friday, and it costs us a few hundred quid in damages, the paper’s been selling out everywhere all weekend. And orders for next week have been piling in. The subscription office’s answering machine was full when they got in this morning – all with new subscription requests.”

“That’s great!” said Morwen, idly kicking at a pigeon that had wandered too close. It didn’t look concerned.

“Isn’t it just! So everyone’s so relieved and we get a pep talk about continuing to build on our success and all that rot, and the meeting ends, but not before Barbra’s caught me and told me to come to her office for a chat.”

Rosa made air quotes with her fingers when she said “for a chat”. The effect was spoiled by the fact that she had a sandwich in one hand and a cup of coffee in another.

“Careful!” said Morwen, grabbing for some napkins as Rosa’s coffee threatened to spill everywhere.

“Sorry.... Anyway, I’m now freaking again, thinking that I must be for the chop, even if everyone else is safe, and I’m racking my brains, trying to think what it is I could have done. But took a deep breath, and went into her office.”

Rosa took another bite of sandwich.

“Well? What did she say?” asked Morwen.

“She tried to do a bit of chitchat, which was weird, ‘cause she’s never really cared about that before. Then she came out with the weirdest question. She wanted to know if it was usual for crowds of people to do what I told them. I said, yeah, right, if I had the power to make lots of people do what I wanted, why would I be working at the paper instead of sunning myself in the Bahamas? But she kept asking me about it. Eventually I blurted out that I had no idea, so it must have been something in the cakes. She went quiet for a minute, and asked me then what cake I’d brought to the cake sale, and where I’d got the recipe.”

“That’s odd.”

“I thought so too. But I couldn’t think of a reason why not to tell her. And knock me over with a feather, but she asked for a copy of the recipe. So I said I’d photocopy it for her. And that was it. At least I think she’s stopped thinking that I’ve got mind control powers or something.”

“Ok. That’s a bit bizarre. ”

“She’s a bit bizarre,” said Rosa. “Her office is absolutely full of little golden Chinese dragon statues, all in different positions. Freaked me out a bit, all those little golden eyes, staring at me.”

Rosa shuddered and nearly spilled her coffee again.

“Maybe I’d understand Barbra a bit more if I could cast her horoscope. I’ll have to ask her,” she mused.

“Well, that’s good news, if a bit weird,” said Morwen briskly. “Hopefully things’ll keep going well for the paper now.”

“Hope so,” said Rosa. “Eeek, look at the time! Got to run! See you later!”

Morwen was preoccupied as she walked back to her office. So she didn’t notice the little old lady with the ebony walking stick, who had been squeezing fruit at the greengrocers, turn to watch her as she walked down the street. Nor did she notice the pigeon hopping along the rooftops, following her.

(Vegetables) Chapter Eleven: Arguing With Technology Never Really Works, Trust Me On This

The technical lab was reached via a cupboard in the kitchen, which was secretly a lift down into an underground cavern, in that traditional secret lair sort of way. The lab itself was tucked into a corner of the echoing chamber, and looked like a normal technology design and build lab. There were lab benches, and spools of wire and soldering irons and miscellaneous electronic component boards. There were oscilloscopes and multimeters and other, stranger items that looked like they were formed when a vacuum tube factory exploded, or were the contents of a Steampunk’s props box. There was also a surprisingly large collection of cogs, gears and the other innards of clocks.

Another bench had trays of test tubes and glass flasks full of coloured liquids bubbling away. Next to it was a large cabinet-shaped instrument that hummed in a minor key.

The whole impression of barely contained technological chaos was somewhat ruined by the stuffed alligator that hung from the ceiling. Especially as the alligator was wearing a party hat and had a party blower hanging droopily from the corner of its toothy grin.

There was a flock of pink plastic flamingos in one corner too.

Sitting in front of a computer terminal was another man, this one with long, greasy, dyed black hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing a black t-shirt and with a spiked leather band around one hairy wrist.

“Raven,” said Richard.

The man quickly stabbed a few buttons on the keyboard, then swivelled around, the bearings on the office chair protesting. He had a straggly beard and his t-shirt bore the slogan “Keep Calm and Take Over the World”.

“Richard,” he replied.

“You’re sitting in my chair,” Richard told him. “Aren’t you supposed to be painting someplace foreign?”

“Nope,” said Raven. “Been chasing down the Ghost Bollard of Glasgow.”

“What?” said Richard.

“The Ghost Bollard of Glasgow. Appears in the middle of the road out of nowhere, right in front of a driver. Driver drives over it, it does no damage except pulling some random wires out from under the car and gives the driver a massive shock.”

“Did you find it?” asked Richard.

“Nope,” said Raven, swivelling in the chair. “I think it’s gone to Edinburgh for the Fringe.”

Richard sighed.

“Get out of my chair,” he ordered. “And stop using my computer to play Total Bioshock, or whatever shoot-em-up you’re playing at the moment.”

“Sorry, man, but you’ve got the best video card and processor in the place.”

“There’s a reason for that,” said Richard. “And that reason is not for playing computer games. Up.”

Raven quickly vacated the chair and watched as Richard took out Morwen’s mobile phone³³.

“What happened to that?” Raven asked.

“It got hit by lightning, and I don’t trust it.”

“Trust it? You don’t mean to say it’s still operational?”

“Well, its owner still uses it. Let’s see what’s going on.”

“Whatever, man, I’ve got to get back. Cakes to bake, fish to fry, evil geniuses to foil. Later.”

As Raven wandered off through the shelves of miscellaneous stuff and piled high boxes, Richard pulled a wire from a pile on the desk, connected one end to the computer and hunted in vain for a port in the phone to plug the other end into. With no success, because the cover had well and truly melted.

“Ok,” said Richard to himself. “Time to do this the hard way.”

He reached out and grabbed a pair of bolt cutters.

The phone immediately started ringing with a horrible electronic squawking , and at the same time the vibrate function buzzed so hard, the phone skidded off the desk and landed on the floor, where it promptly wedged itself under a filing cabinet. The ringing stopped.

Richard put down the bolt cutters and reached for the phone, and pulled. It was definitely stuck.

He sighed, went around the corner and came back with one of those pallet lifter things, which he stuck under one corner of the filing cabinet and pumped the handle. For each centimetre the filing cabinet was lifted, the phone vibrated its way further underneath it.

Finally the cabinet was far enough off the floor so that Richard could reach underneath and grab it. The phone was as far away as it could get, but was stuck in the corner, trapped between two walls.

Richard reached in, far enough to grab it. As his fingers closed around the plastic shell, there came a sudden smell of ozone and a flash.

Richard swore, and pulled his hand out from underneath the cabinet, which fell off the lifter with a crash. He swore even more when he looked at his hand, where the shape of the phone was carefully burned black into the skin of his palm. The skin had shrunk and cracked, and underneath it there was something moving and metallic.

“Damn damn damn damn DAMN!” he said, pretty quietly for someone who’d just had several thousand volts pass through their hand.

He rummaged around in a desk drawer, and came up with a first aid kit. Carefully, favouring his burned hand, he got out a scalpel, a bandage, and a pot of flesh coloured goo and lined them up on the desk.

He whistled a downward arpeggio in D major, and from behind a pile of vacuum tubes came a small, mechanical monkey, dressed in a little waistcoat and wearing a fez³⁴.

The monkey chattered at Richard, and between the two of them, they carefully removed the damaged skin from Richard’s hand, replacing it with a fresh covering of the goo and a nice clean bandage.

“Damn, that hurt,” said Richard.

The monkey looked sympathetic. Or as sympathetic as it could, given that it couldn’t really change its facial expression.

First aid, or repairs, or whatever it was, completed, Richard turned back to the filing cabinet, and levered it up again.

This time, instead of reaching in, he got down so he was at eye level to the phone.

“Ok,” he said. “Truce?”

“I’m not coming out until you put those pliers away,” said Sissy. “And I can’t believe you stole me! What sort of rubbish boyfriend are you?”

“I’m a very good boyfriend,” Richard replied. “I’m checking out things that are strange, to make sure that they won’t hurt my girlfriend.”

“Rubbish,” scoffed Sissy. “You’re just completely controlling and lacking in trust, that’s what I think. And after I was nice enough to send you Felindre’s address too.”

“Don’t know what Morwen sees in you,” Sissy continued, half to itself. “Must be that squishy human stuff.”

Then , louder: “Though you’re not entirely human either, are you?”

Richard really does turn an interesting shade of red when he’s emotional.

“I am a person,” he hissed. “And what I feel for Morwen is important!”

“Oooh, hit a nerve, have I?” Sissy retorted. “Shouldn’t have argued with her then, should you?”

“I was worried about her – something’s going on and I don’t want her to get hurt!”

“Um, Richard?”

This was from Tom, who had appeared behind Richard.

“Why are you talking to the filing cabinet?” Tom continued.

“I’m not talking to the filing cabinet!!”

There was an awkward silence. Tom looked around, and took in the lifter.

“Um, do you need a hand?” he asked. “Only the boss has called us both in to share what’s going on. Says our cases are linked somehow, and we need to figure out how before it all goes a bit tits up.”

Richard heaved himself up from the floor, favouring his injured hand.

“This isn’t finished,” he hissed at the phone underneath the filing cabinet. “You just stay there until I get back and we can have a proper chat.”

With a thump, he lowered the cabinet back to the floor.

Not much happened for a good fifty seven minutes. Yes, Raven came back to play his shoot-em-up game on Richard’s computer for a bit, then poked around the gizmos and do-hickeys on the desk, then attempted to move the filing cabinet, all the while watched by the mechanical monkey.

But the phone was long gone by that stage.
___
³³ Thieving sod.
³⁴ All he needed was the cymbals, and he’d have passed for an old-fashioned Victorian-style kid’s toy.

(Vegetables) Chapter Ten: Driving Dangerously Is Hazardous – Don’t Do It!

Outside the flat there were a large number of (slightly spherical) pigeons milling around the place and desultorily pecking at random specs of stuff that might possibly be edible. Richard kicked at an empty fizzy drink can that lay on the ground, and smiled grimly as it ricocheted off a road sign pole, into the middle of the flock.

Some of the pigeons were so full of cake, they could barely take off.

He deliberately drove his car past the bus stop, and pulled in when he saw Tom there.

“Get in,” Richard told Tom.

He didn’t wait until Tom was buckled in before taking off with a screech of rubber. They drove in silence until they left the built up areas, and then Richard really put his foot down.

“Hey!” protested Tom, as he was thrown from side to side in the car. “Take it easy!”

“Report, now!” snapped Richard.

“Yes sir! I’m on the MANOG case, sir, and I was posted at the Booktastic shop on Ship Street, where the last known sighting was, and there’s been loads of White Rabbit sightings round there too. I was on my way back to work after my lunch break when I saw Morwen, sir, and I recognised her. I was following her to try and get more information about her, because I recognised her as the person who’s bought the book that Mrs K was so desperate to get her hands on. And I wound up at the Weekly Bugle, sir, just in time for the cake fight. Rabbit.”

“What?”

“Rabbit!!”

Sure enough, a multi-coloured rabbit³⁰ had run right out in front of the car. Richard swore again, and pulled the wheel over hard. They missed the rabbit, but bounced along the grass verge, until coming to a stop half buried in a hedge.

Tom pushed the passenger door open, ignoring the screech as the hedge branches ground against the window, and threw up.

“Well,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “That could have been worse.”

Richard had closed his eyes when the car came to a stop, and for the time that it took Tom to throw up, he was perfectly still, not even breathing. Then he swallowed, and opened his eyes.

“Ok,” Richard said. “There’s obviously more at work here than either of us know. I’m on a completely different case, which you don’t need to know about. But something’s connecting them and we need to find out what and why, before it’s too late. Now help me push the car out of the hedge.”

When the car was free, Richard calmly popped the hood of the car, got out and rummaged around for a few minutes. When he got back in, the car started perfectly, and the two men drove off in silence, and a lot more calmly.

Now that Richard was driving in a more sensible way, and obviously trying to get somewhere, rather than just terrify poor Tom, it didn’t take long for them to arrive at an old stately home and pull up in front of the main door.

They’d had to go through some quite serious levels of security before getting to the house, mind. Electric gates and fences, CCTV, warning signs saying “Beware of the Frog”, suspiciously regular dog walkers with suspiciously large dogs, the works.

The house had obviously seen better days³¹, but the lawns were well maintained, and several ducks could be seen snoozing happily on the grass in the late afternoon sun. One of them opened one eye when the car drove up, but then went back to sleep.

Richard looked over at Tom, who was snuffling, with teary eyes, and seemed to take pity.

“You best get yourself seen by Matron. I’ll find you in about an hour.”

Once through the heavy and creaking front door, both men stopped as a red light shone over their faces. The light on Richard’s face turned green and there was a loud beep. The light on Tom’s face stayed red, sweeping back and forth in a confused manner.

Eventually the light stopped, and a door opened into the hall. A woman and a duck stuck their heads around the door.

“Hey, Tom”, said the woman. “You’re confusing the scanner. What happened to your face?”

“Cream cake,” mumbled Tom.

The woman shrugged. “Technology, eh? Come on in.”

They both stepped into the hall.

“Oh,” said the guard, almost as an afterthought before she and the duck tucked their respective heads back into their guard room. “Watch out, the Wandering Door is at it again. Sandy in HR was looking for the ladies and ended up in Schiphol airport.”

“Thanks for the tip,” said Richard.

By contrast to the outside, the inside of the house was well maintained. Old and well worn, obviously, but set up comfortably, even if it hadn’t been redecorated since the house was built, in 1875. The security systems were far more visible from the inside as well. There was a vase of garden flowers on the hall table, concealing a video camera. The hat stand was a wooden statue of a giraffe. It was wearing a pair of goggles over its eyes, several scarves around its long neck, and a pile of umbrellas tangled its hooves.

There was a fine double staircase sweeping up ahead, drawing the eye to a fine stained glass window of a lakeside scene on the landing. The hallway floor was an interlocking tile pattern with ducks and frogs, looking like an MC Escher print. Richard ignored it all, and stomped to the back of the house³². Tom took himself off upstairs.

___

³⁰ Brown, but with pink and green patches
³¹ I’m being polite. It was an old, rickety, drafty dump, obviously not touched by the hand of DIY-er in many decades. I’m surprised the roof was still on.
³² Literally. I’m surprised the tiles weren’t cracking under his feet.

(Vegetables) Chapter Eight: Things Don’t Entirely Go To Plan At The Weekly Bugle Event

The Weekly Bugle had its offices just a few minute’s walk from Morwen’s place of work, so during her lunch break she popped out to see how the big launch and Rosa were doing. She could hear the noise before she could see the event – lots of people laughing and shouting, and what sounded like a brass band playing.

She walked around the corner, and saw what appeared to be a street fair in front of the Weekly Bugle’s offices. There was indeed a brass band, and balloons and streamers and bumper cars and children running around with cake icing smeared all over their mouths. Lots of people seemed to be having a really good time, which was unusual given that it was a slightly damp day and a Friday.

There was even the wheezy sounds of an accordion, the clash of sticks and sound of bells competing with the brass band. The local Morris side were out, dressed in black and neon tatters, and waistcoats with embroidered rabbits on the back. Alongside the accordion player was a pretty young woman in a bright pink top hat, who was playing the tin whistle

A honking noise came from behind her, and she jumped out of the way as the unicycling rabbit cycled past. It waved at her cheerfully, before falling off the unicycle as it failed to hop up the kerb.

Morwen elbowed her way to the cake table where a happy but frazzled Rosa was handing people cakes and reminding them to buy the Weekly Bugle, their first stop for local news.

“Hi!” Rosa called to Morwen. “Bit busy – got a huge crowd! Fel’s over there somewhere!”

She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the brass band.

“Our carrot and orange cakes have gone really well, only got one tray left!”

And then she was back to serving the hordes of people pressing close, on the hunt for free baked goods.

“Hi, yes, have a carrot and orange cake, and buy the Weekly Bugle! Buy one for a friend too! Hey, why not buy lots of copies!”

Morwen looked at the choices²³ and snagged herself a chocolate brownie, before pushing her way over to the band. The crowd had parted enough for her to catch a glimpse of Felindre, who had her back pressed firmly against a wall, and was staring daggers at anyone who came too close.

“I see the Morris are out,” Morwen said.

“Yes, and not a barrel of ale in sight,” replied Felindre.

Several Morris dancers chose that moment to walk past, towing a large barrel of beer on a trolley.

“I stand corrected,” said Felindre.

“You look like you’re having fun,” Morwen observed.

Felindre shot her a look of disgust.

“I’ve already had three men try to make a pass at me. It’s like the whole crowd’s drunk or something.”

“I’m impressed,” said Morwen.

“Why, because that number of creeps have made a pass?”

“No, said Morwen, taking a bite of the chocolate brownie. She pulled a face and spat the bite of brownie back into the napkin she held it in.

“I’m surprised that they’re not lying bleeding on the ground right now.”

Felindre gave her a look, and scowled out at the crowd, watching Rosa.

Morwen found a bin to put the remainder of the chocolate brownie in, before returning to Felindre’s side. Together they watched two kids of indeterminate age and sex running around shrieking and pummelling each other with balloons. There was more than the usual number of pigeons ducking through people’s feet and pecking at the dropped cake crumbs too.

“I promised Rosa I’d hang around for a bit. Besides, I don’t like this crowd. Something tells me they could turn nasty,” Felindre continued.

A middle aged woman was striding around the Weekly Bugle tables. She looked pretty nondescript, except for something exceptionally large and shiny on her shoulder. Even from a distance, the two could see Rosa flinch and shrink whenever the woman was near her.

“Who’s that woman?” asked Morwen.

A middle aged man in a rumpled suit walked up to them.

“What are nice girls like you doing in a place like this?”

Morwen blinked in surprise.

“Do people really use that old line?” she said, then answered herself with, “well, obviously some do…”

“Oh, just push off,” Felindre snapped.

To their surprise, he did.

“Which woman?” Felindre asked.

“That one, with the brown hair, stalking around like she owns the place. The one with the massive shiny broach thing on her shoulder.”

“Oh, her. Yeah, that’s the new boss. Rosa pointed her out to me. Turns out that whopping great broach is a gold and ruby spider. Tacky as all get-out and gives Rosa the creeps.”

Another, younger man came up to them, looking faintly hopeful. Before he could get a word out of his mouth, Felindre told him “No, go away.”

He did, but another woman came up and tried to talk to them, then another man. Morwen started off being polite, but after a while she too resorted to telling people to get stuffed.

“Hey, isn’t that Richard over there?” Felindre nudged Morwen and pointed.

“Where?” said Morwen. “I can’t see him.”

“There!”

“No, and anyway he’s away for work this week.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Felindre, under her breath. Then, louder: “I could have sworn it was him.”

All around the crowd was getting more and more raucous. The table near the cake stall that was selling the copies of the Weekly Bugle was surrounded by people, all waving money and grabbing copies of the paper. Fist-fights were breaking out around the tables as office workers indulged in an unseemly display of tug of war over newspapers.

“This isn’t looking good,” said Felindre, as the newspaper table was turned over with a crash and a rugby scrum of people, desperate to get their hands on a copy, piled on top of the poor hapless Weekly Bugle Staff member.

“Right,” said Felindre, cracking her knuckles. “We’re getting Rosa out of here, before this turns into a riot.”

And she was off, fists, elbows and knees all working to make her way through the heaving crowd.

Oblivious to all of this, the brass band kept playing. Morwen was faintly surprised to hear them playing a medley of James Bond themes, keeping in perfect time with Felindre as she pushed, prodded and thumped her way to the cake table.

There was a pop, expertly drowned out by a crash of cymbals.

There was another crash, as the cake table went flying. What was the beginnings of a brawl now turned into a very sticky cake fight.

A white rabbit with a piece of paper in its mouth hopped out from a shadowed corner. It took one look at the fracas, shook its head and hopped back into the corner. There was another pop, but it was lost in the racket.

The band stopped playing with a very discordant squawk as a young man crashed into the tubas, victim of a randomly thrown cream cake. He pushed himself up awkwardly off the ground, getting tangled in the sheet music stands, one hand trying desperately to wipe the cream out of his eyes. As he tried to free himself, he got his free arm stuck in the slider of a trombone, and then promptly fell over again, onto the cymbal player.

The noise of this one guy trashing the brass band was almost as bad as the near-riot happening near the cake stand. The two weren’t separate though – as members of the band were weighing into the cake fight after being hit by collateral damage from shards of rock cake.

A hapless band member, struck in the face by a chocolate éclair, stumbled backwards and crashed into the barrel of ale, knocking it off its trolley. The Morris dancers stopped as one and watched in horror for a moment as the tap on the barrel got knocked off, and ale started spilling into the gutter.

With a shout, several of them dived for the barrel, stopping the spillage, while the rest dived into the fray, their sticks and bells causing damage and adding a strangely jolly air to the fight, respectively.

Felindre, by this stage, had disappeared into the crowd. Morwen could trace where she was by the high pitched “hi-yahs!” that rang out, and the shockwave of people staggering as far away from her as they could get.

The unicycling rabbit was observing from a safe distance. The pigeons were causing even more chaos by diving in to steal flying bits of cake, tripping humans up and causing them to fall over by flying into their faces. It was not looking good.

On impulse, Morwen plunged into the mess that was once a brass band, dodging gingerbread biscuits and flapjack crumb, and hauled the young man up by the arm, extricating him from the tangle of music case straps he’d somehow got himself tied up in.

“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” she said, as she looked at his familiar, pimply, and cream-covered face.

“Duck!” he replied, and pulled her down, as a triangular flapjack flew through the air where her head had been.

“Thanks,” Morwen said straightening up. “That was close!”

“Duck!” he yelled at her again, pulling her down as a duck flew over her head.

“Wow, really a duck,” said Morwen. “What on earth is that doing here?”

He didn’t get the chance to respond, because at that moment, Felindre, dragging a scared and dishevelled Rosa, exploded out of the crowd towards them²⁴.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Oh, it’s all gone so wrong! I’m going to be in so much trouble!” moaned Rosa.

“It’s not your fault,” said Felindre, expertly blocking a flying piece of shortbread that would have shattered against her hip.

A fondant fancy (obviously shop bought) caught Rosa on the upper arm.

“Ow! That hurt!” Rosa rubbed her arm and yelled at the top of her lungs:

“I wish it would just stop. I want everyone to just STOP!”

Her shout echoed over the noise of the cake fight, and for a moment, everyone stopped. There was a long, drawn-out wheezing note from the accordion. Then the sounds of police sirens could be heard in the distance, drawing near.

There was a space of two, three, four breaths, and then a flying slice of apple cake landed with a splat on a small child in a pushchair.

Said small child screamed, in shock, not pain, and it all kicked off again.

“Run!” yelled Felindre, and they did, Morwen towing the cream-covered young man behind her. The rest of the crowd started running too, scattering in many different directions. For a few moments they all ran next to a harried young mum, pushing a pushchair. The small child inside the pushchair, despite being bumped and rattled around, was happily chomping on the slice of apple cake.

Behind them, in the shadow of an alley, a little old lady with a stick with a handle that looked like a silver cucumber stood and watched them go. She was muttering to herself²⁵.




___

²³ Alongside the carrot and orange muffins, there were fairy cakes of the brightly coloured icing variety, some with chocolate sprinkles, flapjacks, millionaire’s shortbread, billionaire’s shortbread (like the millionaire’s version, but with extra chocolate and caramel), chocolate chip cookies, iced biscuits, Chelsea buns, Belgian buns, iced fingers, iced doughnuts, jam filled doughnuts, chocolate doughnuts, peanut butter cookies, plain shortbread, chocolate coated shortbread, macaroons in a variety of colours, coconut ice, more flapjacks, seed cake, carrot cake, apple cake, chocolate eclairs, Danish pastries, and a lone tray of mini sausage rolls.
²⁴ If Morwen had cared enough to look, she would have seen the large numbers of people on the floor, groaning, that Felindre had left in her wake. But she didn’t.
²⁵ Or maybe she was talking to the bright pink rabbit in the shadows next to her. Who knows?

(Vegetables) Chapter Seven: Here He Comes, A Knight With Shining Wine Bottles

Morwen, Rosa and Felindre were making carrot and orange cupcake numbers 48 to 72 when the doorbell rang. Rosa went to open it.

It was Richard, laden down with shopping bags, and with a bunch of flowers tucked under one arm.

“Am I glad to see you,” said Rosa in relief. “Mor could do with a hug about now.”

She appraised the flowers carefully.

“Tulips. Much better than carnations, but you can still do better.”

Richard gave a half shrug with the shoulder that didn’t have the bunch of flowers wedged under it. A small smile crept over his face.

Rosa took one of the shopping bags from him.

“Mor!” she yelled. “It’s for you!”

Morwen came out of the kitchen looking cross, with flour all over her hands and down the front of her dress.

“The mixer’s just packed it in, and we’ve run out of sugar again! I thought you bought three kilos?”

She stopped dead when she saw Richard.

“I thought you were going away for work,” she said.

“I am,” he said. “But I didn’t want to go without seeing you tonight. And I bet I can fix that mixer for you.”

Rosa, meanwhile had been rummaging through the shopping bags.

“Flour, sugar, cocoa powder, marge, eggs, chocolate sprinkles, icing sugar! You wonderful man! And I bought three bags of sugar – they’re on the counter.”

“I know you have the chickens,” explained Richard, “but I thought I’d bring some eggs along anyway, just in case.

Rosa let go of the bag, and it thumped onto the ground. Richard and Morwen both winced.

“Eggs!” they both called out.

Morwen turned to Rosa “You mean the three five hundred gram bags that we’ve already used up that were on the counter?”

“Oh,” said Rosa. Then to cover she gave Richard a big hug and whispered in his ear.

“Give her the tulips, you dummy!”

She adroitly relieved him of the second shopping bag and looked in there too.

“Wooohoooo!!! WINE!! Fel! Get the bottle opener and glasses!”

Rosa took off back to the kitchen, clutching the wine to her, baking ingredients lying unattended on the floor.

Morwen and Richard looked at each other. Slowly, hesitantly, they both smiled.

Richard awkwardly held out the flowers to her. She took them, and carefully put them down on top of the cake ingredients bag.

Then she stepped into his arms and kissed and hugged him.

“My knight in shining armour,” she said. “Come to save me from the evils of broken mixers, the irritation of housemates who don’t know the difference between five hundred grams and a kilo, and the perils of carrot and orange fairy cakes. Bringing wine too.”

They were about to kiss again, when Felindre’s voice yelled from the kitchen:

“Stop smooching – we’ve got another sixty odd cupcakes to make and ice before tomorrow morning!”

Richard muttered under his breath:

“They’re fine ones to talk...”

“Come on,” said Morwen. “Let’s get baking.”

Exhausted but happy (and slightly drunk) all four fell into various beds at an ungodly hour that morning, with one hundred and fifty beautifully iced fairy cakes on trays covered in cling film lined up on the kitchen table, and a food processor that looked like the bastard offspring of an industrial cement mixer and a drill, but mixed the most perfectly smooth cake batter in less than a minute²¹.

Richard had tried to head back to his own house at half four, but Morwen was having none of it.

They all were happily and very deeply asleep when Morwen’s bedroom door opened. A chicken²² peeked into the room, clucked quietly and contentedly, and then left.

Richard’s phone woke him and Morwen up a mere few hours later. After a whispered conversation, he pulled himself out of bed.

“Sorry, love,” he said. “Server crash. I’ll call in the morning.”

It took Morwen until the morning to realise that he’d called her “love”.

___
²² You don’t want to know what weird and wonderful things Richard had used for parts. And glue. Lots of glue.
²² Gingernut, or possibly Bourbon. It was dark.

(Vegetables) Chapter Six: Sometimes A Friend In Need Needs Cake

¹⁹

When Morwen got home that evening, she was anticipating a nice hot bath and time to relax before meeting Richard for a movie and pizza later that night. What she got was Rosa in floods of tears in the kitchen, staring helplessly at a stack of cookery books.

“We’ve got a cake sale at work tomorrow,” wailed Rosa. “And everyone has to bring something, and I’m rubbish!”

Morwen gave Rosa a quick hug and put the kettle on.

“It’s ok, flower,” she said.

Over tea, and the big guns of the emergency stash of chocolate biscuits, she patiently managed to pull out the real reason why Rosa was so upset. The paper had been clinging onto sales by the skin of its teeth over the past few months, and the hard-nosed new editor who had started work a month ago had given the staff an ultimatum that day: they had three weeks to make the paper profitable again, or it would be wound up and shut down (the more likely scenario).

Rosa had also been in the direct line of fire that day for selling advertising space next to a feature on the health benefits of blueberries to a shoe shop, instead of to the local big health food chain, which would have paid a lot more for the privilege.

All around Rosa were the remains of tissues. Even in her distressed state, and with the limitations of the raw material, she still managed to twist and turn them into small tissue flowers²⁰.

Rosa sniffed, and wiped her face with another tissue.

“And now,” she whimpered, “we’ve all got to do a big relaunch of the paper tomorrow, and there’ll be balloons and cakes, except we’ve got to make them and I’ve got to make 150 fairy cakes by tomorrow and they have to look professional and I don’t want to lose my job!”

She dissolved into tears again.

“Ok,” said Morwen, ever practical. “We can do this. You have a look through the cookbooks, and find a good fairy cake recipe. I’ll audit the store cupboard, and we can do a shop run if needed. I’m just going to make a quick call.”

She went upstairs to her room.

“Sissy, call Richard please.”

“Calling Richard,” Sissy acknowledged.

“Hey you,” he said.

“Hey,” Morwen replied. “Look, I’m really sorry, but Rosa’s having a crisis, and it’s a real one this time.”

“Oh.”

Morwen could hear the disappointment in his voice, before he swallowed it and said:

“Anything you need my help for?”

“Unless you’re capable of baking 150 cupcakes in the space of an evening, no, not really. Thanks for offering though. So, movie tomorrow night instead?”

“Can’t, sorry. Got to go away for work tomorrow – won’t be back for a week.”

“Oh,” said Morwen. “Well, I guess I’ll see you when you get back then.”

“Ok. Good luck with the cakes.”

“Have a good trip.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Morwen hung up, and slumped on her bed for a moment. Then she sighed, wiped her eyes and straightened her shoulders, and went downstairs.

Rosa, still snuffling, was sorting out the post.

“There’s a piece of paper here with just an address on it – any ideas?” she asked.

“No,” said Morwen quietly.

Rosa looked up. It was her turn to hug her friend.

Morwen wiped her eyes again.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s make some cake.”

___

¹⁹ Who are you kidding? Everyone needs cake.
²⁰ There were several roses, some carnations, a daisy or two and even one large sunflower.