1.Deep and crisp and even.
While Gardenia had kept herself to herself for the first twenty two years of her charmed life, for the next ten she played the field with all her might and enthusiasm. Gardenia Racebottom was as bed worthy as a girl could be. Her welcome mat had seen the coming and goings of several invited gentleman callers and one or two less desirable types had also managed to coax their way into her affections helped in great part by that double edged sword, strong drink. It would have been unkind to suggest that most of her suitors were actually more interested in the Racebottom baking fortune rather than Miss Racebottom herself. But nevertheless if a survey had been conducted and the truth extracted from the respondents, the fact that Gardenia was the sole heiress to, at the last estimate, a two hundred and forty million pound inheritance would have been a big contributory factor to what went on after the lights went off.Gardenia was one of those girls that didn't really show much early promise. She was what was politely described as being rather a "plain" girl. She graduated from ponies to horses when the other girls at her boarding school were sliding into men from boys. At university she did get a boyfriend and the two of them read poetry together and went for afternoon tea at "The Olde Bunne Shoppe". Holding hands was as exciting for the couple as joining the extreme sports club was for others and the relationship was like that of brother and sister. Her "boyfriend" was the sibling she never had. Their first kiss was also sadly their last but Gardenia had tasted a hint of the cream on top of the milk. She thought that she would like more and set her milking stool out accordingly. Like Sandy in "Grease" she underwent something of a transformation and started to turn heads. Her light came out from under her bushel. Even her bookish tutor noticed the chrysalis to butterfly moment. Gardenia became sought after among her male colleagues and some of the female ones too.It was Jed who provided her with her first full on encounter and in his Austin Healy Gardenia succumbed to his eager advances. The sound and smell of leather car seats provided a backdrop to the whole mysterious act. Gardenia embraced the world of sex (she actually embraced Jed with such fervour that he couldn't control himself) and the more she tried it, the more she liked it. From “Early Doors” Jed there was Timothy, “Tiny Tim”, as she was to discover and from Timothy she moved on to Seb, “Sideways Seb”, who although wasn't the most active of partners did provide Gardenia with her first orgasm which she experienced quietly but with a great deal of pleasant surprise while astride the laid back Sebastian.Rupert, “Rubbish Roop”, was fun to be with but not very good at doing it and Craig, “Clinical Craig”, was just too experimental, too clinical. Quentin was rather rough and liked it from behind which didn't always agree with Gardenia's sense of direction. Brook was a great kisser and always bought flowers. Sammy, “Burgundy Sam”, smelt nice but tasted of wine sometimes. Don was moody and she discovered after some weeks married too. Brian snored and drank too much and Ben, “Big Ben”, didn't believe in any foreplay. Stan, “Stan the man”, had hard working hands and didn’t always shave and Chuck's breathe wasn't that pleasant. Trevor always said "Thank you" afterwards which annoyed Gardenia greatly and Simon, “Simon the sock”, used to keep his socks on and could never stay overnight. Frankie, “Frank the fuck”, was the best ever and she felt very comfortable with him until he told her, with some considerable embarrassment, to look out for his sexually transmitted disease. Luke wooed her back from a few months abstinence but his fondness for the wacky backy made him too silly and vacant so she had another brief fling with Sammy, “Burgundy Sam”, before Maxwell appeared.Max was different from all the others. He was older, nearly forty, and seemed to really care about Gardenia for the woman she was rather than the “bang with the bucks” as she’d overheard one of her briefer liaison’s describing her. (“Kneading the dough” was another she’d caught). Bit by bit she found herself falling in love with him. He was the man you could take home to meet Mummy and Daddy without any worries. Max always said the right thing. He had the confidence to get on with every body. Gardenia's mother was instantly won over although her father was less convinced."He's too damn smooth for my liking," he said to his wife after one Sunday luncheon.Gardenia’s father was like that with all Gardenias’ male friends and in his simple view there wasn’t a man on the planet that was good enough for his little girl. Had he any inkling about the sort of traffic that had travelled along his daughter’s carriageway or indeed just rested on her hard shoulder, then he would have been beside himself. It would not of course have been anything that Gardenia had done wrong. Far from it. His daughter was the apple of his eye or more appropriately, the bread in his oven, and she could do no wrong at all. He didn’t like Maxwell and that was that.Nevertheless Gardenia and Max became an item. The two of them seemed to enjoy each other's company and Gardenia put the lid on her sampling tin and became a one trick pony. At thirty two it was time for her to consider settling down and maybe Max was the man. He didn't show any traits that Gardenia could complain about and in her heart of hearts she couldn't wait for Maxwell to pop the question.Maxwell Deep (he was one of the Deep's from Hertfordshire) wasn’t as pure as the driven snow. In fact it was “snow” that was getting the better of him. He had acquired an expensive and addictive habit from his stressful hours in the City that involved sniffing white powder up his nostrils or rubbing it onto his gums. His nick name was “Deep and Crisp and Even” in a rather too obvious reference to the “snow that lay round about” when ever Maxwell or his mates took off for the rest room at work or in crowded places or virtually any hard flat surface in private.Max knew that Gardenia didn’t approve of his habit.“I can’t understand any man who needs to take drugs. It’s just a sign of weakness,” she said to Max and her parents one day. Her father, who was on his fourth large whiskey and soda, agreed. He didn’t disagree with anything his daughter said.Maxwell’s habit was kept under wraps from Gardenia and sure enough he proposed to her in Paris one week-end when the two of them took the Eurostar to the continent.The wedding was the sort that a wealthy father would put on for his only spoilt daughter. The “do” at Babington House, in rural Somerset, was a glitzy affair with a celebrity chef overseeing the menu for the four hundred guests. The marquee down by the lake looked like a mini canvass version of the Sydney Opera House and the tables, all forty of them, were themed around Aladdin and his Magic Lamp (or as one of the more inebriated guests rather unkindly put it Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda Camp). The bride’s look verged rather dangerously towards that of Little Bo Peep but the outfit pleased her beaming father even though several in the gathering thought mutton dressed as lamb.The wedding day would have been a wonderful occasion for all concerned and worth every penny of the five hundred pounds a head the event had cost. Most of the guests had a ball but when the bride discovered her groom snorting a fat line of coke in the en-suite, the tears came thick and fast. Gardenia’s father was of course outraged but even more so when, having decided to have it out with his new son in law, he found him in Babington’s billiard room straddled across Gardenia’s mother on the green baize with both of them obviously engrossed with kissing the pink.Gardenia slipped into depression, her mother into divorce proceedings and almost one year later her father had no trouble arranging the slipping of Maxwell’s tightly bound body into one of his industrial ovens, turning up the heat until the flesh started to bubble like a burnt pizza. Max was burnt to a crisp. The police couldn’t prove anything although there was a lot of finger pointing and some awkward interviews.Gardenia and her father felt that they had got even.“Deep and crisp and even.” Gardenia stroked her father’s hand and looked lovingly into his baker’s eyes. How could she possibly love any other man?
2.Easy over sunny side up.
Gardenia was off pizza. Since the betrayal by her ex on her wedding day who, with several lines of coke up his nose, had been caught in flagrante delicto with her mother on a billiard table, the bottom had fallen out of Gardenia’s world. Her self confidence was shot to pieces. Not even the love and over attention of her adoring father could bring her back from the “black dog” moment that had become her waking life. Her father had of course taken care of the wayward son-in-law and had had him baked from this world to the next with his body evenly and very finely distributed across the batch of pizzas that the Racebottom baking empire sent out to a willing and hungry population. The “interesting” new ingredient would have prompted comments among the pizza eating fraternity, most of them favourable. “Great new chewy topping” or “love the new salami” or “tastes just like chicken,” were complements that might have been heard and some that suggested, “…. that chef had been a bit too liberal with the pork scratching or what ever the ingredient was….” were heard and ignored. The ex son-in-law had slipped into the British diet, had become an unwilling participant in the food chain and had disappeared and been digested by those who had bought their frozen pizzas to recreate and consume at home from Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s or the Co-op. The list of ingredients on the box from the well respected national baker didn’t tell the truth, the unwholesome truth or nothing but the truth and pizza sales were as buoyant as they had always been.Gardenia was off pizza and couldn’t stomach much food at all having lost her appetite. She sustained herself on milk shakes and vodka and chocolate, not always in that order, but little else passed her lips apart from the sleeping pills.It was her father who suggested a holiday, a trip to New York that would be a change of scene for his daughter and who knows, restore her to her former self. So father and daughter set off for the Big Apple and two suites of rooms at the Chelsea Hotel near Soho and Greenwich Village. The white stretch limo took them from JFK to downtown Manhattan and they were ushered into their separate apartments on the top floor of the impressive building. Gardenia rang down for a milkshake while her father fixed himself a stiff whiskey and soda from the bar in his suite.The New York trip would be more than a holiday for Mr Racebottom and he had planned a series of face to face meetings with the East Coast Baking Company that had aspirations to acquire Racebottom’s British business. A tough New Jersey operator called Sinus headed up the East Coast Baking Company or ECBC as it was referred to by those on Wall Street. Joseph Sinus had come up the hard way and was what was called a self made man. He’d joke about it in an American way.“Hey I’m a self raising guy,” or “It’s easy beasy,” he’d guffaw when ever he had an admiring audience around him. He was often surrounded by admiring audiences being worth “a cool” eight hundred million dollars. His “people” had identified the British opportunity and had arranged for him to meet up with the main man from Racebottom’s for preliminary talks.“These Brits got no idea how da make a pizza,” was what Joe Sinus thought.“Yanks and bread. Wouldn’t know a decent white farmhouse if it hit him ‘em on the head,” was what Mr Racebottom thought.It was going to be an interesting meeting.Gardenia was expected to be there. Her Daddy had wanted her to be there and besides she did have an interest in the future of the business as heiress apparent. She reluctantly agreed and would put a brave face on the meeting which was set for a famous restaurant just off Central Park. Joe Sinus was bringing his eldest son Sunny who was already taking an active part in the East Coast Baking Company when he wasn’t busy being an active playboy.“Gee pop I hear she’s as plain as a bag of flour,” said Sunny to his father when they were discussing the upcoming meeting.Whether it was a trick of the subdued restaurant lighting or the pre dinner cocktails or a combination of the two, Sunny found Gardenia rather attractive in a kind of quaint way. The fact that she didn’t show an immediate and limpet like attachment to Sunny was probably rather a novel feature which added to her allure. Women of a certain kind normally spread themselves willingly all over the playboy’s attention and it was rumoured that Sunny had bedded more women than his Pop’s firm made donuts. (“He’s bin through more holes than a frikin’ cockroach,” was how one of his jealous gambling chums described him). Gardenia too found herself mildly interested in the chisel featured American playboy who sat opposite her in his white tuxedo and jet black, slicked back hair. She almost expected a diamond like flash from the over white teeth every time a smile was issued and there were plenty from the performing playboy.The first meeting was pleasant enough and the two big bakers got on like a house on fire.“I could do business with that guy,” Joe Sinus said to his son in their limo on the way back across the Hudson.“I could give his daughter a good seeing to,” said Sunny.“Hey boy. You keep your dick in your pocket until the deal’s done.” Joe Sinus didn’t want his son’s pumped up testosterone to ruin his plans for an easy acquisition.“Once we’ve got them under our belt you can screw her till your balls drop off.” Joe Sinus wasn’t a man with a lengthy lexicon. His son however was a man with a lusty libido.Gardenia didn’t really stand a chance. First Sunny sent a truck load of fresh flowers to her suite, then a ridiculous present in a fancy box from Tiffany’s. He called her and asked her to a show and she accepted which was the thin end of the wedge. The helicopter ride over Manhattan at night was quite fun and the drive home in the horse drawn cab after the fine meal was good too. The next evening Sunny Sinus sent his chauffer over to pick her up for the theatre and then it was the sea plane flight off to the beach house and the trip to Atlantic City and the casino he and his friends liked to frequent. At first Gardenia didn’t yield to Sunny’s efforts. But one evening when the vodka had very nearly beaten everything else senseless, Gardenia and Sunny dropped into a big bed together and she rediscovered the real satisfaction that a fit man could offer to a willing girl. He’d made all the right moves and all the right noises. He’d said the most beautiful things to her and about her and Gardenia felt as though she was climbing back on top. He told her that if the two of them got together she could become the jam in his donut and the topping on his pizza. She told him he could be the fruit in her loaf and at once they both laughed out loud about that one. They both agreed that they could make lots of dough together and then without much ceremony they set about creating another sandwich. She felt that here at last was the cure for the “black dog” moments that had been with her since her brief marriage. In that big bed with that big Yank she’d had a ball (actually two) and quite willingly let the playboy overwhelm her on at least five separate occasions before it was time for brunch.It was such a pity that she overheard Sunny taking to his father on the phone. She’d come out of the shower and caught her new lover wrapping up his conversation.“Don’t worry Pop,” he was saying. “I wouldn’t touch the dumpy English bitch with yours. She’s as lifeless as that flat beer they drink across the pond. No worries our deal is in the bag.”His callous words stopped her dead in her recovery tracks, froze over her thaw and immediately summoned the “black dog” moment firmly back to heel.It was over breakfast on the Sunday morning before the day that the Racebottom’s were due to return home that Gardenia let slip the fact that Sunny Sinus had probably gone too far.“What do you mean Darling?” said Mr Racebottom over his eggs and hash browns. He was concerned that something was once again amiss in the core of the apple of his eye.“Well Daddy I don’t know what went on but I know that the American took advantage of me. That’s all.”Her father was on the phone to Joe Sinus in minutes and he told him in no uncertain terms that if he thought that he could ever contemplate doing anything even approaching a business deal with the Racebottom family then he better think again. Further more if couldn’t control his over sexed son who it seems was only after one thing then he could stuff his offer for the business up his own Yankee backside.Gardenia who was listening to the call got the general idea that her father wasn’t a happy man and she watched him as he left the table of the Village Brassiere in a huff to go back to the hotel. His interrupted American breakfast was spread over his plate like an accident. The eggs, both sunny side up, had lost their lustre and congealed like two dull yellow eyes thick and misty with too much sleep.When Gardenia returned to the hotel she saw the small crowd gathered outside. There were several conspicuous NYPD cars with their flashing lights and an ambulance with its rear doors wide and paramedics busy doing their job.Gardenia elbowed urgently through to the front of the crowd to make her way into the building but was stopped by the officer putting out police tape round the cordoned off area.“Sorry miss. You can’t go in there.”Apparently two guys had “gotten” into a fight on the top floor of the hotel and they had somehow ended up toppling over the balcony and falling down onto the side walk several storeys below.Gardenia looked on in horror as she realised that the two broken bodies not far from where she was standing were her father, bent and lifeless, face down and Sunny Sinus with a grotesque grin on his upturned face.The image of her father’s unfinished breakfast came back to her, easy over and sunny side up, and she turned away from the dreadful mess half screaming half retching and brought up her own undigested breakfast, eggs first, all down her quivering chin and over the new red shoes, the ones her father had bought for her the day before.
3.The icing on the cake.
It was, so they said, “a frickin’ miracle”. The fierce struggle between the two men had turned from fisticuffs into a schoolboy wrestling match. Sunny Sinus locked his arms around Mr Racebottom tightly, in a grizzly bear hug, to prevent the British baker’s flailing windmill like arms from damaging the playboy’s prospects. When the two men reeled, spun and spilled over from the balcony, they headed downwards stuck together in the vice grip to hit the ground like a ball of fresh dough. It was Sunny that reached the pavement first cushioning a lot of the impact for the body locked on top of his. The American playboy took the full force of the ghastly collision and as a result literally slipped from this world to the next in a very unglamorous and out of shape fashion. At his send off one of his gambling chums (the same one who had commented on his sexploits) whispered rather too loudly and in very poor taste, “Pretty typical of the sun of a gun but at least he left us sunny side up.” At the over-the-top cremation where the floral tributes reflected the deceased’s colourful past there were several black and white floral “lucky” dice. A giant donut made from carnations and inscribed from the head office staff with the words “Sunny, you’ll leave a hole in all our lives,” was by far the biggest floral tribute. There were fourteen aces of varying sizes and colour with the biggest pink ace of hearts from someone signed Mimi. A garish sports car was crafted from red roses and an enormous green flowered bottle with the word Sunny spewing out of the top like foaming Champagne came with love from all the boys in Atlantic City. Sunny had died on the sidewalk while Mr Racebottom was carefully scooped up by the paramedics and whisked off to the nearest Emergency Room and held in limbo on a life support machine. It was touch and go for forty eight hours but the fight in Mr Racebottom was considerable and with his daughter at his bedside the British baker “hung on in there.”“Daddy, daddy. I thought you were dead,” sobbed Gardenia when on day three her father eventually opened one of his eyes. Gardenia looked dreadful (but not as bad as her father). The bedside vigil had taken its toll and since the accident she hadn’t done much at all other than sit in a chair by the sick bed. Her father’s first view back to the conscious world was of his daughter’s red shoe still with the dried remains of egg on it.“Your shoe,” he tried to say as though it was important. But the oxygen mask made the two words sound like a sneeze.“Bless you daddy,” said his daughter squeezing his bruised hand.Recovery for both of them was a slow process. The Racebottoms returned home to England, father in a wheelchair and daughter further scarred by the trauma of unsatisfactory relationship and her father’s near death experience.Joseph Sinus didn’t take the death of his eldest son very well at all. He felt responsible and he felt that the “Brits” (those “Shit Brits” as he called the Racebottoms) were even more responsible. Some close to him told him that his son was on a path of self destruction any how and that Joe should just try and put the whole thing behind him, get on with his life. There were others though who pampered to Joe’s darker thoughts and his ingrained desire to get even.“If I ever see ‘em again they’re toast,” he said rather ironically. Gardenia had to take a more hands on role with the business and was appointed the CEO while her father became the one day a month Chairman. Over the months she had some good ideas for driving the business into new areas. She brought a strong woman’s touch to the decision making and soon surpassed her father’s reputation as a tough cookie to deal with. She didn’t find much time for anything outside of work and had no time for men in her life other than her invalid father. His seventieth birthday party was a quiet affair but Gardenia’s PA had arranged for an elaborate birthday cake through one of their London bakeries and it arrived in one of the familiar company vans, the ones shaped like a loaf of bread. The whole fleet of vans and trucks had been designed to make people stop and point. “Man cannot live by bread alone,” was the slogan emblazoned on each vehicle’s side together with a shopping list of all the other things the Racebottom baking empire provided besides just bread.The birthday cake was a work of art. Apart from the obvious reference to the number seventy there were some very intricate details highlighting the landmarks in Mr Racebottom’s life so far. There was an accurate mini Buckingham Palace with the date picked out in a different coloured icing. This was the day Mr Racebottom had received his OBE from Her Majesty for services to the British Baking Industry. There was, of course, a tiny cradle and the date of Gardenia’s birth. No mention was made of the marriage to her mother but rather all the happy things that had happened in the baker’s life. The winning race horses at Ascot, the several awards as Best British Baker, the Freedom of the City of London and the landing of the thirty pound salmon on the Spey. All were lovingly recorded in icing by an amazingly talented hand. It really was a cake that looked too good to eat.“What a beautiful cake,” said Gardenia when she saw it. “I want to speak to the person who did this and thank them.”Her PA got onto the case and it was soon discovered that a newly recruited apprentice baker, one from America, had done the job. His name threw Gardenia into a frightening rage and the beautiful cake into a broken mess of marzipan, icing sugar and fruit against the back wall and hearth of the big empty fireplace. What had taken several weeks of painstaking work to create was destroyed in seconds. She demanded to see Silas Sinus at once.Silas looked nothing like his elder brother, Sunny, apart from the clean cut chisel chin.“What the hell do you think you’re doing worming your way into my business?” Gardenia screamed at the American in front of her desk.“I’m sorry mam. All I want is to create some of the finest cakes and confectionery that a man can and I don’t want anything that happened in the past to get in the way.” The young American looked close to tears.“So you know all about our terrible trip to New York?” Gardenia remembered it as thought it was yesterday.“Why yes mam. Pa told me all about it but he and I don’t see eye to eye and from what I hear my big brother shouldn’t have tackled your pa the way he did.”“It was a dreadful business. My father nearly died and your brother ended up…well… like a pancake.” Gardenia was thinking about eggs again rather than any soft sentiments Silas might have had for his departed brother“He got what was commin’ to him and I never want to see my pa again. If we can let bygones be bygones I’d be happy to hone my skills in your business. You’ll have a willing worker in me mam and I’d be happy indeed mam, to be of service.”Gardenia wished he’d stop calling her “mam”.“Please don’t call me mam,” she asked and he didn’t again for some time.She studied the figure in front of her. Silas had his big brother’s charm and way with words and Gardenia’s initial anger subsided and she found herself looking at the American as a man, not a viper at her bosom. He was good looking and probably nearly a dozen years younger than her. He had something of a Californian surfer look about him and there was definitely more than a hint of a message that Gardenia was getting that seemed to be saying, “Surf’s up.” It was agreed that Silas could stay on for a while and as long as his work permit lasted but Gardenia didn’t think that she’d bother telling her father about the new talented icing man on the payroll. She’d keep a close eye on him. And so she found herself thinking more and more about him as she remembered the good time she had had, albeit briefly, with his brother. She found an excuse to visit her London bakery where Silas was working. The visit lead to lunch; lunch to supper and supper to a hastily booked bed at the Dorchester. Gardenia found that Silas wasn’t just an artist with the icing sugar but that his delicate touch could make her glaze over with sheer pleasure. He buttered her up and turned on the charm to way beyond gas mark five and she melted accordingly. He rose to the occasion and she found herself done to a turn.Telling her father that she’d found the man of her dreams and that she planned to marry him was nearly enough to kill the old man and it set him back so that when he wasn’t bed bound he sat in a wheelchair with a vacant gaze on his lined face. No one really knew if he understood that the man his daughter was marrying was the son of Joseph Sinus but it didn’t really matter.The talented cake decorator surpassed himself when it came to the wedding cake. The enormous tiered affair was as substantial as a small building. (They said afterwards it looked uncannily like the Chelsea Hotel in Downtown Manhattan).The happy couple cut the cake with much flashing of cameras from the small group of guests and then the caterers cut it up for everyone to eat. Silas looked proud and Gardenia radiant as she fed a piece of the cake into her father’s lopsided mouth.The poison that had been mixed into the icing on top of the cake did its wicked job and everyone that ate it died either at the reception or on their way to the hospital. Gardenia too had bitten into a large piece of her new husband’s creation and very soon felt the gripping effects as the poison worked its way into her nervous system and the uncontrollable froth started to stream from her gasping mouth. It was as though the celebratory champagne she had consumed couldn’t contain itself any longer.Silas put his arm around his wife and looked into her dilated, terrified eyes.“The icing on the cake, mam,” he whispered and then he burst into tears.
4.Buns in the oven.
The thing about orgasms is that amyl nitrate makes them so much better. The sweet smelling vapour had slipped up Gardenia’s nose and down into her lungs like foggy honey and she was suddenly very keen to get Silas on his own and as soon as possible. She had been going to save the “popper” for the bridal suite later that night but the Champagne had rushed her plans forward. She wanted her man right now in the cloakroom surrounded by the touch, feel and smell of other people’s coats. Aided by the drug in her heightened sense of arousal, making sudden and passionate love in a small cloakroom would be as illicit as performing live sex in front of an invited audience. Her heart was starting to race and although she’d never tried any stimulants before to enhance what came pretty naturally to her, she wanted to please her younger groom and had read somewhere that the contents of the file she’d inhaled would make the earth move as it never had before. In giving herself the extra pleasure she was, she reasoned, giving her new husband a post nuptial bonus, a kick start to many happy years of wedded bliss. She hadn’t bargained for the cyanide laced icing on the cake as Silas’s wedding gift to her. But for the amyl nitrate’s accidental antidote to the poison, Gardenia would have joined several of the guests and her father in the hospital mortuary.The Silas crocodile tears were short lived. Gardenia heaved her guts up all over the groom’s as he held her in his arms. The foaming sick came up like a train and Gardenia’s violent pink complexion retreated to its more normal hue so that she didn’t look like the colour of the icing she had just consumed. At first she thought that her increasingly breathless state was a side effect of the drug she had quietly taken. She didn’t realise that the icing she had chewed was responsible. Then, like a very bad dream, she became aware of people around her, her daddy included; wobbling and collapsing into comas and Silas’s whispering about the icing on the cake and that vile word, “mam” again became the starting pistol’s shot. As she retched once more she reached for the big knife that moments earlier the couple had been grasping together as man and wife. With all her force she plunged the blade into Silas’s neck just below his Adam’s apple and was surprised just how easily the sharp steel slipped its way into her husband’s throat. He too grabbed the bloody handle of the knife and husband and wife grappled and sawed their way clean through his jugular repeating their earlier cake cutting efforts but on this second occasion with less unison than on the first. It was the blood’s turn to flow like Champagne and it gushed from the dreadful open wound in the groom’s neck and streamed down Gardenia’s sleeveless arms and onto her already heavily stained, no longer white wedding outfit.When the paramedics arrived they hurried on to a set like a scene from inside a slaughter house with the most gruesome centre piece the bride and groom locked in each other’s arms, cemented together in blood and gore and icing, a grotesque giant version of the tiny replica of the wedded bliss from the very top of the killer cake.“What a bloody wedding!” was the accurate comment made by one of the ambulance drivers who acted as the shuttle service between the wedding reception and A&E.The inquiry that followed the unusually high profile wedding and one that Gardenia herself had wanted to keep as a low key affair was full of the sort of gossip and speculation that had camera men attached to long lenses teetering on their ladders outside the Racebottom residence. The Director of Public Prosecution to whom the case was referred by the police deliberated and decided that no further action would be taken. The Coroner reached a verdict of unlawful killing of thirteen persons by the American Silas Sinus and further recorded an open verdict of suicide on the same man.At another stroke of misfortune Gardenia had gained and lost a second husband and lost her father with a dozen of her friends and relatives. Across the Pond, old Joseph Sinus was as distraught as a father could be at having his other son untimely taken from him. He blamed himself of course but nevertheless felt doubly cheated that his youngest son had not been able to avenge the death of his eldest. There was much to grieve about in the baking world on both sides of the Atlantic.Gardenia turned into a reincarnation of the Virgin Queen, except for her virginity which was long gone, and set about excluding relationships with men from her life all together just like the good Queen Bess. She became obsessed with protecting and building the Racebottom baking empire so that every crumpet, flapjack, pikelet, loaf of sliced or un-sliced bread, hot cross bun, finger roll, iced bun or fancy from Land’s End to John O’Groats had at some stage of its life been through the Racebottom bakery system.It was probably a big mistake agreeing to see Joseph Sinus. The father of the two boys that Gardenia had briefly dabbled with, and then killed, was in town and wanted to say “Hi.”“Hi,” said the greying American baker.“Hello,” said Gardenia getting up from behind her desk to greet the visitor.The two bakers moved carefully to the comfort of the arm chairs and settled like falling soufflé’s into the rich leather. Chinese tea and Racebottom digestives were brought into the room.“Shall I be mother?” said Gardenia.“What?” said Joe in some surprise.“Let me pour the tea,” she said realising the American had thought she had been talking about something else.“Yeah,” he said. “You do that honey. I take mine straight from the pot.”“Actually,” Joe moved in his seat as though he wasn’t settled. “It was about that that I wanted to see you.”“About what?” said Gardenia as she let the smoky smelling liquid flow from the spout.“About you being a mother.”The pouring stopped abruptly.“What on earth do you mean Mr Sinus?” She sounded like a news reader.“Well there you go honey. You keep your hair on kitten. It’s just that I been thinkin’ about how you and me could come to some arrangement about how our two businesses could git it together like what your dear daddy and me had plans for before my boys went and messed up the whole job.” It wasn’t a pretty sentence but it struggled to mean well.“I’m always keen to explore the ways in which business can be improved. “ Gardenia sensed she had nothing to loose. “What had you in mind Mr Sinus?”“Hell honey you can call me Joe.” Not waiting for a response Joe ploughed on. “I’ve done me lots of thinking and I’m not getting any younger so I want our off spring, the fruit of our loins, the semen from my sack and the eggs from your fillopinun to produce us a child who will grow up to take on the whole kitten caboodle.”Gardenia’s mouth was wide open. The Racebottom digestive hovered in mid air held in the motionless and incredulous hand, stopped on its way by Joe’s extraordinary words.“That’s the most preposterous proposal I’ve ever heard.” Gardenia really thought that it was and she’d heard a book full.“Arw come on honey it’s not that out of line. I’m not asking you to marry me or anything. I’m not even expecting to get my leg over that tidy rump of yours. I’ve put some of my semen in one of those ice banks. You could say I’ve made a deposit and it’s got your name on it just sitting there waiting for the withdrawal at any time that suits you honey.”Gardenia was amazed and amused, disgusted and distrusting all at the same time.“Let me get this straight Mr ….err…Joe…..You want me to undergo artificial insemination to produce your test tube baby?”“Guess that’s about the size of it honey. The off spring will be ours and he or she will take on the ownership of the whole of our joint baking empire. The child will become the biggest baker in the world. Now that’s what I want and I’ve an idea that’s what you want as well.”Joe Sinus looked more comfortable and sipped his tea in the way a man might just having secured a very big deal.His “people” drew up the papers with her “people” and the turkey baster like AI device fired up with Joe Sinus’s seed was introduced into Gardenia Racebottom’s front bottom in the dispassionate manner an uncooked pizza is shovelled into a bread oven.After the first visit to Harley Street it was confirmed that Ms Racebottom was pregnant. As she told her PA rather matter of factly later that day, there was indeed a bun in the oven.What the scan would show in some week’s time was that Gardenia Racebottom was actually carrying a baker’s half dozen inside her.“A womb with a few,” was how her genial gynaecologist broke the news to the swelling baker not really sure of the response he was going to get.
While Gardenia had kept herself to herself for the first twenty two years of her charmed life, for the next ten she played the field with all her might and enthusiasm. Gardenia Racebottom was as bed worthy as a girl could be. Her welcome mat had seen the coming and goings of several invited gentleman callers and one or two less desirable types had also managed to coax their way into her affections helped in great part by that double edged sword, strong drink. It would have been unkind to suggest that most of her suitors were actually more interested in the Racebottom baking fortune rather than Miss Racebottom herself. But nevertheless if a survey had been conducted and the truth extracted from the respondents, the fact that Gardenia was the sole heiress to, at the last estimate, a two hundred and forty million pound inheritance would have been a big contributory factor to what went on after the lights went off.Gardenia was one of those girls that didn't really show much early promise. She was what was politely described as being rather a "plain" girl. She graduated from ponies to horses when the other girls at her boarding school were sliding into men from boys. At university she did get a boyfriend and the two of them read poetry together and went for afternoon tea at "The Olde Bunne Shoppe". Holding hands was as exciting for the couple as joining the extreme sports club was for others and the relationship was like that of brother and sister. Her "boyfriend" was the sibling she never had. Their first kiss was also sadly their last but Gardenia had tasted a hint of the cream on top of the milk. She thought that she would like more and set her milking stool out accordingly. Like Sandy in "Grease" she underwent something of a transformation and started to turn heads. Her light came out from under her bushel. Even her bookish tutor noticed the chrysalis to butterfly moment. Gardenia became sought after among her male colleagues and some of the female ones too.It was Jed who provided her with her first full on encounter and in his Austin Healy Gardenia succumbed to his eager advances. The sound and smell of leather car seats provided a backdrop to the whole mysterious act. Gardenia embraced the world of sex (she actually embraced Jed with such fervour that he couldn't control himself) and the more she tried it, the more she liked it. From “Early Doors” Jed there was Timothy, “Tiny Tim”, as she was to discover and from Timothy she moved on to Seb, “Sideways Seb”, who although wasn't the most active of partners did provide Gardenia with her first orgasm which she experienced quietly but with a great deal of pleasant surprise while astride the laid back Sebastian.Rupert, “Rubbish Roop”, was fun to be with but not very good at doing it and Craig, “Clinical Craig”, was just too experimental, too clinical. Quentin was rather rough and liked it from behind which didn't always agree with Gardenia's sense of direction. Brook was a great kisser and always bought flowers. Sammy, “Burgundy Sam”, smelt nice but tasted of wine sometimes. Don was moody and she discovered after some weeks married too. Brian snored and drank too much and Ben, “Big Ben”, didn't believe in any foreplay. Stan, “Stan the man”, had hard working hands and didn’t always shave and Chuck's breathe wasn't that pleasant. Trevor always said "Thank you" afterwards which annoyed Gardenia greatly and Simon, “Simon the sock”, used to keep his socks on and could never stay overnight. Frankie, “Frank the fuck”, was the best ever and she felt very comfortable with him until he told her, with some considerable embarrassment, to look out for his sexually transmitted disease. Luke wooed her back from a few months abstinence but his fondness for the wacky backy made him too silly and vacant so she had another brief fling with Sammy, “Burgundy Sam”, before Maxwell appeared.Max was different from all the others. He was older, nearly forty, and seemed to really care about Gardenia for the woman she was rather than the “bang with the bucks” as she’d overheard one of her briefer liaison’s describing her. (“Kneading the dough” was another she’d caught). Bit by bit she found herself falling in love with him. He was the man you could take home to meet Mummy and Daddy without any worries. Max always said the right thing. He had the confidence to get on with every body. Gardenia's mother was instantly won over although her father was less convinced."He's too damn smooth for my liking," he said to his wife after one Sunday luncheon.Gardenia’s father was like that with all Gardenias’ male friends and in his simple view there wasn’t a man on the planet that was good enough for his little girl. Had he any inkling about the sort of traffic that had travelled along his daughter’s carriageway or indeed just rested on her hard shoulder, then he would have been beside himself. It would not of course have been anything that Gardenia had done wrong. Far from it. His daughter was the apple of his eye or more appropriately, the bread in his oven, and she could do no wrong at all. He didn’t like Maxwell and that was that.Nevertheless Gardenia and Max became an item. The two of them seemed to enjoy each other's company and Gardenia put the lid on her sampling tin and became a one trick pony. At thirty two it was time for her to consider settling down and maybe Max was the man. He didn't show any traits that Gardenia could complain about and in her heart of hearts she couldn't wait for Maxwell to pop the question.Maxwell Deep (he was one of the Deep's from Hertfordshire) wasn’t as pure as the driven snow. In fact it was “snow” that was getting the better of him. He had acquired an expensive and addictive habit from his stressful hours in the City that involved sniffing white powder up his nostrils or rubbing it onto his gums. His nick name was “Deep and Crisp and Even” in a rather too obvious reference to the “snow that lay round about” when ever Maxwell or his mates took off for the rest room at work or in crowded places or virtually any hard flat surface in private.Max knew that Gardenia didn’t approve of his habit.“I can’t understand any man who needs to take drugs. It’s just a sign of weakness,” she said to Max and her parents one day. Her father, who was on his fourth large whiskey and soda, agreed. He didn’t disagree with anything his daughter said.Maxwell’s habit was kept under wraps from Gardenia and sure enough he proposed to her in Paris one week-end when the two of them took the Eurostar to the continent.The wedding was the sort that a wealthy father would put on for his only spoilt daughter. The “do” at Babington House, in rural Somerset, was a glitzy affair with a celebrity chef overseeing the menu for the four hundred guests. The marquee down by the lake looked like a mini canvass version of the Sydney Opera House and the tables, all forty of them, were themed around Aladdin and his Magic Lamp (or as one of the more inebriated guests rather unkindly put it Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda Camp). The bride’s look verged rather dangerously towards that of Little Bo Peep but the outfit pleased her beaming father even though several in the gathering thought mutton dressed as lamb.The wedding day would have been a wonderful occasion for all concerned and worth every penny of the five hundred pounds a head the event had cost. Most of the guests had a ball but when the bride discovered her groom snorting a fat line of coke in the en-suite, the tears came thick and fast. Gardenia’s father was of course outraged but even more so when, having decided to have it out with his new son in law, he found him in Babington’s billiard room straddled across Gardenia’s mother on the green baize with both of them obviously engrossed with kissing the pink.Gardenia slipped into depression, her mother into divorce proceedings and almost one year later her father had no trouble arranging the slipping of Maxwell’s tightly bound body into one of his industrial ovens, turning up the heat until the flesh started to bubble like a burnt pizza. Max was burnt to a crisp. The police couldn’t prove anything although there was a lot of finger pointing and some awkward interviews.Gardenia and her father felt that they had got even.“Deep and crisp and even.” Gardenia stroked her father’s hand and looked lovingly into his baker’s eyes. How could she possibly love any other man?
2.Easy over sunny side up.
Gardenia was off pizza. Since the betrayal by her ex on her wedding day who, with several lines of coke up his nose, had been caught in flagrante delicto with her mother on a billiard table, the bottom had fallen out of Gardenia’s world. Her self confidence was shot to pieces. Not even the love and over attention of her adoring father could bring her back from the “black dog” moment that had become her waking life. Her father had of course taken care of the wayward son-in-law and had had him baked from this world to the next with his body evenly and very finely distributed across the batch of pizzas that the Racebottom baking empire sent out to a willing and hungry population. The “interesting” new ingredient would have prompted comments among the pizza eating fraternity, most of them favourable. “Great new chewy topping” or “love the new salami” or “tastes just like chicken,” were complements that might have been heard and some that suggested, “…. that chef had been a bit too liberal with the pork scratching or what ever the ingredient was….” were heard and ignored. The ex son-in-law had slipped into the British diet, had become an unwilling participant in the food chain and had disappeared and been digested by those who had bought their frozen pizzas to recreate and consume at home from Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s or the Co-op. The list of ingredients on the box from the well respected national baker didn’t tell the truth, the unwholesome truth or nothing but the truth and pizza sales were as buoyant as they had always been.Gardenia was off pizza and couldn’t stomach much food at all having lost her appetite. She sustained herself on milk shakes and vodka and chocolate, not always in that order, but little else passed her lips apart from the sleeping pills.It was her father who suggested a holiday, a trip to New York that would be a change of scene for his daughter and who knows, restore her to her former self. So father and daughter set off for the Big Apple and two suites of rooms at the Chelsea Hotel near Soho and Greenwich Village. The white stretch limo took them from JFK to downtown Manhattan and they were ushered into their separate apartments on the top floor of the impressive building. Gardenia rang down for a milkshake while her father fixed himself a stiff whiskey and soda from the bar in his suite.The New York trip would be more than a holiday for Mr Racebottom and he had planned a series of face to face meetings with the East Coast Baking Company that had aspirations to acquire Racebottom’s British business. A tough New Jersey operator called Sinus headed up the East Coast Baking Company or ECBC as it was referred to by those on Wall Street. Joseph Sinus had come up the hard way and was what was called a self made man. He’d joke about it in an American way.“Hey I’m a self raising guy,” or “It’s easy beasy,” he’d guffaw when ever he had an admiring audience around him. He was often surrounded by admiring audiences being worth “a cool” eight hundred million dollars. His “people” had identified the British opportunity and had arranged for him to meet up with the main man from Racebottom’s for preliminary talks.“These Brits got no idea how da make a pizza,” was what Joe Sinus thought.“Yanks and bread. Wouldn’t know a decent white farmhouse if it hit him ‘em on the head,” was what Mr Racebottom thought.It was going to be an interesting meeting.Gardenia was expected to be there. Her Daddy had wanted her to be there and besides she did have an interest in the future of the business as heiress apparent. She reluctantly agreed and would put a brave face on the meeting which was set for a famous restaurant just off Central Park. Joe Sinus was bringing his eldest son Sunny who was already taking an active part in the East Coast Baking Company when he wasn’t busy being an active playboy.“Gee pop I hear she’s as plain as a bag of flour,” said Sunny to his father when they were discussing the upcoming meeting.Whether it was a trick of the subdued restaurant lighting or the pre dinner cocktails or a combination of the two, Sunny found Gardenia rather attractive in a kind of quaint way. The fact that she didn’t show an immediate and limpet like attachment to Sunny was probably rather a novel feature which added to her allure. Women of a certain kind normally spread themselves willingly all over the playboy’s attention and it was rumoured that Sunny had bedded more women than his Pop’s firm made donuts. (“He’s bin through more holes than a frikin’ cockroach,” was how one of his jealous gambling chums described him). Gardenia too found herself mildly interested in the chisel featured American playboy who sat opposite her in his white tuxedo and jet black, slicked back hair. She almost expected a diamond like flash from the over white teeth every time a smile was issued and there were plenty from the performing playboy.The first meeting was pleasant enough and the two big bakers got on like a house on fire.“I could do business with that guy,” Joe Sinus said to his son in their limo on the way back across the Hudson.“I could give his daughter a good seeing to,” said Sunny.“Hey boy. You keep your dick in your pocket until the deal’s done.” Joe Sinus didn’t want his son’s pumped up testosterone to ruin his plans for an easy acquisition.“Once we’ve got them under our belt you can screw her till your balls drop off.” Joe Sinus wasn’t a man with a lengthy lexicon. His son however was a man with a lusty libido.Gardenia didn’t really stand a chance. First Sunny sent a truck load of fresh flowers to her suite, then a ridiculous present in a fancy box from Tiffany’s. He called her and asked her to a show and she accepted which was the thin end of the wedge. The helicopter ride over Manhattan at night was quite fun and the drive home in the horse drawn cab after the fine meal was good too. The next evening Sunny Sinus sent his chauffer over to pick her up for the theatre and then it was the sea plane flight off to the beach house and the trip to Atlantic City and the casino he and his friends liked to frequent. At first Gardenia didn’t yield to Sunny’s efforts. But one evening when the vodka had very nearly beaten everything else senseless, Gardenia and Sunny dropped into a big bed together and she rediscovered the real satisfaction that a fit man could offer to a willing girl. He’d made all the right moves and all the right noises. He’d said the most beautiful things to her and about her and Gardenia felt as though she was climbing back on top. He told her that if the two of them got together she could become the jam in his donut and the topping on his pizza. She told him he could be the fruit in her loaf and at once they both laughed out loud about that one. They both agreed that they could make lots of dough together and then without much ceremony they set about creating another sandwich. She felt that here at last was the cure for the “black dog” moments that had been with her since her brief marriage. In that big bed with that big Yank she’d had a ball (actually two) and quite willingly let the playboy overwhelm her on at least five separate occasions before it was time for brunch.It was such a pity that she overheard Sunny taking to his father on the phone. She’d come out of the shower and caught her new lover wrapping up his conversation.“Don’t worry Pop,” he was saying. “I wouldn’t touch the dumpy English bitch with yours. She’s as lifeless as that flat beer they drink across the pond. No worries our deal is in the bag.”His callous words stopped her dead in her recovery tracks, froze over her thaw and immediately summoned the “black dog” moment firmly back to heel.It was over breakfast on the Sunday morning before the day that the Racebottom’s were due to return home that Gardenia let slip the fact that Sunny Sinus had probably gone too far.“What do you mean Darling?” said Mr Racebottom over his eggs and hash browns. He was concerned that something was once again amiss in the core of the apple of his eye.“Well Daddy I don’t know what went on but I know that the American took advantage of me. That’s all.”Her father was on the phone to Joe Sinus in minutes and he told him in no uncertain terms that if he thought that he could ever contemplate doing anything even approaching a business deal with the Racebottom family then he better think again. Further more if couldn’t control his over sexed son who it seems was only after one thing then he could stuff his offer for the business up his own Yankee backside.Gardenia who was listening to the call got the general idea that her father wasn’t a happy man and she watched him as he left the table of the Village Brassiere in a huff to go back to the hotel. His interrupted American breakfast was spread over his plate like an accident. The eggs, both sunny side up, had lost their lustre and congealed like two dull yellow eyes thick and misty with too much sleep.When Gardenia returned to the hotel she saw the small crowd gathered outside. There were several conspicuous NYPD cars with their flashing lights and an ambulance with its rear doors wide and paramedics busy doing their job.Gardenia elbowed urgently through to the front of the crowd to make her way into the building but was stopped by the officer putting out police tape round the cordoned off area.“Sorry miss. You can’t go in there.”Apparently two guys had “gotten” into a fight on the top floor of the hotel and they had somehow ended up toppling over the balcony and falling down onto the side walk several storeys below.Gardenia looked on in horror as she realised that the two broken bodies not far from where she was standing were her father, bent and lifeless, face down and Sunny Sinus with a grotesque grin on his upturned face.The image of her father’s unfinished breakfast came back to her, easy over and sunny side up, and she turned away from the dreadful mess half screaming half retching and brought up her own undigested breakfast, eggs first, all down her quivering chin and over the new red shoes, the ones her father had bought for her the day before.
3.The icing on the cake.
It was, so they said, “a frickin’ miracle”. The fierce struggle between the two men had turned from fisticuffs into a schoolboy wrestling match. Sunny Sinus locked his arms around Mr Racebottom tightly, in a grizzly bear hug, to prevent the British baker’s flailing windmill like arms from damaging the playboy’s prospects. When the two men reeled, spun and spilled over from the balcony, they headed downwards stuck together in the vice grip to hit the ground like a ball of fresh dough. It was Sunny that reached the pavement first cushioning a lot of the impact for the body locked on top of his. The American playboy took the full force of the ghastly collision and as a result literally slipped from this world to the next in a very unglamorous and out of shape fashion. At his send off one of his gambling chums (the same one who had commented on his sexploits) whispered rather too loudly and in very poor taste, “Pretty typical of the sun of a gun but at least he left us sunny side up.” At the over-the-top cremation where the floral tributes reflected the deceased’s colourful past there were several black and white floral “lucky” dice. A giant donut made from carnations and inscribed from the head office staff with the words “Sunny, you’ll leave a hole in all our lives,” was by far the biggest floral tribute. There were fourteen aces of varying sizes and colour with the biggest pink ace of hearts from someone signed Mimi. A garish sports car was crafted from red roses and an enormous green flowered bottle with the word Sunny spewing out of the top like foaming Champagne came with love from all the boys in Atlantic City. Sunny had died on the sidewalk while Mr Racebottom was carefully scooped up by the paramedics and whisked off to the nearest Emergency Room and held in limbo on a life support machine. It was touch and go for forty eight hours but the fight in Mr Racebottom was considerable and with his daughter at his bedside the British baker “hung on in there.”“Daddy, daddy. I thought you were dead,” sobbed Gardenia when on day three her father eventually opened one of his eyes. Gardenia looked dreadful (but not as bad as her father). The bedside vigil had taken its toll and since the accident she hadn’t done much at all other than sit in a chair by the sick bed. Her father’s first view back to the conscious world was of his daughter’s red shoe still with the dried remains of egg on it.“Your shoe,” he tried to say as though it was important. But the oxygen mask made the two words sound like a sneeze.“Bless you daddy,” said his daughter squeezing his bruised hand.Recovery for both of them was a slow process. The Racebottoms returned home to England, father in a wheelchair and daughter further scarred by the trauma of unsatisfactory relationship and her father’s near death experience.Joseph Sinus didn’t take the death of his eldest son very well at all. He felt responsible and he felt that the “Brits” (those “Shit Brits” as he called the Racebottoms) were even more responsible. Some close to him told him that his son was on a path of self destruction any how and that Joe should just try and put the whole thing behind him, get on with his life. There were others though who pampered to Joe’s darker thoughts and his ingrained desire to get even.“If I ever see ‘em again they’re toast,” he said rather ironically. Gardenia had to take a more hands on role with the business and was appointed the CEO while her father became the one day a month Chairman. Over the months she had some good ideas for driving the business into new areas. She brought a strong woman’s touch to the decision making and soon surpassed her father’s reputation as a tough cookie to deal with. She didn’t find much time for anything outside of work and had no time for men in her life other than her invalid father. His seventieth birthday party was a quiet affair but Gardenia’s PA had arranged for an elaborate birthday cake through one of their London bakeries and it arrived in one of the familiar company vans, the ones shaped like a loaf of bread. The whole fleet of vans and trucks had been designed to make people stop and point. “Man cannot live by bread alone,” was the slogan emblazoned on each vehicle’s side together with a shopping list of all the other things the Racebottom baking empire provided besides just bread.The birthday cake was a work of art. Apart from the obvious reference to the number seventy there were some very intricate details highlighting the landmarks in Mr Racebottom’s life so far. There was an accurate mini Buckingham Palace with the date picked out in a different coloured icing. This was the day Mr Racebottom had received his OBE from Her Majesty for services to the British Baking Industry. There was, of course, a tiny cradle and the date of Gardenia’s birth. No mention was made of the marriage to her mother but rather all the happy things that had happened in the baker’s life. The winning race horses at Ascot, the several awards as Best British Baker, the Freedom of the City of London and the landing of the thirty pound salmon on the Spey. All were lovingly recorded in icing by an amazingly talented hand. It really was a cake that looked too good to eat.“What a beautiful cake,” said Gardenia when she saw it. “I want to speak to the person who did this and thank them.”Her PA got onto the case and it was soon discovered that a newly recruited apprentice baker, one from America, had done the job. His name threw Gardenia into a frightening rage and the beautiful cake into a broken mess of marzipan, icing sugar and fruit against the back wall and hearth of the big empty fireplace. What had taken several weeks of painstaking work to create was destroyed in seconds. She demanded to see Silas Sinus at once.Silas looked nothing like his elder brother, Sunny, apart from the clean cut chisel chin.“What the hell do you think you’re doing worming your way into my business?” Gardenia screamed at the American in front of her desk.“I’m sorry mam. All I want is to create some of the finest cakes and confectionery that a man can and I don’t want anything that happened in the past to get in the way.” The young American looked close to tears.“So you know all about our terrible trip to New York?” Gardenia remembered it as thought it was yesterday.“Why yes mam. Pa told me all about it but he and I don’t see eye to eye and from what I hear my big brother shouldn’t have tackled your pa the way he did.”“It was a dreadful business. My father nearly died and your brother ended up…well… like a pancake.” Gardenia was thinking about eggs again rather than any soft sentiments Silas might have had for his departed brother“He got what was commin’ to him and I never want to see my pa again. If we can let bygones be bygones I’d be happy to hone my skills in your business. You’ll have a willing worker in me mam and I’d be happy indeed mam, to be of service.”Gardenia wished he’d stop calling her “mam”.“Please don’t call me mam,” she asked and he didn’t again for some time.She studied the figure in front of her. Silas had his big brother’s charm and way with words and Gardenia’s initial anger subsided and she found herself looking at the American as a man, not a viper at her bosom. He was good looking and probably nearly a dozen years younger than her. He had something of a Californian surfer look about him and there was definitely more than a hint of a message that Gardenia was getting that seemed to be saying, “Surf’s up.” It was agreed that Silas could stay on for a while and as long as his work permit lasted but Gardenia didn’t think that she’d bother telling her father about the new talented icing man on the payroll. She’d keep a close eye on him. And so she found herself thinking more and more about him as she remembered the good time she had had, albeit briefly, with his brother. She found an excuse to visit her London bakery where Silas was working. The visit lead to lunch; lunch to supper and supper to a hastily booked bed at the Dorchester. Gardenia found that Silas wasn’t just an artist with the icing sugar but that his delicate touch could make her glaze over with sheer pleasure. He buttered her up and turned on the charm to way beyond gas mark five and she melted accordingly. He rose to the occasion and she found herself done to a turn.Telling her father that she’d found the man of her dreams and that she planned to marry him was nearly enough to kill the old man and it set him back so that when he wasn’t bed bound he sat in a wheelchair with a vacant gaze on his lined face. No one really knew if he understood that the man his daughter was marrying was the son of Joseph Sinus but it didn’t really matter.The talented cake decorator surpassed himself when it came to the wedding cake. The enormous tiered affair was as substantial as a small building. (They said afterwards it looked uncannily like the Chelsea Hotel in Downtown Manhattan).The happy couple cut the cake with much flashing of cameras from the small group of guests and then the caterers cut it up for everyone to eat. Silas looked proud and Gardenia radiant as she fed a piece of the cake into her father’s lopsided mouth.The poison that had been mixed into the icing on top of the cake did its wicked job and everyone that ate it died either at the reception or on their way to the hospital. Gardenia too had bitten into a large piece of her new husband’s creation and very soon felt the gripping effects as the poison worked its way into her nervous system and the uncontrollable froth started to stream from her gasping mouth. It was as though the celebratory champagne she had consumed couldn’t contain itself any longer.Silas put his arm around his wife and looked into her dilated, terrified eyes.“The icing on the cake, mam,” he whispered and then he burst into tears.
4.Buns in the oven.
The thing about orgasms is that amyl nitrate makes them so much better. The sweet smelling vapour had slipped up Gardenia’s nose and down into her lungs like foggy honey and she was suddenly very keen to get Silas on his own and as soon as possible. She had been going to save the “popper” for the bridal suite later that night but the Champagne had rushed her plans forward. She wanted her man right now in the cloakroom surrounded by the touch, feel and smell of other people’s coats. Aided by the drug in her heightened sense of arousal, making sudden and passionate love in a small cloakroom would be as illicit as performing live sex in front of an invited audience. Her heart was starting to race and although she’d never tried any stimulants before to enhance what came pretty naturally to her, she wanted to please her younger groom and had read somewhere that the contents of the file she’d inhaled would make the earth move as it never had before. In giving herself the extra pleasure she was, she reasoned, giving her new husband a post nuptial bonus, a kick start to many happy years of wedded bliss. She hadn’t bargained for the cyanide laced icing on the cake as Silas’s wedding gift to her. But for the amyl nitrate’s accidental antidote to the poison, Gardenia would have joined several of the guests and her father in the hospital mortuary.The Silas crocodile tears were short lived. Gardenia heaved her guts up all over the groom’s as he held her in his arms. The foaming sick came up like a train and Gardenia’s violent pink complexion retreated to its more normal hue so that she didn’t look like the colour of the icing she had just consumed. At first she thought that her increasingly breathless state was a side effect of the drug she had quietly taken. She didn’t realise that the icing she had chewed was responsible. Then, like a very bad dream, she became aware of people around her, her daddy included; wobbling and collapsing into comas and Silas’s whispering about the icing on the cake and that vile word, “mam” again became the starting pistol’s shot. As she retched once more she reached for the big knife that moments earlier the couple had been grasping together as man and wife. With all her force she plunged the blade into Silas’s neck just below his Adam’s apple and was surprised just how easily the sharp steel slipped its way into her husband’s throat. He too grabbed the bloody handle of the knife and husband and wife grappled and sawed their way clean through his jugular repeating their earlier cake cutting efforts but on this second occasion with less unison than on the first. It was the blood’s turn to flow like Champagne and it gushed from the dreadful open wound in the groom’s neck and streamed down Gardenia’s sleeveless arms and onto her already heavily stained, no longer white wedding outfit.When the paramedics arrived they hurried on to a set like a scene from inside a slaughter house with the most gruesome centre piece the bride and groom locked in each other’s arms, cemented together in blood and gore and icing, a grotesque giant version of the tiny replica of the wedded bliss from the very top of the killer cake.“What a bloody wedding!” was the accurate comment made by one of the ambulance drivers who acted as the shuttle service between the wedding reception and A&E.The inquiry that followed the unusually high profile wedding and one that Gardenia herself had wanted to keep as a low key affair was full of the sort of gossip and speculation that had camera men attached to long lenses teetering on their ladders outside the Racebottom residence. The Director of Public Prosecution to whom the case was referred by the police deliberated and decided that no further action would be taken. The Coroner reached a verdict of unlawful killing of thirteen persons by the American Silas Sinus and further recorded an open verdict of suicide on the same man.At another stroke of misfortune Gardenia had gained and lost a second husband and lost her father with a dozen of her friends and relatives. Across the Pond, old Joseph Sinus was as distraught as a father could be at having his other son untimely taken from him. He blamed himself of course but nevertheless felt doubly cheated that his youngest son had not been able to avenge the death of his eldest. There was much to grieve about in the baking world on both sides of the Atlantic.Gardenia turned into a reincarnation of the Virgin Queen, except for her virginity which was long gone, and set about excluding relationships with men from her life all together just like the good Queen Bess. She became obsessed with protecting and building the Racebottom baking empire so that every crumpet, flapjack, pikelet, loaf of sliced or un-sliced bread, hot cross bun, finger roll, iced bun or fancy from Land’s End to John O’Groats had at some stage of its life been through the Racebottom bakery system.It was probably a big mistake agreeing to see Joseph Sinus. The father of the two boys that Gardenia had briefly dabbled with, and then killed, was in town and wanted to say “Hi.”“Hi,” said the greying American baker.“Hello,” said Gardenia getting up from behind her desk to greet the visitor.The two bakers moved carefully to the comfort of the arm chairs and settled like falling soufflé’s into the rich leather. Chinese tea and Racebottom digestives were brought into the room.“Shall I be mother?” said Gardenia.“What?” said Joe in some surprise.“Let me pour the tea,” she said realising the American had thought she had been talking about something else.“Yeah,” he said. “You do that honey. I take mine straight from the pot.”“Actually,” Joe moved in his seat as though he wasn’t settled. “It was about that that I wanted to see you.”“About what?” said Gardenia as she let the smoky smelling liquid flow from the spout.“About you being a mother.”The pouring stopped abruptly.“What on earth do you mean Mr Sinus?” She sounded like a news reader.“Well there you go honey. You keep your hair on kitten. It’s just that I been thinkin’ about how you and me could come to some arrangement about how our two businesses could git it together like what your dear daddy and me had plans for before my boys went and messed up the whole job.” It wasn’t a pretty sentence but it struggled to mean well.“I’m always keen to explore the ways in which business can be improved. “ Gardenia sensed she had nothing to loose. “What had you in mind Mr Sinus?”“Hell honey you can call me Joe.” Not waiting for a response Joe ploughed on. “I’ve done me lots of thinking and I’m not getting any younger so I want our off spring, the fruit of our loins, the semen from my sack and the eggs from your fillopinun to produce us a child who will grow up to take on the whole kitten caboodle.”Gardenia’s mouth was wide open. The Racebottom digestive hovered in mid air held in the motionless and incredulous hand, stopped on its way by Joe’s extraordinary words.“That’s the most preposterous proposal I’ve ever heard.” Gardenia really thought that it was and she’d heard a book full.“Arw come on honey it’s not that out of line. I’m not asking you to marry me or anything. I’m not even expecting to get my leg over that tidy rump of yours. I’ve put some of my semen in one of those ice banks. You could say I’ve made a deposit and it’s got your name on it just sitting there waiting for the withdrawal at any time that suits you honey.”Gardenia was amazed and amused, disgusted and distrusting all at the same time.“Let me get this straight Mr ….err…Joe…..You want me to undergo artificial insemination to produce your test tube baby?”“Guess that’s about the size of it honey. The off spring will be ours and he or she will take on the ownership of the whole of our joint baking empire. The child will become the biggest baker in the world. Now that’s what I want and I’ve an idea that’s what you want as well.”Joe Sinus looked more comfortable and sipped his tea in the way a man might just having secured a very big deal.His “people” drew up the papers with her “people” and the turkey baster like AI device fired up with Joe Sinus’s seed was introduced into Gardenia Racebottom’s front bottom in the dispassionate manner an uncooked pizza is shovelled into a bread oven.After the first visit to Harley Street it was confirmed that Ms Racebottom was pregnant. As she told her PA rather matter of factly later that day, there was indeed a bun in the oven.What the scan would show in some week’s time was that Gardenia Racebottom was actually carrying a baker’s half dozen inside her.“A womb with a few,” was how her genial gynaecologist broke the news to the swelling baker not really sure of the response he was going to get.
