Barbara watches in horror, but I assure her it’s meant to look terrible.
“It’s from a movie Ellenor likes. Hagrid the giant gives Harry a sticky chocolate cake for his eleventh birthday.”
“Half-giant,” Barbara corrects.
I blink at her, taken aback. “What?”
“He was a half-giant, dear.”
I gape after her as she goes to the pantry. She’s familiar withHarry Potter?
“We’d best make this cake stickier before the icing goes on,” she says, grabbing golden syrup. I’m sceptical, but she says, “Trust me—this will give it a soft, fudgy texture.”
Finally, after spending the better half of the day in her kitchen, we stand back to inspect the final result.
The cake is lopsided and slightly sunken, coated haphazardly in pink frosting. I’ve added messy green icing that spells:
HAPPEE BIRTHDAE ELINOR
“Now, it’s perfect,” I declare, turning to Barbara to hug her. “Thank you. Ellenor will love it.”
Barbara agrees to bring the cake over this afternoon for the party, and I return to the cottage.
With time to spare, I shower and change into jeans and a nice top before setting up the garden.
The cottage is quiet. Brandon’s still at work, and Ellenor asked Mum to go shopping with her so that she could come home and be ‘appropriately surprised’ for her party.
By mid-afternoon, everything is ready. I’ve hung up streamers, set the dining table—borrowed from Barbara, who insisted on having us hoist it over the fence—and blown up close to a hundred balloons with the hand pump.
One by one, people file in for the party.
Brandon arrives through the garden gate, carrying a cooler full of oysters.
“Here they are. I was thinking we could finally revisit your Dad’s recipe,”he suggests.
“Sounds good,” I say eagerly, following him to the kitchen, where I help him and Mum with the cooking and preparing the salads.
When we sit down to eat, Ellenor looks at Sean, pausing a fraction. “You’ve done something to your beard.”
He huffs a quiet laugh and shrugs, but I notice it too—the silvered auburn is trimmed close now, the line of his jaw more defined.
“Distinguished,” Brandon observes.
“Shut up,” Sean mutters, glancing at Ellenor, but she’s busy with her food.
After dinner, I present Ellenor with her cake.
“Aww, you even spelled my name wrong!” she fawns, her eyes dancing with the light of thirty candles as she hugs me. “This is amazing! Thank you, Lil. Best birthday gift ever.”
Mum gives her a matcha-coloured dress, which is not quite Slytherin-green, but Ellenor accepts it graciously.
Brandon gets her aScrabbleset, which Ellenor accepts not-so-graciously.
“I thought we could continue ourWords with Friendsgame in real life,” he says.
“Scrabble is not the same,” Ellenor says, eyeing the board game dubiously. “Does this thing even have Wi-Fi?”
Rupert and Barbara bring separate gifts—he a bottle of rum, her a set of lace thongs. Both go down well with her.
