Birthday Cake

 

Damn, damn, damn. Ellen searched frantically through the crammed kitchen cupboards for the cake mix, the lusciously packaged chocolate fudge cake mix which Jane Asher promises even you , you slap-dash, harassed, non-domesticated goddess can bake into submission.

 

It was in there somewhere. It had to be. It was already after 12, the twins' birthday party was less than two hours away now and there were still sandwiches to spread, sausages to grill, pineapple cubes to spear onto sticks. Aaargh! How had she let herself get so behind?

 

She could hear her just-turned four year olds whooping and screaming in the front room with their older sister. All three of them had been in a frenzy of excitement since 5 am this morning.

 

She poked her head through the connecting hatch between the kitchen and the sitting room, which she, single-handed mother of three, had installed when she'd worn the carpet out pacing between the two rooms.

‘Now,' she warned, ‘No jumping on the sofa. You can play cowboys and Indians, but not on the sofa.'

 

Max and Dan looked up at her, faces smeared with ‘war paint', matching curls tucked under homemade headdresses.

 

Millie, sophisticated six year old cowgirl that she was, in her denim jeans and Stetson, was standing beside the tent with a perfectly ‘can't blame me' expression across her face.

 

And poor Buster, the world's longest suffering mongrel who had probably wished himself back at the dog shelter as soon as he'd arrived in this chaotic household, shot her a look of disgust about the toy wagon hitched to his back legs.

Ding Dong. Guests?! Ellen panicked. Surely not yet? She double-checked her watch, then remembered that Ali had promised to come and help.

 

As soon as her face moved from the kitchen hatch, the wild Indians began whooping and bouncing again.