Delicious Chocolate Fudge Cake

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I wondered about baking them a cake as a ‘welcome to the neighbourhood’ gesture. I’d seen the removal van pull up and had heard the sounds of it being decanted into the empty house next door.

This house had been empty for a while. The curtains were down and the floorboards were naked. Workmen had carried out a few basic repairs, and then it had been left empty for months. A few of its windows had been left wide open by the decorator perhaps to air the rooms.

The neighbourhood cats truly appreciated this kindness. Cats, never ones to miss an opportunity, had this wet summer made it their own bijou residence. They’d climb up onto one of the low roofs and then surreptitiously sneak in through the open bathroom window. Once inside no doubt they perfumed the house with a certain Tom Cat’s ‘je ne sais quoi.’

I don’t know how to make cakes, but I wondered about finding a chocolate cake recipe on the internet and then baking one for my new neighbours as a welcome gift.

I imagined baking a delicious chocolate fudge cake; one that would be carefully iced and which would be meltingly soft in the mouth.
However, I knew that any cake that I made would inevitably be flat, burnt around the edges, poisoned with the rust of the tin, have a texture and taste of galvanised rubber and would when bitten into break teeth and send fillings flying.

So I did not bake a cake for my new neighbours.

A few days later I heard the unmistakable sounds of a house warming party being organised in the cats’ former chateau.

Around twelve I went to bed leaving The Teenager downstairs on the computer.

At three I was woken up. There were loud banging sounds and screams. I knew instantly that someone had broken into the house and was downstairs at that very moment murdering The Teenager.

Without hesitation and with my heart pounding, I tumbled out of bed and half fell downstairs to do battle with the intruders.

The downstairs rooms were in blackness. In terror I switched on the bright overhead light.

There was no one there. Everything was still.

The Teenager had obviously long ago gone to bed. From next door I could heard the revellers. The music was blaring. Doors were being banged loudly and it sounded as if an army was doing the conga. I could hear the sounds of people stamping loudly on the bare wooden floorboards.

I met The Teenager on the stairs. He too was bleary-eyed.

Downstairs we held a crisis meeting as the ‘music’ knifed through the bricks and mortar and cut deep into my psyche. There were more loud bangs. It sounded as if our new neighbours were now throwing their all their furniture down the stairs.

I realised to my horror that my car was parked directed outside their front door. I had visions of the drunken revellers smashing chair legs against it; or worse, of the conga line of revellers spilling out onto the street, and its leader stamping over the bonnet of my car before the hob-nailed-booted dancers in tow merrily followed suit.

I decided to move my car out of harm’s way.

It was three-thirty when I dressed, stepped into the black night and moved the car down the road. As I walked back up the street in the dark I realised that my legs were still shaking from the fright that I’d experienced earlier.

Something then clicked as I walked back up the hill in the chill darkness.

I suddenly felt angry. The red haze had descended

Next thing, I’m banging on their window.

It takes an age for someone to come to the door and to successfully unlock it.

She doesn’t speak English very well. She is slight in build and dark-haired. She instantly guesses, from the fury I’m unable to disguise, why I’m standing on her doorstep.

I use wild gestures to make myself understood. I am shaking with fear and anger, I’m expecting to be knifed at the very least. I try to speak calmly and explain the problem. I do not raise my voice and I do not swear.

She apologises, the music is eventually turned off by a belligerent looking man who appeared in the hallway behind her, and the massacre of furniture stops. I shake her hand introduce myself and leave.

They’re from Poland.

Some politician’s sweep of the pen has allowed them into the country and wrecked my night’s sleep.

Back in my small terraced house it is now impossible to sleep. The early morning programmes for under-five year old insomniacs are on the television. Their presenters’ bright garish costumes, brittle voices and artificial sets are sickeningly ugly and bring me no peace.

My day lies in tatters around me. I am muttering darkly. The Teenager is now calling me a racist and he’s probably right.

I’m steaming with anger and wondering what to do next.

Genocide perhaps?

No, I wouldn’t stoop so low.

I might instead… after all ...and much careful thought…bake them one of my cakes instead!
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