Spice

It took a short while for Cake to settle into his new life. Harrods bakery staff at first was cold towards him. They were jealous and could not understand why a young farm boy with no qualifications had landed the enviable position as the head pâtissier’s assistant. However, once they tasted his cakes and pastries, they realised that he was special and deserved the post. Cake worked hard and spent most of his time at the bakery.

Cake’s reputation spread throughout the culinary world around London. Harrods bakery sales increased and Cake was soon in demand by competitors. He earned good money and was doing what he loved, baking.

Jimmy became his mentor and taught Cake invaluable trade tricks and techniques. However, Cake felt limited from experimenting at Harrods. The fixed menu rarely changed and there was no room for innovation. Cake felt unchallenged and the job soon became mundane. He took up kickboxing again to break the monotony.

Although turning down jobs in other prestigious bakeries and restaurants, Jimmy encouraged him to advance his career, advising him to take another job should the right opportunity come along. That opening came when Cake was twenty-four-years-old. The Savoy Hotel approached him to be their head pâtissier, which Cake considered.

They offered him a generous salary increase and he would control the cake and pastry menu. He had the freedom to experiment with his own recipes, but the success of the department and responsibility to make the pâtisserie a success, rested on his shoulders.

Cake discussed the offer with Jimmy, who advised him to accept the position.

The Savoy, although built in the late eighteenth century, was a modern 5-star hotel with its opulence and grandeur impressing Cake.

He wasn’t impressed with the bakery, which, unlike the Hilton, was next to the main kitchen. Cake’s first day came as a shock as he was used to a quiet and efficient bakery. The chefs in the kitchen buzzed around like headless chickens, as a small, fat, head chef bawled and screamed at them. Cake went into the bakery section, where a pâtissier was shouting at his harassed looking staff. He introduced himself to the assistant head pâtissier, who looked unimpressed at his new boss and, while barking out orders to his underlings, showed Cake around.

Cake wasted no time in getting the bakery into order and after a short time, reorganised the bakery section and trained the bakers to his techniques and recipes.

At last, he felt free to experiment with his own innovations and involved in creating every item that left his bakery. He fired the assistant pâtissier and the work area became serene and well organised, unlike the main kitchen, with its disorganised chaos and megalomaniacal head chefs yelling at their minions. Albeit they spoke respectfully to Cake, as they knew that unlike him, they were expendable.

Cake enjoyed strolling along the river Thames and often wondered about his extraordinary senses. He wanted to find out more about it, so went to see Doctor Arnold Sagger, an eminent Harley Street clinical genetic specialist and physician, who took DNA samples for parenthesis and susceptibility.

The results astounded the doctor. Cake had over a third more olfactory receptor genes than other human beings and more than most other mammalians.

The doctor had researched cases of individuals and on record, they’d found the most in a wine sommelier in Italy, with 980 receptor genes, slightly more than the average in human beings of less than 900. Cake had in excess of 1400, slightly less than mice, which have the highest with 1500 olfactory genes.

The doctor sounded excited when he asked to study Cake and research his unique mutation, but looked disappointed when Cake declined because the doctor made him feel like an X-Man. He was just a normal chap with a heightened sense and now that he had found out the reason behind it, that was all he needed to know.

Cake remained at the Savoy for several years, his name becoming synonymous with great confectionary. His reputation spread with articles written about him in baking journals and magazines referring to him as ‘The Pâtissier Phenom.’ Prince Charles regularly had Cakes confectionary delivered to Clarence house.

Cake went on a few dates with female chefs, who he’d found boring and smelt of cooking fat.

Several years later, the Savoy’s ownership changed, and the new owners were a corporation. Their only concern was money, profit, and setting targets and budgets. Cake spent more time with paperwork than doing what he loved, so he became disheartened. He’d received many other job offers and after again discussing them and his situation with Jimmy, he accepted an offer from a new hotel in Richmond, Greater London, The Avalon. He would earn the same as the Savoy with bonuses, and still be running the bakery, but would not have to do any paperwork as they allocated him an administrator. The Savoy offered Cake a substantial wage increase and a large bonus to stay, but Cake refused and left the Savoy.

Cake enjoyed working at the Avalon. Now thirty-years-old, he felt comfortable with the freedom and responsibility.

Gaining a kickboxing black belt qualification before leaving the Savoy; after starting with the Avalon, he went to the Tojo Kickboxing Club, based in the gymnasium of the nearby Kings Leisure Centre.

He saw a few kickboxers training, so put down his holdall, and wandered around the gym waiting for someone to acknowledge him.

An attractive woman came over and smiled at him.

Cake smiled at her and thought. ‘Ooh, she’s nice and too pretty to be a kickboxer. Probably a groupie,’ he smirked.

“What do you want?” asked the woman in an abrupt cockney accent.

“I want to join the kickboxing club,” replied Cake.

“Why?” asked the woman, “D’ ya think you’re tough?”

The others around the gym looked and smiled.

“Tough enough,” said Cake, taken aback by the abrupt woman, “I’m a bla...”

His sentence cut short when she thumped him on the nose.

Cake looked shocked as she again went to punch him. He blocked her shot, so she kicked his leg and stood back into an attacking stance.

“The first lesson,” the woman said, “always be prepared.” She then launched a vicious assault, kicking and punching Cake, who, although blocking most of the attacks still got hit. Now angry, he retaliated, punching and kicking back at the woman, who blocked each strike and punched him again on the nose. Cake was becoming irate. The woman, noticing this, stood back, and smiled.

“Yeah okay, you can join. But we need to work on your defence and karma; it was too easy to rile you into making mistakes.”

Cake glared at the woman and looked at the other kickboxers, who were giggling as they watched the pair.

“I’m Jade,” said the woman extending her hand. “I am the head instructor.”

Cake, though feeling perturbed, said, “So you attack all new members, do you? What would happen if I couldn’t defend myself? Luckily I am a kickboxer.”

Jade chuckled and replied, “I don’t attack everyone, only the cocksure ones, Mr Blackbelt.” She pointed to Cake’s bag and the large cotton embroidered badge, showing the Zendo logo on his black belt tied around the handle.

Cake looked at his bag and then smiled at the woman.

“Oh!” he stammered, feeling embarrassed. “My name’s Ben, but everybody calls me ‘Cake.’”

After their initial contact, Cake and Jade hit it off. Cake found Jade intriguing, down to earth, and didn’t smell of cooking oil. Jade found Cake to be a kind, humble and attractive man. Everyone soon realised by the way they looked at each other and their lingering glances that the pair were falling for each other, and betting on which one would have the nerve to ask the other out. Although they had strong feelings for each other, they were both shy, neither realising how the other one felt.

Cake couldn’t take his mind off Jade and the kickboxing sessions became the highlight of his week.

The hair salon where Jade worked met at a nightclub for its Christmas party and Jade invited the kickboxers. Cake felt a little uneasy in the large nightclub. The party was the usual affair with people separated into their individual little groups. Jade could see that Cake looked uncomfortable and out of place, like a lost puppy. She left her group of hairdressing colleagues and went over to him. Cake stood alone with a bottle of Bacardi Breezer looking at the crowded dance floor.

“Glad you could make it,” Jade shouted above the noise of the music.

“Thanks for inviting me,”

There was an awkward silence between the two as music blasted out. Neither knew what to say next and both stared at each other for several moments, until Jade asked, “You smell nice, what’s that you’ve got on?” referring to Cake’s aftershave.

Cake looked thoughtful, smirked, and replied, “A hard, but I didn’t think you could smell it,” he laughed.

Jade looked confused and then figured it out. That broke the ice and Jade giggled and said, “Well it would be a shame to waste a good hard.” She took the bottle from his hand and placed it on a table.

“Let’s get out of here and go somewhere quieter,” she said, and suggested, “Let’s go to my place.”

The couple walked hand in hand out of the nightclub, with the kickboxers cheering them on.

Jade was a few years older than Cake, with brown wavy hair, brown eyes, and impish features. She resembled a smaller, muscular, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Cake marvelled at her feminine, well-defined body as they lay entwined, naked in each other’s arms on a cold Christmas morning in Jade’s single bed at her flat above the hair salon.

Cake felt nauseous by the overpowering smell coming from the chemicals in the salon, which he also could smell on Jade, but thought she smelt a lot better than female cooks did.

It was the first serious relationship for both of them. Cake and Jade became inseparable, spending all their free time together. Cake told Jade about his heightened olfactory senses, informing her he wasn’t being a cheeky twat by saying he couldn’t stay the night at the salon because it stank. The smell of ammonia in the hair dye made him retch.