Free The Boyfriend Dilemma by Fiona Foden Page A

hoping she doesn’t have to go anywhere.
    â€œGran’s birthday party tomorrow,” Layla explains. “Mum’s made the cake but she wants me to decorate it. One of Gran’s friends has taken her out so I’ve got an hour to do it.” Maybe that’s what’s playing on her mind. It’s unlike Layla to stress over a creative project, though. “Want to help?” she asks, slipping off her bed.
    â€œOh, you know I’m rubbish at that kind of thing.”
    â€œNo, you’re not,” she insists. “C’mon, it’ll be more fun if we do it together.”
    It’s not that I don’t want to help. Just that I’d rather hang out in Layla’s room, especially as Amber’s out at the Young Adventurers’ fun day, so we’d have the chance to catch up. But Layla’s already heading downstairs, so I follow her to the kitchen where her mum has set everything out for us. “What are you planning to do?” I ask.
    â€œThought I’d make a patchwork cake,” Layla replies. “Gran used to love making patchwork rugs. Remember how she taught me to sew all the knitted squares together?” I nod. My grandparents live hundreds of miles away so we only see them on special occasions.
    â€œShe can’t manage it any more, though,” her mum adds, glancing at me. “It’s sad, Zoe. She can’t remember how to make all the pieces fit together.”
    I glance down at the block of sugarpaste icing, ready to be tinted into a rainbow of different colours. “D’you think it’ll upset her?” I ask as Layla’s phone bleeps in her pocket.
    â€œI don’t think so,” she replies, ignoring the message. “She still loves home-made things. She’s always asking me about my clothes.”
    â€œShe’ll be delighted,” her mum says firmly. “Anyway, I need to pick up Amber, OK? Can I leave you girls to it?”
    â€œSure,” Layla says.
    In fact, decorating the cake is just the thing to take my mind off my two days with Rosalind and Olivia. We knead food colouring into the icing, then roll out the different colours and cut them into tiny squares to place carefully on the cake. By the time we’ve finished we’ve made a complete mess of the kitchen but the cake looks brilliant. We have some icing left over and Layla has the idea the idea of making a little icing basket, which she fills with miniature fruit, then moulds a model “Gran” and places her on the cake beside it.
    â€œWhat d’you think?” she asks, grinning.
    â€œIt’s amazing! Remember when your gran used to take us up to the quarry and we’d have a picnic?”
    Layla nods, grabs a couple of pieces of icing and blends them together until they’re a fiery orange shade. Within minutes she’s made a tiny fox, with a flash of white beneath its chin, which she places at the edge of the cake. “It’s perfect,” I exclaim.
    â€œWell, you did it too.”
    â€œYou did the creative bits, though,” I say, even if I am pretty proud of myself too for my part in the Great Cake Effort. We hide it on top of the fridge where her gran won’t see it, and are settling down in Layla’s bedroom again when the front door bursts open and Amber charges upstairs towards us.
    â€œLook what I made!” she announces, clutching a shoebox to her chest.
    â€œWhat is it?” Layla asks.
    â€œA purse!” Amber whips off the lid and something terrible wafts out – deeply fishy and possibly the worst stink I’ve ever smelled in my life.
    We both recoil in horror and Layla makes a gagging noise. “Ugh, get it out of here!”
    â€œDon’t you like it?” Amber has plucked something brownish, like a lump of dead skin, from the box.
    â€œIt’s horrible,” I exclaim. “What’s it made of?”
    â€œSalmon.”
    â€œSalmon?” Layla