Chapter Six

Kat loved food like Dolly Parton loved hair, like George W Bush loved oil and David Icke loved lizards. As a baby she had moved on to solid food in record time. She had baked for first successful soufflé at five and by ten was cooking elaborate dinner parties while her confused peers were trying to work out the dance moves to Steps songs.




In galleries she wanted to lick the art. If she liked people she secretly wanted to bite their fingers and if she was distressed then the only cure was ice cream.


At high school Kat had specialised finding love in sugar craft, creating works of delicious art - cakes that resembled the cakes in children's books stacked high with mouth watering sponge and eye clotting cream. Each week her skills grew stronger and she would pour forth in a creative blur, knocking out a meringue David; the Venus di Milo in marzipan or Guernica splattered across sponge in raspberry crème and lemon curd.


Kat had forsaken everything else and grown joyfully plump until the other kids teased her and the teachers began to fret, fearing problems at home. It stood to reason that fat kids were always secretly unhappy.


Eventually her folks were called into the school and cooking privileges had been replaced with tennis lessons, a bereft Kat was forced underground.


Instead she had become a very successful burglar, sneaking into closed down cafes and pubs in the middle of the night, evading alarms and side stepping security to happy baffle morning cleaners with perfect breakfasts of cakes and scones. That was, until she had read the blog.


The blog had changed everything. From standing alone she had suddenly felt a part of a crowd, a group of misfits and strange people who had gathered together under Natasha. Natasha, the one who had been brave enough to act, who had been strong enough to unite them all.


Ever since the blog had exploded all over their screens the group had began to bond, commenting, emailing, tweeting and finding each other. Natasha was the key. If only she'd email back.


But Kat had been blessed, for the first time in a year she realised that destiny had tapped her on the shoulder - because she recognised Natasha, Natasha was the woman over the road. The strange woman over the road whose boyfriend had left about six months ago, who didn't smile back, who had stopped opening the curtains. Who had known that all that gloom was a masquerade? A brilliant disguise for a brilliant woman who was destined to change the world.


Finally Kat had plucked up the courage to visit.


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There was a fat teenage goth on the doorstep carrying a cake box. This couldn't be good. She'd been there for twenty minutes and it didn't look like she was going away. There was also the promise of cake, but Natasha was pretty sure that it would cost her soul, or at least having to do something more than just standing up from the couch.


Another twenty minutes later and there was a fat teenage goth in her kitchen cooking something that smelled like childhood beach holidays crossed with meadows full of wild flowers garnished with a naked Johnny Depp.


"We've got to hurry," said Kat adding the finishing touches of icing to a buttercreme Angel of the North. "We're meeting everyone else in an hour……"Do you think you should maybe get dressed?"