Week One
Cakes
Friday
It was Natalie’s fault. Beautiful, brilliant, ambitious Natalie, who Audrey had grown up with, fallen in love with, followed to university and to London and then, at last, been dumped by. Or, in Natalie’s preferred framing, with whom she had come to the completely mutual conclusion that they’d be better off without each other.
It was Natalie’s fault that she’d left Shropshire for the gleaming allure of a big-city career. And Natalie’s fault she’d comebackto Shropshire a decade later with a ton of experience in an environment she never wanted to work in again. And that she’d taken a job with a tiny local newspaper whose circulation her previous editor would have laughed at. Well, would have laughed at if he hadn’t mostly reserved his laughter for sexist jokes and his rivals’ failures.
It was also—somewhat indirectly—Natalie’s fault that Audrey had got drunk one evening and sent in a joke application to appear on the self-described-national-favouriteBake Expectations.An application that had turned into an audition and then, somehow, into a place on the show. Which meant it was also—in a very realsense—Natalie’s fault that Audrey was behind on work, stressed about the quality of her simnel cake, and getting called into her boss’s office over what his email described as an “extremely serious issue.”
The boss in question was a man named Gavin Pettiforth who had, allegedly, been quite a big deal at one point, although nobody was quite able to remember how or when. Audrey found him sitting in front of a printout of her latest article, which was normal Gavin behaviour. In a doomed effort to save paper, Audrey and Trish from Entertainment had once tried to get him to stop printing out every single email and attachment that crossed his desk. Then once they’d watched him try to read from a screen without opening the wrong document, losing his place, or accidentally deleting something, they’d got him to start again.
“Sorry.” He looked up at her over half-rimmed glasses. Lisa from Advertising had once told Audrey that Gavin had been quite dashing in his day, but that had been years ago, and he’d since graduated from “dashing” to “avuncular” and was now hovering on the edge of “wizened.”
“I know you’ve got your”—he waved a hand in distracted circles—“you know, the baking thing, and of course we’re all in your corner on that front. But this couldn’t wait because we’re going to press soon, and I wanted to make absolutely certain that we had this pieceperfectbefore you went.”
Gavin, like many of the staff at theShropshire Echo, had his enthusiasms. Enthusiasms that weren’t necessarily directed towards ends Audrey would, personally, have hoped he’d be directing his enthusiasms towards. But he was her boss and her editor, and so it was his job to edit, sometimes bossily. “Happy to make changes before I go.”
Beaming, Gavin gave Audrey an approving nod. “That’s just what I wanted to hear. Remember, Audrey, we are Shropshire’s second largest regional newspaper. People from Ludlow to Whitchurch are depending on us for the facts anddetails matter. Especially on a story like this. One that really impacts people’s lives.”
Reaching across the desk, Audrey slid the printout of her article over and turned it round to reread it. “What do you think needs doing?”
“Well, it’s the headline,” explained Gavin. “Headlines are very important. They’re the thing that really catches somebody’s eye. They’re the peacock’s tail. The rooster’s—you know, red bit on the top of his head. It needs to entice and intrigue, but not be sensationalist. We want tolead”—he made a gathering motion, showing how he imagined a well-crafted header would draw the reader further into the story—“but not tomislead. You see?”
It all looked fine to Audrey, but she’d got to know Gavin pretty well since joining theEcho. “It’s too sensationalist, isn’t it?”
“I think so.” Concern spread across Gavin’s face like marmalade over a crumpet.
“So what do you suggest?”
“Well”—he took the paper back and peered at it—“I think, to me, ‘Much Wenlock Car Park Charges to Increase’ might be deemed to be putting an unduly negative spin on council decisions. And media impartiality is increasingly important these days. Look what happened to Gary Lineker.”
“Okay,” said Audrey in her best I’m-listening-and-learning, do-go-on voice.
“The issue might be around the wordincrease.” Gavin made an almost mystical gesture, as if conjuring storms or gatheringteacups. “I appreciate that it is strictly speaking factual. But is that the element of the narrative we want to foreground?”
“How about,” suggested Audrey, “we go to ‘Much Wenlock Car Park Charges to Change’?”
Gavin thought about this for a long moment. Then for a longer moment. Then for a moment so long it slipped past the point where it could be considered a moment at all. “Change,” he mused. “Change. Yes. Yes, I like it. It has sort of”—another gesticulation, like a tree growing out of a fountain—“millennial optimism to it.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
Getting right on it consisted of Audrey going back to her desk, rebooting her computer, changing one word in a file, emailing that file to Gavin, and, in order to save time, running off a hard copy in advance so that she wouldn’t have to wait for Gavin to print it himself.
In her mind, Natalie was giving her thatreallylook again. And, right at that second, Audrey didn’t have the energy to look back. It was, after all, true that this particular instance of this particular part of her job wasn’t exactly taxing her faculties to their limits.
Three-years-ago Audrey lived in the heart of a thriving metropolis, did anything for the story, never slept, subsisted on a takeaway-only diet, had extremely infrequent but extremely intense sex with her long-term girlfriend, and was miserable. Present-day Audrey baked the occasional cake for nobody, drove to small villages in a Mini Cooper for the story, slept okay-ish, and had serious conversations about how to tackle the hot-button issue of parking charges in Much Wenlock. Sometimes, present-day Audrey wondered if she shouldn’t have just stuck with the misery.
Edits made, she shut her computer down again—waiting asshe always did to be sure it was definitely off. Because if it didn’t shut down properly shewouldcome in on Monday to find Andy from Maintenance sitting on her desk saying,Forgot something on Friday, did we?—and made a dash for her car.
* * *
Reflecting on her life choices was the last thing Audrey wanted to be doing, but the long drive out of Shropshire through Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and the dreaded London to finally reach Surrey and the set ofBake Expectationswas, unfortunately, the sort of trip that gave you plenty of time to reflect. Plenty of time to ask six-months-ago Audrey what the fuck she’d been thinking. And for six-months-ago Audrey to sit back and reply,Oh come off it, you know perfectly well.
And she did.
Because this was the biggest thing—so far at least—that was Natalie’s fault.
