“That’s tomorrow. Today I have to be on TV with him.”
“Which will suck. But you’ll get through it.”
Alanis made a small want-to-believe-it noise. “Promise?”
“Promise,” replied Audrey, trying to project confidence and certainty and, she thought, mostly succeeding.
“Not gonna lie, it doesn’tfeellike I’ll get through it.”
Here, Audrey was on firmer ground. “It never does. Like if I’d actually not got through all the things I felt I’d never get through, I’d…”
With an instinct for kindness that Audrey couldn’t help admiring, Alanis waited until it was clear that no, Audrey really had run that sentence off a cliff. “You’d be…not through any of them?”
“Yes,” Audrey finished with a grateful nod.
“Thank you for your wisdom.”
“Anytime.”
For about half a second, Alanis looked at least partially reassured. Then she glanced up at Audrey with visible concern. “Shit, do I look really cry-face?”
“A bit,” Audrey conceded, “but they can do a lot with makeup.”
They both got up and stood facing each other, which meant Audrey was left trying to be all sage and comforting at somebody who stood about an inch taller than her.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re going to”—Audrey excavated her reserves of synonyms fordo well—“rock this or nail this or kick arse or eat and leave no crumbs or whatever means you’ve got this.”
Alanis was looking at her with faint concern. “Are you having a stroke?”
“No, I’m being encouraging.”
“Okay.” She patted Audrey’s shoulder reassuringly. “I’m encouraged. But please stop.”
* * *
For the rest of the day, Audrey sat in Jennifer’s trailer, watching whichever camera feed was following Alanis. Although it was hard to tell without sound, she seemed, as far as Audrey could tell, fine. It made her retrospectively resentful of her teenage self who had been significantly less fine about almost everything.
The blind bake for this episode was brownies and, unusually for the doing-simple-things-well season, it actuallywasabout doing simple things well. There were no tricks or hidden gimmicks, but there was a whole lot of talk about texture and evenness of bake and crumb density. What with it being the week before the semifinal, everybody left in the competition categorically belonged in the competition, and so the judging for that week was achingly close, with Joshua just taking it, Meera coming an unexpected bottom, and the rest clustered in the middle for a variety of highly technical reasons.
“Well, that seems to have shaken out okay,” Jennifer told her when they’d done. “You could barely tell she started the day with a tantrum.”
“It wasn’t a tantrum, Jennifer. She was really hurt.”
When she turned her chair to face Audrey, Jennifer was smiling a more sardonic, less malicious smile than she usually gave.“Yes, yes, people have feelings, children should be protected, I’m terrible. Now how about you take the win and kiss me?”
And on this occasion at least, Audrey was happy to follow instructions.
Sunday
“Welcome,” Grace Forsythe was saying over the live feed, “to thelastchallenge before thesemifinal of this theeighthseason ofBake—”
“Colin, ask Grace what the fuck she thinks she’s doing with her stress patterns.”
In the ballroom, Colin Thrimp relayed the question and Grace Forsythe, speaking into open air, explained that if Jennifer had to ask, she’d never know.
“Theeighthseason,” Grace Forsythe repeated, “ofBake Expectations. And because this is chocolate week, you are to be set a challenge worthy of Willy Wonka himself—before you say anything, Colin, that isnotadvertising; it is aliteraryreference. You are to craft the most spectacular, most elaborate, freestanding chocolate centrepiece you can possibly imagine. The judges have asked me to remind you that this is abakingshow and so it should have abakedelement, but that otherwise not even the sky is the limit. We expect to see chocolate work, we expect to see spun sugar, we expect to see something that theDaily Mailcan say was‘extremely graphic’ even though it really didn’t look very phallic at all. You have four hours starting on three”—she paused, as always, for effect. “Three, darlings.”
Monitoring by video, Audrey was glad that she was already out of the running. Chocolate work had never been her strong suit, and as she watched the other contestants bring their remarkable constructions together, she felt very, very sure that she’d have just embarrassed herself. The other thing she was glad about was that Alanis appeared to be continuing in her earlier fine-ness. Grace Forsythe was with her now, as she happily whipped up a cake base while chatting to the camera.
