Audrey was about to make a disgruntled face, but realised just in time that it would be an incredibly bad idea when there was a camera pointed directly at her, so she smiled her just-pleased-to-be-here-est smile and walked away.
She shouldprobablyhave gone back to her parents, but since the great muffin debate was likely still raging, she took the opportunity to people watch for a moment. The other returning contestants were gradually getting their own interviews, but the crew didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, or to be going in elimination order. Somebody was talking to Blue Collar Jim (out week four, Audrey’s internal Rolodex noted) but they’d definitely not got around to Gerald (out week one) yet. Which was good,because it might give him time to realise he’d put his shirt on inside out.
“Do you want to tell him,” asked a voice behind her, “or shall I?”
Turning, Audrey found Linda standing arm in arm with a thin, bespectacled man with an affable expression. “I think maybe we should leave it?” she suggested. “It’s pretty on brand for him, and he didn’t get long to make an impression.”
“True.” Linda paused a moment, then added, “Oh, by the way, Audrey, this is my husband Phil. Phil, this is Audrey. She’s the one who told us the whole thing was rigged.”
She was smiling as she said it, rather than looking like her world was falling down, which Audrey took as a good sign. “I didn’t say it wasrigged,” she protested, “just…rigged adjacent?”
Phil looked perplexed, and although Audrey had only known him for eighteen seconds, she felt he had a good face for perplexity. “What doesrigged adjacentlook like exactly?”
“Like pretty much every reality TV show you’ve ever seen?” suggested Audrey apologetically.
“Oh. Mygod,” said another voice just outside Audrey’s field of vision. “You’rethe one who had Alanis all in her head about that.”
Turning again—it was going to be a turny kind of day what with being surrounded on all sides—Audrey saw a girl about Alanis’s age and about her own height. Like Alanis, she had a personal style that skewed rural, with a floral-pattern dress and a red scarf tied around her hair. She was holding two paper plates and fixing Audrey with a hard stare.
“Sorry,” Audrey said. “Who are you?”
The hard stare only got harder. “I’m hergirlfriend.”
That was news to Audrey on several levels. “I…didn’t realise she had one.”
“Yeah, well.” The girl made an extremely dismissive gesture. “There was this whole thing where there was a guy she was into and I was all,Alanis, no seriously, get with me instead, and she was all,Oh but he’s so mature and interesting, and I was all,I bet he isn’t actually. I bet you just think that because you don’t see him every day, and she was all,No, he totally is like, really, you’d like him, and I was all,Well maybe you could see if he’s up for a poly thing then, and she was all,I’m not sure I’m into that, and I was all—”
“But”—Audrey did her best to make it the polite sort of interruption—“she’s with you now?”
The girl nodded. “Oh yeah. She asked him out and he was all,Nah babe, you’re too young, and she was, like,empiricallycrushed and I was like,I told you so, and she was like,It’s too soon, and I was like,Okay, but that wasweeksago.”
Two weeks, by Audrey’s reckoning. But time was different for the young. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t get in her head too much,” she said.
“Were you not listening? She was upset about that fordays.” Audrey was about to reply when her interlocutor spotted somebody across the field—an older woman in a bright yellow hijab sitting patiently at a picnic table—and seemed to remember that she had something more important to do than talk to a middle-aged rando. “Sorry,” she said. “Love to stay and chat, but I was meant to be bringing cake to Alanis’s grandmother.”
Having heard at least a little about Alanis’s grandparents, Audrey briefly considered going over to introduce herself, although having to start with, “Hi, I’m the one who really upset your granddaughter a few weeks ago,” didn’t make the idea a terribly appealing one.
While Audrey was weighing the pros and cons of cowardice,she was interrupted by an announcement. Well, an attempt at an announcement. From across the lawn, Colin Thrimp was jumping up and down and waving. “Everybody,” he was saying as loudly as his limited lung capacity and lack of a megaphone would allow. “We’re about to bring the contestants out for the final scenes so please stand back, remember to look thrilled at the bakes, and do try to make way for friends and family.”
There was an element of herding cats to the whole process, but eventually the crowd did resolve itself into an arrangement that would film well, and Grace Forsythe—always first in everything—emerged from the ballroom followed by Wilfred and Marianne and then, moments later, by Doris, Alanis, and Meera.
The bakes had already been examined by the judges in the more private and more easy-to-film location of the ballroom and so the versions that Audrey could see now were not all they would have been in their full glory, but they were still pretty damn glorious.
Since the contestants were told the weeks’ themes in advance so they could start practising, Audrey already knew that the final challenge had been a cake that doesn’t look like a cake—Expectationskeeping up to the last its tradition of reflecting the latest in baking trends only a year or two after they came to mainstream attention.
None of the illusions were perfect, partly because amateur bakers under competition conditions couldn’t be expected to achieve perfection, partly because making a cake totally indistinguishable from a non-cake object relied a lot on good lighting and friendly angles, and partly because they’d already had slices cut out of them. But even as imperfect illusions, they were impressive.
Alanis had made a bouquet of roses strewn on a bed of leaves,which, if Audrey was honest, probably looked the most cake-like of the cakes. Meera had gone for something more ambitious, a children’s lunchbox complete with a sandwich whose crust really looked like bread, and crisps whose packaging really looked like something you wouldn’t want to eat. Which Audrey supposed was a positive in this highly specific context.
And finally, there was Doris. She’d made a book. And although Audrey barely got close enough to see before the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren flooded in, she managed to catch the title that had been painstakingly stencilled onto the leather-effect cover:Rebecca.
Once the cakes that didn’t look like cakes had been thoroughly demolished and the contestants had been given time to get all the good luck and well wishes they needed from their assembled supporters, they were lined up in a row to wait for the final results.
The final, final results, Audrey recalled, with a twinge of regret for the past and excitement for the future.
“Friends,” Grace Forsythe began, “Romans, countrypersons, lend me your ears. I come not to bury Caesar, nor to praise him. Actually, I’ve not come to say anything about Caesar at all. I have come, as I always do, to congratulate our marvellous,marvellousfinalists. Three of the most exquisite human beings ever to be expected to bake onBake Expectationsand including, of course”—Here it comes, thought Audrey—“both our oldest”—camera hovers on Doris—“and our youngest”—camera hovers on Alanis—“ever contestant. But nevertheless the question remains, have age and treachery beaten youth and skill—”
“Jennifer says we’re cutting that,” interjected Colin.
