Gerald’s sincere tell-me-more look searchlighted from Joshua to Audrey. “I’ve heard of that. It’s French, isn’t it?”
“Not really. More Shropshire.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “Sort of chocolatey?”
“Fruit.”
“And it has a distinctive decorative style?”
Audrey nodded. “Yes it’s—”
“Sort of a fleur-de-lis in sugar work?”
“Balls of marzipan.”
Gerald smiled. “That’s the bugger. Knew I’d heard of it.”
“And how does it show who you are?” asked Alanis with the devastating innocence of a young boy asking whether the emperor might not be a bit chilly with his dick out.
“Well…” Audrey squirmed in her seat. It felt a bit pathetic to sayBecause it’s from Shropshire and I’m also from Shropshire. But what else did she have? “It’s traditional, where I’m from. I used to make one for my mum every Mother’s Day.”
Joshua laid a gentle hand on Audrey’s arm. “I’m sorry. How did she die?”
Since parsing potentially ambiguous headlines was a major part of Audrey’s job, it didn’t take her long to work out where the confusion had crept in. “Oh, no, I mean I used to make them, but I stopped. She’s fine. She lives in Much Wenlock.”
“That’s not a real place,” Alanis protested, oddly insistent for somebody in no position to actually know. “You’re refabulating us.”
“That’s not real slang,” replied Audrey. And then, used to having to prove the reality of her hometown, she pulled out her phone and brought up Much Wenlock on Google maps. “See, here it is.”
Snatching the phone, Alanis dragged and dropped the little streetview figure into the middle of Much Wenlock. “Oh, it’sso cute. I didn’t think people really lived in places like this.”
“What did you think all the houses were for? Instagram?”
Alanis was still staring somewhat entranced at the chocolate-box wonders of Much Wenlock. “I just…it’s super pretty and I don’t, I don’t know, I suppose it would be nice to live there? Your parents are very lucky.”
They were. For a start they’d been lucky enough to buy a house in Much Wenlock before property prices went through the roof. Which meant that when Audrey had come slinking back from London with her tail between her legs, her choice had been to live in her childhood bedroom for the rest of her life or move somewhere comparatively normal. Like Bridgnorth.
“So why did you stop?” asked Gerald. “Making the cake, I mean. Seems a very fine tradition to have if you ask me.”
“I moved away.” It was a technically correct answer but anuninformative one, so Audrey continued. “To London. And, well, I was busy and my girlfriend wasn’t one for baking.”
Alanis blinked like Bambi’s cottagecore sister. “That’s really sad. What happened with the girlfriend?”
“We broke up.”
“Probably for the best.” Alanis shot a shy glance at Joshua. “I wouldn’t want to date somebody who wasn’t into baking.”
* * *
“Welcome,” Grace Forsythe was saying, her hands clasped in front of her like she was trying to crush a mouse to death, “to thefirstbaketacular of theeighthseason ofBake Expectations. And in keeping with this season’s back-to-basics theme, we’re going to ask you to make a cake. No particular kind of cake—any cake you like.”
Audrey had watched enough episodes of the show to suspect that this was about to launch into one of the host’s famously long, whimsically alliterative lists. That suspicion was about to prove founded.
“It could be,” continued Grace Forsythe, “chocolate or cherry, madeira or matcha; you could make cupcakes, bundt cakes, upside-down cakes, or right-side-up cakes. It could be tiered or layered; you could top it with ganache, or just with panache. If you wanted to be trendy, you could even make it naked, although then wemighthave to broadcast after the watershed.”
There was a brief pause for people to give suitably amused reactions, during which Colin Thrimp managed to sneak in a “Jennifer says please wrap it up before Christmas.”
“Just as long,” Grace Forsythe kept right on talking as if nobody else had spoken—which, in Audrey’s limited experience,was pretty usual for celebrities, “as it shows”—she clapped—“us”—she clapped again—“who”—clap—“you”—clap—“are. You have three hours, starting on three.Three, darlings.”
