Audrey had barely started sieving her flour when the judges and camera crew descended on her station. The part of her that paid attention to technicalities wondered if they’d picked her first out of kindness to the other contestants, assuming that her media background would make her more comfortable and give the rest of them time to settle into things. The part of her that had met Jennifer Hallet, however, suspected that people’s comfort wasn’t a high priority for the production team.
“So, lass,” Wilfred Honey was asking, “what’re you making, and what does it say about you?”
More used to being interviewer than interviewee, Audrey took a moment to gather her thoughts. “Well, I’m making a traditional Shropshire simnel cake.”
“Ooh, now that’s interesting is that.” Wilfred Honey didn’t seem excited exactly—more sort of in his element. If there was one thing that the nation’s grandfather loved, it was a slightly obscure heritage cake from a British region. “It’s an Easter bake, isn’t it?”
Audrey nodded in what she hoped was an appropriately yes-anding way. “That’s right. Once it’s done it’ll be decorated with eleven little marzipan balls to represent the disciples.”
From the other end of the counter, Grace Forsythe leaned in with a hang-on-a-second expression. “Elevenballs? I admit I never paid a tremendous amount of attention in Sunday school, but—”
“They don’t count Judas,” Wilfred Honey explained. “On account of his being a wrong’un.”
Marianne Wolvercote, however, had other concerns. “I assume you’re making your marzipan from scratch?”
“Yes.” There had been a brief window on Tuesday when Audrey had been considering not and just using store-bought like she usually did when she made simnel cake in contexts that were neither competitive nor televised. But she’d decided against it and was now sending Tuesday-Audrey heartfelt thanks. “The cake needs two hours in the oven so I should just be able to make it within the time.”
The mention of time hadn’t been a hint, but they’d taken it as one anyway. “Then,” Grace Forsythe told her, “we shall leave you to it.”
Audrey went back to her sieving immediately because while it was probably more polite to watch the judges walk away, she had timing to think about. With her flour and spices mixed, she turned her attention to her butter and sugar, digging her fingers in and rubbing them together into a delicious coarse yellow mixture. And for just a moment, she let herself forget the lights and the cameras and that she was in a very real sense about to be judged for this, and just enjoy herself. And it turned out to be surprisingly easy, because for a part of Audrey this—wrist deep in cake sugar and eggs—was what happiness felt like.
Natalie had never approved, but Audrey had always liked making things. Cakes, scarves, newspaper articles, or TV shows—it wasn’t the final product that mattered, not really. It was seeing something—feeling something—coming together in front of you. Getting it as right as possible and then putting it out, for better or worse, into the world.
But you could, Natalie reminded her,be making history.
“Ah yes, so, well,” Gerald was saying on the other side of the ballroom. “This is my, well, it’s my show-you-who-I-am cake.”
Audrey knew she should be focusing on her own bake, but itwas hard to take her eyes off Gerald’s bench now that it had drawn her attention. His mixing bowl had overspilled and a measuring jug entirely too full of mascarpone was looming ominously close to his elbow.
“Is it not…” Grace Forsythe was doing her best to be tactful. “That is to say, is there not rather alotof it?”
“Thatwasintentional,” Gerald looked down at his bowl with a look that edged very close to a grimace. The spoon was slowly vanishing into the batter like a TV cowboy sinking into quicksand. “Trying to convey that there’s rather a lot ofme.In the personality sense, I mean, not the physical. Turns out Imayhave slightly miscalculated. I wanted it to be twice as big as normal, you see, but then I remembered from school that twice the”—he held his hands out to indicate length—“means four times the”—he indicated a square—“and then eight times the”—a cube—“Now I look at it, though, I’m starting to think that might have been the tiniest bit of an overcorrection.”
Grace Forsythe patted him on the arm. “Well, good luck. Might want to nab that spoon before you lose it completely.”
Turning her attention reluctantly back to her own workstation, Audrey began adding the spice-and-flour mix to the butter-and-sugar mix. While she worked, snatches of other people’s interviews drifted towards her and, although she tried to block them out, she couldn’t help making mental notes in case they came in handy.
I just feel like this has gone really wrong. That was Linda—about Audrey’s age and permanently harried—working on a fruit cake with royal icing, intricate details picked out by hand. It hadn’t gone wrong at all from where Audrey was standing, but Linda had exacting standards.
…and a little bit spicy. That, of course, was Alanis. She’d been practising the line all day, but while that was obvious to Audrey, it would probably come across well on camera.
“And you’re actually our youngestevercontestant, aren’t you?” Grace Forsythe was saying as Audrey put her cake mix aside and started on her marzipan.
“That’s right.” Audrey wasn’t looking but she could imagine Alanis’s enthusiastic nod anyway. “I’m sixteen.”
Grace Forsythe gave a gasp of faux shock. “You realise that means I’ve been presenting this show for half your life?” She sighed. “I need to lie down.”
She didn’t, of course. It was a bit. Setup for the next part. Audrey half-followed her with her eyes while she was adding the egg to her ground-almond-and-sugar-mix.
“Hello, dear.” Doris greeted Grace Forsythe as if she was a wayward grandchild rather than a B-list celebrity with A-list pretensions. “I suppose you want to know what I’m baking.”
Ever the professional, Grace Forsythe rolled with it. “You’re going to do me out of a job, Doris.”
“Well, I’m making a carrot cake. This is the recipe my old mum used during the war and I thought it’d fit.” There was a pause, and although Audrey was trying to keep her mind on her marzipan, she wasn’t trying very successfully. And frankly she was far less interested in her batter than in the trace of melancholy she could hear in Doris’s voice. “Bit obvious really, isn’t it?”
“Darling,” replied Grace Forsythe who, for all her faults, never let a contestant run themselves down, “this is a cooking show with a tenuous baking pun in its name. Obvious is very much the order of the day.”
Once again, Audrey tried to make herself focus on the job athand and, once again, she didn’t try particularly hard. She told herself it was because it was more difficult to concentrate under studio lights and surrounded by other people than in a silent kitchen in a flat in Bridgnorth that you shared with nobody. Except she could see so many stories here, stories Jennifer Hallet had probably seen from the beginning, and would draw out expertly over the course of the next eight weeks.
