Either out of mercy, or a terrible realisation that she’d beenoff camera for fourteen seconds, Grace Forsythe stepped forwards. “Perhaps I can help. You see, as I explained in my three-part docuseries about the history of geometry,The Shape of Things, tangrams are a kind of puzzle in which you have seven different polygons that can be rearranged into a variety of different patterns.”
Wilfred Honey looked down. “And you made your rolls into one of these?”
“Yes.” Reggie’s initial look of confidence was fading. “I made two sets for each, so there’s actually fourteen rolls total because you asked for twelve.”
“Fourteen isn’t twelve,” pointed out Marianne.
Grace Forsythe waved a hand. “It’s a baker’s twelve.”
“It’s not.” Wilfred Honey was looking sceptical, but he’d cut a piece off the corner of two triangles, one exactly twice as large as the other, and was inspecting them closely. “Mind you, it’s a surprisingly even bake. Did you need to do them for different times?”
Reggie nodded. “Yeah, took some trial and error at home.”
“The flavours,” Marianne Wolvercote announced, having turned her attention instead to the Chelsea buns, “are excellent. Which means I’m torn. Because on the one hand this was a highly technical bake, executed well and actuallymostlyon brief, but on theotherhand I can’t help thinking you’re taking the mickey just a little bit.”
Grace Forsythe pressed a hand to her bosom. “Marianne, darling, I have been watching this dear man all day, and I swear to you he has been resolutely mickeyless.”
Reggie returned to his place with that aura of coming-first-or-going-out that you sometimes saw when somebody took a swing for the fences. And once the remaining contenders had faced the music—all doing fine, none so polarising as Reggie nor generallywell-received as Alanis—the judges retired to deliberate.
They didn’t take long in the end. Just long enough for everybody to share a few nervous glances and to agree privately amongst themselves that if Reggie didn’t win this one, then it was probably going to be his last week but that at least he’d be going out in style.
The presenters returned, and Grace Forsythe took up her place of honour in front of the contestants. “We will start, as ever, with the good news. Our winner this week delivered baguettes that were ba—hang on, I had something.” She waved a hand at the camera. “Let me have that one again—delivered baguettes that were absolute bally bangers, and a range of rolls so exquisitely crafted”—Audrey shot a look at Alanis, who was trying not to look excited;exquisitely craftedwasn’t the language Grace Forsythe would use for tangrams—“that you could stick the wordRoyceon the end of them and sell them in a high-end car showroom.”
Across the ballroom, Colin Thrimp put his hand to his ear. “Jennifer sayswho the fuck do you think you are, noted Dadaist Marcel Duchamp?” And Audrey’s brain not so helpfully offered her a very clear mental image of Jennifer saying it, her lips half smiling as they dripped that slightly-trying-too-hard sarcasm.
“I actually did a BBC special on Duchamp years back,” replied Grace Forsythe, ever unperturbable. “Fascinating fellow. Now where were we? Ah yes.In a high-end car showroom.That’s right, our winner this week is the wonderful Alanis. Now isn’t that ironi—”
“Jennifer says don’t you dare,” shouted Colin Thrimp in a great hurry.
While Grace and Jennifer-by-proxy were debating the validity or otherwise of nineties music references in a contemporary work of reality television, the contestants passed congratulatory hugs toAlanis and early commiseratory hugs to Reggie.
“But now”—Grace Forsythe’s RADA training took her from joy to sorrow in a heartbeat—“it’s time to say goodbye to our second contestant. Yes, it’s that heartbreaking point in bread week when we have to reveal which of our perfectly risen bakers is actuallytoast. And this week, I’m sorry to say…”
Reggie was already wincing.
“It’s John.”
* * *
John was nice about it. From what little Audrey had seen, he seemed a nice-about-it sort of guy. And while the group consensus was that, despite straying from the brief, Reggie did definitely deserve a second chance. Audrey couldn’t help wondering if John had been doomed from day one by the fact that a wholesome stay-at-home dad with two kids had won thelastseason.
“Just over the moon to have made it this far,” John was saying in his exit interview, “and looking forward to getting back home to my family.”
Meanwhile in a slightly different filming location, Reggie was making an exaggeratedphewgesture and trying one more time to explain what tangrams were.
Audrey finished up her own interview and, with a big-sisterly impulse she was increasingly worried might be patronising, had a quick look around for Alanis, who she found perfectly happy giving an interview of her own.
Which just left Doris. She’d already been debriefed and was now sitting on a bench a little way from the entrance to the ballroom, looking out over the garden with a quiet smile onher face.
“Are you…?” Audrey began. “I mean shall we…?”
“No rush, is there?” asked Doris, looking distinctly unrushing.
“No, I suppose not.” Audrey sat down beside her putative interviewee at a comfortableI am interested but not crowding youdistance. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Whenever Doris was ready, it turned out, wouldn’t be for a while. She sat quite contentedly people watching, saying the occasional hello or goodbye as contestants filed away to the carpark and standing up to give John a kiss on the cheek as he left since they wouldn’t be seeing each other again.
It wasn’t until they were alone that Doris finally turned to Audrey and said, “Right, about that cup of tea.”
