“I don’t pretend that I’m not a piece of shit.”
The words settled heavily like a bad kebab.
“Okay,” said Audrey. “Thanks.” Later on, quite a while later on, Audrey decided that, actually, the difference between her and Jennifer Hallet was probably that Jennifer hadn’t immediately gone to sit in her car and cry.
Typical, said Natalie.
Saturday
“Bonjour,” Grace Forsythe was saying as the remaining contestants gathered on the Saturday morning. “And it’s one of the bonnest jours we can expect all season because this week is a personal favourite of mine. It’s the week you’re breaking out your sweetest, shortest, or hotwateriest crusts, indulging in deep, rich, luscious fillings that we can’twaitto plunge into—”
“Jennifer says,” Colin Thrimp directed from the sidelines, “that you need to sound about ten percent less like you want to fuck the bakes.”
The mention of Jennifer knocked Audrey’s never-terribly-fixed internal chronometer back to Wednesday and to the bitter taste the whole confrontation had left in her mouth for days afterwards.
“That’s right,” Grace Forsythe went on, oblivious to both Colin’s instructions and Audrey’s inner turmoil, “it’s pie week.”
A moment’s pause for reaction shots, although honestly Audrey wasn’t sure how she was supposed to be reacting. Partly because she was still adrift in nasty Wednesday feelings but mostly because she’d always found pie week blah in general. Bread andpatisserie had reputations for being tough and technical, cakes and biscuits for being relaxed and homey. Pies she always felt, as a fan with a media background, were sort of a filler week. Something you put in to space the more iconic episodes out a bit.
“And we’re starting you off with something warm, wholesome, and sumptuous—Colin, Jennifer cannotpossiblyobject to my sayingwholesome and sumptuous.”
“She says it’s the way you say it.”
“Tell her she’s projecting. Now where was I?” Grace Forsythe found her spot, cast a wicked glimpse at the camera—one that Audrey felt pretty sure was meant to signal thatwholesome and sumptuouswas absolutely intended to be read as suggestive even if it wasn’t entirely clear what it was meant to be suggestiveof. “Ah yes, the perfect dish for a balmy evening in whatever month this winds up going out in. Wilfred has obligingly provided you with his finest recipe for a summer vegetable pie, and all you need to do is follow it.”
There was something ominous about the way Grace Forsythe had saidfollow it. Like the instructions were going to be in code or mirror writing or something.
“You have five hours, starting on three.Three, darlings.”
Five hours wasn’t a good sign either. Both in terms of what that implied about the bake and in terms of how long it meant Audrey would have to keep her game face on for the cameras. She turned over the recipe and began reading through it. For the blind bake, the instructions were surprisingly detailed.Halve the tomatoes,normal,preheat the oven, normal and they’d even specified temperature and timing.Lay out the filo.
Ah.
Audrey checked the recipe again, then checked the ingredientsarrayed in front of her on the bench. So that was the trick. They’d been given a recipe that assumed premade or store-bought filo pastry but hadn’t actually been given any.
What theyhadbeen given was a carefully measured allotment of plain flour, salt, warm water, and olive oil.
Well this was going to be fun.
And since making unnecessary fuckups on national television would be a particularly shitty ending to a particularly shitty week, Audrey made a concerted effort to focus on baking and only baking. Having double-checked in case the production team had somehow tucked the “this is how you make filo pastry if you’ve forgotten” instructions into the fine print somewhere and concluded that no, they definitely hadn’t, Audrey bit the bullet and started trying to make a famously fiddly pastry from memory.
The first part was easy enough, mixing flour, salt, and water—the show had even provided a dough hook and mixer as a little extra clue in case anybody hadn’t realised what the game was here. The second bit, though, that was going to be trickier.
“I never buy filo pastry,” Meera was saying to camera from two benches over. “I always make it from scratch. I just hope the recipe I’m used to is the one the judges expect.”
“And how about you?” an anonymously black-shirted producer was asking Audrey all of a sudden. “Normally buy in or make your own?”
In her mind’s eye and ear, Audrey could already see how the two bits would go together on television. And out of a kind of semi-professional semi-solidarity that she still felt for the crew, if not for the producer, she decided to go with it. “It’s been a while since I’ve done this,” she said as if the thought had just occurred to her. “I’ve got to be honest, if a recipe calls for filo, I usually justgrab some from Sainsbury’s.”
As if conjured by some primordial incantation, Grace Forsythe appeared at Audrey’s shoulder to say, “Other supermarket pastry brands are available,” before vanishing into the ether.
“Got everything you need?” Audrey asked the producer, hoping the answer would be yes because she actually had quite a lot to be getting on with.
The producer nodded. “Yeah. Just wanted to get a bit of contrast, y’know?”
“You mean between me and the one who actually knows what she’s doing?” replied Audrey with what she hoped was an in-on-the-joke smile. And when the producer, without replying, followed Grace etherwards, Audrey shrugged and turned her attention back to baking. Once her dough was prepared, she separated it into nice round balls on a baking tray and covered them with a damp tea towel. And then froze. Because she knew it had to stand, but had no idea how long it had to standfor.
Fortunately, from a brief glance around the ballroom, it seemed like nobody else did either. Well, almost nobody else. Meera seemed pretty confident, and so did Reggie, but the rest of them were just giving each other mutually supportiveI’m-as-in-the-dark-as-you-arelooks. They were in a pastry standoff, sizing each other up like filo-based gunslingers. Eventually somebody would crack and start rolling out, and then everybody would be racing to be as neither first nor last as they possibly could.
