The instinct that made Audrey defend more or less anybody Jennifer was having a go at stepped up once again. “I don’t think her interest in your love life has much to do with her ability as a presenter.”
“Don’t you believe it. She’s just trying to get in my head so I don’t fire her.”
Even for one of Jennifer’s blasts of drive-by cynicism, that seemed unconvincing. “She said you were friends.”
“Grace doesn’t have friends. She just has bits that flake off her ego.”
Audrey did her best to look sardonic, but it wasn’t an expressionshe’d had much practice with. “Whereas you’re surrounded by well-wishers and loved ones?”
“Excuse me, for all you know I have a thriving social life.”
“True. Butdo you, actually?”
Jennifer glowered. She had a good glower. “I get by.”
“We all get by, Jennifer. But don’t you want…I don’t know?”
“To date an annoying journalist? Not especially.”
Standing up, Audrey took off her headset and put it down on the desk next to Jennifer. “Fine. I tried. See you, I don’t know, next time you’re threatening to sue theEchoI suppose.”
Jennifer was silent until Audrey had her hand on the door and then she said, very softly, “Just sit down.”
“Pardon?”
“You heard.”
“I really don’t think I did.”
From where she was standing, Audrey could just make out the tension in Jennifer’s jaw. “I said, will you please sit down. You’ve come all this way. You might as well see the day out.”
“Might I?” Audrey was still of half a mind to leave. Well, a third of a mind. “Because if you think you’re doing me a favour…”
“I wouldlikeyou to stay,” clarified Jennifer through clenched teeth.
It would have been churlish to make her say it again, and while Audrey sometimes saw the appeal of churlishness, she didn’t want to risk a good thing. So she returned to her seat and wasn’t too surprised when Jennifer went straight back to work without saying another word.
* * *
Audrey had seen the judging ofBake Expectationsfrom two directions already, as a viewer and as a contestant. Seeing it as…whatever she was now, a sort of unofficial adjunct to Jennifer Hallet, was a different experience again.
Here, as in both of her previous perspectives, the process still began with each baker bringing their bake up to the judges to receive their feedback, and then from the contestant’s-eye-view there was another round of interminable waiting while the judges made a decision. But from the viewer’s position there was a seamless transition to Wilfred, Marianne, and Grace sitting around a table in a lovely, sunny—or sometimes slightly drizzly; this was still England, after all—gazebo talking about how everybody had done and who was safe and who was in danger, which would cut away coyly before they actually reached a conclusion.
Rationally, of course, Audrey knew that the conclusion was going to have been reached long before that spot was filmed. But it was weird seeing it. Especially because theywereon the cosy table set, just with Jennifer Hallet leaning by a wall glaring and calling the shots.
“I don’t care which,” she was saying, “just lose a disposable and give me a win for somebody who needs one.”
The disposables, it turned out, were Jim, Joshua, Reggie, and either Linda or Meera, because apparently production didn’t really need them both.
“Linda did genuinely well this week,” Marianne Wolvercote said, “but I don’t think she’ll make it all the way.”
Jennifer frowned. “We can’t have the good-but-insecure one going out in the semi though—we did that last year.”
“I think”—even off-camera Wilfred Honey didn’t quite lose his grandfatherly edge—“that she’ll either plateau or crash next week. Might be nice to give her a win before she’s out.”
That got a nod from Grace Forsythe. “And it’ll look like classic winner’s curse. I think this week we probably need to give Jim theWe needed to see moreor to give Reggie theOne experiment too many.”
“Did he do one experiment too many?” asked Marianne. “I thought he actually played it fairly safe this week.”
