“Then he gets theThis should have been your week but you got complacent?” suggested Audrey, who only realised she probably shouldn’t be speaking when it was already substantially too late to stop.
Wilfred Honey looked around. “Sorry, pet, can I just check why you’re here?”
To spare Audrey from having to explain herself, but most certainly not to spare her from several different kinds of embarrassment, Grace Forsythe stepped in. “Jennifer wants to get into her pants.”
“You are so fucking fired,” said Jennifer in a tone that suggested it wasn’t the first time she’d said it that series or, indeed, that afternoon.
“Face of the show, darling. Besides you know I’m right. As, for that matter, is our lovely guest—Sorry you got complacentworks perfectly well as an arc finisher. Although I think it’s probably more of aDrag Racebeat than anExpectationsone if I’m honest.”
Marianne Wolvercote had been nodding along quietly with the discussion. “I think on balance we lose Jim? I don’t think he’s shown us much.” She looked up. “Jennifer, no plans?”
“Nope, can the fucker. And give the win to Linda. I agree with Wilfred that she needs the old”—she mimed something going up, exploding, and crashing. “And make sure you emphasise that Doris has been coming close every week because if she makes it to the final without a win we’ll get letters.”
“We could give her this week,” Wilfred Honey suggested. “She’d deserve it. She made two kinds of gingerbread, and her decoration was good.”
Jennifer seemed to be thinking about it, but in the end she shook her head. “No, she might wind up peaking too early. She and the teen need two more wins between them, but we’ve got space to make that happen. Everybody good?”
Everybody was. Well, everybody with the slight exception of Audrey, who was feeling a little awkward at quite how disillusioning this view of the show was turning out to be.
“Great,” said Jennifer. “Action.”
And as if it was the most natural thing in the world, Wilfred Honey, Marianne Wolvercote, and Grace Forsythe turned to each other over the little gingham-covered tablecloth and smiled. “Well,” said Grace Forsythe, “the contestants have given you a lot to think about this week.”
Wilfred Honey gave a deep, knowing nod. “That they have, that they have. Some of them did very well, but there’s one or two I’ve got my concerns about. What do you think, Marianne?”
And so they went on, dancing around a conclusion that everybody present knew they’d already reached. It was sad in a way, being behind the curtain. It was like seeing how a magic trick was done. And, yes, as she’d told Linda, on some level you knew it was all mirrors and wires. That the lady in the box wasn’t really sawn in half. That the card wasn’t really lost in the pack. But having it confirmed still kind of marred the experience, especially when you weren’t quite close enough to appreciate the artistry involved.
With the decision made and the segment in which the decision was meant to be made filmed, Audrey followed Jennifer back to her trailer to monitor the endgame.
Having already watched the baking from a distance, Audrey thought she’d be prepared for watching the elimination, too, but she wasn’t. The baking, for all it was a tactile experience, was also a solitary one, so observing everybody from a monitoring station outside the building wasn’t that different from observing them from across the ballroom. But the elimination was shared, a joint tension of thinking,Will it be me?andThank God it wasn’t me,Fuck it was me, orSorry, it was you. And now it felt isolating. Like she’d switched sides.
A week ago, she’d been in the same boat as these people. Today everybody else was still tossing about on the sea while she was safe and warm in some fancy club hanging out with retired admirals.
When Jim was eliminated, everybody hugged him goodbye and trooped outside to do their exit interviews. So for a while Audrey was just left staring at a live feed of an empty ballroom. And then Jennifer rose, pulled on a jacket, and gave Audrey a look that was mostly still daggers, but might have been the trick kind that slid back into the hilt when you stabbed somebody with them.
“Well,” she said. “Back to Kansas with you, sunshine.” And then after a moment’s pause she added, “Thanks for your help.”
Audrey stared at her. “Did you just thank me for my help?
“Clearly having your cunt on my face made me a better person.”
“Clearly it didn’t.”
“You’re right. Fuck off.”
And, for some reason, Audrey was laughing as she left.
Week Five
Patisserie
Monday
“The problem is,” Ms. Waverly, the custodian of the @bagleybrooktrolleys Instagram account was saying, “that we’re at a nexus.”
Hoping that she’d explain what that meant without being asked verbally, Audrey gave an encouraging nod and a tell-me-more handwave.
“There’s a Spar, a Tesco Express, and a Morrisons in a triangle around us, and for some reason people like to take trolleys from all of them and leave them right in the brook. And I swear I don’t know what they’re doing with them. Because I’m sure it’s nobody that lives nearby, so if the trolleys are full then where are they putting the shopping, and if they’re not full then what do they want them for?”
