She was a tall, sharp-eyed woman and, in the picture Audrey was looking at, wore a pristine white suit and matching trilby as she leaned on a wall and laughed at some long-forgotten joke with a man in a loincloth. The photograph, according to the source, was from a Halloween party at Studio 54 in 1977, and while neither Jennifer’s nor Gavin’s misgivings had made Audrey second-guess the wisdom of continuing to dig, that caption did.
Because for all Audrey had a sentimental streak, the moregrounded, more practical, moreexperiencedpart of her couldn’t help but wonder how a woman who partied with Warhol and a woman who, as far as Audrey could make out, had lived all her life in either Stepney or Patchley, could possibly be anything but bad for each other.
After all, look at how things had worked out with Natalie.
Thursday
The problem, and this was a veryspecificproblem—with being on a televised baking show was that it spilled into life in every possible direction. There were weeks of preparation before, weeks of actually doing it in the middle, and then weeks—well, a week and a half so far—of readjusting afterwards. It helped, of course, if you obsessively pursued something only tangentially baking show related that everyone around you kept telling you not to pursue.
But you still had evenings where you were suddenly a whole lot freer than you’d planned for. If she’d been in London, the hours would have filled up anyway. With work, with Natalie, or with the endless parade of going out that twentysomething Londoners needed to do to prove they existed. Here in Bridgnorth, though, the time was hers. To do whatever she wanted.
Which, Natalie reminded her, is apparently nothing.
Peering through the oven door at her lemon and blueberry cupcakes, Audrey was pleased to see that they’d risen nicely and were just the right shade of golden splodged with just the right shade of…blueberry. She slipped on her oven gloves, which becausethey’d been a not-so-secret Santa gift from Eddie a Christmas back, were printed with photorealistic manatees and was just mid-bend-down-door-open-tray-lift-don’t-drop-anything-or-burn-yourself when the intercom buzzed. Then, as she was telling herself it was fine and she should put her cupcakes down carefully and close the oven properly because there was no rush, it buzzed again. And again.
Audrey did not get many urgently buzzing Thursday night visitors. Nor did she have anybody in her life whowouldbe an urgently buzzing Thursday night visitor. If there’d been a family emergency her parents would have rung, texted, and emailed all at the same time and they’d done none of them. If it had been Natalie—and it wouldn’t be, it couldn’t be—but if ithadbeen Natalie, suddenly contrite and coming to say, “I’m sorry, Audrey, I fucked up, what will it take to get you back?” she’d still have only buzzed once. She was the sort of person who wouldn’t even press the call lift button if somebody else had already pressed it.
Balancing her cupcakes awkwardly, Audrey manatee-handled the intercom handset to her ear and got as far as “He—”
“Open the fucking door,” said Jennifer Hallet.
“What? Why?”
“Because I don’t want to stand on the fucking street in fucking Shropshire for the rest of the fucking evening.”
“Why are youonthe fucking street in fucking Shropshire?”
“Why do you fucking think?”
Honestly, Audrey had no idea. “You know,” she said, “I’m rather enjoying being on the inside of the door for once.”
“Yes, yes.” Jennifer Hallet orally eye-rolled. “This is a terribly ironic role reversal. Now let me the fuck in.”
The sensible thing to do—actually there probably wasn’t asensible thing to do. This wasn’t a sensible situation. So Audrey did the thing she wanted instead and buzzed Jennifer up, taking advantage of the seventeen-second window between unlocking the front door and Jennifer Hallet bursting in to put down her cupcakes.
“What the fuck is wrong with your hands?” asked Jennifer.
“You make a baking show. You must know what oven gloves are.”
“Why have they got ugly dolphins on them?”
“They’re manatees,” Audrey explained. “And they were a gift.”
“Was it a gift from somebody who hates you?”
“Sorry, did you come here exclusively to swear at me and insult my cookwear?”
“No, I came to fuck you. But I got distracted by the vortex of quirk and cushions that is your life.”
Militantly, Audrey stripped off her manatees. “So, what? We should just sit on spikes?”
“Whatever you’re into, darling.”
“Shall I tell you what I’m not into?” said Audrey, actually wagging an actual finger as she marched, newly de-manateed, from the kitchen to the living area. “I’m not into people showing up on my doorstep unannounced—at…whatever time of the evening this is—while I’m trying to make cupcakes and having a go at my soft furnishings less than a week after they doinked me then told me to fuck off, then gave me mixed signals, then told me to fuck off again.”
Audrey’s wagging and marching had brought her what would have been chest to chest with Jennifer Hallet had one of them been substantially shorter, the other substantially taller, or there’d been a box involved. As it was, they were more boobs to upperabdomen.
“Are you sure about that, Lane?” asked Jennifer Hallet.
