I’m laughing now. ‘No more arguments, just move the bowl right above my head and turn it upside down.’
Around the table everyone’s holding their breath. As he steps towards me I breathe in his scent and my head spins. Then he drops back and puts the bowl back on the table again.
He’s looking at me with one eyebrow raised. ‘Just in case this is a trap to make me look an idiot, I’m going to cover the floor.’ He disappears to the hallway then comes back and starts to spread out the tablecloth we put down for the buns-on-string activity.
If this is his attempt to ramp up the tension, it’s working. He makes a big deal of standing me in the centre of the cloth, then squares up my shoulders. Which is great except if he carries on like this we’ll never get the damn things in the oven.
I’m pushing him on. ‘Right, let’s do this, just grab the bowl and tip it –now!’
Ross is playing this to the maximum. If he’s used to laying on the one-to-one charm with his patients’ owners, times that by twelve. He’s keeping so much eye contact with the audience he’s barely looking at the bowl he’s picking up.
There’s a murmur around the table as he swings it high above my head, and as I glance down I see there’s a bowl of sticky white egg mixture on the table in front of me. Maybe it’s those two glasses of wine, perhaps it’s having Ross so damned close that’s distracting me. But whichever it is, I’m a second too late as I spot that he’s picked up the wrong bowl, which means the one he’s about to tip upside down is the one full of sloppyunbeatenegg white.
‘St-o-o-o-o-p!’ I put up my hand to catch his arm before he tips, but it’s too late! The mix of slime and bubbles is already cascading, hitting my head, sliding through my hair and frothing down my forehead and onto my cheeks.
There’s a roar from the guests, then they all start to clap their hands and cheer.
Ross is hissing at me. ‘What the eff?’
As I wipe the drips off my nose with my fist I’m dying inside but I manage to force out a grin. ‘So just to say to the doubters, this is why big eyebrows are really, really useful.’ Then I pick up the second bowl from the table, and hold it upside down over my head. ‘And for comparison, this is what would have happened if I’d told Ross to pick up the right bowl – the mixture would have defied gravity in a way the unbeaten mixture hasn’t.’
Ross is joining in. ‘And the funniest thing of all is, Cressy’s nickname as a kid used to beEggand Cressy, isn’t that right, Egbert?’ He’s murmuring in my ear: ‘So sorry, but if we play this for laughs, we might get away with it.’ He turns to the room again. ‘I’m more than happy to step in and tell you a few of my dog jokes while Cressy gets cleaned up?’
Nell’s already at my side, taking towels from Bonnie. ‘Fabulous, Ross, super-helpful as usual. I’ll come with you, Cressy.’
Every experience is there to learn from, and what I’ll take from this isn’t that I should choose my helpers more carefully – it’s that however bad I think my hair is, itcouldalways be worse.
And if we’re talking rock bottoms, I’m truly hoping I’ve hit it. Thishasto be the worst things get – doesn’t it?
As for this evening, thanks to no one else but me, it’s totally ruined. And the saddest thing is that all due to me trying to get my own back on Ross for his teasing, I’ll have wrecked what promised to be a great way of raising funds for Kittiwake Court.
20
The meringue night at Comet Cove
Punch lines and second chances
Saturday evening
‘No one in St Aidan is ever going to take anything I say seriously after this. I’ve lost all credibility.’ You can come back from a lot of things, but I’m pretty sure telling someone to throw sloppy egg over your own head isn’t one of them. When you’re a guest in someone else’s house too, it’s unforgivable.
I’m sitting on the bed in Bonnie’s spare bedroom, talking to Sophie, Millie and Nell through the towel as I rub my newly-scrubbed hair. In the end my hair and shirt soaked up most of the egg, so they’ve been washed, but my jeans and vest are still wearable. And Ross decided to dedicate himself to wiping the worst off my Converse rather than entertaining the crowd.
As for me, I’m pretty much resigned; after what just happened here my attempt to be a roving baking tutor in St Aidan will be over as quickly as it began.
As I put the towel down and shake my hair out, Nell’s searching my face for clues. ‘But youaregoing back out there?’
One glimpse of myself in the dressing-table mirror tells me it’s way worse than it felt when my head was buried in Bonnie’s navy-blue velour. With my hair hanging in rat tails, and my face stripped bare except for some inky mascara blotches under my eyes, I’m about as glamorous as a broad bean that’s been trodden on.
I blow out a breath. ‘Even forgetting the rest, I can hardly carry on when I’m such a mess.’ I pull my cardi over my vest so I’m ready to make a run for it and let out a smaller sigh. ‘If I were at home, getting properly ready from this stage would take me until way past midnight.’
Nell’s eyes pop open in horror. ‘Blinking Nora, that’s hours of your life!’
Sophie’s nodding. ‘That’s why you’re such a pro, Cressy – you make it look effortless.’
Millie’s frowning. ‘That’s the trap though. We’ve talked about this at school. The more make-up you use, the more you have to put on to make yourself feel normal. You might need to go back to zero and try a more natural look.’
I let out a groan, because she’s so young, yet probably also so right. ‘But that beauty regime of mine has propped me up for years. It’s who I am!’ I give a sniff as I get down to the real truth. ‘Sometimes I think it’sallI am. Which is why I can’t possibly go out there in front of everyone like this.’
