Sunday
The theme for that week’s baketacular was simply “childhood favourites” with no instruction beyond—in Grace Forsythe’s words—“blowing Wilfred and Marianne’s little socks off.
” And while Audrey was sure Jennifer would characterise it as cheap, saccharine, and emotionally manipulative, she still appreciated the, for want of a better word, rightness of it.
Because it didn’t only close the loop on episode one’s show us who you are bake by asking the contestants to show us who you were, it grounded the penultimate episode of Jennifer’s last series in reflection and retrospection.
How far we have come? it seemed to be saying.
And it was saying it in a room containing a woman who had lived in Patchley before it was even a hotel, and a girl who had been watching the show since she was eight years old.
Cheap and saccharine it may have been. But it was also perfect.
Meera had been first with a variety of extremely simple bakes of the make-at-home-with-mother variety, which, she explained, she enjoyed making at home right now with her actual children, plus a batch of laddoo, which the judges nitpicked.
“If I were in a mood to be technical,” Marianne was saying, “these aren’t baked.”
It wasn’t normally wise to talk back to the judges, but Meera did anyway, and Audrey could see why. “Neither are donuts, but you did those last series.”
Jennifer pressed a button. “Colin, tell her the point’s taken but to can the meta talk. We let the contestants go on like that and they’ll be doing fourth wall shit all over the place.”
While Colin was relaying this, Alanis raised a hand from the back of the room.
“What did the child say?” asked Jennifer.
“She’s made sambusas,” Colin relayed, “which aren’t baked either.”
Jennifer didn’t quite headdesk, but her head moved in a desky direction. “Fuck it, tell Marianne to be less pedantic and we’ll just accept that Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells will write us angry letters.”
Next up was Alanis, who came forward and set her childhood-on-a-tray down in front of the judges.
“So these are sambusas,” she said, “which are really more from my dad’s childhood, but I wanted to celebrate that as well.
And this is unicorn toast, and I did bake the bread myself.
And I made rainbow cupcakes to go with it. ”
Wilfred Honey and Marianne Wolvercote looked down at the riot of colour before them with the most kids-today looks on their faces that Audrey had ever seen.
“What I find really distressing about this”—Marianne Wolvercote picked up a multicoloured cupcake—“is realising that you would have been about ten years old during this particular trend.”
Alanis nodded. “Yeah. When I was younger it was rainbow everything for days, and I wanted to get that feeling back.”
While she’d been talking, Wilfred Honey had picked up a sambusa.
“Now this,” he said, “has a lovely golden-brown colour to it, which is exactly what I want from a pastry and—if I may say so—to me feels more like a proper food colour in general. And the flavours are gradely. The spices are coming through wonderful.”
“This, on the other hand…”Marianne Wolvercote was poking at the unicorn toast. “Now as it happens, I do know how hard it is to get those swirls to look just right. But the problem is that, well, this was a trend that went away for a reason. Making something brightly coloured doesn’t actually make it taste better, and while the bread itself is competently executed, I don’t think the cream cheese and marshmallow fluff topping actually adds anything to it. ”
Alanis gave a fair enough kind of nod. “Yeah, it wasn’t as good as I remembered.”
Next up was Joshua, with his mix of homemade party rings and, for reasons Audrey wasn’t at all privy to but which he’d presumably explained in an earlier to-camera segment, mini Cornish pasties.
It being the semifinal, he received a base level of praise just because of the high standard of the competition, but unless Doris did extremely badly, Audrey was pretty confident that he’d done nowhere near enough to overcome the youngest contestant, oldest contestant, mum framing that Jennifer had as good as admitted she was going for.
That just left Doris. Like Joshua, she’d leaned heavily into keeping things simple.
Like Alanis, she’d gone for recipes that unmistakably spoke to the exact time and place of her youth.
They were all rationing-era—something called glory buns, a tray of jam tarts, and, in pride of place, a simple loaf of fresh-baked bread.
“I grew up round these parts,” she explained to the judges. “Well, did some of my growing up round these parts at any rate. And it’s food like this what I used to look forward to the most.”
Marianne Wolvercote jabbed at a tart. “Simple,” she said, “but excellently presented.”
“And by ’eck it takes you back,” added Wilfred Honey. “It’s true not everything was better in the old days, but I can’t fault a nice bun, nor a jam tart, and that bread is just wonderful.”
The cynical part of her brain that Audrey sincerely wished she could switch off made her turn to Jennifer and ask, “Is that really what they think, or did you tell them the old lady needed a win?”
“Given the news you’re about to give her,” Jennifer replied, “would you say she doesn’t?”
* * *
Doris did, in fact, get the win in the end.
Audrey had skipped the gazebo talk, fearing that she’d find it too depressing, but that just meant she didn’t know what had been said and had to assume the worst. She tried to tell herself it had been a clean victory.
That everybody else had made some kind of crucial mistake, like not pushing themselves hard enough or serving something that looked better than it tasted.
But she couldn’t quite shake the feeling it should have gone to Meera.
Once the unsurprising news of Doris’s victory had been delivered, Grace Forsythe moved on to the equally unsurprising news of Joshua’s defeat.
And since that would be the cue for the contestants to start going their separate ways, Audrey set out at once for the ballroom so that she could catch Doris on the way out.
She ran into Joshua first.
“Hi,” she said, a little awkwardly. “Sorry to see you go.”
He gave her an almost rueful smile back. “It’s cool. I got all the way to the semifinal, and I was up against three amazing women who really deserved to go through.”
There was the tiniest edge of rehearsal in his voice, which made Audrey suspect he’d used the same line for the cameras. “That’s very chill of you.”
Joshua nodded. Then just as Audrey was about to move on he said, “Alanis told me you spoke to her the other week. And, thanks, I suppose.”
“I’m not sure what you have to thank me for,” replied Audrey, who genuinely wasn’t.
“Just for helping her out. It was—look don’t take this the wrong way, but I know you think I’m a prick.”
“I don’t,” Audrey protested, subconsciously kicking herself at the insincerity in her voice.
“Yeah you do. So do most people. And I get it. But this”—he indicated himself, but with particular emphasis on the trilby/goatee/slightly retro shirt combo—“isn’t an act. People think I’m really tryhard because I’m really trying.”
Not sure what to say to that, Audrey made a kind of encouraging uh-huh?
“So, yeah I guess I was glad that even though you don’t like me you didn’t, like, trash me to her or anything. But you still had her back. And, like, I know that’s a tough line to walk so, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it?” Audrey tried. Partly because she was beginning to wish he hadn’t.
Joshua nodded. “Bye, Audrey.”
“Goodbye, Joshua.” Then after a moment’s pause she added, “Umm, do we hug?”
“Maybe not?”
“Yeah, good call.”
She watched Joshua walk away, out of the competition and in all likelihood out of her life. And felt the mildest pang of guilt at the fact she still thought he was a prick.
Unable to put off telling Doris the bad news any longer, Audrey made her way over to the steps, where she was still giving her obligatory just-glad-to-have-a-win-at-last interview.
In as little of a hurry as ever, Doris said a polite goodbye to the camera operator and ambled over to where Audrey was waiting.
“Congratulations,” Audrey began, pushing aside any doubts she was still harbouring about the fairness of the whole arrangement. “It was about time you won a week.”
“Because of the story, you mean?” asked Doris with a playful smile.
“Because you’re good. You’ve done well every time, and this week you did best.”
Doris gave Audrey an askance look. “You think? Or you think it was just my turn?”
The honest answer was that it was difficult for Audrey to judge. “The problem is I know why you went with the bread. And that makes me a bit biased.”
“Bit pathetic really, isn’t it,” replied Doris. “Still thinking about that one day after all these years.”
“It’s not pathetic.” Audrey’s instinct would have been to say the nice thing anyway, but this time it really did have the virtue of being true.
“We all have days like that, I think—ones we keep living in even when we shouldn’t.
And if you’re going to have those sorts of days, better that they be the good ones than the ones that, well, that aren’t so good. ”
Doris nodded a gentle agreement. “I’ve had a lot of good days.”
“And you’ll have a lot more.”
That made Doris laugh. “Leave it out. I know I’m old. You don’t have to pretend I ain’t.”
“I’m not pretending, I just mean—you know, life is still good. In general.”
Doris had stopped laughing. “She’s not coming, is she? You’d’ve said by now if she was.”
“Sorry.” Audrey tried not to squirm. On balance, she still thought going to see Emily had been the right thing to do.
But it did mean she was now having to give shit news to a nice old lady.
“And I would have told you sooner, but I’d had a long trip and I didn’t want to ruin your weekend and it seemed really insensitive to just come straight out with it after you’d won and—”
With the impeccable instincts of somebody who’d been grandmothering longer than Audrey had been alive, Doris came forward and folded her into a hug. “Hush now. It’s no matter. You tried your best and—was she okay? Was she happy, like?”
And Audrey wasn’t at all sure what to say to that either. “She was—she was exactly like you described her.”
“Not sure that answers my question.”
“Was she happy when you knew her?”
Breaking off the hug, Doris looked calm, almost contemplative. “Some days I thought she was,” she said. “Some days I thought she wasn’t. Some days I thought I was wasting my time trying to work it out.”
Audrey nodded. “Yeah. She was a lot like that.”
“I reckon,” said Doris, with a deliberate slowness that suggested she only half trusted the notion, “I reckon that’s good to hear. I’d not have wanted her to change. Not really.”
Honestly, Audrey wasn’t sure if she agreed.
Then again she wasn’t sure if Doris really agreed either.
But you got through life by telling yourself what you had to tell yourself, and probably The woman I love has always been a beautiful disaster and it comforts me that she still is was the safest way to go.
Better than just admitting the whole thing was a miserable pissing letdown.