Sunday #2
And finally, there was Doris. She’d made a book. And although Audrey barely got close enough to see before the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren flooded in, she managed to catch the title that had been painstakingly stencilled onto the leather-effect cover: Rebecca.
Once the cakes that didn’t look like cakes had been thoroughly demolished and the contestants had been given time to get all the good luck and well wishes they needed from their assembled supporters, they were lined up in a row to wait for the final results.
The final, final results, Audrey recalled, with a twinge of regret for the past and excitement for the future.
“Friends,” Grace Forsythe began, “Romans, countrypersons, lend me your ears. I come not to bury Caesar, nor to praise him. Actually, I’ve not come to say anything about Caesar at all.
I have come, as I always do, to congratulate our marvellous, marvellous finalists.
Three of the most exquisite human beings ever to be expected to bake on Bake Expectations and including, of course”—Here it comes, thought Audrey—“both our oldest”—camera hovers on Doris—“and our youngest”—camera hovers on Alanis—“ever contestant. But nevertheless the question remains, have age and treachery beaten youth and skill—”
“Jennifer says we’re cutting that,” interjected Colin.
Grace Forsythe gave a long-suffering sigh. “No sense of fun, no sense of nuance, that’s her problem. Where were we?” She paused for a third of a heartbeat. “Ah yes, the question remains, who, at last, is our winner.”
Silence reigned on the grounds. Or at least silence would reign once the birdsong, distant sounds of traffic, and muttering of unruly children had been edited out in post.
“Well,” Grace Forsythe went on. “Without any more delay.”
This phrase, naturally, preceded a delay of some seconds.
“I can announce.”
She paused again.
“That the winner.”
And again.
“Of the eighth.”
Again.
“Season.”
Again. And this time Colin Thrimp piped up. “Jennifer says you’re just taking the piss now.”
“Colin”—Grace Forsythe affected a tone of outrage—“there are children present.”
“Jennifer says…” And here Colin Thrimp blushed and tripped a little on his words. “Um, that is, she says eff the children.”
Grace Forsythe smiled. “I bet she doesn’t. But do remind her that all she’s doing is delaying things unnecessarily.” Then she stopped, took a dramatically deep breath, and returned to her speech with the word “Of.”
“Seriously Grace,” Colin relayed.
“Bake.”
“You are this close to being fired.”
“Expectations.” Pause. “Is.”
“I mean it.”
“None other.”
“She says that’s it, you’re done. It’s over. You’re…well you can probably fill in the details for yourself.”
“Than.”
Still, Grace was pausing for effect.
“Meera.”
The crowd burst into thunderous applause, Meera looked like she was about to faint, and Audrey, despite having deep down felt that Meera deserved the win, could scarcely believe that she’d actually got the win.
There was about a three-second window between Meera being handed her frankly tacky trophy-that-was-also-a-functioning-cake-slice and the whole group of finalists being mobbed by their various emotionally resonant guests, plus the occasional person who just wanted to take their last chance to get on telly.
Audrey stood a little to one side, leaving the moment for the people who’d earned it. Besides, she was still processing.
“Some comments for the cameras,” one of the interchangeable, black-T-shirted producers was saying to Meera.
With her adoring and, Audrey had to admit, adorable family gathered around her, Meera clutched her cake-slice-trophy like a sword and smiled at the viewing public.
“I should probably say,” she began, “that I’m just happy to be here, and everybody did so well and I wish we could all have been winners, and ladies—” she turned to Doris and Alanis who, Audrey was sure, would be at least briefly cut into the shot in post—“you were both brilliant. But I think what I really want to say”—she brandished the cake slice—“is: I earned this.”
It wasn’t the acceptance speech Audrey had expected, but she sneakily thought it had a good chance of becoming iconic.
As the production crew put the final, final touches on the eighth season of Bake Expectations—exit interviews with the runners-up, texture shots of the lawn, the obligatory scenes of people hugging and being excited—Audrey let herself take a moment to just…
be there. To savour having been part of something.
Something that wasn’t exactly going away but wasn’t exactly sticking around either.
Something that was ending and beginning and changing and staying exactly the same all at once.
Something that, for a half of a half of a heartbeat was singularly, perfectly, now.
And then it was done. The celebratory noises had died away, the camera operators were putting down their cameras, the cleanup crew began thanklessly picking paper plates off the formerly pristine lawn, and Colin Thrimp came scampering over to where Audrey was standing.
“Umm,” he offered. “Jennifer says you were right. She was the best choice.”
“Yeah,” Audrey said, looking at where Meera had been before the crowd swallowed her. “She really was.”
“She also says turn around.”
Audrey turned around to see Jennifer Hallet, wireless mic still pinned to her lapel, sauntering across the grass towards them.
“That’s a wrap, Lane.”
She wasn’t sure, but Audrey thought she heard a note of melancholy in Jennifer’s voice. “And you’re okay with that?”
“Always wanted to go out on a high note.”
Cautiously, Audrey took Jennifer’s hand. “So what now?”
“If you’re up for it, I still say we have a go at Dead Fish and Sad Children.”
There were a hundred reasons why they shouldn’t. A thousand. Right then, Audrey couldn’t bring herself to give a single solitary shit about any of them. “You know what,” Audrey replied. “Let’s fucking do it.”
Jennifer actually looked shocked. “What, really?”
“Were you not serious?”
“I’m as serious as a brain tumour. But I thought you’d still be all, Ooh no, it’s too soon, what if—”
“Oh, shut up, Jennifer. It’s a risk. Of course it’s a risk. But life is risks and I’m in the mood to take one.”
“Even if—”
Audrey smiled a smile that somehow managed to be both aggressive and sappy. “Which part of ‘Oh, shut up’ didn’t you understand?”
The intimate-ish moment of planning her entire future life and career with an annoying sweary woman was interrupted by a tap on her shoulder. Turning, Audrey saw a woman in maybe her sixties who, though her face was less lined and her hair closer to grey than white, was the absolute image of Doris.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Are you—I don’t mean to be weird, but are you Audrey Lane?”
“You’d better fucking believe she is,” said Jennifer Hallet, helpfully.
“My mum’s said a lot about you and I think—I mean I know—she didn’t win, but I think it’d mean a lot to her if you were with us right now.”
Audrey blinked in confusion. “Isn’t this sort of a family time?”
Beside her, Jennifer was scowling. “Fuck me, Lane, you’ve been all over this woman’s business for months. Go tell your friend she did well.”
“I’m Susan, by the way,” said Susan. Because of course she was. Who else would she have been?
And Audrey said, “I know,” which thankfully Susan didn’t think was odd and let herself be led over to where Doris and her family were waiting.
“This is my brother Robert,” said Susan conversationally, “and my sister Maggie.”
They both waved, although it seemed Maggie, all these years later, was still bad with strangers.
“This is my husband,” Susan went on. And then she went on, and on, and on, introducing partners and children and children’s partners and children’s children until Audrey wanted to break down and cry.
Because she’d barely thought about this side of Doris’s life.
The side that the rest of the world saw every day, the side that was, in its own way, just as much a monument to Doris’s legacy as any story Audrey could tell.
A side she wouldn’t be complete without.
Doris’s voice—a voice she’d heard so often over the last few weeks that she could hear it in her sleep—brought Audrey sharply back to the present. “Hello you. This is a nice surprise.”
“We thought you’d want to see her,” said Susan.
“She’s not shut up about you,” added one of the grandsons. A Tim, Audrey was pretty sure, although even her good-with-namesness had its limits.
“Don’t you tell such tales Timothy Rice,” replied Doris with grandmatriarchal authority.
Bobby Junior—Robert, he was actually called, a quiet, dapper man in his sixties with steel-grey hair and a glint in his eyes that Audrey suspected was hereditary—put his arms around his mother. “We’re sorry you didn’t win.”
“I’m not,” Doris replied. “I mean, I am but it’s—you know when you watch the show and everyone’s all, ‘Ooh, I’m just glad I got to be here.’”
“And you’re all, ‘No you’re fucking not, you’re fucking gutted and you wish some other bastard had gone out instead,’” said Timothy Rice. “Yeah I know.”
A murmur of assent from the extended family suggested that they all knew, and they all shared the same reading.
Doris gave a little shrug. “Turns out they ain’t lying. I’d’ve liked to win. Course I would. But just being here was”—she locked eyes with Audrey—“it was special.”
“Well, if that’s good enough for you, Mum,” said Robert, “it’s good enough for—”
The sound of an engine cut him off. And since they were away from the carpark and the hotel had a strict no-driving-in-the-pretty-bits policy, which the Expectations crew enforced rigorously to minimise lost footage, the sound of an engine was extremely unexpected. Especially because it was so loud.
As everyone watched, a jet-black open-top Bugatti Veyron slid to a halt at a careless angle outside the ballroom. Colin Thrimp had already raced up to intercept it, but Audrey—knowing this could only be one person—did not at all fancy his chances.
Emily Branningham, her hair windswept from the drive, stepped down into the grounds of Patchley House.
She was wearing wide-leg satin trousers and a navy-and-cream plaid jacket that was probably the most stylish thing Audrey had ever seen in real life.
For a moment she paused, framed by the house she’d grown up in.
And when Colin attempted to ask her why she was here and tell her why she couldn’t be, she ignored him completely, stalking towards the crowd. Towards Doris. Towards Audrey.
“Gran,” said a slightly balding man in his late thirties who Audrey was pretty sure was a William. “I think there’s a strange woman coming for you.”
The strange woman descended like the angel of death, and Doris stood waiting for her, either transfixed or defiant. Either way, Audrey couldn’t help sidling closer.
Emily Branningham lowered yet another pair of fabulous, oversized sunglasses. “Nymph.”
“Emily.” It seemed Doris was choosing defiance. “This is my family.”
“Charmed.”
“Everybody,” Doris continued, keeping way calmer than Audrey thought she’d have been able to in the circumstances. “This is Emily. She was—we was—look can we do this somewhere else?”
“It’s all right, Mum,” said Susan. “Whatever it is, it’s all right.”
Audrey held her breath just a little, half expecting—perhaps three-quarters expecting—Emily Branningham to say something callous, demeaning, or flat-out self-destructive.
She didn’t. Yet.
“Your mother and I,” she said instead, “we…”
“Hang on,” said a woman in a chiffon blouse who Audrey was pretty sure was a Tiffany and one of Maggie’s daughters. “Is this a coming-out speech?”
It could have been awkward, but Doris decided to own it. “Pretty much, yeah.”
The part of Audrey’s brain that Jennifer Hallet had both fallen for and taken up residence in really wished they were still filming this, because it really would have made a banger of a finale.
The rest of Audrey, though, really didn’t.
While in a garden surrounded by your entire family and quite a lot of other people’s families wasn’t exactly a private setting, compared to a national TV broadcast, it was practically intimate.
Now that she’d done the hard part of explaining—or at least implying—to her family that this strange immaculately dressed woman who’d just gate-crashed a film set in a car worth north of a million pounds was something in the vicinity of her ex-girlfriend, Doris could go back to defiance.
She folded her arms, looked Emily Branningham squarely in the eye and said, “Well?”
Audrey didn’t hear what Emily said next. She moved very close to Doris and murmured something in her ear. And when Audrey tried to imagine what that something might have been, all the options seemed wrong or trite or too much or not enough.
But whatever it was, it was what Doris needed. She nodded once. Then glanced towards her family. “You’ll be all right here without me for a bit, won’t you?”
“What’s a bit?” asked one of them, but Susan said more confidently, “Course we will.”
And then Emily Branningham led Doris Rice-nee-Cooper back up past Patchley House, helped her into the passenger seat of her irresponsibly dangerous vehicle, climbed in beside her, and the two of them sped away together.
Audrey watched them until they were gone.
Which didn’t take long. Because Emily drove very, very fast, the afternoon sun catching upon the car like a starburst.