Chapter Thirty-Two #2
‘Ha, all she cares about is herself,’ said Audrey with a toss of her head.
‘But I can’t tell him that, can I? If it weren’t for that bloody debt, I’m sure he’d just tell her to sling her hook.
I couldn’t believe she turned up the other day, all sweetness and light.
’ She poked at the bottles on the table and held up a tall thin bottle containing a startling cerise-coloured liquid.
‘I do wonder where people get these things from.’
With a sigh, she put it back. ‘Bets says she’s up to something.
Made him some offer. Whatever it is, isn’t making him happy.
He’s been grumpy since he came back, but he seems much worse suddenly.
He’s always been difficult to read. Unlike his brother, Jack.
All charm and smiles.’ She shook her head, her face lighting up with a fond smile.
‘But like an eel. Slithers off the minute there’s work to be done, but with more charm in his little finger than you can shake a stick at.
Bets is far too good for him.’ Ella was less and less liking the sound of Jack.
Bets had definitely lost a touch of her bounce in recent weeks.
Jack sounded totally selfish to her, not that she could say that to his mother.
‘I find it’s best if you stick to the noughts and fives,’ advised Audrey with one of her lightning changes of tack, ‘then people know they’ve won something straight away. And arrange everything in number order, otherwise it’s a nightmare trying to find the right bottles.’
Ella nodded. She hadn’t realised she’d have to do this bit when she was volunteered.
‘So I have to stick raffle tickets on every bottle?’
‘That’s right, dear. One on the bottle and the other ticket in the barrel.’
Ella looked at the collection of bottles on the table.
She was going to have her work cut out. Before she could wonder out loud how long it might take her, Audrey had bobbed up and was off with a cheery wave.
‘Cakes need to be delivered to the tent by eight-thirty, so that the judges can start their deliberations first thing. Stalls open at ten prompt. You’re on till twelve and then someone will take over.
Think that’s everything. Look at the time.
I still need to get to the hairdressers, pick up the new rat and make sure that Peter’s got the trestle tables out of the village hall. It’s all go. Happy baking.’
Watching Audrey’s retreating figure, Ella sighed, reeling slightly. It was as if a tornado had just swept through.
She exchanged a look with Tess, who shook her head, kneaded her blanket with her paws, walked around three times and then with a mournful sigh, dropped into the bed, turning her back on Ella. ‘I’m on my own, then,’ said Ella.
She started combining the cake ingredients she’d previously measured out and then couldn’t remember how much baking powder she’d put in, so added a tiny bit extra to the flour just in case.
She had no idea that baking could be so therapeutic, although her arm was killing her and her mind kept straying to Devon.
Whether he went back to Marina or not, she still wanted to explain about Patrick.
She didn’t want him to assume that she’d forgiven Patrick.
Audrey had looked so worried about him. It didn’t seem right he owed so much money, not with the way property prices were in London. Something nagged at her, like a missing piece of puzzle.
Now the cake was in the oven, she wondered how she was going to decorate it.
She’d seen the odd episode of Bake Off. That nagging buzz at the back of her head surged forward again. Filmed in a tent in the grounds of some gorgeous house. Did they pay the house-owners to rent the grounds?
She needed to focus on the task at hand. Baking. Presentation. Making it look as good on the outside as on the inside. Not that she was particularly confident about the inside. But the outside, she could definitely do something about.
As she tidied the kitchen, wiping up the flour, washing the mixing bowl, under the watchful eye of Tess, she flitted from one idea to another.
She could cut the cake into an intricate shape and ice it.
Trim one edge into a straight line and tip the cake on its side so that the flat front faced forwards.
That would be different, but then what would she put on the front?
There were so many possibilities. Tess yawned with a loud groan.
‘What do you think Tess? Fancy shape? Fancy icing? Or am I overthinking it?’
Tess stood up slowly, shook herself and came to stand in front of Ella, her amber eyes blinking up at her with a serious expression as if she were carefully considering the options.
With a sudden gurgle of laughter, Ella crouched down to give the dog a hug.
‘You don’t care, do you?’ Under her arms, Tess wriggled to get closer, almost knocking Ella off her feet.
A surge of love bloomed in Ella’s chest.
‘Daft dog,’ she whispered, feeling the prickle of tears in her eyes.
There was nothing quite like this quiet, unconditional companionship.
It was a shame friendship with people couldn’t be like this.
Although, Ella smiled to herself, it was rather convenient when one half of a pair couldn’t talk back.
She sighed and looked at her watch. While the cake was baking she just had time to make a phone call.
The idea that had been nagging at her had bubbled away for the last hour.
‘Britta, it’s Ella.’ She held the phone in one hand, the other stroking Tess’s silky ears. The crazy dog had snuggled in so close, her head nestled on Ella’s thigh and her breath was leaving damp patches on Ella’s jeans.
‘Ella, babes. How you doing? You and Patrick sorted things out yet?’
Ella refused to even discuss that yet. This call was going to be difficult and she would rather have avoided it but she needed to check something.
‘Yes, we have.’
‘Thank God for that. So when are you coming back to London?’
Ella chickened out. ‘Britta, remember when you and Bryce did that video installation.’
‘Lord, yes. What a palaver.’
‘How much did you have to pay for the studio?’
‘Daylight robbery. Only ￡900 a day.’
‘And what did that include?’
‘Ella, babes. What are you planning? Should I be getting excited? Is this a new direction?’
Ella wanted to groan out loud. Instead she looked down at Tess and rolled her eyes. The dog lifted her head and nuzzled in closer if that were possible, almost sitting on Ella. A definite show of support on the canine front.
‘Yeah,’ she lied quickly. It was probably easier. ‘So what did that pay for?’
‘Lights and electricity. That’s it. Then we had to pay extra for the cameraman, the sound man, all the kit. Cameras. Mics. And then we went over one day. By an hour. Had to pay a surcharge of ￡250.’
Filming was an expensive business. Even more than Ella would have guessed.
‘And is that standard?’
‘No, that was cheap. Depends on the size of the studio you hire. How specialist is it? Depends whether you want sound and cameras. Whether you want to use their editing suite. Their editors. Licence to print money. Although you can get some great grants for video work. What are you thinking of doing? Have you told Patrick? Is it a solo project?’
Ella winced at Britta’s flurry of enthusiastic questions. ‘There’s no project. I went to the gallery.’ She sounded accusatory but Britta missed it.
‘What, in London? Why didn’t you call me? We could have met up for coffee.’
Ella swallowed. Her next words would be the equivalent of lighting a match and watching everything go up in flames but she couldn’t pretend everything was all right.
Her hand stilled on Tess’s ear and the dog nudged her hand, giving it a swift lick.
For a moment, she let the silence hang between them before saying, ‘You knew.’ The bald words dropped like stones down a well. One by one, impossible to take back.
‘Knew what?’ Britta’s tone changed, her voice immediately guarded. Ella didn’t have the energy to play games.
‘That Patrick was selling my pictures. You took it, didn’t you. Cuthbert in his Cavalier hat.’
Typical Britta; she didn’t miss a beat or try to excuse what she’d done.
‘He said he missed you and wanted a souvenir.’ Ella could imagine Britta’s insouciant, elegant shrug of her bony shoulders.
Maybe she hadn’t known what Patrick was doing.
Difficult to believe, although she desperately wanted to.
Britta’s next words robbed her of that hope.
‘He wanted to know what you were doing. He said he wouldn’t sell that one.’
‘That one.’ Ella swallowed, the hard knot pressing into her throat. Damn. She’d really wanted Britta to be innocent. To be as in the dark as she’d been. But the throwaway line confirmed that Britta knew full well that Patrick was selling Ella’s pictures.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Tell you what? Does it matter that he sold them? I mean, no disrespect, but you’re selling the images anyway?
What’s the difference? People buy them all the time in the books.
Babes, you are very good at drawing. You’re good at everything, sculpting, modelling, painting.
You’ve got it. Technically those pictures are brilliant. ’
‘Shame you never said that before,’ snapped Ella.
‘Are you mad at me?’ Britta’s voice held a hint of amazed disbelief.
‘Too flipping right, I’m mad. I’m furious.’
‘Oh.’
That was all she had to say. Just ‘Oh’. That was it?
‘I have to go, Britta.’ She hastily ended the call. She just didn’t have the energy to explain to Britta how much it mattered or, more satisfyingly, any desire to do so.
Tess put a paw on Ella’s hip and her head nudged at Ella’s chin.
The shift in weight made it hard for Ella to keep her balance.
Tess’s head nudged her again. Silly dog.
Managing to regain her balance, she ruffled Tess’s ears.
‘You agree with me, don’t you?’ Tess’s steady gaze immediately lifted her spirits.
Britta had let her down. She’d told her how she felt and it was done.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Ella as she pulled the cake tins out of the oven when the timer went off.
The last time she’d peered through the glass in the oven, the two sponges had risen rather well – in fact spectacularly well, like a pair of volcanoes.
Since then they’d sunk and now each featured a definite dip in the top.
‘Hmm, if I cut the tops off and cover everything with icing, they could be ok. What do you think, Tess?’
Tess’s tongue was hanging out.
‘Stupid question. You’d eat both in one gulp, wouldn’t you?’
As the cakes cooled, she turned her thoughts back to Devon.
She really wanted to do something for him for a change.
With a sudden burst of energy, she sat down at the kitchen table and opened up a spreadsheet.
She needed some more information. Thank God for the internet and Google.
She scrolled through several websites, checking her facts.
Making Pets Well With Marina was produced by a company called Vet Magic Productions.
With a little more digging, lo and behold, it turned out that Marina part-owned the film production company.
That made things really murky. Ella picked up the phone again.
Why was she doing this? Some forlorn hope of rescuing Devon from Marina?
Making sure that he had a choice? She didn’t want him to be in the dark the same way that she had been for all this time.
By the end of the afternoon, after several calls including one to Bets to find out how long Devon and Marina had lived in the house and one to the registered offices of VM Productions, Ella had struck gold with a very chatty receptionist who’d been only too happy to tell her how long the programme had been running and the history of the show.
It turned out that the first two series of the programme – which was now in its tenth series – had been filmed in a studio before they’d moved to the current location.
And more recently they were doing the regular segment on the news magazine show on ITV.
With all the information she had, Ella set up a spreadsheet, typing in estimated figures.
She was guessing, but even on the conservative side with the time period and number of series she created a compelling set of figures.
In the last three years, eight ten-week series of Making Pets Well With Marina had been filmed in the consulting rooms at Marina and Devon’s house.
Eighty programmes equated to a lot of filming time.
According to Ella’s spreadsheet, that was an awful lot of studio fees that someone should have paid.
Ella snapped shut her laptop and nibbled at her fingernail. Marina had seemed so sincere and heartbroken the other day. Maybe she shouldn’t interfere . . .