Chapter Thirty-Four
Julia had grown up on sets. She could remember playing around the legs of tables as her mother cooked above her, cautioning her to be quiet when the cameras started rolling.
And the set of Cooking with Gabby was no different from any other.
Gleaming countertops, professional lighting that made everything look slightly unreal, and an audience of about a hundred people arranged in tiered seating like spectators at the Colosseum, waiting for someone to get devoured by lions.
Julia wondered if she was the gladiator or the lion. Well, it was time to find out, wasn’t it?
Her heart was hammering so hard she was fairly certain the sound technicians would pick it up.
She'd slipped past a distracted PA who was too busy arguing about catering to notice one more blonde woman in the building, walked through a door marked TALENT ONLY, and now here she was.
Standing at the edge of the set. On live television.
This was either the bravest thing she'd ever done or the stupidest. Probably both.
Her mother was mid-sentence, demonstrating something with a whisk, when her gaze landed on her youngest daughter hovering in the wings like a nervous ghost.
To Gabby Richardson's eternal credit, she didn't miss a beat. Thirty years of live television had prepared her for worse surprises than an uninvited family member.
"And look who's surprised us today!" Gabby's smile was television-perfect. "My daughter Julia, everyone. Come on out, darling."
The audience applauded politely. Julia walked onto the set on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else. Someone braver. Someone who hadn't spent twenty-nine years being terrified of this exact moment.
The lights were blinding up close. The cameras looked like enormous mechanical eyes, tracking her every movement. Julia resisted the urge to wave at them like an idiot.
She was doing this. Really doing it. Acting, not talking, proving to herself, to Elliott, that she had a spine and that she could, finally, be honest.
"What a lovely surprise," Gabby said, pulling Julia into a hug that was mostly a warning. "What are you doing?" she whispered against Julia's hair.
"Something I should have done years ago," Julia whispered back.
Gabby pulled away, that professional smile still firmly in place. "Well! Julia's been running her own bakery in Oakhaven, haven't you, darling? Perhaps you'd like to tell our audience how that's been going?"
It was a trap, obviously. A chance for Julia to spin some feel-good story about following in her mother's footsteps, to perform the role of grateful daughter one more time.
The cameras were rolling. The audience was watching.
Every instinct Julia had, every deeply ingrained people-pleasing reflex, screamed at her to smile and nod and say something vaguely positive.
She thought about Elliott. About the way Elliott had looked at her when she'd found out about Gabby. About all the ways Julia had failed to be honest when honesty was all Elliott had ever wanted.
She took a deep breath.
"Actually, Mum, that's what I wanted to talk about."
???
"Would you slow down?"
"No," Jamie said cheerfully, accelerating past a tractor. "You want to get there, don't you?"
Elliott gripped the door handle of Jamie's car and tried not to think about all the ways this day had gone sideways.
Twenty minutes ago, she'd been in the bakery kitchen, surrounded by the comforting smell of lemon drizzle biscuits, preparing to have a mature, adult conversation with Julia about her feelings.
Now she was hurtling through the countryside like they were in some kind of low-budget action film while Julia apparently staged a one-woman intervention on live television.
"I wasn't going to do grand gestures," Elliott said, more to herself than to Jamie. "I had a plan. I was just going to be honest. Tell her how I felt. Like a normal person."
"Uh huh." Jamie swerved around a pothole with the confidence of a man who'd clearly done worse. "And how's that working out for you?"
"Shut up and drive."
Elliott looked down at Jamie's phone, propped in the cupholder and streaming Gabby's show. On the small screen, Julia was standing next to her mother, looking simultaneously terrified and determined.
Elliott had never seen her look more beautiful.
Or more likely to do something spectacularly unwise.
"Keep watching," Jamie said. "I’ll bet it’s going to get better."
???
"The thing is," Julia said, and her voice only shook a little, "I'm not actually a baker."
The audience murmured. Gabby's smile flickered like a faulty light bulb.
"I've never been a baker. I'm terrible at it, actually.
Everything I touch in a kitchen either burns or explodes or somehow does both at the same time.
" Julia could hear how manic she sounded, but the words kept coming, like a dam had finally broken and there was no stopping the flood.
"All those pastries and cakes everyone's been praising?
They weren't mine. They were made by Elliott Sinclair.
She's brilliant. An actual artist. Self-taught, works harder than anyone I've ever met, and I've been taking credit for her work for months. "
The murmuring got louder. Someone in the front row gasped. A production assistant was making frantic gestures from the wings, but Julia couldn't stop now, even if she wanted to.
Gabby's expression had frozen somewhere between horror and fury, but she rallied with the grace of a true professional. "Darling, I think you're being modest. You've always had a gift…"
"No, Mum." Julia turned to face her directly. "I haven't. That's the whole point. You wanted me to have a gift, and I let you believe I did because I was too scared to disappoint you. But the truth is, I don't want to be a chef. I never have."
The silence was deafening. Julia could hear the soft whir of the cameras, the distant hum of the air conditioning. A hundred people holding their breath.
"I want to be a nurse," Julia said, and saying it out loud, finally, in front of all these people and cameras, felt like taking her first real breath in twenty-nine years.
"I've wanted to be a nurse since I was twelve years old.
I've been watching medical videos in secret, studying anatomy textbooks when no one was looking, and pretending I cared about reduction sauces when all I actually wanted was to help people.
Real people, with real problems, not… not soufflés that won't rise. "
Gabby looked like she'd been slapped. "Julia…"
"I'm sorry I lied to you. I'm sorry I was too afraid to tell you the truth. But I'm done pretending to be someone I'm not just because it's easier than having this conversation."
???
Elliott had forgotten how to breathe.
On the tiny screen, Julia stood under the harsh studio lights, looking small next to her mother but somehow larger than she'd ever seemed before. She was telling the truth. All of it. Every secret, every fear, every lie she'd been carrying around like a boulder on her back.
In front of cameras. And an audience. And probably thousands of people watching at home.
Julia Richardson, chronic people-pleaser, pathological conflict-avoider, woman who Elliott had seen apologize to a door she'd bumped into, was standing up to her mother on live television.
Elliott's heart felt like it might burst.
"She's really doing it," she said, her voice strange and thick.
"Told you." Jamie took a roundabout at slightly illegal speed. "Keep watching. She's not done."
Pride swelled in Elliott's chest, fierce and bright and overwhelming. This was Julia, the real Julia, finally letting herself be seen. Not the perfect daughter. Not the people-pleaser. But the brave, brilliant, ridiculous woman who'd walked into Elliott's disaster of a life and refused to leave.
Even when Elliott had tried very hard to make her go.
???
Julia wasn't finished.
She'd come this far. She'd burned every bridge and salted the earth behind her. She might as well torch whatever was left.
"There's something else," she said, and her voice steadied.
Strengthened. "Elliott and I pretended to be in a relationship.
I told you it was fake. A business arrangement so she could keep living in the flat above the bakery while I figured out what I was doing.
I told you she was my girlfriend because I panicked, and then it just… snowballed."
Gabby made a small, strangled sound.
"But here's the thing." Julia looked directly into the camera, imagining Elliott watching somewhere, hoping desperately that she was.
"Somewhere along the way, it stopped being fake for me.
I fell in love with her. Really, properly, completely in love.
The kind of love that makes you do stupid things like show up on your mother's cooking show and confess everything. "
A ripple of laughter moved through the audience. Julia smiled, though it wobbled at the edges.
"And I ruined it. Because I was too scared to be honest with her, too busy trying to fix things without actually communicating, too caught up in being what everyone else wanted me to be instead of just… being myself."
The audience had gone completely silent. Julia was vaguely aware of cameras zooming in, of production assistants biting their lips, of her mother standing frozen beside her like a waxwork figure.
None of it mattered.
"Elliott Sinclair is the most talented, stubborn, infuriating, wonderful person I've ever met. She pushes me to be braver. She makes me want to be better. She calls me out on my nonsense and makes me laugh and bakes me lemon drizzle biscuits when I’m having a terrible day.
" Julia's voice faltered, but she kept going.
"And I love her. I love her, and I was too afraid to say it when it mattered, so I'm saying it now.
In front of everyone. Because she deserves to know that someone thinks she's worth making a complete fool of themselves on national television. "
For a long moment, nothing happened. The studio paused.
Then someone in the audience started clapping.
Slow at first, then faster. Then someone else joined in.
And suddenly the whole studio erupted in applause, whistles and cheers rising from the crowd, and Gabby was staring at her daughter like she'd never seen her before, and Julia was laughing and crying at the same time.
She'd done it.
Whatever happened next, she'd finally told the truth.
???
"She loves me."
Elliott said it out loud because she needed to hear it, needed to make it real. On the screen, Julia was crying and laughing and the audience was applauding like she'd just won something, and Elliott's entire chest felt like it was on fire.
"She loves me," she said again, and then, with rising urgency, "Jamie, how much further?"
"We're here." He pulled into the studio car park at the kind of speed that suggested he'd been waiting for an excuse to drive like this his whole life. "Go."
The car hadn't fully stopped when Elliott reached for the door handle.
"Elliott! The car is still moving!"
She didn't care. She shoved the door open and stumbled out, catching herself on the wing mirror before she could faceplant on the tarmac.
Her ankle twisted slightly. She ignored it.
Behind her, she heard Jamie slam on the brakes, heard him shout something that sounded suspiciously like so much for not making grand gestures, but she was already running.
The studio entrance was thirty metres away. Then twenty. Then ten.
Elliott Sinclair, who had spent her whole life convincing herself she didn't need anyone, who had built walls so high she'd forgotten there was a world on the other side, sprinted toward the door like her life depended on it.
Because maybe it did.