Chapter 50
MINNIE
SURREY, ENGLAND
Educational animal presenter at the zoo? This might have legs. It reads: ‘You will keep a selection of the animals at home with you’. Hm, not sure how the dogs will like a lemur taking up residence in the utility room. Next.
TikTok Live Sales Presenter for a cheese company? Next.
English teacher? Not sure how that relates to my search.
This is hopeless. At this rate, I’ll be unemployed into the next decade, which firmly deviates from the timeline I spent half of yesterday making (it has glitter and everything). More specifically, I have two weeks, four days and nine hours to secure a new job.
Then phase two commences: move out three months after, and be in a proper relationship by next summer. I’ve even downloaded Hinge, but after being royally humbled, it’s been paused. Proactivity is what I need right now. Anything to avoid thinking about…
Emails. I must check my emails. I’ve applied for twenty-three jobs so far this week, and it’s only Wednesday. Excellent, there’s a new one! It’s… from Celine Fournier?
There’s an opening in her team.
She wants a Zoom call this week.
Hang on.
Unless my French is way worse than I thought, I think she’s considering me for the vacancy?
Excuse me?
After I caused chaos for Channel 3, refused to listen to instructions, and walked out mid-show? After I froze twice, called my boss ‘pathetic’, and argued with my colleague live on air for weeks on end? I wouldn’t even hire me.
I indulge it for a moment and imagine myself back on the circuit. The energy, the pace, the travel. Standing in front of the camera. Working under legendary Celine. Learning about the French viewership. Using my language skills. Being employed by a channel that champions wome—
I remember the job entails interviewing drivers, and that dream shrivels into a husk.
I’ll draft a reply later; time for a ‘Vampire’ break.
It takes a minute (maybe three) to psyche myself up enough to release my phone from my trouser drawer, and I’m definitely not disappointed to have received no messages because I definitely don’t know that a certain someone will be finishing his workout with Georgie now to have an early lunch.
I shake my head and play Olivia Rodrigo.
Quietly, so Mum doesn’t yell at me. Olivia and I don’t share the same grievance, but I feel like she gets it. She’s wise beyond her years.
‘Minnie!’ booms a voice from down the hall.
Bloody hell, the woman has ears like a bat. ‘Yes?’
‘You’re not listening to Olivia Rodrigo again, are you?’
I turn it down so it’s barely a whisper. Why did I have to lose my headphones in this turbulent time? Haven’t I been through enough?
Footsteps thump towards my room. Here we go.
She appears in the doorway. ‘You need to stop listening to Gen Z heartbreak songs. All this angst isn’t good for you.’
‘I’m rationing it,’ I mumble.
‘Feeling sorry for yourself is unbecoming, and it’s not the Macklin way.
’ She makes no effort to hide her judgement of the stains down my jumper, the used tissues by my side, the empty Milky Buttons packets, Maple curled up at my feet, ‘Driver’s Licence’ playing faintly in the background.
She sucks in a bracing breath. ‘That’s it, I’m taking action.
What’s guaranteed to make you feel better? ’
Nothing. ‘Proactivity!’ Ok, I admit the air punch was a bit much.
‘Wrong. What’s universally guaranteed to make every woman feel better?’
I harrumph. ‘A spray tan.’
‘That’s right.’ She flicks her hair over her shoulder. ‘Because life is better bronzed. Now come on, get dressed. You look like your Great Aunt Matilda.’
When we return, I don’t feel better – I’m not even hopeful I’ll feel better in the next three working weeks, as my timeline dictates – but I do feel like I’ve been invasively scrutinised by a Hungarian lady wielding a tanning nozzle, and that’s better than numb.
She said I ‘bruise easily’, and that’s without knowing the half of it.
Mum dumps our shopping on the kitchen table. During the car journey home, for the first time in over a year, I was struck by the overwhelming urge to bake. Actually, I wanted to eat cake, but I’m a fussy moose and I can’t take any more disappointment right now.
We fall into our familiar patterns. Mum turns on the oven; I dig out the Magimix and bowls.
‘Gen Zs don’t know what real heartbreak is,’ she says, connecting her phone to the speaker, ‘but Alanis Morissette does.’
‘You Oughta Know’ booms through the kitchen while we assemble the cupboard ingredients. I wish I could be furious like Alanis but it’s still too raw.
‘Is there a name for what we’re baking?’ Mum yells over the music, measuring gluten-free plain flour.
I shake my head mid-grating pumpkin. ‘No. We’ll make it up as we go.’
I look around for anything else that might fit.
Grated carrots. Mashed banana. Desiccated coconut.
Tinned pineapple. I don’t think too much about it, relying on muscle memory of which flavours marry well.
We chop and zest and fold and stir, adding coconut sugar, honey, eggs and chopped nuts.
Mum swipes her finger along the edge of the bowl, tastes the batter, and makes a deep ‘mm’ sound.
Alanis becomes Joan Jett who becomes No Doubt, and I try to surrender to this unabashed female power, but it just makes me feel like a pathetic idiot for sobbing over a stupid boy.
I scrub the tear off my cheek with the back of my hand and furiously resume dumping the mixture into three greased tins.
‘Years ago, your dad was pipped to the post in Kuala Lumpur,’ Mum says, pausing her scooping, her smile hard to read, ‘so to cheer him up, we made a huge Victoria Sponge for him coming home. It was even bigger than this. You were quite little so you probably don’t remember it.
Anyway, he never told me he’s allergic to almonds. ’
I cover my mouth as she purses her lips.
‘He was so grateful, the stupid mug ate a whole piece despite tasting the almond flour,’ she goes on, ‘and we spent the night in hospital.’
It’s my turn to stop spooning. ‘Oh my god!’
‘I never thought he was the best dad – he was barely around – but he was a good dad that night. He read to you from his hospital bed even though he was barely comprehensible and looked like a platypus, and made up stories about you opening your own bakery.’
I wipe my moist cheeks with the dishcloth. She’s never told me that story before. I wonder how many other things I’ll learn now she’s trying to hate him less.
I don’t rest when the tins are safely in the oven, retrieving cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom and saffron from the cupboard.
‘What are you doing now?’ Mum asks, looking back from loading the dishwasher.
‘The poached pears, of course.’
‘Why, of course.’
‘We’re going to eat the whole thing,’ I promise, fishing the peeler from the drawer.
‘An inspired idea. But tomorrow, we CrossFit. Your bum’s already losing definition.’
Rude. I rotate so it’s not visible.
While I poach, she starts on the icing: coconut cream, icing sugar and vanilla bean paste. The kitchen’s infused with the irresistible smell of baking batter – familiar and sweet. We’ve exhausted the soundtrack of basically 10 Things I Hate About You when the oven timer pings.
‘I got an email from Celine Fournier,’ I say casually, carefully testing one of the sponges to make sure it’s cooked all the way through.
The Magimix attachments clank in the sink behind me. ‘Whatever for?’
‘I think she’s offering me a job at Sportif+.’
‘Minnie Me, that’s huge!’
I shrug. ‘I’m not going to take it.’
‘You should at least speak with her.’
‘I can’t go back. Not this soon.’
‘I think it’s still worth a conversation. She’s a good person to have in your corner. Also, unrelated, she has a gorgeous house in Antibes. She invited us for Bastille Day once. A kitchen to die for.’
‘Noted,’ I say flatly, taking the other tins out.
‘At the very least, you should feel heartened by her reaching out. You’re an incredible presenter. You just need the right opportunity.’
‘Which will be when? I’m not getting anywhere.’
‘It’s only been three days. I told you that timeline was a load of twaddle.’
The finished cake sits proudly in the middle of the table, a three-tiered giant glued together with fluffy coconut icing and topped with long curly shavings of orange peel, lemon peel, coconut and edible flowers.
‘It’s almost too divine to eat,’ Mum whispers.
I can feel her side-glancing at me, trying to gauge my reaction.
‘Dairy-free, gluten-free, and no refined sugar. Practically the same as eating a carrot!’ The overenthusiasm in her voice is clear.
I get it; I’m supposed to be cheered up. ‘Have you missed it?’
It’s difficult to say. I feel lots of things, and most have nothing to do with cake.
I’m exhausted – it’s the longest I’ve been standing up since Sunday.
I’m proud – it’s absolutely beautiful. But mostly, it’s reaffirmed that I don’t want to do this for a living anymore.
Baking and running a business are both so personal, much more than presenting, and I can’t lay myself bare to the public like that for a while.
It’s fun doing it for me, though. Interesting that this is the only area of my life where I’ve never needed a plan.
It definitely won’t be over a year before I get my Magimix out again. ‘Yes.’
Mum hugs me from the side. ‘Atta-girl. Now, let’s get stuck in.’
The tears come from nowhere. One minute I’m staring at a coconut shaving that should move four millimetres to the left, and the next, Jack’s carrot cake flashes uninvited into my brain and I’m bawling. Great big heaving sobs that rack my whole body.
Mum rubs my back. ‘Let it out, chick.’
I’m sick of feeling like I’m missing a limb. I’m sick of my mind circling back to the same frustrating person. I’m sick of feeling like I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life. It doesn’t matter how much I schedule or manifest or create or distract, every day it gets a little bit worse.
I collapse into a chair. Mum doesn’t seem bothered that her only child is falling to pieces in front of her. She’s fiddling with her phone, prodding the screen with a stiff finger. Suddenly, Toni Braxton’s voice fills the room.
‘Before Alanis, there was Queen Toni,’ she says, pushing a box of tissues across the table.