This was . . . better, wasn’t it? He seemed amused rather than actively disgusted with her.
And of course, Mr. St. John Palmer chose exactly that moment to pull up in front of them. Emerging from the driver’s side, he released the boot to allow Rosaline to stow her bag.
“I got here as quickly as I could,” he told her. “I was stuck behind some cretin with a caravan on the motorway and then all the roads round here are full of bloody sheep.” It was at about this point that he noticed Alain and, whether for reasons of proximity, gender, or general demeanour, decided he was probably important. “Terribly sorry. Where are my manners? St. John Palmer. I’m Rosaline’s father.”
As Rosaline tried to apologise with her eyes, Alain was left with no choice but to accept one of her father’s extremely forceful handshakes. “Alain Pope. I’m one of Rosaline’s cocontestants.”
“Oh. I’d assumed you were the producer.”
“No, I’m an architect.”
“Worked on anything I might know?”
“Possibly. When were you last in Dubai?”
“Not for a year or two.”
Alain smiled the kind of smile you were supposed to use in job interviews. “Then you wouldn’t be familiar with my most recent project. If you’ve visited Coombecamden Manor, I’ve done some work there as well?”
Rosaline had seen her father do this to a lot of people. The game was to keep tacitly implying he thought you were a loser until you gave up and admitted it. And unusually, Alain seemed perilously close to actually winning.
“You do keep busy,” conceded St. John Palmer. “How the hell did you wind up baking?”
“Ah, well. When I was refitting my house a few years back I had an AGA put in, and I thought I should probably learn to use it properly.”
“Something for the wife, was it?”
“No. I’m not married.” By way of illustration Alain raised his left hand to display his entirely absent wedding ring.
To Rosaline’s absolute horror, St. John Palmer clapped Alain on the back and, with one hand between his shoulder blades, guided him towards the rear of the car where she had just dumped her bag. “Rosaline,” he called out, “was I interrupting something between you and this young man here?”
“What?” She had no idea how to respond to this. “No. Nothing. I mean—”
“Rosaline’s been very sweet.” Alain shot her a look that could almost have been conspiratorial. “But the competition has kept us both extremely busy. Still, I’m sure we’ll get to know each other better as the weeks go on.” A car horn beeped from the other side of the car park and Alain glanced over in recognition. “And that will be my friend Liv. A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Palmer.” He shook her father’s hand again and seemed to be giving as good as he got. “I’ll see you next week, Rosaline.”
There was just enough time for Rosaline to mouth a very quick, very silent Thank you to Alain for not dropping her totally in the shit with her dad before he hurried over to his ride. There he hugged a brief hello to an intimidatingly attractive blond woman, and the two of them sped away.
St. John Palmer got back into his car and Rosaline got in beside him. She’d barely finished fastening her seat belt when it started.
“Your mother was expecting you to call.”
“I’ve only just left the set.”
“You seem to have found plenty of time to socialise.”
She had, in a way, but he had no actual evidence of it. “You mean Alain? We were just both waiting in the same car park.”
“It looked like you were talking.” The rules of the road meant that her father was legally obliged to keep staring straight ahead while he spoke to her. But Rosaline was pretty sure he would have even if they hadn’t.
“Just being polite. I think he’s . . . nice, though?”
“Nice.” Her father held a lot of things in contempt, but for some reason seemed to reserve his most particular ire for a small selection of words that Rosaline had always felt was wholly arbitrary. “You used to have such a good vocabulary.”
“He seems very diligent, capable, intelligent, and”—somehow she thought her father wouldn’t accept hot—“sesquipedalian.”
“Don’t be facetious, Rosaline. It’s beneath you. Or at least it should be.”
She sighed. “Sorry.”
There was one of those “lulling her into a false sense of security” pauses.
“Honestly,” St. John Palmer continued, “I’m a little surprised a man like that is appearing on a show like—what’s it called?”
He knew what it was called. He just liked making her say it.
“Bake Expectations.”
“Still, I suppose once your career’s established you can mess around with whatever hobbies you like. No different from golfing really, is it?”
Her father wasn’t a golfer, but it was one of the few pastimes he didn’t look down on. Which would have been the closest he’d come in a long time to supporting her choices, had it not been so painfully obvious that his approval of Alain’s participation was grounded in the fact he didn’t actually need anything from the show. Whereas Rosaline, who desperately did, was wasting her time and embarrassing her family. “No,” she said. “It’s basically just golf with more raisins.”
St. John Palmer didn’t reply. Perhaps he was punishing Rosaline for her continued facetiousness.
And after a moment or two, he turned on Radio 4 in time to catch the end of the shipping forecast.
Week Two
Pie
Friday
IN SOME WAYS, returning for week two was even stranger than arriving for week one. As soon as Rosaline had left, Patchley House and everything in it started to feel like a bizarrely specific dream. But now she was back, her time at home—taking Amelie to school, going to her job, making endless mini chicken pies—was heading the same way. Which meant there was nothing to distract her from her performance in week one. A performance that had involved freaking out over the inherent futility of what she was doing. Then making a mediocre cake in front of the nation and a complete fool of herself in front of someone she was maybe interested in. C-minus, Rosaline. Must try harder. See me after class.
Having successfully navigated public transport and dumped her bag in her room, she went for a restless wander through the grounds. Short of building a time machine out of hot water crust pastry and the chocolate ganache she should have made last week, there was nothing she could do about Malawigate. But she could do something about her attitude. Because, even though winning Bake Expectations wouldn’t magically transform her into a qualified heart surgeon, Cordelia and St. John Palmer hadn’t raised a quitter.
And while they would never approve of her being on reality TV, they’d probably disown her completely if she went on reality TV and then half-arsed it.
So she had to focus. Do the work. Push herself as hard as she could. Not get distracted by boys. Produce the kind of baketactular that would make viewers at home go “Ooh, that’s quite impressive for week two.”