“Being on reality television is not a career. A career requires work and qualifications.”
“Oh, you mean because I didn’t go to university I should give up and pimp myself out to the first man with a decent job who looks my way?”
“You’re being unfair,” said Cordelia. “And a little childish. Your father and I just want you to be happy, darling, and while of course we would have been overjoyed if you’d gone back to university and become a doctor like you wanted, you chose not to and”—for a moment Cordelia was silent, as if the topic was more painful for her than it was for Rosaline—“we’re only trying to support you as best we know how. That’s all we’ve ever done.”
Rosaline knew better than to argue the point. “I’m sorry. It’s been a stressful week and I really appreciate you taking care of Amelie for me.”
“Don’t be silly, we love spending time with Amelie. She’s our granddaughter. But you could be a little kinder to your father. He’s worked very hard for you his whole life, and he sometimes feels like you barely acknowledge it.”
There wasn’t much more she could say. Give a conversation with either of the Palmers long enough, and it would eventually deteriorate into a laundry list of grievances. The only way out was to nod, say she was sorry, and promise to do better next time. While privately knowing there was no way she could.
Her mother dropped her off at the station where they exchanged a formulaic back-and-forth of I-love-you-toos, and then Rosaline tucked herself away in a seat on a second-class carriage and tried, for as long as she could, to think about nothing.
“Welcome back, my little Chelsea buns,” said Grace Forsythe. “I’m afraid this is the one you’ve been dreading because it’s the week you’ll be battling with bloomers, fighting with focaccia, wrestling with rolls, and if you’re very lucky, larking about with a loaf or two. That’s right, it’s bread week. And we’re throwing you immediately into our most challenging blind bake yet.”
A pause for reaction shots. Rosaline, at least, found it quite easy to look traumatised, mainly because she felt traumatised. She hadn’t been looking forward to bread week to begin with—she loved baking from scratch, but she really couldn’t justify spending six hours making something she could buy for ninety-five pence from Sainsbury’s—and being met at the gates by a harried technician who’d confiscated her luggage and her phone before rushing her into the ballroom for a surprise filming session had been the hell raisins in her batch of doom scones.
Wilfred Honey stepped forward. “What we’d like you to make this week is a traditional sourdough. And it’s extra specially important because it’s my mam’s recipe. We’ve given you all a little pot of starter that comes out of my own kitchen in Armley from a culture I’ve kept going continuously for forty years.”
Another round of reaction shots. Everyone else seemed to be doing a decent job of conveying how simultaneously intimidated and moved they were. But Rosaline’s face was as tired as the rest of her so most of her effort went into keeping her eyes open.
“Because this bread takes such a long time to rise,” Grace Forsythe continued, “you’ll be making your dough now and finishing your loaves tomorrow. You have one hour for this part of the challenge starting on three. Three, darlings.”
Normally this was everyone’s cue to start frantically baking, but this time the cameras stopped rolling and Jennifer Hallet materialised like the Wicked Witch of the West with further instructions. “Now we’ve got our bombshell shots for the next week on, here’s how this is actually going to work. So pay attention, you bucket of pigs’ cocks, because if any one of you fucks this up for me, I’ll come down on you so hard that Satan himself will take a break from roasting the arses of sinners in the fires of hell and say, Are you all right there, Jenny? I think you’re being a bit harsh.”
The rules, as it happened, were fairly straightforward. Because they were filming over two days, and it was supposed to be a blind challenge, they were effectively on blackout until the end of Saturday.
Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem—Rosaline tried to call home as much as she could, and when she couldn’t, she felt comfortable relying on Lauren to smooth things over with Amelie. But while she knew St. John and Cordelia Palmer wouldn’t let her have a massive freak-out, not that Amelie was really the freaking-out sort, they’d also see it as yet more evidence that Rosaline, having failed as a daughter, was now failing as a mother as well.
“Uh, Jennifer,” she said.
But Jennifer Hallet was already signalling to the camera operators. “Did any part of that suggest I was taking questions?”
It hadn’t, and she wasn’t, and they were filming.
And the clock was ticking
And oh God. The instructions literally just said “Make the dough.”
Rosaline was going home. She was definitely going home.
“I make this about once a week.” Josie’s voice floated cheerfully across the ballroom as Colin Thrimp and a camera wielder assembled at her station. “It’s actually one of the oldest leavened breads in the world.”
Come on, Rosaline. If your neolithic ancestors could do this, you can do this. Although, by that logic, she should also be able to make a flint arrowhead and shoot a mammoth with it.
Right. One thing at a time. Stop worrying about the phone. Wake the fuck up. Think this through.
They had an hour, which meant it had to be fairly straightforward and Rosaline knew dough usually needed to rest anywhere from fifteen to ninety minutes.
Half an hour? That seemed . . . right? Safe? And in-the-middle enough that even if it was wrong it couldn’t be too far wrong. But it did mean she had to start right the hell now.
She whisked water and a little oil into the starter, then gradually added the dry ingredients. The problem was, she couldn’t remember if this was a work-the-shit-out-of-it bread or a barely-touch-it bread. From the way Ricky’s arms were going—and wasn’t the internet going to love that—he’d definitely taken the work-the-shit-out-of-it route.
“What are you doing?” asked Colin Thrimp.
Rosaline looked at the ball of dough between her hands. “So this is a technical process that we bakers call squishing. I want to make sure the dough’s absorbed the flour. And after that, I’m probably going to leave it alone for a bit.”
Normally, at this point Rosaline would be fretting about her bake, but there wasn’t a huge amount to fret about yet—unless, of course, she’d fucked it up so hard and so immediately that when she came back tomorrow she’d find her dough, instead of rising, had rearranged itself into the words “you suck.” So, instead, she fretted about everything else.
About the aliens in the boiler.
About whatever the fuck was going on with the electricity.
About how she could probably afford to have one of those things fixed but not both.
About how whichever she chose it might not get fixed anyway, because the guy she hired to fix it would just stand there making concerned noises, tell her she needed someone else, and charge her for the privilege.
About how she should have spent more time getting her shit together and being a proper mum instead of throwing her every spare moment at a TV cooking show like she was having a midlife crisis at twenty-seven.