“So, um,” she said when she finally reached the front of the ballroom, “I’ve made a series of traditional family favourites reinterpreted with, um, booze. So there’s brown butter shortbread with Bailey’s—”
“Sorry.” Colin Thrimp darted briefly forward. “Can we have that without the brand name?”
Rosaline took a deep breath. “So I’ve got brown butter shortbread with an Irish crème liqueur, which is sort of my take on a custard cream. Then I’ve got black-currant jammy dodgers with raspberry liqueur. And, finally, cinnamon brandy snaps with triple sec Chantilly cream.”
Marianne Wolvercote pounced on a jammy dodger. “I do like that. I like that a lot.”
She seemed to have nothing further to add. Which Rosaline took as a good sign.
“I was a bit uncertain,” added Wilfred Honey, “because for me a biscuit should feel like home. Not like the pub. But actually you got the balance really nice. And the brandy snaps remind me of my mam.”
“Big drinker, was she?” asked Grace Forsythe.
Wilfred Honey twinkled. “Well, who don’t like a snifter of an evening?”
They both glanced at Marianne Wolvercote for comment, but she was too busy trying the shortbread.
Josie and Alain followed, Josie’s biscuity reimaginings of classic desserts, including a treacle toffee macaron and a key lime digestive, hadn’t quite worked but were praised for their ambition; and Alain, having preempted any possible concerns about his narrative, received good comments on his flavours and the quality of his bake. Finally, Harry came forward with his two and eleven-twelfths dozen childhood-memory-inspired biscuits.
“Mea culpa,” said Grace Forsythe, literally putting her hands up, “bit of a snafu. Someone, who shall remain nameless, but was me, may have inadvertently eaten one of Harry’s cookies.”
Wilfred Honey picked up one of the insufficiently numerate biscuits. “Well, we can’t hold you accountable for random acts of Forsythe, so what have we got here.”
“I thought I’d do”—Harry looked nervously from Wilfred to Marianne to Grace back to Wilfred—“one biscuit for each of my three sisters. So those are Toll House cookies ’cos my sister Ashley had a holiday in America and really liked ’em and now she eats ’em whenever she can. And those are party rings because Sam’s got kids so they always have party rings in the house left over from birthdays and stuff. And that one there’s a chocolate Hobnob—”
“Chocolate oat biscuit,” put in Colin Thrimp.
“It’s a bloody Hobnob, mate. Everyone knows it’s a Hobnob.”
“Because of the unique way the BBC is funded, we aren’t allowed to broadcast this unless you say oat biscuit.”
Clearly feeling either guilty or like she wanted to annoy the production company, Grace Forsythe offered, “What if I say, other oat biscuits are available?”
“And that one there,” said Harry, pointing, “is a chocolate . . . oat biscuit. Because my sister Heather is a nurse and that’s pretty much all she can eat on her breaks.”
Wilfred Honey gave one of his most grandfatherly smiles. “Well, I think your sisters can be very proud. Because these taste lovely.”
It wasn’t quite a “by ’eck,” but it was still pretty good.
“What impresses me,” added Marianne Wolvercote, “is that these are surprisingly refined, given their inspiration.”
Harry blinked. “You what?”
“The feathering on the party rings is actually rather neatly done. And your chocolate work is very precise.”
He returned to his stool, looking baffled but pleased.
Rosaline’s brain was in a bit of a whirl as they were herded outside for another round of interviews. For the first time since week one, she thought she might be in the running and that was dangerous. Emotionally, because she’d never been an “every setback is an opportunity” type of person. And practically, because she didn’t want to be all Yes, I’m amazing and have done amazing on national television, only to find out she was actually mediocre and had done mediocre. Yet again.
Back in the ballroom, they were once more gathered together like the suspects at the end of a Poirot, with Rosaline feeling about as anxious as if she’d murdered her great-aunt with a silver-plated poniard and now had a moustachioed Belgian descending upon her.
Harry nudged her with his elbow. “Reckon you got this, mate.”
“And now my little ginger nuts,” began Grace Forsythe, “it is time to lower the digestive of eternity into the coffee cup of fate. Which is to say, the results are in. And I am delighted to announce that our winner this week is someone whose nankhatai were nankhatastic, whose brandy had exactly the right amount of snap, and who, most importantly, got us all pleasantly tipsy. That’s right, it’s Rosaline.”
Rosaline had backed-and-forthed so many times on whether she’d nailed this week or fucked it that she was genuinely shocked.
There was the usual smattering of polite applause and then Grace Forsythe’s face fell. “Of course, it’s also my painful duty to reveal the baker whose cookie has sadly crumbled. And this week it’s Claudia. We’ll be sorry to see you go.”
Claudia was not a hugger but this was television, so she didn’t get much choice.
“The truth is,” she told the cameras afterwards, “I was feeling a little burned out on the career front when I signed up for this show. And I thought that since I love baking so much, I could take a left turn at forty. But I’ve discovered that a big part of the reason I love baking is that I can do it when I feel like it and not when I don’t. So . . . ah . . . I’m very much looking forward to going back to that and also back to work. Which I’ve remembered I also love.”
Rosaline had thought interviews were tricky when all you had to say was “Well, I think it could have gone better,” but they were way worse when you actually had something to talk about and needed to do it in a way that didn’t come across as either false modesty or smugness. “Really pleased,” she tried. “I . . . I’m just really pleased.”
“Aren’t you going to ring your daughter?” asked Colin Thrimp.
“Well, yes. On the way back.”
“Can we get it for the camera?”
She wasn’t sure how she felt about putting Amelie, even Amelie’s voice, into the public domain when she was too young to know what she was doing. But she was already on thin ice after insisting they let her call home mid-sourdough. Besides, she’d signed a bunch of waivers that meant the production company basically owned her life, so she pulled out her phone and called home.
“Fuck me,” cried Lauren immediately. “Your fucking child. She insisted on watching a single episode of Blue Planet on a loop for the past five hours. It’s the one about the spooky fish in the dark and the dead whale. I’m going to have fucking nightmares, Roz, fucking nightmares.”
Rosaline winced. “So you’re on-camera.”
“Oh, bollocks. Other programmes about squoogly fish are available.”
“I think it’s more the saying ‘fuck’ they’re likely to object to.”
“Yes,” put in Colin Thrimp, “if you could both stop saying fuck, that would be helpful.”