Chapter Thirty-Six

What the frick am I doing? It’s just a few days before Christmas, I still have no good present ideas for Pete (though Valium might still be effective as he continues to map out our rest-of-life-fund in Excel); I haven’t practised the cake for Rich’s wedding nearly enough and it’s a little under two weeks away – my snowmen are still either too much like lumpy doughballs or Halloween treats. Lyds still won’t return my calls and I miss her so much that I’m considering just turning up at Portobello Market and crying into her face until her resolve breaks. I’ve got all that on my plate and yet I’m currently holding an actual plate piled high with freshly made doughnuts, smiling into a camera, while megawatt lightbulbs try and boil the top layer of my skin off my face. And Joe is right next to me, a cheeky grin plastered over his chops and his beer bread grasped in one strong hand.

I’m sure the runner said that this first session would involve no filming. I’m pretty sure I asked her that five million times. It was just going to be an informal chat with producers, where I’d outline my favourite recipe, answer a few questions.

Joe and I had met up for a coffee before we nervously made our way up to the production office in Islington on this last Saturday before Christmas. We eventually shuffled in the line through double doors that opened up into a busy open-plan office, not unlike Crumbs but – I can hardly believe I’m saying this – MORE cake. They had an actual croquembouche tower. I had an emotional reaction to the very sight of it. A small, confident, competitive voice in my head said You could master that by New Year’s Eve. Think how impressive it would look at the wedding! But then a weedy little voice piped up: Is that a studio set up over there? And I spied the tiny but complete studio set up in the corner of this massive office: a kitchen counter, two huge cameras that looked like Daleks swivelling about on wheels, a sink with no plumbing and a super sexy oven built into the back wall.

Joe and I had stood in the queue to be checked off a list, giggling like kids on a school trip to the Going Live! studios.

‘I could be the new Tim Lovejoy, you know,’ he said. ‘I could deal with mucking about in a kitchen and then sitting on a sofa every weekend. That’s pretty much my Sunday anyway, but now I’ll have cameras on me and get tonnes of money for doing it. And probably interview The Saturdays every now and again. Sweet.’

‘I used to feel sorry for the northern chef bloke who does all the cooking on that show. Tim just comes in and breaks an egg to look involved, when it’s the chef that’s planned three separate dishes. Then he released a cookbook called Men Love Pies, Women Like Hummus and I thought he was a bit of a prick.’

‘Ha ha!’ Joe nudged my shoulder just as the woman I vaguely recognised as Zoe speed-walked past. She stopped dead in her tracks when she caught my eye.

‘Hey!’ she beamed and then beamed even harder when she took in Joe. ‘Ellie, isn’t it? I thought I recognised you, though not looking quite so peaky today, I’m glad to see. And this is?’

She looked up at Joe, who was frowning at me in confusion, so I bolted out a sentence to avoid the most cringey explanation of my life. ‘This is Joe. Joe, this is Zoe who works on the show.’

‘Did you two come together?’

‘Yes, we met in a baking class, actually,’ Joe starts, but Zoe cuts him off by seizing his wrist.

‘Perfect! Do you know what? I’m going to be a bit cheeky and get you in front of Simon and Priya first. I think they’re going to love that you …’ She’s looking at all six foot two of Joe, his muscular frame and cheekily twinkling eyes, and dodging the pheromones jumbling up her brain to find the right words, ‘… you go to a baking class. You’re obviously experts!’

And so she took us off to see Simon and Priya, the head producers, and it was all very friendly and sociable, talking about quiche fillings and vanilla extract, while the others in the queue hated us intensely. So when Simon, a perfect media type in huge Perspex glasses and grey cardigan, leant forward and said conspiratorially, ‘Shall we just do a little screen test?’ I somehow forgot that I absolutely DID NOT want to be filmed today. I hadn’t had time to talk to Pete about going on telly – the right moment had never popped up, with all the wedding plans and office Christmas dos and him still wanting to tell Spencer to shove his gross margins up his bum. Besides, I didn’t have my best Shu Uemura foundation on, and there was no helpful make-up artist hanging around with a giant puffy brush, like there always is in films.

But Simon’s confident manner and his artfully swooshy hair just felt so persuasive in the moment. And Joe had pretty much sprinted into the spotlight in the little fake kitchen, so I could hardly wee all over his parade and say no. I could always give it a go and change my mind, I told myself. I could tear up the release papers like a particularly bad episode of Dallas where a secret uncle sets fire to the seventeenth set of drilling licences. I was an adult: I wouldn’t be pushed along.

But I have been pushed along. I’ve just made a batch of doughnuts in front of the cameras and the production team, using their new deep-fat-fryer and their sink with just a bucket under the plughole. I can pretty much recount the recipe off the top of my head in the way other people know the order of the planets (and my, how that nerdy knowledge must come in useful for them) as it’s Pete’s favourite that I make for his birthday, each and every year. In fact, I told Priya how they’re more romantic than they look, doughnuts: hefty and calorific, yes, but made with care, time and affection they are irresistible. All that faffing: a real sign of true love. She smiled as Joe rolled his eyes in mock-derision.

They had a larder that was like a baker’s wet dream: every kind of flour, five different jams, vanilla pods and even one of those super sexy American mixers with the big balloon whisk attachment. Heaven. I think it was the balloon whisk that finally broke my right mind away from the rest of my being. Because all of a sudden it became very easy, like I’d been doing it for years: narrating my actions out loud (those imaginary Saturday Morning Kitchen sessions with James Martin at home really paid off), tipping my bowl up a little to the camera so they could see the doughnut batter more easily, quipping that Joe could keep his hands to himself, thank you, when he dipped a finger into the jam pot. He was hanging about just out of shot, waiting his turn, but his cheekiness barged its way in and Priya said why not let him in on the shot, as we were here together. I actually felt more comfortable with him just there: it was like being back in Mr Berry’s class.

And now we’re posing like a couple of idiots with our bakes in front of us, having a test shot taken (‘Wasn’t the last hour enough of a test!’ I want to cry) and I realise it’s nearly 6 p.m. and I’ll never have time to get to the shops and trawl about for Pete’s perfect present, whatever that is. Shit. At least I’ve been working away like a secret squirrel on Lydia’s. She will have to warm up her cold shoulder when she gets it, I’m sure.

As the cameraman stops papping us with his ridiculously proportioned lens, I put the plate down and stretch out my cheek muscles.

‘It’s wrong to smile this much.’

‘Yeuch. I’m with you.’ Joe rubs his hands along his jawline, then presses his fingers into his face.

‘Guys, that was all great. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of you.’ Simon actually winks before he walks away. I feel like I’m in the first few scenes of Fame.

‘Shit,’ Joe says through clenched teeth, in a squeaky tone. ‘This is actually happening, then. Christ. Time for a pint of Dutch courage, Ellie? Or something to eat?’

‘Sorry, got to try and leg it to John Lewis before it closes, you know how it is.’ And when I look at him, I realise he doesn’t.

‘Seriously? You’re choosing John Lewis over me?’

Well, put like that, it did sound like I was being a bit rude. And I had time for just one, probably. A quick one.

Everywhere was so busy we actually nipped into a Carluccio’s for a glass of festive red.

Joe was telling me about going home to his mum’s for Christmas, what he’d bought cute little Grace and asking if I was busy over New Year.

A stone lands in my stomach as I think about the wedding cake. Will it be good enough? I might not be making it on telly, but the audience is even more important than millions of licence-fee payers. I cannot let Skye down, and God knows Pete’s family don’t need more evidence that I’m deficient.

‘Yes, loads going on actually. God, this year has gone fast, hasn’t it?’ I can feel the blood pump through my ears as worry speeds up my heart. ‘And next year we might be on TV. That sounds weird to say out loud, doesn’t it?’

Joe just shakes his head. ‘Life is random.’ His chocolate eyes find mine. ‘But sometimes random stuff turns out to be great. Another glass for you?’

My watch says it’s 7.45 p.m. No way. How can that be? Holy Moses, I’m not going to have anything for Pete. ‘Eeeep, no thanks. I’ve really got to go this time. But I suppose I’ll see you at the next round, seeing as classes are over for the hols. If you were Hannah, I’d say text me and tell me what you’re going to wear, so I can tell if I’m on the right track, but I don’t suppose it really matters in this situation, does it?’

He puts his head to one side, looking down on me with those very dark eyes. ‘I’ll be happy to tell you what I’m wearing, Ells, day or night.’ I swear he made that filthier than it ever needed to be, just to watch me go puce and stumble off into the night a blushing wreck.

I make it to John Lewis just as they are locking the doors. A thin salesman shakes his head sadly at me; sad perhaps for the poor soul who was expecting me to successfully buy them something. And now all the shops are shut. Being uncharacteristically crap with my present buying is weighing down on my conscious: as I half-jog to the Tube, I have that tight, heavy feeling of guilt on my chest.