What Would Mary Berry Do?

by Claire Sandy

  ‘Our boy . . .’ said Robert.

  ‘And my girl . . .’ said Lucy.

  They blinked, struggling to join the dots.

  ‘I think,’ said Marie slowly, ‘we just watched two people falling in love.’

  It fell to Lucy to cut through the pink haze surrounding them all. ‘The show-stopper!’ she yelped. ‘We’re late!’

  Marie led the charge as her little clan fled the Design and Technology block, with Angus and Chloe, hand firmly in hand, joining them outside.

  ‘This way, Mum,’ shouted Angus, darting in front.

  ‘So, you . . .’ puffed Marie, hoping the show-stopper would emerge unscathed from this mercy dash, ‘. . . and Chloe . . .’ She wasn’t sure what to ask.

  ‘She’s my soulmate,’ he said over his shoulder. Just like that. Unembarrassed.

  ‘How did you know?’ giggled Chloe, who looked far too happy to be a goth.

  Heaving open the double doors of the hall, Angus gasped, ‘The girlfriend questionnaire.’ He held them open for the others, his lips to Chloe’s ear. ‘You only ever make one spelling mistake.’

  ‘You mean exciting?’

  ‘Yup. You always leave out the C.’ Angus let the door bang and they all trotted past the raffle and the bric-a-brac and the Guess the Weight of the PE Teacher. ‘I’ve never known anybody else do that, and it was the only typo Soulmate ever made in her emails. Suddenly everything made sense. Why I could never meet Soulmate. Why she encouraged me to give the crazy goth across the road a chance. Why I was secretly so drawn to the crazy goth across the road.’ He hung back from the others and bent his head to Chloe’s. ‘Why I thought you were so gorgeous.’

  ‘I would never have said a thing, you know,’ said Chloe, through his kiss.

  ‘I know. I was furious at first. You lied to me. All that time. But then I remembered. She’s complicated, dude.’ Angus kissed her again. Perhaps they would kiss forever.

  ‘But she’s good complicated.’

  There is a limit to how long a mother can witness her son snogging, so Marie was glad to see the sponges, the fruit breads, the Battenberg, the inevitable cupcakes, the plaited loaf, something odd covered with buttercream, and an empty stand awaiting the head honcho, the big cheese, the top banana.

  The show-stopper.

  ‘Come on!’ The Chair of the PSA – How can a person be a chair? thought Marie, amused – was gesticulating wildly, perpetually irritated with the ne’er-do-well parents she had to deal with. ‘You’re late!’ she shouted above the buzz of the browsing crowd.

  ‘I know.’ Marie was imperturbable. This was her moment. It would take more than a power-crazed mum of five in a sensible court shoe to rain on her parade.

  As she peeled off the brown packing tape, a small knot of people gathered. This was the high spot of the school calendar for St Ethelred’s baking fraternity, and last year’s epic fail had made Marie’s second chance the subject of controversy. A photographer was on hand, and beyond the tombola Mr Cassidy downed a miniature whisky.

  ‘Come on, Mum, the tension’s killing us,’ laughed Angus. He was beaming from ear to ear, like a Cheshire cat with popstar hair. His arm was clamped around Chloe as if she might blow away, and she in turn was superglued to his middle, arms wrapped around him, rucking up his white fancy-dress uniform.

  Iris nudged Chloe as their mother reached into the box. ‘Look at Lauren!’ They chuckled at the girl’s cartoonish dismay on the fringes of the crowd as she took in the school’s newest lovebirds, and Marie chided them with a ‘Don’t be mean’.

  ‘Mum,’ said Iris loftily, ‘you don’t know the half of it.’

  The air around Marie thickened as she lifted the show-stopper out of the box. She remembered this from last year: the pregnant feeling of an expectant gaggle, waiting to be wowed. The ghost of a gasp hung in the air, and then – just like last year – the gasp fell back on itself, mutating into a communal, perplexed Eh?

  ‘No, Mum . . .’ Angus’s mouth fell open.

  ‘Omigod,’ breathed Chloe.

  ‘Holy sh—’ began Robert, before Rose kicked him in the shin.

  ‘Ta-daa!’ sang Marie.

  The Chair of the PSA looked unhappy. Very unhappy. A-bird-shat-on-her-hat unhappy. ‘Mr Kipling French Fancies?’ she said slowly, disbelievingly.

  ‘Yes!’ Marie took out the four bright boxes with their unmistakable branding, the cheerful illustrations of the delights that lay within, the helpful analysis of each fancy’s calorie- and fat-content. ‘Good old Mr Kipling.’ She undid the first carton and slid out the inner packaging, its cellophane crackling, and arranged the neon yellow, pink and brown cakelets on the show-stopper glass stand. ‘Could you give me a hand, Lu?’

  ‘Um . . . sure.’ Lucy blinked away her expression of frozen stupefaction and manoeuvred the other boxes open. Together she and Marie made as appealing a display as they could.

  The number of onlookers had swelled. Word had spread that history was repeating itself at the cake stall.

  ‘I don’t get this,’ said Robert, looking from the colourful cubes to his wife and back again.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Iris. ‘But I don’t care, because I love French Fancies.’

  ‘Everybody loves French Fancies,’ said Marie.

  ‘For a woman who’s lost her mind,’ said Robert, ‘you seem remarkably relaxed.’

  ‘One last detail to take care of.’ Marie reached into her handbag and produced a small wooden rolling pin. She brought it down gently on the cakes a couple of times. ‘There,’ she said, before battering them a little more. ‘Perfect!’ She held out a punch-drunk, slightly squashed fancy to the Chair. ‘Try one.’

  ‘If I must.’ Her face a rigid mask of disapproval, the Chair bit into the cake. ‘Oh,’ she said, and what Marie thought of as ‘the Mary Berry Effect’ happened on her face. The lines softened, the furrows between her brows disappeared, the eyes grew wide and a dozen or so years dropped away. ‘It’s delicious!’ she breathed.

  Hands reached out. Fancies were scooped up and torn apart and shared out. Showering her mother with crumbs, Rose laughed. ‘You made these yourself, Mum!’

  ‘Yes, sweetie-pie, I did.’ Marie winked at her husband, enjoying his enjoyment. The horror-struck silence had segued into tee-hees and mmms.

  ‘They’re fabulous!’ Mr Cassidy managed, mid-devour.

  ‘I’ve never tasted anything so scrummy!’ said Lauren, proving that even the most hardened of characters can be reached by cake.

  ‘How . . .’ began Robert, leaning in.

  ‘I bought a whole load of the real thing,’ said Marie, guessing the question. ‘I carefully opened the boxes and I sliced open the cellophane and saved it all. Mary had a recipe, of course. I bought little white paper cases and then I laid out the fancies in the inner sleeve, glued the cellophane back together, put it all back in the outer box and stuck the flaps down.’

  ‘Why? You could have made a massive gateau-type thing. You could have made a bloody crocky-whatsit. You could have wiped the floor with the PSA.’

  ‘I didn’t need to.’ Marie peeled off some icing and popped it into his mouth, enjoying the contact of her fingers with his lips. ‘I don’t have to impress anybody. I know what I can do. I do it for you and the kids and my mates and . . . well, me. It’s a joy, not something I need to show off about.’ She endured Robert’s eye-roll and said, seriously, ‘I’ve come a long way this year, but it’s all in here.’ She touched where her heart must be beneath her T-shirt. ‘And here.’ She touched Robert’s chest, and he grabbed her hand.

  ‘So is it goodbye Mary?’ he whispered, staring at her mouth the way he did before he kissed it.

  ‘Absolutely n—’

  ‘Yuk!’ screamed Rose. ‘Get a room, you two!’

  Dear Marie Dunwoody,

  Thank you for your application to take part in THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF 2015. We are delighted to let you know that you have been selected to take part in a regional heat for the
Surrey area. Details are below.

  Congratulations!

  Yours sincerely,

  Eleanor Rackham

  First published in 2014 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2014 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

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  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-5351-8

  Copyright © Just Grand 2014

  The right of Claire Sandy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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