‘Oh God, an audition.’ She imagined standing on stage in front of the X Factor judges, juggling scones and singing ‘Pat-A-Cake’.
‘Relax, that’s probably not for months yet,’ Rachel said. ‘The deadline for applications isn’t even until March so they must be really keen to have you on the show if they’re saying yes already. And it’s just a phone call for now. You hardly need to swot up, do you? You make loads of delicious cakes. Any audition would be ages away. Won’t you think about it? It’s not like there’ll be any cameras there, just a few other bakers like yourself.’
‘How many others?’
‘Well I don’t know, do I? Ten or twenty, I guess? And you won’t have to bake in front of them. Look, it says here that you’ll bring two dishes for the judges to try. You get to bake them ahead of time. Sarah, think about it. You’re getting the chance to try out for The Great British Bake Off.’
She did think about it as they sipped their champagne. It wasn’t like she didn’t imagine her signature bakes when she watched the show every year. She did always wonder how she’d do against the others. She fantasised about Mary Berry saying she’d baked the best eclair she’d ever tasted.
But national telly! Could she really do that? Just the thought made her feel ill.
Still, at least there wouldn’t be a live audience. It was better than those talent shows.
Listen to her. She still had the phone call and the audition to get through.
Did that mean she was going to try?
‘I will too have to swot up,’ she finally said. ‘The interview won’t be easy. And then I’ll have to bake the best cakes of my life to have any chance.’
Rachel’s smile spread across her face. ‘You’ll do it?’
‘I guess I can try.’
At least she’d have something to wear to the audition.
Chapter Nineteen
Catherine
Catherine plastered her smile into place as Magda prattled on. Wedding wedding wedding, nothing but the wedding. And she was probably one of those people who complained that women didn’t like her. No prizes for guessing why.
‘Catherine? Did you hear me?’ Magda held two blue swatches under her nose. ‘You are off in fairyland. Which one do you prefer? For the napkins?’
There was virtually no difference between them. ‘Erm, that one. Magda, I’m sorry, but I’m a bit busy just now.’ With running a business and all. ‘Maybe we can talk about this later?’
‘Over lunch. Yes, good idea, let’s do that.’ Magda hurried away to her desk.
‘No, I meant …’ Never.
The woman seemed to have no qualms about bullying her fiancé’s first wife into making plans for his second wedding.
Five minutes later an email from Magda popped up. Subject: Agenda. Even her mealtimes were annoying.
But she wasn’t proposing to organise their starters, Catherine realised as she read Magda’s broken English.
[email protected] 11.48am (1 minute ago)
To: me
I want to talk these things please.
makeover
grow
plase settings
thank you
Magda continued her napkin commentary all the way to the restaurant but Catherine hardly heard her. She had her other agenda points to worry about.
It was one of those healthy restaurants where the menu items were all plays on words like Miso Hungry Soup and Absolutely Radishing Salad. Catherine hated it, but Magda was eating only macrobiotic now that she was pregnant.
‘So how is the makeover business going?’ she asked sweetly when they’d sat down.
Straight into agenda point one.
‘It’s fine.’ Catherine pushed the sprouts off her avocado and looked around for a salt shaker. Of course there weren’t any.
Magda waited for more, but Catherine had practically invented that tactic. She could eat her entire lunch in silence if she needed to.
Magda finally broke. ‘How many clients are you working with now?’
She couldn’t very well ignore a direct question. ‘Two.’
‘It’s not very many, I don’t think. When do you plan to increase?’
‘It’s a bespoke service, Magda. I haven’t got time to increase. Besides, not all of our clients need the makeover. They’re carefully chosen. And if you don’t mind me saying …’ She didn’t give a toss whether or not she minded. ‘You seem focussed on growth instead of the business itself. We didn’t get where we are today by running off in six different directions. I know how to run my business, thank you very much.’
Magda slowly finished chewing her food. Then she set her fork back on her plate. ‘But it isn’t your business now, is it, Catherine? It’s mine too, and if you do not mind, I will say what I think is right for it. I want to expand the makeovers. Maybe I should take on one or two clients as well.’
That wasn’t on the agenda! Catherine felt everything she’d worked for slipping from her grasp. All the late nights and weekends spent with her computer instead of her friends. Penny-pinching to afford the website upgrades and forgoing pay cheques to be able to hire another consultant. All for what? So some teenager with her ex-husband’s bollocks in a vice could swan in and do what she pleased. That was not going to happen.
But she couldn’t confront her directly. What little she knew about Magda told her that she’d fly off in in a fury, like some badly behaved child, if she didn’t think she was getting her way.
‘That’s very kind of you, Magda, and it would be a huge help, thanks. I have one client in mind who could really use your guidance. Would you take her on?’
Magda’s eyes shone. ‘I will be happy to! I am very busy with the wedding planning, as you know, but I no longer feel as sick, so I can start right away. Should I call her this afternoon?’
‘You definitely should,’ Catherine said, smiling into her tasteless raw salad.
A few minutes later, Magda patted her tummy. ‘Isn’t it hard to believe that Richard’s baby is in here?’
She wasn’t yet ready to let Catherine go.
‘Well where else would it be?’
Magda cocked her head. ‘Did you not ever want children with him?’
‘Haven’t you asked Richard about that?’ she murmured.
‘I did not want to pry into his past.’
Oh but you’ll dig straight into mine, she thought.
‘It’s just that you were together for nearly seven years. Usually people think about children after that time.’ Magda laughed. ‘Or sooner, in our case.’
‘Well, we bounced around between England and the US. And we were ridiculously young. Too young to be responsible for children.’
Magda could hardly miss the barb but she shrugged it off. ‘Well, now I know there were no physical problems, at least from Richard’s side. More water?’
Catherine wasn’t about to give Magda the satisfaction of an explanation. For whatever reason, she hadn’t asked Richard about his first marriage, so let her guess what happened. Her imagination was probably worse than the reality anyway, and obviously implicated Richard.
She smiled as Magda studied her.
‘What is that for?’ she demanded.
‘Oh I’m just thinking about when Richard and I were together.’
It was true. Not in the way Magda thought, but so what? Let her think another woman was imagining passionate sex with her fiancé.
The memory was actually much more mundane than that. They had been sitting together on their huge L-shaped sofa. It was an indulgence to buy it when they first moved to Washington and realised everything was bigger in America.
‘Catherine,’ he’d called from the opposite end of the sofa. ‘Do you realise we’ve colonised this thing?’
‘Have we?’ She’d glanced up from her book. ‘I guess we do each have our end.’
Richard had shifted to his knees and crawled along the seat cushions. He’d wriggled his body between hers and the sofa back. ‘I l
ike this better.’
‘It’s a bit crowded,’ she’d joked. Actually she felt a little thrill, as she always did on the rare occasions when he was the one being affectionate.
But he didn’t move away.
If they’d stayed crowded on that sofa she might not now be having lunch with Magda.
Catherine had to rush back to the office for her next appointment while Magda faffed around drinking some kind of thistle tea after lunch.
Her new client was already waiting in reception.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late, Alistair,’ she said, hardly faltering at his appearance.
‘Pleasure to meet you.’ He extended his hand.
‘Please, come through.’ She led him to her office and closed the door. ‘Would you like something to drink?’
He hesitated. ‘I suppose I could have a beer.’
‘Oh, I meant a hot drink. Or maybe a soft drink?’
‘Sorry!’ he said. ‘Stupid of me.’ His face reddened. At least the bits she could see.
He had the biggest, bushiest black beard she’d ever seen. Their initial phone conversation couldn’t have been more misleading. He’d sounded like your run-of-the-mill middle-class Englishman. In real life he looked like a tattoo artist had had a love child with Father Christmas. She mentally crossed him off Georgina’s list.
‘So, thank you for coming in today. We like to meet with our clients in person, to answer any questions they might have.’
‘And make sure they’re not total twats, probably,’ he said.
‘Well, yes, that too.’ She smiled. ‘As I explained on the phone, we choose our clients carefully. So we can be sure we’ll be able to provide the best service.’
‘I guess I don’t fit your usual profile.’
She considered his stocky build and the muscular inked arms sticking out from a rather tight Abercrombie-and-Fitch-type tee shirt. And that beard. ‘I think you’ll find that we look after a wide range of clients. Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself? Did you grow up near London?’
‘They’re not too far, in Epsom. It’s only forty minutes on the train.’ He barked a short laugh. ‘Everyone from the suburbs says that, don’t they? I don’t know how Dad did it for so many years. Just so we could have a nice house.’ He rubbed the colourful firebird tattoo on his forearm.
Catherine nodded. ‘My family was near Hemel Hempstead, so I know exactly what you mean. Even forty minutes adds two hours a day to the commute, by the time you factor in the journey to and from the station. It must have made for long days for your father, and not much time with you.’
‘Well I wouldn’t have seen him much anyway. I went away to school at twelve, when we moved.’
She resisted the urge to ask how he felt about that. It was important to get into the psyche of her clients, but she didn’t want to sound like a therapist.
‘Did you like school?’ she asked instead.
‘I loved it!’ He beamed. ‘The kids were really nice and not stuck-up at all. That’s what I worried about before I went. Well, aside from the buggery, of course.’
‘Of course,’ she said, smiling. ‘And was that an unfounded worry?’
‘Oh yeah. I had all the buggery I wanted.’
Catherine knew her face registered surprise.
He grinned. ‘Only joking. It was a co-ed school. My sister’s a year older and we both went. I think it’s good for boys to be around girls. We’re savages without them. Though God knows what the poor girls get out of it, having to deal with us spotty hormones on legs. My sister and I had to start a new school anyway when we moved and a lot of our friends in London were starting to go away. You want to do what your friends do.’ He shrugged. ‘Mum didn’t want us to go but she let us convince her. I’m glad she did. I liked the teachers there, and playing sport. I was mad about sport. Rugby and tennis,’ he said, anticipating Catherine’s question.
She couldn’t remember ever giving her full attention to a beard before. Virtually all the men she’d ever known were clean-shaven. When Alistair talked, the bottom half of his face moved a bit like a puppet’s, in a smooth up and down motion.
Her fingers flew over the keyboard as he talked about studying economics at uni and moving to London after.
‘And now I’m studying to become an accredited feng shui consultant.’
She nearly laughed in his face, until she realised he wasn’t taking the piss.
‘But I thought you worked in purchasing, Alistair?’
He’d definitely told her that on the phone.
‘Call me Alis. I did. I quit. I start the course next month.’
‘Alis? Is that what you go by?’
‘Yes, my full name is too poncy. Please call me Alis.’
‘That sounds like …’
‘What?’
‘It sounds like Alice.’
‘It’s my name.’
‘Well technically it’s your nickname. So … feng shui. That’s an unusual career move for someone who’s spent a decade in manufacturing. Is it something you’ve always wanted to do?’
Nothing in his background suggested this about-face. Had he been dying to wave joss sticks around when he was at his private boarding school, or at the back of his university economics lectures?
If he thought she was being cheeky he didn’t show it. ‘My reiki teacher introduced me to it.’
‘Reiki?’
‘It’s a way of healing a person’s life force energy.’
‘I know what it is.’ Mostly a load of old tosh, she thought. ‘Would you say your life is taking a new direction? I mean, when we talked on the phone you were the head of purchasing for Bravissimo and looking to buy a flat.’
Her clients usually split neatly into two camps: the ones with successful careers that left them no time to manage their own love lives, and the ones who spent most of their time, and a lot of their money, on the latest holistic miracle. Alis seemed to fall between stereotypes.
‘I’m still looking to buy a flat,’ he said. ‘I figure a few more rounds of bone marrow donations and I’ll have the deposit nailed. Listen, I’m getting some negative energy here. If you don’t want to take me on then that’s fine. I just thought I’d try your service because I want to meet someone and you’ve got a lot of good testimonials on your site.’
Catherine felt bad for knocking his voodoo aspirations. ‘I haven’t said I don’t want to take you on, Alis. I’m just trying to understand a bit about you so that I know whether we’ll have suitable dates on our books. I’m sorry if I sounded judgemental. I’m not. Judgemental, I mean. Tell me more about your course.’ She fixed her features in a suitably benign expression while he talked about chakras and nerve strokes.
By the end of their meeting Catherine knew Alis was as flaky as a puff pastry but also engaging and solvent enough to suit her list. She had a few women in mind already, mostly yoga devotees who wouldn’t mind all that talk about good chi.
Honestly, though, if people spent half as much time just getting on with their lives as they did trying to reroute their energy or channel their inner child, they’d be a lot better off.
As soon as Catherine ushered Alis out, Magda pounced.
‘Who was that?!’ Her disdain was palpable.
‘His name is Alis, and he may be a new client.’
‘Alice? As in Wonderland? You cannot be serious. He is not the kind of client we want.’
‘Don’t be so elitist, Magda. You can’t judge people by looks alone, you know. It’s insulting. I happen to think he’s a very nice person.’
‘He looks like a delivery person. He should be bringing us sandwiches, not dating our clients.’
Catherine bristled, despite having thought the same thing when she first saw him. ‘Well, he’s also my new client. I’m signing him. So I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself.’
He might be the most unsuitable client they’d ever have, but she was not about to let Magda get her way.
Chapter Twenty
Rachel
A text from Thomas pinged Rachel’s phone as she walked to the pub where they were meeting.
Snagged a table. Should I wait to get a beer? Does that make me sound like an alcoholic? I’m not an alcoholic.
That sounds defensive. Also not defensive.
How do you say that without sounding defensive? Tx
On my way! Get a beer. I won’t judge. xo
They’d talked a lot after their first date, at least by text if not on the phone. With each call or message, he got better looking. Now imaginary Thomas surpassed even his photographs. Maybe he wasn’t as plump as she remembered. And there was no denying that his Scottish accent was very sexy when he’d rung.
This time she chose the pub. All Bar One was fine for a first date but she wanted somewhere a bit more romantic, and dimly lit. She suggested The Dove, nearby in Hackney. Cosy, dripping with atmosphere and candle wax, it was perfect for the blustery January night.
As she walked she scrolled back through Thomas’s messages from earlier.
On the bus next to a man who looks like an over-grilled Simon Cowell. Should I ask him if I’ve got the X Factor? Tx
Take a pic. He’ll think he’s been papped. Did he bring his rotating chair on the bus?
That’s The Voice. Don’t you know your celeb TV? Tx
Sorry, I usually read.
Anyone on the bus w/X
Factor potential?
There’s a youth at the back singing with his earphones in. We may get auditions going before we reach my stop. Will let you know if he makes it through. Tx
Can I vote for him?
It’ll cost you 35p from your mobile and BT landlines. Calls from other landlines may vary. Voting closes at midnight. Tx
You really do watch too much TV. xo
And yesterday.
I can’t believe how expensive okra is. T
That’s random.
Did you mean to text me, Thomas? xo
Yeah but I don’t want to rush you … is it too soon for veg talk?
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