Bella's Christmas Bake Off (18 page)

I gazed at Mary’s huge portrait on the wall. I doubt her life was quite such a circus.

I wondered if Peter had, by now, crept back to the master bedroom, declared undying love and they were now having rampant make-up sex, while I sat on the bed with a Mary Berry Cookbook and a gender-confused cat called Keith.

D
espite being desperately tired
I lay awake for ages intrigued by everything I’d overheard. None of it made sense. Had Bella put the show first and Peter was now feeling neglected? That would be terrible for her – he was such a handsome, successful guy, the first hint of a crack in their marriage and women would be forming a queue for a shot at the Silver Fox.

It must have been about two a.m. when I heard it... the hissed conversation, the raised voices again.

It seemed Bella and the Silver Fox were resuming their earlier argument, so I carefully got out of bed and opened my door slightly. I loitered in the doorway a while praying Fliss wasn’t on the prowl, but things seemed to have quietened down. I was just about to close the door when I saw the Silver Fox sweeping down the stairs, past the huge Christmas tree and outside, slamming the front door as he went.

Where the hell was he off to? I hung around trying to listen, and after about a minute I heard Bella sobbing. It looked like they’d had a real humdinger this time – especially as he’d rejected the silky seduction of Nigella and walked out. It made me think about my own marriage and the terrible rows that gave me hangovers the next morning. Neil and I hadn’t been happy for a long time, and it was only since he’d gone I realised how peaceful life could be at home.

Knowing just how she felt and falling into my old mode of best friend I had to comfort Bella, so I knocked on her bedroom door and asked if she was okay. After a little while she appeared in the doorway, wig askew, her face wet with tears.

‘I heard you crying,’ I started.

‘Amy, I’m so sorry, did we wake you?’

‘No, no, I was just passing... I was just going to the toilet...’ I lied.

‘But you have an ensuite...is that not something you’re used to? Would you like a bucket?’ she said and started to laugh.

I rolled my eyes. ‘Okay, I heard noises coming from your room and heard you crying.’

‘Ahhh thank you,’ she seemed touched at my concern. ‘Yes well, the old Silver Fox can be a little... vigorous in the bedroom,’ she laughed and looked at me, standing there a crumpled mess, none of the designer clothes and grooming that made her what she was – or what she seemed.

‘You’re not okay are you, Bella?’ I asked gently.

She shook her head like a little girl about to burst into tears and I reached out my arms to hug her while she sobbed on my shoulder. After a while she composed herself and, pulling her dressing gown around her, I saw that old twinkle in her eye.

‘Sod them all,’ she smiled. ‘I need a drink – fancy one?’ She was beginning to walk down the stairs regardless of whether or not I was going, so I followed her down and into the kitchen where Crimson was perched on a stool.

‘It’s the middle of the night, shouldn’t you be in bed, my darling?’ Bella smiled.

‘Shouldn’t you?’

Bella ignored this and opened up her huge fridge, which seemed bigger than my car. It contained only a couple of bottles of wine and champagne and what looked like a platter of cheese - it was a beautiful showpiece, just like Bella. She opened a bottle of cold white wine and poured it into two Christmassy glasses decorated with hand-painted holly.

‘Drink?’ she asked Crimson.

‘No thanks, one of us has to be sober in the morning.’

Bella smiled and pulled a face like we were the teenagers and Crimson our mother.

‘Fancy a bit of Stinking Bishop, Amy?’ Bella asked.

‘Oh God is that some kind of middle-aged sex thing?’ Crimson piped up from under her hair before I could speak.

‘No, it’s a washed rind cheese,’ Bella said, like Crimson had made a genuine enquiry.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Crimson huffed, picking up her iPhone and leaving the room. Bella called goodnight and turned to face me; ‘I will do it,’ she sighed, ‘the homeless thingy. I don’t want to and I worry my viewers will want glitz and glamour instead of filth and Fair Isle jumpers – but I’ll do it. Tim recced the place last week and says it’s ‘tragic,’ but then – he would.’

‘It is pretty tragic really,’ I said, ‘even Tim isn’t over-dramatising when he says that.’

Bella pushed a domed lidded cheese plate towards me and I lifted the lid.

‘I wouldn’t normally dream of eating cheese in the middle of the night,’ I said, ‘but this looks beautiful.’ There were several wedges of fabulous cheese, vine-leaf covered, rich blue-veined and soft, salty goat’s, with little glass pots of chutney and a scattering of figs and nuts. It was Christmas on a plate for me and I pulled up a stool, took the glass of wine from Bella and tucked in.

‘Yes, this time of year I always have a winterscape of cheeses made up for Peter when he gets home from a war zone,’ she smiled.

‘How lovely for him. No wonder Neil left me, he was lucky if I left a lump of stale cheddar in the fridge when he came home from work,’ I laughed.

I thought I saw a hint of sadness in her eyes as she looked at me; ‘what happened... with you and Neil? I remember you writing to me just after you were married, you both seemed so happy.’

‘Aren’t most people happy just after they get married?’ I smiled. ‘It’s all new and wonderful and everything they say is magical and amazing, but wind on a few years and the stuff you thought was magical is boring and ridiculous and they make loud chewing noises over romantic dinner a deux and say crass things in front of your friends. And then they run off with a pole-dancing legal assistant, leaving you high and dry at Christmas. Well, she’s welcome to him.’

‘Oh, how I envy you,’ she sighed.

‘You envy me? I just told you about my unhappy marriage and how he is now wrapped round a pole with another woman... there’s nothing to envy, Bella.’

‘Even after what you just told me, it sounds like you had more of a marriage than I ever have.’

We both sipped our wine in silence.

‘I can see you and Peter are going through a rough patch,’ I said, wondering if the baby mentioned in the birth card was anything to do with their current disharmony. Did Peter refuse to accept the child into their lives? Had Bella had the child adopted? Had I got it completely wrong and the ‘congratulations on your baby’ card was something quite different, Bella had gone ahead with the termination and there was no baby. I was desperately trying to think of a way of bringing this up, but how could I without alerting Bella to the fact that I’d been snooping in her stuff?

‘I used to think, just give me a long weekend with Peter, and everything will be fine,’ she was saying. ‘But I know now I was fooling myself. I’ll never change him.’ She suddenly seemed very serious and near to tears.

Looking at the sadness in her eyes, I decided it was time to stop eating my way through the winter landscape of cheese – Bella was trying to tell me something.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, Fliss says I shouldn’t tell anyone, no one can be trusted, she says...’ she broke off and looked at me as if she’d been caught, as if Fliss were there keeping her in check.

I didn’t want to push her, but at the same time I could tell she wanted to talk, she just needed reassurance. ‘Bella, you can trust me, I know at first I virtually threatened to go to the papers about Mum’s recipes, but I wouldn’t have. Let’s face it, I’ve carried your biggest secret around for years, I’m your oldest friend...’

‘Yes, I know and I do trust you. I’d almost forgotten what friendship was like until you came here, the past twenty-four hours have reminded me what it’s like to have someone of your own. I know we argue, we always did – but I always knew you were there, objective, sometimes annoying – but always on my side. I need that girl now Ames... that confidante, someone I can trust and who can give me advice, I’ve got people like Fliss and Tim, but I need someone who isn’t on the bloody payroll.’

‘I’m here – talk to me. I feel like I let you down all those years ago, let me make it up to you.’

‘We’ve kept it all quiet for so long and Fliss has worked so hard to keep everything out of the papers, I shouldn’t talk about it...’

‘But it’s not healthy to live like this. I know as a celebrity you have to be discreet and you might not want to share all your personal business with the world, but it seems to me you’ve created your own world and it’s not real. Dovecote is like the Bella theme park, it seems so magical but in reality it’s fake and full of secrets... perhaps talking about stuff to someone you can trust will help? I don’t want you to tell me anything you’re not comfortable with, but like I said, I’m here and I want to help.’

She nodded but didn’t say anything and I presumed she’d clammed up again, she was so used to keeping everything locked up inside it must have been hard to let it all go. I couldn’t imagine having to cope with all of my problems alone, no one to talk to or confide in, and all the while pretending that everything was perfect. I finished my wine and was about to change the subject when she suddenly started talking.

‘When I first met Peter I fell completely in love. I thought if I loved him enough he’d love me back.’

‘But he’s so attentive, so adoring, surely he still does?’

She shook her head. ‘He left me years ago – he lives with his lover, Sacha.’

‘Oh Bella, I’m sorry, I had no idea, I thought you were happy... had the perfect marriage. I thought he lived with you here.’

‘That’s what everyone’s supposed to think, we’ve kept it a secret all these years because it could ruin both of us if it got out.’

‘That must be hard, sharing your husband with another woman,’ I started.

‘Sacha isn’t a woman,’ Bella said, gulping a large glug of wine without taking her eyes off me.

‘What? I don’t understand...’

‘Sacha’s a man. And the reason we’re arguing so much is that he’s fed up of waiting in the wings... he wants Peter to marry him.’

‘Oh...oh...’ I didn’t know what to say. I was shocked to the core. ‘You’re telling me Peter – the Silver Fox – is gay?’ I had to have it spelt out to me I was so amazed I wanted to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood what she was saying.

‘Yes.’

‘But he was here, he looked into your eyes in the kitchen and I watched him nuzzle your neck. Only last week he said on TV you were the sexiest woman in the world...’

‘Yes, he’s a good actor. He tries, God bless him he even tried in the bedroom when we were younger. He closed his eyes, lay back and thought of war zones and there was the odd uprising when I felt we might be able to find some common ground. But then he went to Iraq to cover the insurgency and found Sacha. They spend their time between their place in London and Sacha’s home in Paris – which is difficult, but what can I do?’

‘Divorce him?’

‘It isn’t as simple as that. I always knew the score, it was a “showbiz marriage”. Peter was young, handsome, up-and-coming, but in 1990 being gay wouldn’t help his image, especially as there was frenzied talk of him having his own current affairs programme. Coming out would just shift the emphasis from intellectual hunk to intellectual gay man and twenty years ago that wasn’t to everyone’s taste.’

Peter and I were both clients of hers so in Fliss’s inimitable words she “killed two birds with one stone” – and booked a wedding. Gay men weren’t the stuff of TV as they are now. Hell, these days it’s all about the dysfunctional family reality shows where Dad is expected to have a sex change while Mum takes a toy-boy. It was all so different back then, wasn’t it? So we set off for the registry office to hide the gay macho correspondent and his new kitchen goddess under a veil of white tulle and a five-foot croquembouche.’

‘Wow... I remember the beautiful wedding photos. Peter was such a big name back then, no-one had a clue. When you married him I remember thinking how well you’d done... not that you didn’t deserve...’

‘It’s okay Ames,’ she smiled; ‘You’re right, Peter was quite the high-profile celeb and in marrying him my own star rose dramatically, our marriage opened doors for me. And in the years since we’ve become the quintessential English couple with our Sunday supplement lifestyle and spreads in celebrity magazines. You have to hand it to Fliss, she engineered the whole thing brilliantly.’

‘So Peter has his... lover. What about you?’

‘Nada. I have been set up as the perfect woman married to a very physical man and even if another guy was interested in me he’d either be too scared of me or even more scared of my big butch husband. Besides, I can’t get close to anyone because if the press got hold of anything...’

‘But you share a bedroom... don’t you?’

She shook her head. ‘No, sometimes I’d beg him to come to my bed and keep me warm, and once or twice he obliged, but nothing really happened. The tragedy is that despite it being a relationship for show I couldn’t help falling for him, just a little bit - Peter is my perfect man – so handsome, fun, charming and caring. I used to hear him on the telephone to Sacha in the other room, the soft tone of his voice, the way his eyes would soften when he spoke about him and I would cry myself to sleep.’

‘I can’t believe it... you two are just so good together. Peter seems like the perfect husband.’

‘Yes he is – for Sacha, and for the cameras, but there’s only so much you can fake when you’re married to the wrong gender.’

It hit me again just how much she’d suffered just to keep her secrets safe. To live a lie like that for so many years must have been horrific and not worth the fame, adoration, or any of the wonderful things she owned, even Dovecote.

‘I know I live in a different world, but I can’t believe you went through with a fake marriage.’

‘It seems stupid and superficial now, but if I’m honest I believed we could live that life and everything would fall into place. I stupidly thought I might be able to change him, of course I didn’t... I couldn’t love enough for both of us.’

‘Have you ever been in love with anyone else?’