Bella's Christmas Bake Off (9 page)

T
hat evening
after I’d eaten supper I looked outside the kitchen window and through the darkness was a light sprinkling of snow. I held my mug of tea and wondered what the next few days would bring.

I was still looking out onto our tiny lawn when Fiona called my mobile; ‘I rang because I’m really excited for you, but I’m worried too, Mum. I hope you get there safely in the morning, before the snow sets in,’ she’d said.

‘A professional driver’s taking me, I’ll be fine.’

‘Has the snow made you sad, Mum?’ she asked, which was probably the real reason for her call.

‘Yes, I’m a bit sad, sweetie, but I’m fine.’ The snow always made me sad, because it reminded me of the worst day of my life.

I’d been fifteen when my auntie had woken me on a cold, December morning to tell me it was snowing... and that my mum had died. I’d never imagined this in my worst nightmares, despite Mum being ill for some time, and at first I refused to believe it.

‘No, not before Christmas, she wouldn’t,’ I kept saying, refusing to let any more information in. It was Mum’s favourite time of year, and despite it always being about hard work and financial worry, she’d be as excited as us kids on Christmas day.

My life changed forever the day Mum died and our home was never the same again. It seemed to hold onto the cold of that desolate wintry December morning and I felt as though I would never be warm again.

I thought about that first Christmas without Mum later as I watched a recording of Bella decorating her own tree at Dovecote. She was threatening to make us all feel very unworthy as she stood by the huge piney fronds threatening to ‘glitter every single one,’ later in the show.

I was settling down to watch when Sylvia popped round with a bottle of Baileys and some jewellery she’d offered to lend me. She said the prospect of seeing one of her necklaces on TV was just ‘orgasmic’... a very Bella word.

‘You’ve been watching too much Bella already,’ I smiled offering her a seat at the kitchen table.

‘Yes, I love her – and I always have to watch ‘Bella’s Christmas Bake Off’ with a Baileys at Christmas,’ she said, plonking the bottle on the table and emptying out a million years’ of baubles and bangles.

I took two small glasses out of the cupboard and turned the volume down on the TV.

‘You practising your Christmas with Bella?’ Sylvia asked, pointing to the TV.

‘Yeah,’ I smiled, ‘like I need to glitter every branch of my Christmas tree – I ripped it down when Neil left.’

‘Ah really? He’s ended your marriage, don’t let him take Christmas from you too, love,’ she sighed.

‘You’re right, but I don’t have the energy to reclaim Christmas tonight,’ I said.

‘Oh forget about him, just look forward to tomorrow when you’re stood with Bella Bradley telling us how to create Christmas Charlotte Russe,’ she laughed, squeezing my arm excitedly. My stomach dipped, I was so nervous, I knocked back the Baileys in one – it was warming and creamy and delicious and tasted of Christmas.

I’d drunk Baileys last Christmas with Neil – now just thinking about him sucked away all my Christmas spirit. He had rung me earlier and I’d told him all about my trip to Dovecote and that I’d be on Bella’s programme.

‘You?’ he said, like he didn’t believe it.

‘Yes, why are you saying it like that?’

‘Well, you’re... you’re no Bella Bradley are you, I mean she’s gorgeous?’

That stung. ‘I’m not trying to be her – and it has nothing to do with looks, I’ve just won the prize to cook with her and then she’s coming to cook for the hostel on Christmas Day.’

‘When is it being filmed – at the hostel?’

‘Christmas Day... I just told you.’ He never listened.

‘Oh... it’s just that I thought I’d come home for Christmas Dinner and see the kids and...’

‘Well they aren’t here – and neither am I.’

‘But what will I do?’ he said in all seriousness.

‘I don’t know, Neil. Maybe you could help Jayne grease her pole?’

I slammed the phone down, too enraged to talk.

‘I’m worried what I’ll look like on TV,’ I said to Sylvia as we pored over her ‘statement jewellery’ and shared the Baileys. ‘Neil said Bella’s gorgeous and it made me think about how I...’

‘Stop that right now,’ she said, wagging her finger at me.

‘You’re an attractive woman, Amy, and don’t worry, you can hold your own against Bella Bradley anytime. What would Neil know – he lost his taste in women the day he left you.’

I glanced up at the TV screen, the Silver Fox was now massaging oil into Bella’s baking tins; it was quite distracting. At least Bella had finally found her Mr Right – but then she always landed on her feet.

‘Neil is a dickhead – if you want to know, I never liked him,’ Sylvia was saying as she poured us both another couple of drinks. I’d told her ‘no thanks’ after the last one, but Sylvia was on a roll. Was this the second or third glass? – I wasn’t sure but I had a very early start and could hardly turn up on national TV half-baked. Generation YouTube already had me down as a homeless drunk.

Sylvia had been through a nasty divorce herself, but always stayed cheerful, helped others, and when it wasn’t the homeless or some kid at school she’d identified as neglected, she was helping me. Just thinking about all the support and kindness she’d given me recently made me reach out and hug her.

‘What’s that for?’ she said, hugging me back.

‘Thanks for helping me through all this - I’m so grateful to have you in my life,’ I said. After everything that had happened with Bella I had been wary of making friends, becoming too close. But since meeting her several years before, Sylvia had restored my faith in friendship, she was uncomplicated and selfless and I loved her for it.

She was half watching Bella on TV and smiling. ‘Funny to think you’ll be there tomorrow, actually at Dovecote... in her gorgeous kitchen. Everyone at school’s recording it, I can’t wait.’

‘Yeah... it’s exciting,’ I said. ‘Nerve-wracking, but exciting.’

‘Look at her, she won’t be rushing round Debenhams at ten to five on Christmas Eve, will she? I bet she has everything delivered and wrapped and she just “does” Christmas,’ Sylvia sighed as she gazed longingly at Bella on screen.

We both sat watching Bella ‘sparkle’ a tree branch, lost in our own thoughts.

‘Bloody hell, I wish I had the time to add glitter to individual branches,’ Sylvia laughed.

I nodded; ‘Christmas is stressful enough without having to do that. While she’s glittering fronds, the rest of us are cleaning the house, out shopping and worrying if we’ve got enough money for everything.’

‘And drinking Baileys,’ she laughed, holding up her glass before becoming more serious. ‘Amy, don’t let Bella’s life get to you while you’re there,’ she said. ‘Money, beauty, a handsome husband, a mansion and a successful TV career isn’t everything.’

We both laughed and she poured us another Baileys... though I couldn’t remember finishing the last one.

T
he following morning
I woke and for a few seconds my mind was blank. Then I remembered what was happening that day and I almost threw up with nerves and a slight hangover. I looked around my room at the dated floral wallpaper, the old bedside tables Neil and I had bought together years ago – and thought perhaps it might be time for me to move house after all.

At the age of forty I’d be starting a new life on my own, which was scary, but exciting too. Why couldn’t I have just a little bit of happiness, like Bella? Why did my life always have to be dull? I put on my old dressing gown, absently thinking that too needed to be replaced.

I’d bought a lovely below the knee brown skirt, an autumnal blouse and a long cardigan for the first day’s filming. I’d spent money I didn’t have but I was going on national TV and I’d worry about that when my credit card payment arrived in January.

I dressed quickly, made a cup of tea and breakfasted on Christmas cake. Tasting the moist fruitcake and nutty, buttery marzipan made me feel quite Christmassy, but the house showed no sign of the season. I thought about the decked halls and holly boughs that would greet me at Dovecote and what Sylvia had said the previous evening about not letting Neil take away my Christmas. I checked my watch; the driver was due in half an hour and I was ready, so I quickly ran upstairs and dragged out the Christmas tree I’d taken down days earlier. I grabbed a bag of baubles and put the tree back up in the living room, adding a few ornaments, but this time leaving any ‘Neil related’ ones in the bag. Then I poured myself a glass of sherry – yes it was early, but I needed it for my nerves – and it was almost Christmas. Sitting by the tree drinking the sherry renewed my faith in the season, and that morning as the snowflakes drifted slowly past the window I felt a little bit excited about Christmas. This was going to be a very different Christmas than the one I’d been expecting – and perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing after all?

T
he car collected
me as arranged with a lovely driver called Frank and we set off to travel the twenty-odd miles to Bella’s country retreat in the Cotswolds. I knew from the glossy photos and breathless descriptions I’d read in magazines that Bella lived just outside Broadway, described as ‘The jewel of the Cotswolds, a little village nestling beneath the Worcestershire hills’. I sometimes took the kids for daytrips in the summer when they were little, and just coming back here where nothing had changed made me feel safe. I loved the cosiness of the past and could feel my nerves calming slightly as we drove down the country roads we’d travelled as a young family.

I missed those days with the kids – being parents to twins had been total madness – everything happening at once – and in double doses. From first steps to first schooldays to first loves – to university, everything was in twos. Since their birth our lives had been transformed from calm to chaos and only in the past year when they both went off to uni had the calm descended again. Funny how you can get to love chaos though – I’d once complained of the noise of loud music and constant arguing, but now I had a whole house to read a book in and it felt empty. Be careful what you wish for, I thought, feeling as if everyone had gone to a great party and left me behind. Perhaps now, with Neil gone, it was time to find my own party?

I wound down the window and despite the freezing cold took huge gulps of country air, calming my nerves and filling my lungs with a tingly chill. The child in me was excited to see the snow really begin to come down – it made me sad because of Mum, but at the same time she loved this time of year and I had to stop seeing snow as a reminder of something bad. I smiled thinking of mum’s joy when she’d look out of the window and shout, ‘It’s snowing, kids!’ Neil’s leaving meant there were going to be great changes ahead for me – but in order to make the most of my future I had to allow myself to enjoy any drop of snow or happiness that came my way. I was determined to try and shake free the guilt and sadness of the past – at least for Christmas.

I gazed out of the open car window at huge, twirling snowdrops now falling heavily from the whitest skies, slowly turning the golden Cotswold stone to sparkly white. The buildings were a lovely cliché of a Christmas shortbread tin – the kind you can never throw away even when it’s empty. It was like a film set of Dickensian England, with tumbledown tea rooms and gift shops selling stuff you will never need but can’t resist buying just because you’re there. I spotted a lovely deli and imagined Bella shopping there for artisan breads and Italian olives, before popping into the gorgeous little tea rooms for hot Earl Grey and designer scones. We swept past the fabulously expensive interiors shop at the end of the high street and I just knew Bella would have an account there. It housed some of the most beautiful but expensive stuff I’d ever seen – a cushion cost as much as one of our sofas – I bet those cushions were scattered everywhere at Dovecote. Oh yes, this place was unreal, beautiful, and from what I’d seen of her on the telly over the years it was very, very Bella.

‘Looks like this snow’s going to stick,’ Frank the driver predicted from his front seat and I nodded. I wasn’t sure what to say, how to address him – I’d never been chauffeur-driven before and I felt quite uncomfortable. I suppose it was something Bella was used to, she must be driven everywhere. There you go again, I thought – I had to move on, stop comparing our lives and just enjoy the ride – literally. It was nice being able to sit back and enjoy the scenery.

‘Some of these buildings date back to the sixteenth century and even earlier,’ the driver said, coming over all tour guide-ish.

‘Gosh,’ I responded, ‘I feel like we’re back there – it’s so different, like driving into the past...’ which was just what I was doing by going to see Bella.

Bella’s family might have had money, but her parents were always at work in their business and they had little time for their only child. One year when we were both ten, her mother asked if Bella could stay with us for Christmas. I’d overheard Mum telling my nan in a slightly angry voice that it was because they wanted to go somewhere warm for a holiday and didn’t want ‘the hassle’ of a child. As we’d never had a holiday apart from the odd day out at Weston, I thought of warm places as ovens and fires and in my childlike way thought they wanted to leave Bella with my mum for Christmas because it would be safer and happier than this furnace-like holiday location. But Mum said to Nan she was shocked any parent could leave their child at Christmas and told me to pretend to Bella it was me who asked if she could stay with us to spare her feelings.

‘But Mum, that’s not true,’ I’d said, frowning and confused at the mixed messages adults sometimes gave us. ‘You said I mustn’t tell lies.’

‘There are some lies that you can tell,’ she’d explained, stroking my hair, ‘and this is a good lie because it will stop Bella from being upset. This is our secret Amy – and you must never tell anyone a secret.’

When Mum ‘broke it’ to Bella that she wouldn’t be having Christmas in her own home we both waited for the tears, but after a moment to process the information, Bella was delighted. She was needy, attention-seeking and lonely – and in the absence of her own family around the kitchen table, she had mine. This is just one of the many reasons why I was finding her theft of Mum’s recipes so hard to take. How could she take my mother’s kindness and use it for profit? I didn’t understand how she could do this to someone who’d done so much for her, but I was determined that one way or another spoiled brat Bella was going to pay for this.

S
weeping
past the high street on the way to Dovecote, we were suddenly surrounded by fields. They were patchy now, but soon a blanket of white would cover them completely, the driver was right, this snow was sticking, and ten minutes later when we pulled in to Bella’s sweeping drive, her enormous Cotswold-stone home was virtually white.

It looked just like the cover of a Christmas ‘House Beautiful’. She couldn’t have planned it better for her TV show, the snowy exterior, lights twinkling in the bay, trees on either side of the huge double doors, and a golden glow coming from inside the kitchen. As we drove around the side, we were greeted with a bustling scene of TV vans parking up, cameras and crew being unloaded and even a small marquee being erected on the acres of lawn. I took everything in, eager for my first glimpse inside Bella’s world.

‘What’s that?’ I asked the driver, pointing to the large white tent almost disappearing in the snow.

‘Canteen, for the crew to eat...the food truck’s round the back, out of shot.’

‘Oh...I would have thought as it’s a cookery show the crew would eat what’s cooked in the kitchen.’

‘Ha ha, oh no, love. It doesn’t work like that...besides, I’m not sure I’d want Bella’s cooking!’

I thought that was perhaps a bit rude, she wasn’t a great cook when I’d known her, but she seemed very competent and creative on screen - when she was using her own recipes. The world of TV was a mystery to me so I didn’t ask any more. I supposed Bella was busy cooking for the cameras and didn’t have time to make meals for the TV crew while she was filming. I didn’t blame her either, there were too many mouths to feed – as the TV crew congregated on the front lawn I was amazed to see just how many people were involved in the making of one programme.

I almost felt my legs give way as I climbed out of the car, it all felt so unreal, I was here at Dovecote and finally about to meet Bella after all these years. As I waited for the driver to unload my bags I was suddenly accosted by a rather anxious woman who introduced herself as Felicity, Bella’s agent. ‘Dahling,’ she squealed, bundling me into the house before I could even say hello.

‘Hi Felicity...’ I started.

‘Call me Fliss, it saves time,’ she said brusquely, running her hands through her short blonde hair, her face beautifully made up but not concealing the stress around her eyes. As she ushered me in, I was able to take in her bright pink outfit with matching kitten heels, which seemed quite out of balance for her short, wide stature.

Standing in that huge hallway with stone floor and an impossibly high ceiling, I had to stop and stare. I’d seen it many times on the TV, but here, now, I couldn’t believe I was actually standing there. ‘Wow, it’s so beautiful,’ I gasped.

‘It’s not a bad old bothy, is it?’ Fliss sighed, looking around. ‘It’s swallowed up half my life and all of Bella’s – this kind of real estate comes at a high price, my dear,’ she looked at me then looked away quickly.

‘Now, we want you to enjoy your stay’, she said, suddenly moving on, with one foot on the stairs. ‘Whatever you may think, and for whatever reason you’re really here, we want you to enjoy this whole Christmas experience. But I beg you, please keep anything you may see or hear to yourself.’

‘Like what?’ I asked puzzled, but before she could answer I heard Bella’s voice.

‘Do you like my home then?’

I looked up to the top of the huge staircase where the voice was coming from and nodded.

‘It’s lovely... hello Bella.’

She was standing at the top of the stairs peering through the weight of holly boughs and mistletoe. I saw the arm of a red cashmere robe and below were slippers shaped like elephants (I’d seen them online, they cost as much as last year’s family holiday). Eventually she peered round the boughs of holly and our eyes met for the first time in over twenty years.

‘It’s you, Amy... it is you, after all these years.’ Her arms were out to welcome me, but the rest of her body language was saying something quite different. Her smile wasn’t reaching her eyes and she wasn’t moving towards me – the message was clear – she wasn’t coming downstairs to me, I had to go upstairs to Bella.

There was an awkward silence where I didn’t move and we just looked at each other. It felt less like two old friends and more like a stand-off in a western. What did I expect? She was being forced to entertain me here in her beautiful home and she simply didn’t want me around. I was the past, her past – and I knew too much. This was purely about her ‘playing nicely’ to keep me quiet and keep her secrets and lies concealed from her adoring public, including her staff and the TV crew. It must have been a strange situation for Bella, who’d never done anything she didn’t want to do in her life. As a kid her parents had spoiled her with money and ‘things’ to compensate for their absence and now she was indulged by everyone around her because of her fame. It must have been quite a shock having me suddenly reappear like the ghost of Christmas past.

I was still looking up the stairs and she was still looking down. It might have stayed that way for hours, but she suddenly seemed to remember why I was there – and put on her TV Bella mask.

‘Let me show you your room, Amy,’ she said, her face lit with false brightness. ‘You’re in the Mary Berry room, follow me.’ She headed off down the landing and I was clearly expected to follow – one nil to Bella.

Fliss galloped behind Bella up the thickly carpeted stairway on those poor kitten heels, no doubt keen to keep her PR eye on proceedings, while I went to grab my bags, but a young man appeared at my side and took them. Bella had staff! There were various people milling around who looked like they belonged here, a woman was polishing mirrors, another was running upstairs with a breakfast tray, no doubt for Bella. Wow, I thought – I have to carry my own bags and make my own breakfast – how far she’s come.

‘Come on Amy, we’ve got a programme to make my love,’ Bella was now calling me from the top of the stairs.

I nodded and took my time, I didn’t rush - Bella may be calling the shots, but I didn’t have to dance to her tune.

‘All the bedrooms are named after famous TV chefs. The Jamie Oliver is a butch, rough-and-ready rustic style, Martha Stewart is clean and fresh – nice plaids and contrasting New England shades...’ Bella was saying.

‘But no bars on the windows!’ Fliss added, roaring with laughter as she staggered up the final step.