The Art of Baking Blind (11 page)

She writes about this as well: racing through descriptions of tea breads and Shrewsbury buns as fast as she can bake them, her manuscript thickening even though her waistline remains svelte. Despite the nausea and the tiredness, she enjoys the restless creativity: she bakes, she writes – and she nourishes a baby. She exists in a productive whirl.

‘My bread section's coming along well,' she tells George at the end of another fruitful day. ‘The book's almost half finished.'

‘Well, you won't have time to write once you've had the baby.' He smiles, indulgent.

‘Oh, I will.' She is emphatic. ‘I can write when it's sleeping. I can do many things – write, bake, grow children – all at once.'

‘Perhaps we could have a child a book?'

He slips his arms around her waist and her smile wavers.

‘Let me have this one first,' she tells him, fear crowding in, then tries to sound more optimistic. ‘But, in theory, yes. Let's fill this great big house.'

It is around this time that she perfects her Chelsea bun recipe. Chelsea buns for my Chelsea girl, says George, as she brings out a further batch from the oven. It is a short-lived obsession.

She is photographed proffering them for publicity shots, she writes about them for
Home Magazine
– and then, quite abruptly, she goes off making them.

She finds her appetite for them has completely stopped.

11

In baking, organisation and preparation are of the utmost importance. Mastering both will ensure you bake calmly and efficiently. The same may be said of life. Take the time to prepare yourself, whether for an appointment or for your husband, and you will reap the benefits.

Saturday morning, mid-March, the day of the biscuit stage of the competition and Karen Hammond is trapped inside her Porsche Cayenne outside Bradley Hall waiting for the weather to clear.

It is still raining; relentless driving rain that hammers down on her windscreen, impervious to the sluice of her wipers. She turns off the ignition. Better wait for it to subside. Her blow-dry will be ruined if she makes a dash for it.

Forced to rest, Karen leans back against the warmed leather seats and takes in the mansion in front of her. She can see why it might appeal to a self-made man like George Eaden – a man keen to demonstrate his wealth with a fairytale palace with lots of phallic turrets – but she imagines Kathleen Eaden would have preferred something more intimate; a little less grandiose.

Bored, she reaches into her glove compartment for a leaflet given to each competitor. George bought the property in 1964, some months after the Profumo affair occurred at nearby Cliveden, she reads. Perhaps he got it cheap because of that – or perhaps he was hoping for his own naked moonlit swims? She glances at his black and white photo: a broad, stolid figure, with sandy hair, a cheery smile and the look of a market trader. Yes, you'd have an eye for a bargain. Too conventional, though, for skinny dipping.

She stretches and carries on reading about the hall's extensive renovation. ‘When finished, it will boast a visitors' centre detailing Eaden's growth from humble grocer to FTSE 100 Corporation; become an elegant retreat for star employees; and house the entire Kathleen Eaden recipe archive,' she reads.

A photo shows the hall flanked by herbaceous borders and bathed in summer sunshine. The archetypal eccentric English stately home.

Today, the skies are leaden; the borders barren. It is a setting fit for a Gothic novel.

*   *   *

After twenty minutes, the rain peters out and a watery sun peers through the mass of grey. Karen grabs her leather overnight holdall and decides to risk it, neat ballet pumps crunching across the gravel and dancing up the puddled stone steps to an elaborate entrance hall. From now on, the contestants will bake all weekend – and so, today, she will get to stay overnight and explore the hall. Her heart flutters, not from the exercise but from excitement. She feels refreshingly energised.

Inside, she picks up the keys to her assigned room and climbs the stairs, pushing past the rose briars reaching for the ceiling like the thicket encasing Sleeping Beauty's castle. On either side, black eyes – captured in oil; surrounded by gilt – watch as she dares to venture further. They really need to crack on with the refurbishment.

Yet Karen's room, when she flings open the heavy oak door, feels airy and contemporary: freshly painted pale grey walls; white eggshell picture rails and cornicing; a new iron bed – king-sized, she notes – a slate mohair throw; crisp white bed linen from an upmarket company.

It is as if she has stepped into a boutique hotel – though the clean white en suite boasts no complimentary toiletries. She places her bags on the floor and sits on the mattress – firm; just the way she likes it – then allows herself to lie along the length of the bed and – insofar as she ever does this – tries to relax.

The preparation for this moment has, she realises, been immense. Like Vicki and Jenny, she too has been seeking biscuit perfection and has been moulding warm tuiles over oranges and warm brandy snaps around wooden spoons just as
The Art of Baking
dictates.

But she has also been perfecting herself. The list of beauty treatments she would usually spread over a three-week cycle has been condensed into three days. And so she has been pruned and honed, pummelled and irrigated; stripped back and defoliated as if she were a particularly lush garden that has grown rampant and needs to be wrestled under control.

Many of these processes are supposed to be enjoyable – pro-lift firming facials, luxury manicures, body wraps and full-body massages – and they have cost her over £600. And yet undergoing them has seemed onerous as she has counted the vacant hours away from her kitchen. There is no doubt these hours perfecting herself were necessary, just as it was necessary to have her lowlights retouched and to put in five spin classes as well as her daily gym sessions. Her children have barely seen her – though as day boarders they are not home until nine. The house has felt as calm, as empty, as whitely sterile as ever. Oliver has stayed in London all week, apparently working on some commercial take-over. God knows what she has to do to attract him these days. She doubts he even notices.

She sighs and looks at herself in the reproduction Venetian glass mirror, taking in the fine smile lines now traced on her cheeks, the deeper crease above her eyes. So much for that anti-ageing facial. She smooths her forehead as if to erase the tell-tale signs of ageing. How much longer can she stave off the Botox? Just a matter of months.

Perhaps that's what Jake meant with his casual, ‘You're fooling no one.' You're no longer an attractive young woman. You're mutton dressed as lamb. Her stomach twists. She knows at heart it's not that, or not just that, for then his contempt would be general; not so cutting; so scalpel-sharp.

She thinks back to the conversation she had last night with her daughter, slim, studious Olivia. At fifteen, her world view is far safer than her mother's was. She may flirt with boys on Facebook but she wouldn't dream of touching them. Passion is something found in books and, very sensibly, she is waiting for her Heathcliff, Mr Darcy, or Edward Cullen.

Despite this naivety, Livy is wise, so much so that she often appears older than her brother. Those grey eyes appraise her, and Karen has an unnerving sense that this beautiful, innocent girl – so different from herself as a teenager – can see right through to her core.

Her children are close: the nineteen months between them meaning that Jake confides in his sister and is protective of her in a way that confounds Karen – recalling her own experience with Steven, the older brother she hasn't seen for twenty years. If Jake has a specific reason to hate his mother, then Livy is likely to know. And, even though she is unlikely to trick her into betraying that confidence, Karen needs to try.

She had interrupted her as she sat reading some English set text, long legs curled beneath her on the sofa.

‘Livy … Do you know if there's something bugging Jake?'

‘Male adolescence?' her daughter had drawled without looking up at her.

‘Something more specific.'

She had forced the words out as if they choked her.

‘Something he's particularly angry about … Something, perhaps, to do with me?'

Olivia had looked up then, and had gazed at her through those heavy-rimmed spectacles Karen wished she would swap for contacts. She always felt they distanced her: making her more implacable; her expression harder to gauge.

‘If there is, Mum, then that's not a conversation you need to have with me.'

Her daughter had swung her legs off the sofa and got up to leave the room.

‘It's a conversation you need to have with him.'

Of course, she hadn't dared to. It had been much easier just to provide food, clear away their plates, remind him of the time he needed to get to rugby and that she wouldn't be there the next evening but that Oliver should be back to check on them. Easier just to slink away that morning without popping her head round his door and saying goodbye; to pretend that she was just thinking of him and his need for sleep.

You're fooling no one, Ma.
The words cloud her head. No, she hasn't fooled him, nor – seemingly, now – her daughter. The fear that she has slipped in both their opinions – that, perhaps, they deplore her – cuts like a Sabatier knife.

But the rest of the world? Well, she has to try. She has to keep on trying.

She focuses on the familiar face staring at her in the mirror. With the eye of a connoisseur, she reaches for the metallic leather make-up bag in her handbag, takes a pair of tweezers and prises a stray hair free from her eyebrow. She reassesses herself, then brushes her mane with firm, even strokes, forcing any softness away. Finally, she reapplies lip pencil and a neutral lipstick, her hand shaking ever so slightly, and kisses a white tissue, leaving a jammy print. She smooths down her shift dress; rolls back her shoulders, and, before leaving the room, takes a very deep breath.

*   *   *

Downstairs, the contestants are taking coffee in the drawing room, their excitement palpable as they adapt to the grandiose surroundings. Claire is the most nervous; unable to relax on the chintz floral sofa; fearful of spilling her tea. She tries to steady her cup and succeeds in slopping liquid into the saucer. Has anyone noticed? Her stomach tightens like string pulled into an impenetrable tangle as she counts down the minutes to the next ordeal.

Incapable of sitting still, she gets up and walks over to the huge, arched windows, overlooking the impressive sweep of gravel. A battered Ford Focus estate has just drawn up and she smiles, feeling an unexpected flicker of relief. Mike Wilkinson, buffeted by the rain, wrestles an overnight holdall from the boot and trudges across the drive, head down. Who's he left behind this weekend? She barely spoke to him last week but had spotted his wedding ring and overheard a reference to children. And yet there was an air of sadness about him.

Watching him dodge the rain, she realises she has instantly warmed to the lone man in the competition. She senses a conspirator: someone who isn't sure how he got here but will try to enjoy the ride. For some reason – perhaps his dogged trudge or the hint of a sense of humour – she suspects that Mike is like her: someone who may feel a little lost in life but who has more to them than meets the eye.

As for Vicki, she seems very self-assured. Well, she won at the Battenburg. But Jenny also seems on edge. Last week, she had gone out of her way to be friendly; now she doesn't start conversations – or seem to welcome them. Looking closer, Claire sees that she is not just preoccupied or distant but that her eyes seem almost dead. It is as if something has occurred while they have all been practising their chocolate macaroons and almond and cherry biscuits. Life has happened, away from a preheated oven and a greased baking tray.

*   *   *

‘Hello, everyone. Are we all ready for the Search for the New Mrs Eaden to continue?' Cora, dressed in tapered navy trousers and a Breton top, smiles at them in expectation, eyes sparkling, head to one side.

The contestants have two hours in which to prepare melting moments, shortbread, macaroons and almond and chilli biscuits in a test of time-management as much as baking skill. Poring over her recipes at the back of the room, Jenny is relieved to be offered something more complex than a Victoria sponge: something that requires her to make calculations and to act swiftly, the adrenalin flowing as she works out a timetable.

Jotting down the timings, she has a sudden flashback to her mother baking, churning out butter biscuits, shortbread fingers, jam tarts for the church summer fête. A batter-splattered
Good Housekeeping
book is open on the table, but a couple of years later it could equally have been
The Art of Baking.
Lucy, her neat figure hidden by a cotton overall, would flit from one to another, comparing recipes and scribbling notes.

Standing on a chair in the kitchen, the only room that was ever warm in that draughty rectory, Jenny dips a fat finger into the mixture, sucks at a curl of buttery dough.

‘Now, Jenny. You should ask before you do that,' her mother remonstrates but with a smile. At her feet her sixteen-month-old sister sits, squat, banging a wooden spoon on a saucepan lid. Eleanor looks up at her four-year-old sister for titbits. Jenny obliges, her mother's back turned. The two girls smile a gooey, buttery smile as they share their secret: a secret more delicious for being so cloyingly sweet.

If only life could have remained that simple, she thinks, gathering together caster sugar, unsalted butter and plain flour, required for the shortbread.
Cheddar, chilli and garlic are lined up for the savoury biscuits – her second job.

Cocooned in warmth, the scent of melting butter coming from an Aga, her baby sister at her feet and her mother at her side. The squidgy sensation of sweet biscuit dough seeping into her mouth. Outside, sunshine and a vast country garden. Life could not get any better. For a moment, she wants to regress.