What Alice Forgot (52 page)

“The aprons turned out beautifully, Alice!” she said as she slid the apron over Alice’s neck and tied it at her waist.

Alice looked around and saw rows of pink-aproned women lining up around the big table with the mixing bowls.

“It looks like we’re about ready to start,” said Maggie. “Is that okay with you?”

“Sure thing,” said Alice recklessly.

“You’re over here,” said Maggie. “Next to me.”

“Good luck, darling,” said Barb. “I do hope they’re careful with that oven. It’s very easy to burn the meringue on a lemon meringue pie. I remember once I was making one when your father’s boss was coming for dinner. I was terribly upset, I remember looking in the oven and thinking—”

“Come on, Barbie,” said Roger, pulling on her arm. “You can tell me the rest of the story while we’re sitting down.”

He winked at Alice as he guided her still-chattering mother into the audience, and Alice was filled with affection for him. He loved Barb—in his own self-satisfied way, he loved her.

“I’ll get the kids to come and sit down,” said Nick, and he headed off to the children’s area.

Alice went to stand beside Maggie behind the tables.

“What an event,” said the woman standing next to Alice. She had a birthmark like a burn across the bottom half of her face. “You’re a bloody marvel, Alice.”

I’m a bloody marvel,
thought Alice. Her head was feeling fuzzy.

Nora stood at the microphone. “Can everybody take their seats, please? The baking is about to commence!”

Alice found Nick in the audience. He had Olivia on his lap. The fairy wings she’d insisted on wearing that day were brushing against his face. Tom was on Nick’s left, taking photos with a digital camera, and Madison was on his right, seemingly intensely interested in the proceedings. Nick said something and pointed at Alice, and all three children beamed and waved in her direction.

Alice waved back, and as she did, Dominick and Jasper caught her eye. They were sitting just two rows behind Nick and the children, and waving enthusiastically, as if they’d thought Alice had been waving at them.

Oh dear. Now she could see Libby and Ben waving at her, along with Frannie, Xavier, Barb, and Roger.

Alice tried to make her smile and wave seem all encompassing and personal to each of them.

Nora was speaking again.

“I’m stepping in on behalf of Alice Love to be your host today. As many of you know, Alice had an accident at the gym last week and still isn’t feeling a hundred percent. You know, I can still remember the day Alice said to me that she wanted to get one hundred mums together to bake the world’s largest lemon meringue pie. I thought she was nuts!”

The audience chuckled.

“But you all know Alice. She’s like a bull terrier when she gets an idea in her head.” There was appreciative laughter.
A bull terrier?
How had she changed so much in just ten years? She was more like a Labrador. Anxious to please and overexcited.

“But just a few months later, no surprise, here we are! Let’s put our hands together for
Alice
!”

There was a burst of enthusiastic applause. Alice nodded and smiled fraudulently.

“We’re dedicating this day to a very dear friend and member of the school community who we tragically lost last year,” said Nora. “We’re using her lemon meringue pie recipe and we’re sure she’s with us in spirit today. I’m referring, of course, to Gina Boyle. We miss you, Gina. A minute’s silence, please, for Gina.”

Alice watched as people reverently bowed their heads and remembered the woman who had apparently been such a significant part of Alice’s life. Her own mind was blank. This morning’s pancakes sat uncomfortably in her stomach. After what seemed much longer than a minute, Nora lifted her head.

“Ladies,” she said. “Pick up your whisks.”

Chapter 31

T
he women picked up their whisks solemnly as if they were musicians in an orchestra.

“Whisk the eggs, cream, sugar, lemon rind, and juice until combined,” read out Nora.

There was a pause and then everyone put their whisks back down and began to select ingredients.

Alice cracked her eggs one after the other into her bowl. All around her, women were doing the same thing. There were nervous giggles and whispers.

“Don’t get any eggshell in there!” called out someone from the audience, to much hilarity.

After a few minutes, the sound of brisk whisking filled the marquee.

Under Nora’s instructions, once they were all finished, they stood in line to pour their mixture into a huge yellow industrial vat.

This is going to be an absolute disaster,
thought Alice.

“Place the flour, almond meal, icing sugar, and butter into a food processor and process until it resembles fine bread crumbs,” read out Nora. “Instead of using a food processor, we’re going to use a concrete mixer. Don’t worry, it’s clean! So could each mum please place her combined ingredients into the mixer.”

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” whispered Alice to Maggie, as the mothers lined up with their bowls of ingredients. “It’s madness.”

Maggie laughed. “It’s all your doing, Alice!”

One of the bemused workmen operated the concrete mixer while the mothers separated yolks from whites.

“Add the egg yolk and process,” ordered Nora.

Once again the woman lined up to add their egg yolks. A few minutes later a massive glob of yellow dough was upended from the concrete mixer and onto the floury surface of the center table.

“Knead until smooth.”

The women gathered around the table, kneading and pulling at the dough.
This pastry is going to be inedible,
thought Alice, watching inexpert hands pushing and pulling. Cameras flashed.

“Now we really should be putting the pastry into the fridge for half an hour, but today is all about quantity, rather than quality,” said Nora. “So we’re going to go straight to rolling out the pastry.”

The workmen carried over the giant rolling pin.

Alice stood back and watched as three women stood on each side of the rolling pin, took a firm grip of the handles, and began to push forward, as if they were pushing along a broken-down car.

There was giggling and shrieking and yelled suggestions from the audience as the women went off in different directions, but, incredibly, after a few minutes, the dough began to flatten. It was working. It was actually working. A huge sheet of pastry, the size of a king-size bed, was emerging.

“Now, the hard bit,” said Nora. “Line the pie dish.”

We’ll never do it,
thought Alice, as the women gathered around the sheet of pastry and lifted it into the air, with their palms flat, as though they were carrying some sort of precious canvas. Every woman had the exact same expression of terrified concentration on her face.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” said the woman with the birthmark, as the pastry began to sag in the middle. Another woman rushed to try and save it. They were treading on each other’s toes, calling out sharp orders like “Be careful there!” and “Watch that part there!”

No one smiled or laughed until the delicate sheet of pastry was safely placed in the massive pie dish. They’d done it. No serious tears or cracks. It was a miracle.

“Hooray!” cried the crowd, and the women shared ecstatic grins as they used their thumbs to push the pastry against the sides of the dish. Next they covered it with sheet after sheet of baking paper and weighted it down with rice, and the workmen lifted the dish and placed it into the oven.

“We’ll bake that for ten minutes,” said Nora smoothly, as if it weren’t at all surprising that they had got this far. “And in the meantime our clever mums will make the meringue.”

The ladies went back to their tables and began to whisk egg whites, gradually adding the sugar as they did so.

The tent filled with heat from the giant oven. Alice could feel her face flushing and beads of perspiration forming at her hairline. The fragrance of cooking pastry filled the air. Her head ached. She wondered if she was coming down with the flu.

The smell of the pastry was making her want to remember something. Except it was somehow too large to remember. It was like the huge sheet of pastry. Too big for one person. She couldn’t find an edge to grasp so she could pull it in front of her. But there was definitely something there.

“Are you okay?” Maggie’s face loomed in front of Alice.

“Fine. I’m fine.”

The pastry shell was pulled from the oven to a round of applause. It was golden brown. The baking paper and rice were removed and the vat of lemon-colored filling was poured into the pastry. Next came the meringue. The women seemed tipsy with relief. They danced around the pie like schoolgirls, pouring their frothy white meringue mixtures over the filling and using wooden spoons to create snowy peaks.

More cameras flashed.

“Alice?” said Nora into the microphone. “Do we have your approval?”

Alice felt like the world had been wrapped in some sort of gauzy material. Her vision was slightly blurred, her mouth felt full of cotton wool. It was as though she’d just woken up and was trying to clear her head of the previous night’s dreams. She blinked and considered the pie. “Can someone just smooth the meringue over in that corner?” she said, and was surprised that her voice came out sounding quite normal. A woman rushed to obey her.

Alice nodded at Nora.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, we
bake
,” said Nora.

Maggie’s husband gave the thumbs-up signal to the forklift driver. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the magnificent pie as it was lifted by the forklift and slid into the oven. There was a round of applause.

“Year 4 has kindly offered to keep us entertained while the lemon meringue pie is baking,” said Nora. “As many of you will remember, our dear friend Gina loved Elvis. Whenever she was cooking, she always had Elvis playing. You couldn’t get her to play anything else. So Year 4 is going to perform a medley of Elvis hits for us. Gina, honey, this is for you.”

There was a burst of laughter and cheers as thirty miniature Elvises swaggered into the center of the marquee. They were wearing dark glasses and white satin jumpsuits complete with sparkly rhinestones. A teacher pressed a button on a stereo and the children began to dance, Elvis style, to “Hound Dog.”

There was nowhere for the Mega Meringue mums to sit, so they all leaned back against the long tables. Some of them took off their pink aprons. Alice’s legs ached. Actually, everything ached.

Oh, this song is so . . . familiar.

Yes, that’s because it’s Elvis. Elvis is familiar to everyone.

The song switched to “Love Me Tender.”

The sweet lemony smell of the baking pie was overpowering. It was impossible to think of anything else but lemon . . . meringue . . . pie . . .

That smell is so . . . familiar.

Yes, that’s because it’s a lemon meringue pie. You know what a lemon meringue pie smells like.

But there was something more than that. It meant something.

Alice’s face had been feeling flushed and hot. Now she felt cold, as if she’d stepped into an icy wind.

Oh, dear, she wasn’t well. She really wasn’t well.

She looked desperately into the audience for someone to help.

She saw Nick suddenly lift Olivia off his lap and stand up.

She saw Dominick bounce to his feet, frowning with concern.

Both men were making their way past people’s knees, trying to get to her.

Now the song was “Jailhouse Rock.”

The scent of lemon meringue was becoming stronger and stronger. It was going straight up her nostrils and trickling into her brain, filling it with memory.

Oh, God, of course, of course, of course.

Alice’s legs buckled.

Elisabeth’s Homework for Jeremy

I missed seeing Alice collapse because I’d gone outside to the toilet.

They had a row of those blue plastic Port-a-loos.

I was bleeding.

I thought, How fitting. That I should be losing my last baby in a Port-a-loo.

Trashy and slightly laughable. Like my life.

Chapter 32