Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,14
go back about thirty times. Because I am fucking starving. And even if I wasn’t, it’s a free breakfast buffet and the point of a free breakfast buffet is to eat enough that you don’t need another meal until the next free breakfast buffet.”
Between the nerves and the . . . actually, probably just the nerves, Rosaline had lost her appetite. “I might start with cornflakes and go from there.”
Anvita shook her head despairingly. “Weaksauce.”
They briefly parted ways to take on the slightly soggy bounty. Grabbing a bowl of off-brand corn cereal and a glass of punishingly tart grapefruit juice, Rosaline glanced around for somewhere to sit. Then she realised she was looking for Alain and kicked herself for not focusing on the competition.
In any case, he wasn’t there and the rest of the contestants had mostly separated themselves over two picnic tables, apparently by age. Which made things a little bit difficult for Rosaline because she felt slightly too young for Group A, which consisted of an elderly lady, an older gentleman in a floral shirt, and two middle-aged women. But Group B—Anvita and two guys of university age—seemed far too young, cool, and not-child-having. In the end, she went B, on the assumption that in Anvita’s world “weaksauce” constituted a standing invitation to eat food together.
“So this is Rosaline,” announced Anvita as Rosaline perched herself on the end of the table and tried to cornflake. “Rosaline, this is Ricky and Dave.”
“All right?” Ricky waved a spoon cheerfully. Anvita had not oversold him, although Rosaline was fast getting to the age where nineteen-year-olds were losing their appeal.
Dave, a skinny man with a goatee, wearing a llama-print shirt, and an item of headwear that Rosaline feared was a fedora, nodded a silent hi. “We were just talking,” he said, “about what made us apply for the show.”
“I hate to be that girl”—Anvita pushed her glasses back up her nose—“but I’m mostly doing this for my nan. She taught me how to bake and all that shit. And I’m blatantly going to be crying about it at some point.”
“Better to cry about your nan,” Rosaline told her, “than about a flat scone or collapsed meringue.”
This was clearly too much emotions talk for Dave and he turned to Ricky. “What about you, mate?”
Ricky somehow indicated with his whole body that he was far too cool to worry about a little thing like a nationally televised test of his baking skills. “Thought it’d be a laugh. I didn’t expect to get in, to be honest. But we’ll see.”
Not seeming to notice or care that Rosaline hadn’t replied yet, Dave plonked his elbows on the table and launched into what felt like a pre-prepared speech. “I applied because I felt I had a really different take on the whole concept of”—he did actual air quotes—“‘baking.’ Like, Marianne and Wilfred are great, but they’re both very traditional in their outlook, and I wanted to show people that they don’t have to live their lives the way they’re expected to.”
In the silence that followed, Anvita, Rosaline, and Ricky signalled to each other, without speaking or moving, that none of them had a fucking clue what to do with that.
“And,” Rosaline tried, “you’re going to show them this by . . . making cakes?”
“Well, what are”—air quotes again—“‘cakes’?”
After breakfast, they were hurried through to the ballroom of the main house for a series of briefings. From some angles, everything looked exactly like it did on TV. Those angles, of course, being the ones the cameras were pointing along, where it was all rainbow-coloured workstations set against incongruous baroque grandeur. From a less flattering direction, everything was wires and booms and people in black T-shirts making incomprehensible hand gestures. It was also, Rosaline was rapidly coming to realise, a terrible cooking environment, being vast and echoing and designed for people to dance in two hundred and forty years ago. Right now, it was unpleasantly cold. But given the ten mini-kitchens and the lighting rig, it would probably be uncomfortably hot by about half past ten. And ruinously hot by noon.
No wonder that guy had burst into tears over his sorbet that one time.
Finally, they were permitted access to a row of stools, where they arranged themselves tentatively and awaited further instructions. Their final briefing came from the show’s producer. Jennifer Hallet turned out to be a tall woman in her thirties, with long, sandy-brown hair and a general vibe that said she didn’t take shit.