What Would Mary Berry Do? Read online

  This book is for Caroline Hogg; friend, editor, heroine

  Contents

  Prologue

  JULY: School Fete

  AUGUST: Sunday Lunch

  AUGUST: Residents’ Association Meeting

  SEPTEMBER: Angus’s Birthday

  NOVEMBER: Fireworks Night

  DECEMBER: Christmas

  DECEMBER: New Year’s Eve

  FEBRUARY: St Valentine’s Day

  APRIL: Easter

  MAY: Funeral Tea

  JUNE: Just Because

  JULY: School Fete

  Prologue

  Marie Dunwoody loved her children, all three of them, with a ferocity beyond understanding. But every once in a while she would gladly sell them to a passing gypsy. And that Friday morning, the morning of St Ethelred’s school fete, was one of those once-in-a-whiles.

  ‘Mum,’ said Iris, lavishing the last of the milk on her cereal, ‘I did tell you that you need to bake something for today’s cake stall, didn’t I? It’s got to be a . . . um . . . what was it? Oh, yeah. It’s got to be a show-stopper.’

  JULY

  School Fete

  Show-Stopper

  Dear Iris and Rose’s mum

  Thank you so much for agreeing to bake the show-stopper for the school fete. Every penny made by the fete will go to the PSA and will directly benefit our pupils.

  Best regards

  The PSA

  Their shoes squeaking on the gym’s waxed floor, hordes of parents rifled bric-a-brac, lucky-dipped and bought one-eyed hunchback teddies from the craft stand.

  Over at the cake stall the show-stopper was attracting attention. Of the wrong kind.

  ‘I’m sorry, girls.’ Marie took in her daughters’ crestfallen faces, both so perfectly alike, with their ski-slope noses, their confetti freckles, their grave brown eyes just like their dad’s. ‘Next year . . .’ she began, but went no further. She’d made the same speech last year: her annual promise to be the mum they deserved.

  Angus – video camera, as ever, grafted to his hand – zoomed in on his mother’s contribution.

  ‘Darling, don’t,’ pleaded Marie. The world didn’t need footage of her show-stopper. With minutes to spare she had had to rely on the petrol-station minimart. The realisation that just-on-their-sell-by-date French Fancies were as good as it would get had made her want to lie down among the chilled wraps and weep. She’d bought the lot, hoping to make them look . . . well, abundant; but, huddled bleakly on a tiered cake stand, the dozen battered fancies looked . . . well, shop-bought.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Mum,’ said Rose.

  ‘Nah,’ said Iris.

  But they kept sneaking looks at Lucy’s cake.

  Lucy Gray. Mild-mannered mum of one, neighbour and nemesis. As if constructed especially to shame Marie, the woman was birdlike, a petite and neat counterpoint to Marie’s more-than-adequate bosom/bottom arrangement. Her house, the largest on Caraway Close, boasted hanging baskets, gleaming windows and a perfect front lawn of neon emerald; across the way, Marie’s house number hung upside down (transforming them from number nineteen to sixty-one) and the twins’ bikes copulated in the porch, tripping her up each and every morning.

  Lucy baked show-stoppers every other day, ‘just for fun’.

  Wearing a flowery tea-dress, without a speck of make-up on her wholesome face, and simpering with false modesty at the compliments raining down around her, Lucy stood proudly by her cake.

  And what a cake it was!

  It was a supermodel of cakes, an Alfa Romeo, a Crufts Best in Show. A multi-storey sponge high-rise, plastered with the softest buttercream and festooned with hand-made fondant roses that could deceive a bee, it came complete with its own theme tune of tinkling harps.

  Or maybe, thought Marie, that last bit is just in my head. ‘Go on, girls,’ she sighed, defeated, handing over a pound coin as a donation. ‘Ask Mrs Gray for a slice. Politely!’

  She was jealous. It was not a nice thing to admit, but Marie was frank about her own faults. She freely admitted she was rubbish at Monopoly, that her boisterous hair needed a cut, that she should visit the gym more often (or at all), and that she was deeply envious not only of Lucy’s baking prowess, but of the general air of homespun domestication that surrounded the woman like a pastel pea-souper. Hard to imagine Lucy snarling at her husband to ‘get out of the damn way or, so help me God, I’ll mow you down’, as Marie had at poor Robert that morning.

  In her defence, Robert should have known better than to shrug when told of the twins’ bombshell. ‘Sorry, love – your department. You don’t expect me to bake, do you?’ he’d said, as if the notion of him making a cake was as absurd as juggling with fire. She’d answered with a loud un-Lucy-like ‘Why expect me to bake? Because I have ovaries?’ and had jumped into the car.

  Robert was lovely. He was her best mate. He made her laugh and still fancied her, despite stretch marks, greying hair and even greyer pants. (She fancied him right back. No longer the black-haired, brown-eyed skinny guy she’d first lusted after, Robert now had a spiky salt-and-pepper thatch that was, in her opinion, every bit as gorgeous; she simply didn’t see the lines around his eyes, or the useful little shelf around his middle.) And what’s more, Mr and Mrs Robert Dunwoody were a team, securely yoked together in harness as they shouldered the burdens of raising a family. But it peeved Marie that the kitchen was ‘her’ domain simply because of her gender.

  Lucy had no such qualms. Lucy loved the kitchen. She pickled things. She preserved other things. She candied peel. She froze gluts. She even – and Marie could work up a ten-minute rant about this – potted shrimps. Lucy’s kitchen (the literal opposite of Marie’s; the Grays faced the Dunwoodys on their circular cul-de-sac) boasted a walk-in larder. Marie’s boasted a sofa and the UK’s largest private collection of Pop-Tarts.

  ‘Hello there!’

  Oh Christ, Lucy was talking to her.

  ‘Hi,’ said Marie.

  ‘Nice to see you here. I thought maybe, you know, what with work and everything, you might not make it.’

  Always a little barb. Some little insinuation. Some of us have to work, thought Marie, going further with a heartfelt Some of us love our work. ‘I make it to most of the school stuff,’ she said, keeping any defensive briskness out of her voice. She didn’t want Lucy to know she was rattled. Marie nodded at the cake, looming over them like a sugary Nelson’s Column. ‘Amazing cake!’ It was true, and Marie had been brought up to be polite, even to a nemesis.

  ‘Oh well, I try,’ said Lucy. She even worked up a blush.

  Beside her neighbour, Marie felt seven feet tall and almost as wide. A Boden ad come to life, Lucy had the pearlescent skin of the clichéd English rose and the matching, almost transparent, fine fair hair, always pulled back into a careless yet charming ponytail. A few fronds escaped to dangle around her face, a style that semaphored I am not vain enough to fuss with my hair.

  For the first time Marie noticed the boniness of the knees sticking out of the flowery dress, the tiny circumference of the wrists. How could a woman who baked every day be so skinny? ‘How’s Tod?’ she asked conversationally, aware of an oppressive awkwardness.

  ‘He’s great, thanks. Working hard. You know.’ Lucy smiled, wobbled her head, also at a loss for conversation. ‘And how’s . . . um?’

  Typical, thought Marie. ‘Robert,’ she said slowly and clearly.

  ‘Yes, Robert,’ repeated Lucy, as if congratulating Marie on knowing her own husband’s name.

  ‘He’s fine, thanks!’

  And the awkwardness descended like a toxic cloud.

  The gulf between them was too wide to cross. Marie, with her untidy hair and her pretty, animated face alwa
ys ready to break into a hooting laugh or exasperated gurn, could never find common ground with this geisha who kissed her husband goodbye every day on the doorstep, having filled him with home-made muesli and freshly squeezed orange juice. Marie thought with hot shame of the careful way in which she carved out the jade dots of mould before throwing toast at her brood. And just last week Robert had gone commando to work because laundry duties had clashed with water-pistol-battle-with-the-twins duties. ‘Anyway . . .’ Marie began to back away, over-smiling, ‘must get on.’ She lost her basic social skills around this woman. ‘Congratulations on the cake!’

  ‘Take a slice with you.’ Lucy deftly cut a triangle of gateau. ‘I owe it all to Delia!’

  Escaping outside to the grounds wrapped around the low-rise sprawl of the school, Marie thought That figures. Delia Smith, head girl of the TV chefs, was Lucy’s natural leader.

  The sunshine was shockingly bright after the gym’s cool institutional interior. Wandering, paper plate in hand, her epic culinary fail firmly on her mind, Marie recognised representatives of other foodie tribes milling about the stalls erected on the tennis court, or chatting in little knots by the adventure playground.

  Presiding over the raffle, Miss Harper was undoubtedly a devotee of Nigella. A luscious hourglass, the teacher’s pouting air of posh wantonness ensured that Robert took in nothing at parents’ evening. Like the original domestic goddess, she could kill a man by slowly licking a spoon.

  Over by the car park, marshalling the twins and their nine-year-old classmates for the country-dancing display, the new teaching assistant’s swooping eyeliner and vintage sundress gave her away as a Rachel Khoo. Dinner at her place would be all mismatched china and vodka in teacups.

  Warming to her theme, Marie picked out Angus’s floppy-fringed art teacher, who was sketching caricatures for fifty pence, as a Raymond Blanc. Although not French (he was Welsh, probably as un-French as it’s possible to be), he had the requisite passion and style and floppy hair and . . . Marie conceded that she rather fancied Angus’s art teacher and moved swiftly on, gravitating towards the second-hand bookstall.

  A familiar figure caught her eye. Far from the action, in the shadow cast by a large oak, sat her son. On his own, thought Marie. Again. She quelled an impulse to go and sit by him. A clump of teenage boys passed her, shouting and pushing, a messy, laughing amoeba.

  And there was Angus, head down as ever, camera by his side, fingers flying over his iPhone. Marie felt exasperated: Why is he emailing some girl he’s never met, when he’s surrounded by flesh-and-blood people?

  TO: [email protected]

  FROM: [email protected]

  26.07.13

  15.03

  SUBJECT: Me again

  Hi Soulmate

  Yeah I know my family are always mad but today they’re madder than usual. (Should that be ‘more mad’? Go on. Correct me, Grammar Freek, u know u want to.) Mum threatened to murder Dad this morning reversing out over the gravel at 300 mph in that stupid little car of her’s. And right now my worst nightmare is coming true. MY MUM IS IN MY SCHOOL. Bet she drools over Mr Rosen again and thinks nobody notices. The twins are giggling in that special evil way. It’s not looking good, Soulmate.

  Which is why you should be here. It’s so selfish of you to live in Scotland. Tell me what’s going on at your house. Your Mum and Dad still giving each other shit? Don’t let it get to you. Wish you could come to this party with me tonight. Gonna be awesome. Amazed I’m even invited. I’m not one of that trendy crowd. I could never be a Clone. They all look the same and they all sound the same but I’m a geek and proud of it! Like you.

  Will we ever meet up? Can’t believe I found a best mate on an indie film forum. I know what films you like but I don’t know what your voice sounds like. Mad.

  EVERYTHING is mad.

  laters

  Angus

  Marie, staring at her son, popped a plastic forkful of cake in her mouth.

  Stopped in her tracks by the ambrosial taste, she almost groaned. Lucy’s cake was exquisite, like being French-kissed by angels. It was buttery, it was light, it tasted like Mother used to make (if Mother was a genius).

  In that instant, Marie suddenly got it.

  She got why people make such a fuss about cooking. She got why there are foodie tribes, and why people worship the ones who show them how. This cake was more than the sum of its parts; it couldn’t be reduced to butter, eggs, flour. It was life-affirming, it was joy-bringing; it was simple and complex all at the same time.

  I want to be able to do this! she thought with sudden vehemence.

  Chasing crumbs round the plate with a forefinger, Marie froze. As if placed on the bookstall by a celestial hand, a hardback book, its edges worn by loving overuse, sat at an angle atop the rubble of novels and TV tie-ins and self-help manuals. Clever blue eyes stared out and found Marie’s from a tanned and handsomely lined face, framed by a genteel blonde bob.

  Here I am! that wise, friendly face said.

  Marie picked up the book reverentially, as if it might explode.

  ‘That one’s a pound,’ said the head of the PSA, a hoity-toity woman with a regrettable fringe, who was a Hairy Bikers disciple if her moustache was anything to go by.

  Paying up, Marie knew she was changing her life. In a flash she saw her new existence. She saw her family gathered around the table. Angus wasn’t peering down a viewfinder; the twins weren’t arguing about what they’d call the cow that they planned to own one day; Robert wasn’t repeating mind-numbingly dull office gossip; they were all saying Mmmm, Mother dearest, that smells good! as Marie sliced into something heavenly that she’d made earlier. Their faces were rosy, their eyes were bright and the kitchen seemed to have been miraculously redecorated.

  Placing her hand on the book as if it was a Bible, Marie whispered the vow she’d abandoned earlier. ‘This time next year,’ she said, eyes closed, heart a-flutter, ‘I’ll make a show-stopper for the school fete. I swear, on the Mary Berry Complete Baking Bible.’

  It was a long time since Marie had read a book walking along the road. She remembered the summer of her first Jilly Cooper novel, banging into lamp posts on the way home from school. This was like that, but more so. Meandering down wide and winding suburban avenues beneath early-evening lilac skies, she devoured the Basic Equipment section in her new Mary Berry Complete Baking Bible.

  Hmm, she thought, eyes narrowing, my whisk doesn’t look like that. Robert had used it to stir emulsion and it hadn’t been the same since. ‘Wait for me at the kerb, girls!’ she shouted, and the twins obediently stalled.

  She caught the glance they gave each other. She knew they were humouring her; some nine-year-olds may need their mum to guide them across the road, but not ones who could retool the UK economy while brushing their Barbies’ hair. She looked behind to see Angus tailing her, with his camera to his eye.

  ‘Not from behind!’ squawked Marie, covering her bottom with the Baking Bible. ‘Give your poor old mother a break.’

  ‘You don’t look that old from behind,’ said Angus, with that special teenage-boy gallantry that makes a woman feel 104.

  ‘Look,’ said Marie, pointing. ‘Somebody’s calling your name.’

  Scuttling along in St Ethelred’s wine-and-blue livery, Chloe shouted ‘Hey! Angus! Wait up!’

  Chloe Gray was goth Ying to Lucy Gray’s blonde Yang – one of the reasons Marie liked her so much. The other reason was how vividly Marie remembered being fifteen and totes in love with a boy who barely noticed you.

  Presumably Chloe had also clocked the faint slump of Angus’s shoulders when he saw her, and had noted the mechanical nature of his barely there smile.

  Be nice, Marie willed her son, recognising from her own youth Chloe’s desperate-for-a-welcome-but-expecting-a-knock-back expression and her hyper-casual conversation opener.

  ‘Saw you tootling along. Thought I’d – you know – say hello, kind of thing.’

  ‘Rig
ht. Cool.’

  For Angus, this was Noël Coward-style repartee; since he’d finally saved up enough for his Sony HDR-AS15 camera, he spoke less than a child raised by orang-utans.

  They’d caught up with Iris and Rose. ‘Look straight ahead and cross, ladies,’ said Marie, bonking both girls gently on the head with her new Mary Berry, confident that this translated as Stop staring at Chloe! Her daughters were obsessed with Chloe’s obsession with their brother, and loved to watch her watch him.

  ‘Why,’ they often marvelled to their mother, ‘would anybody look at Angus like that?’

  ‘Because,’ Marie would answer, ‘your brother is handsome.’

  Despite the retching sounds this always provoked, it was true. Angus had wayward chestnut hair that curled forward like Caesar’s, and wide blue eyes. Perhaps Marie was prejudiced (he’d inherited her colouring), but she saw her gauche son, teetering on the cusp of manhood, as poetic-looking.

  It wasn’t all poetry. There were pimples, of course, those pus-filled pressies from Mother Nature, and his feet had already grown to canoe-like dimensions. Marie had had to pointedly leave anti-perspirant at eye level in his room before he got with the whole showering-every-day programme and eradicated the whiff of musky compost that warns of approaching man-child. But Angus was a bit of a looker – if only he’d ever look up.

  You should have more confidence, she told him endlessly.

  You’re biased, Mum, he’d laugh. True enough, and it was also true that all teenagers looked gorgeous to a woman wading through her forties. It was the bright whites of the eyes, the untroubled brow, the resilient glow of almost-new skin; even Chloe, who sought to obliterate her distinctive features beneath Cleopatra eyeliner, black lipstick and Elvis hair dye, couldn’t dull that bloom. Marie winced with feminine empathy as she watched the girl swim upstream against Angus’s lack of interest.

  ‘I saved you some of my mother’s cake.’ Chloe held out a Tupperware box.