скачать книгу бесплатно
She’d found this baking competition – it was an annual thing apparently and very popular – and somehow convinced the organisers to hold it on the shores of the loch next to the cafe. She said the publicity would be worth thousands of pounds, and if we were to enter the competition, it would be even better.
I picked up the flyer and sighed. I supposed she had a point – it was a great opportunity. I just didn’t really want to be involved.
Britain Bakes! the paper said. Do you have what it takes to bake your way to the top? Then enter our tasty competition and prove it!
I shook my head. There were so many things wrong with this whole situation that I didn’t know where to begin.
For a start, like I said, I was pregnant. And grumpy. Sweating over an oven as I fended off midges on the shores of the loch was not how I planned to spend the last few weekends before my baby arrived. And there was the tiny problem that I was useless at baking. Mum was brilliant, my Auntie Suky was brilliant, Harry – I had to grudgingly admit – had recently discovered a talent for whipping up the most amazing cakes. But I was hopeless. I had no business entering a baking competition.
I peered at the flyer again. At the bottom was a logo. It was a large H with swirly writing around it. Highland Television it said. WHAT?!
Harry came back into the office, her phone in her hand.
‘It’s on bloody TV,’ I said. ‘It’s on Highland Television.’
‘Is it?’ Harry said. She didn’t sound very surprised.
‘You knew?’
‘Well, yes,’ she admitted, sitting down opposite me and thumbing through some papers on my desk. ‘But that’s why it’s so great. The cafe will get so much publicity. Claddach will look amazing. Tourists will flock there and takings will go through the roof.’
‘I don’t want to be on TV,’ I said. ‘What if someone I know sees it?’
‘They’re not likely to watch Highland Television, are they?’ Harry pointed out. ‘I think it’s got something like ten viewers.’
She didn’t quite meet my eye, though, so I suspected HTV got a lot more viewers than that.
‘Anyway, it’s too late,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s all sorted. There are six contestants, including us, two judges and loads of crew. Milicent’s beside herself with joy because they’re all staying at her B&B.’
I grinned. Milicent was the local hotelier. She was a real character with a heart of gold, and she would love all the extra people descending on Claddach.
‘We start filming next weekend.’
‘Next weekend!’ I practically shouted. ‘Aren’t there like auditions and heats and things to get through first?’
Harry looked shifty.
‘Well, yes there were,’ she said. ‘But I had a word with the producers and they saved two spots for us.’
‘A word?’ I said. ‘What word would that be? Abraca-bloody-dabra?’
Because that was the other thing about Harry and me. We were both witches. Just like our mums, and Eva – and my toddler daughter Clemmie, which was already proving to be a bit of a headache. But unlike Harry and the rest of my family, I wasn’t massively enthusiastic about witchcraft. I used it when I really had to – why clean the bathroom by hand? – but I wasn’t casting spells left, right and centre like the rest of them were.
I was fairly sure that Harry had used her magical skills of persuasion to get the producers to let us enter the competition at this late stage and probably to get them to hold the bloody thing in Claddach too.
Harry grinned at me.
‘It doesn’t matter how I did it,’ she said. ‘All that matters is we start filming next weekend.’
‘I’m busy next weekend actually,’ I said, sulking. ‘I’ve got things to do. We need to paint the baby’s room.’
Harry waved her hand as if that was a minor inconvenience.
‘You’ve got ages before the baby comes,’ she said.
‘And I can’t bake,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t be in the competition.’
‘They always have two local contestants,’ Harry said.
‘I can’t bake,’ I said again. ‘Just because you’re a bloody domestic goddess nowadays, you can’t assume everyone is.’
Harry laughed.
‘I’m not a domestic goddess but, yes, I can bake because I learned. And so can you.’
‘Not by next weekend,’ I wailed.
‘Oh we’ll sort it out,’ Harry said vaguely.
‘With magic?’ I was hopeful Harry could fix this, even if I couldn’t.
‘Erm, not really,’ Harry said.
‘Not really?’
‘Not at all.’
My jaw dropped.
‘What do you mean not at all?’
‘No magic allowed, I’m afraid,’ Harry said. ‘You know as well as I do that we can’t bake with magic – it just doesn’t work.’
‘What’s the point of entering then?’ I said through gritted teeth.
‘Well, it’s fun, isn’t it?’ said Harry. ‘And it’s nice for us all to get together.’
I put my head in my hands.
‘So how does it work?’ I said, dreading the answer.
‘They’re putting up a big marquee on the shores of the loch, right by the café,’ Harry said. ‘It’s going to be amazing. There will be ovens and fridges and mixers and everything we could possibly need inside there.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘It’s every weekend for six weeks – someone gets knocked out each weekend.’
‘I’ll be out first,’ I said, cheering up a bit. ‘So it’ll only be one weekend really.’
Harry shook her head at my lack of focus.
‘Anyway,’ she carried on. ‘Each week concentrates on a different aspect of baking. We do two challenges and the judges taste them and decide who’s going through to the next round and who isn’t. It’ssimple.’
‘Simple?’ I said, raising an eyebrow.
‘Simple.’
‘What’s the first week?’
‘Spongecakes,’said Harry. ‘Easy bloody peasy.’
‘Fine,’ I said, perking up at the thought of scoffing cake for days on end. ‘I’ll do some practice this week. Are you taking the kids?’
Harry and her wife Louise had twins – Fiona and Finlay – who were three years old, adorable, and, in my opinion, out of control.
‘No way,’ she said. ‘Louise will be fine at home with them. Jamie can look after Clemmie on his own, can’t he? She’s no trouble.’
I wasn’t so sure about that, not now my cute Clemmie had started experimenting with her new-found witching skills. But the thought of an unbroken night’s sleep was too good to resist.
‘He’ll love it,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it.’
Two (#ulink_8c0efc55-2ea0-5318-bd0d-5682e140281e)
‘Are you trembling?’ Harry looked at my hands in suspicion. ‘You are, you’re all shaky.’
‘I’m nervous,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been on television before, I can’t bake, I’m too fat to do up my own shoelaces and, altogether, this is one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done.’
Harry gave me a look that suggested I’d just grown an extra head.
‘It’s going to be fun,’ she said.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s just my idea of fun is normally very different from yours. Can we drive down? I’m not walking.’
We had arrived in Claddach, the tiny town where we’d grown up, super-early that morning after driving up in Harry’s car. The competition was taking place down in the town, on the shores of the loch and close to Mum’s cafe. I was keen to see what it would be like after Harry’s talk of marquees and what not. We’d not seen anything yet as the road from Edinburgh skirted Claddach itself and wound up into the Cairngorms where our house was perched in the foothills and where we now stood, contemplating the road in front of us.
It was a beautiful day but the walk into Claddach was pretty steep and I knew that while I might manage to waddle down the slope, the chances of me waddling back up again were slim.
I sighed heavily and stuck my bump out, and Harry rolled her eyes.
‘Okay, fatso,’ she said. She beeped the car doors and I, rather inelegantly, wedged myself into the passenger seat.
‘So what should I expect?’ I asked as Harry pulled out on to the main road.
‘Nothing fancy,’ she said. ‘There’s going to be the marquee, like I said but, honestly, it’s all going to be fairly understated. It’s not the X Factor.’
‘So it’s just a fun way of promoting Claddach?’ I asked, hoping for reassurance. ‘No pressure?’
‘No pressure,’ Harry said, glancing at me as she turned off the main road into Claddach centre. ‘Honestly, it’s fine. It’s a tiny show on a tiny channel – it’s not a big set-up.’
She indicated, then spun the wheel to go round the corner into the lane that led to the café. I was thrown forward as she slammed on the brakes.
‘Harry!’ I said in annoyance, giving her a filthy look. But she wasn’t listening.
‘Oh. My. God,’ she breathed. ‘Oh. My. God.’
I looked up from adjusting my seatbelt over my bump.
‘Ohhhhh,’ I said, horrified.
This was no small set-up. This was huge.
It was a gorgeous June day and Claddach was at her most stunning. The inky-black waters of the loch were, for once, a deep blue, the sky was bright with sunshine and tiny puffs of cloud skipped along in the breeze. On the distant hills gorse burned vibrant yellow, and the trees shone their greenest green. It would have been quite a view anyway, but add Britain Bakes to the mix and it took my breath away.
A beautiful white marquee billowed on the shores of the loch, close to the cafe, like the sails on a pirate ship. There was bunting strung along the outside of the cafe and forming a sort of corridor between the cafe’s front door and the entrance to the marquee. And there were people everywhere.
There were cameras being set up all over the place, and lots of people wearing black trousers and T-shirts speaking into headsets running around. There were some young women with swishy hair clutching clipboards and shouting into mobile phones and two huge trucks with HTV emblazoned along the side parked like exclamation marks across the road.
The Claddach pipe band was playing a little way along the beach, and lots of locals were drifting about, watching what was going on. I saw several people I recognised – my best friend Chloe, who was with her kids and her husband, was easily spotted because of her bright-red hair. I saw another friend, Kirsty, looking like an off-duty rock star in shiny black leggings and an oversized vest top that showed off her tattoos. Millicent Fry was bustling around organising everyone and everything – as always – and it looked like just about the whole town had turned out.
Harry and I stared at the action through the windscreen. She turned the engine off.
‘Shall we go and introduce ourselves?’ she said.
I folded my arms over my bump protectively.
‘We could,’ I said. ‘Or, we could turn the car round, drive back to Edinburgh and pretend this never happened.’
For a second I thought Harry was going to agree and my heart lifted.
‘I admit this is a bit bigger than we thought it was going to be,’ she said.
‘Harry, I was imagining a couple of old women in a tent,’ I said, my voice shrill. ‘Not the whole town showing up to watch me make a mess of a Victoria sponge on national television.’
Harry swallowed.
‘Britain Bakes is a bit more popular than I thought it was,’ she said. She looked through the windscreen again and took a breath, then she threw her shoulders back, shook her super-shiny hair, and gave me her most dazzling smile.
‘But this is good,’ she said.
‘It is?’
‘Yes. It’s good. It’s great, in fact. All this fuss means the whole country will be looking at Claddach. It will really put the town on the map. Business will go through the roof. See how amazing it all looks – the tourist board will be going wild.’
If I’d been trembling before, I was shaking violently now.
‘But look at all the people,’ I said. ‘Look at how many people there are. Everyone’s going to be watching me make a huge mess of this.’
Harry patted my hand. I pulled it away.
