Bella's Christmas Bake Off (13 page)

Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling any love or life in the dough, just grit and vague embarrassment, but Tim was positively orgasmic at my digits, urging me on and making me even more uncomfortable. Then when he was almost spent and things were grinding to a halt everything stopped abruptly as a dark silhouette landed in the middle of the set. Bella was standing in the doorway. She had one arm leaning on the door jamb, a fag in her mouth and an evil look on her face. Tim leaped away from me and my dough like a husband caught in bed with another woman.

‘Oh, now little Amy’s all dressed up, I suppose you don’t need me anymore?’ she said, sashaying into the kitchen like a forties film star.

‘No, we were doing fine without you,’ Crimson sighed, barely looking up from her iPod. But Bella ignored her and was looking straight at me. I knew this look from the past and felt that old twinge of guilt as she stared me down. She’d always been the pretty one who got what she wanted, and if she didn’t – like now – she could be quite a handful. Now I was older, I wasn’t fooled or in awe of my old friend. I worked with teenagers and Bella was a walk in the park compared to the hormonal psychopaths of Year Ten and Eleven.

Mike the cameraman had put down his camera and was now just waiting. He rolled his eyes at me and I smiled back, it was reassuring to think I wasn’t the only person in this kitchen who wasn’t certifiable.

Bella slowly moved out of the doorway without taking her eyes off me and sashayed into the kitchen,
her
kitchen. She gestured for Billy to replenish her make-up, which I presumed must be a sign she was about to start filming again. Everyone stayed silent, watching sideways, like one would a naughty child who had to be ignored or they might blow again. Once her make-up was refreshed, her lips red and glossy, she came over and stood next to me in, it has to be said, a rather threatening manner. I wasn’t sure whether this was my cue to leave. I glanced over at Fliss for confirmation, but I couldn’t see her for Crimson’s plume of black backcombed hair.

‘Get on with it, Bella,’ Crimson said, completely unfazed by the whole drama, she seemed to be the only person here who didn’t pander to Bella and said what she thought.

I felt my basic teacher/child psychology was fitting for this situation and waded in. ‘You okay now, Bella?’ I said, slowly looking up at her, meeting her eyes which still held the flickering fire of her anger. ‘You always had a temper when we were younger, remember when I dropped ink on your homework?’ I rolled my eyes. ‘You went mad and threw the rest of the bottle over me,’ I laughed at the memory of her outrageous reaction to what was only an accident.

But she didn’t laugh, she just stared straight ahead and without looking at me like a queen who wouldn’t look at anyone she deemed beneath her. ‘Have you finished reminiscing, Amy?’

I shrugged, wiping my hands on a holly-embroidered tea towel, she was tougher than some of my Year Tens, but I wasn’t giving up just yet.

‘My mum used to say your temper was like a force of nature,’ I smiled, waiting for a glimmer of a reaction, for a moment of shared memory to bond us and calm her down. ‘Like a tempest tossing sailors around the sea,’ I added. Crimson sniggered at the word tossing and I heard Fliss telling her to shush.

‘Mum was the only one who could calm you when you were like that and she always said “think about cool water, lapping on sand,” do you remember?’

I looked at her, but she didn’t return my look, she was still avoiding my eyes. It was clear that I was wasting my time and couldn’t get through to her. Over the years, Bella had become harder, less accessible, and any thoughts I’d had about us ever being friends again were a lot further away than I’d ever imagined.

Wordlessly, I took off the scarlet apron and handed it to her. She took it, thanked me then turned, opened the oven door, and took out the huge ham still in its oven tray.

‘Are cameras rolling?’ she asked. Mike the cameraman immediately turned on the camera and a sound guy moved into position.

Everyone was watching silently. I felt at a complete loss and wondered if I should just go home. This was pointless, but I had to stay and put up with all this, because while I stuck by my agreement to go along with her programme and not say anything, Bella had to stand by hers. I wasn’t letting St Swithin’s down – and neither was she.

Perhaps that stuff about my mum and her temper was probably too personal to share in front of the others? Had I just completely closed the door on any kind of communication with her by talking of the past? She was now carrying the heavy glistening ham carefully, unsmiling, Stepford-like in her scarlet apron. Earlier she’d basted the ham for the camera, she’d massaged and ooed and aahed about its sweet plumpness for too long, but what happened next was quite a surprise.

‘
I
’m bored
, bored, bored,’ she suddenly announced, walking precariously across the kitchen on high heels carrying the huge ham. ‘I’m bored of you all, but most of all I’m bored of being told what to say, how to act and who to tell what to. I can’t bloody breathe in my own home!’ she was yelling at anyone and everyone. ‘And will you stop smirking?’ she waved her arm in Crimson’s direction – but Crimson stuck her tongue out.

Billy was on standby with a holdall full of brushes and make-up so he could go back in after Bella’s storm had subsided and put more lipstick on. Tim was looking at Bella and telling her she was wonderful, the lighting woman was re-adjusting the lights and Fliss was taking a swig from a diamante hip flask.

‘Dahling, we don’t want to get all excited now do we, sweetcakes?’ she said between swigs.

‘We do... oh yes we bloody do!’ Bella screamed, taking a swig from the proffered flask. ‘I want to get very excited,’ and with that she lifted the huge ham from its tray. She was now holding it against her, and the warm fat and syrup and sugar was drenching her lovely blouse but she didn’t seem to care. She stood defiantly in the middle of the beautiful kitchen and raised that wonderful ham high in the air, and it was then I realised, to my horror, that she was about to hurl it across the kitchen.

‘NO,’ I screamed, which of course egged her on, and she launched it through the air like a shot-putter. In a split second I leaped up to try and catch it. This was food, it might not have meant much to bloody Bella, with her fabulous cars and glittery diamonds and twenty foot tree, but throwing a beautiful Christmas ham was pure waste in my book, and besides it was dangerous. She could have knocked someone out with that huge ham, so screaming ‘BELLA NO,’ I lunged forward, throwing my whole body at it arms out like I was trying to catch a large ball. But as it landed in my arms I was amazed to feel how light it was, like a ball – just like a rubber ball. A rubber ball that I couldn’t hold on to. I looked down in horror as it fell from my arms and slowly bounced along the kitchen floor. Everyone was staring, open-mouthed, Bella’s tantrum was clearly nothing out of the ordinary, but me rugby-tackling a syrupy ham apparently was. In the silence I finally said what everyone else already knew. ‘It’s fake.’

‘That’s not the only fake thing in this kitchen,’ Crimson said, rolling her eyes.

This was followed by peals of laughter from Fliss who seemed to enjoy the whole spectacle and Bella whose temper had suddenly disappeared.

‘Oh Ames, your face is a picture... you didn’t think that ham was real did you?’ Bella asked, laughing at me, looking around at her audience, her courtiers, who laughed along politely.

‘Yes... I did. I thought... silly me, it looked like a real ham, I thought as it was a food show, you might just use... real food?’ I said sarcastically. Someone handed me a towel and I tried to mop the syrupy juices from my blouse.

‘Is this what all TV cookery programmes do?’ I asked.

Bella nodded but everyone else shook their heads.

‘Well, Bella’s food is sometimes...“styled”, because as much as she loves to bake, the poor love just doesn’t have the time. And sometimes... we need to improvise... come into the sitting room, dahling, while Bella has a touch-up,’ Fliss was covering for her – again.

She bustled me out of the kitchen where Bella was now being tended to by Tim and Billy. Crimson was skulking in a corner, her mouth downwards, her eyes shifting from side to side, she was sniggering at Bella.

Fliss sat me down on the blue armchair and positioned herself on the pouffe, pulling it closer so her chin was almost on my knees. It was quite disconcerting.

‘This is mad,’ I started. ‘I honestly don’t believe this. It’s all just one big lie, the food is fake, other people dress the tree and, don’t tell me, someone else makes all of the other decorations?’

‘Crimson does the decorations, she’s been doing them for years now. She did A level art – never took it any further but she has talent.’

‘So why won’t Bella mention her on the programme? Why doesn’t she have her on screen showing how she makes the stuff?’

‘Dahling, you’ve seen Crimson...she looks like something from Lord of the Rings!’ Fliss laughed, slapping her thighs and criss-crossing those beleaguered kitten heels that had been carrying her not inconsiderable weight all morning.

Then she turned serious, ‘Bella is what people want, rich, glamourous, sexy – the perfect woman in the perfect life – and she knows how to sell it. And make no mistake, she can bake. That woman bakes a mean batch of brownies, so don’t get any ideas about going to the gutter press, saying she can’t. Sometimes we fake the food and we employ a little help off screen... that’s all.’

‘On screen she comes over as quite passionate about food and baking so why doesn’t she bake her own...’

‘On screen I come over as quite passionate about a lot of things, because I’m the perfect actress, I’ve had to be...’ it was Bella, now hanging in the doorway being handed a flute of champagne by Billy.

‘Bella, that’s enough, Amy doesn’t need to know everything,’ Fliss warned.

What the hell was she talking about? I knew everything about Bella, even the stuff from our teens that she hid from the world, there was nothing else to know... was there?

‘Oh chill... have a glass of champagne. I’ve had three this morning and it’s not twelve yet,’ Bella giggled, holding up a wobbly hand before almost collapsing into Tim’s arms. Thank goodness he’d been standing behind her.

‘No... er dahling, she’s teasing, aren’t you, dear?’ Fliss turned back to me, wafting Bella away and clearly giving her a meaningful look, but Bella was laughing.

‘Have some bloody Champagne, Ames...’ she was very tipsy. She’d been sipping champagne all morning, when she wasn’t throwing hams and having tantrums – I reckon the champagne had a lot to answer for.

‘No... thank you, it’s a little early for me,’ I said.

‘It’s a little early for me,’ she mimicked my voice while wandering into the room on wobbly legs and stood in front of me, looking directly at me, her head to one side like a puzzled robin.

‘Amy, loosen up, why are you being so boring?’

I stiffened, recalling this phrase from when we were teenagers and I refused to go late night clubbing or said I’d had enough to drink.

‘I’m not being boring, Bella,’ I started, like I was talking to a ten-year-old. ‘I’m just a bit disappointed that’s all. I’ll be honest, for years I’ve watched your programme along with the rest of the country. I’ve tried to reach your standards, take your advice, aspire to your life,
your
Christmas – even though I never had the time or the money you have. Watching you bake and dress the house was pure nostalgia for me because we’d done those things together. And now I discover that Bella Bradley, the brilliant cook, the woman who can dress a room in minutes and make it look fabulous doesn’t exist. Someone else does it for her – and what’s more, they don’t even get credit. Poor Crimson over there does all the decorations, but not once have you ever given her credit. It seems that everyone else is busy making you look good and all you seem to do is put on a red apron every Christmas and have a big tantrum, while selling us all a dream we can’t buy.’ I’d always wanted to meet the new Bella, the fabulous cook, the creative genius, but none of it was real – it was all one big fat lie and I couldn’t even enjoy the fantasy anymore.

‘Oh stop it, Amy, you’re not stupid, you know it’s all smoke and mirrors, that’s what TV is,’ she said, flopping on the blue velvet sofa and wrapping herself in a throw.

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ I went on. She was closing her eyes and pretending to be asleep but I knew what she was doing, she was still so childlike. ‘I believed in you, but now I feel cheated, betrayed, like every other viewer out there who spent a fortune on the “right” bird, soaked their raisins in expensive gin for a fortnight and did extra shifts to buy bloody gold leaf for a trifle.’

‘Oh Ames...’ she said, giving me a jolt from my melancholy. ‘The viewers aren’t interested in what I do, or even if I do it. They love me, they want to be me and they want my wonderful bloody life. You’re right – I’m selling them a dream and if part of that dream is a little cloudy then who cares? They don’t want to see me sweating over a hot stove in my joggers and stained T-shirt because that’s what
they
do. My viewers want to escape from Coronation Street and visit Bond Street every now and then – and that’s what I do for them.’

And she was right. I’d been one of those viewers who was seeking an escape from the boredom of my marriage, the routine of my day-to-day life, and I’d found it in Bella’s programmes. I couldn’t even enjoy my own Christmas, because it always had to be ‘a Bella Christmas’. I’d make lists of her preferred ingredients, her tips and advice, and save hard to buy everything she recommended when I was perfectly capable of making my own choices and decisions. But she’d offered me something else... the dream of the perfect kitchen, the perfect marriage and the perfect Christmas. What’s more – I’d bought it, because my own real life had been so unbearable. I started laughing.

‘What? Why are you laughing?’ she said.

‘You’ve created this business, this whole celebrity persona around food and yet it seems you’ve forgotten what it means to love cooking, to love food.

‘Ha, Bella hates food. She hasn’t eaten since 1999,’ Fliss roared laughing; ‘which reminds me – it must be lunchtime.’ With that she headed off down the hall and Bella picked up her phone, becoming engrossed very quickly – I think I was dismissed.

A
s filming had finished
for lunch and no one was allowed inside Dovecote with hot food (oh the irony), everyone trooped out into the cold to the catering truck. I watched them through the window being handed turkey sarnies with all the trimmings followed by Christmassy cupcakes from the food truck.

As soon as I could I was going out there for a big hot chocolate and a slice of what looked like very fruity Christmas cake – assuming that wasn’t fake. I had only been here a few hours and already the superficiality of these people and this world was getting to me. Looking at Bella’s skinny frame earlier had made me wonder if I should diet, something I would normally never do. Since when did I tell myself to stop eating because I needed to look right? This world was so infectious, with its unreasonable demands on the appearances of presenters and the thinness of women. I gave myself a talking to; Christmas was not the season to be worrying about me, it was a time for others, and my physical appearance on TV was the least of my worries. I was locked in a house with a mean, drunken presenter, her crazy agent, a stroppy Goth and a director who thought he was working on ‘The Taming of the Shrew’.

‘Darling, come over here, I need you to make some notes,’ Bella was saying to Crimson who was reluctantly dragging herself across the floor like a dark-eyed sloth.

‘Now we need to do my Twitter feed,’ she said, patting the stool next to her. Crimson’s face was crumpled as she lumbered up onto the stool; she was clearly furious at being asked to do her job. A part of me didn’t blame her, she seemed to have to do everything for Bella off screen.

‘Write this down,’ Bella directed, composing herself while waiting for Crimson to do the same, but anyone watching knew this may take some time. Eventually Crimson found a pen from about her person, it had a fluffy top and fangs and it waggled ludicrously as she began to write.

‘Now I’m going to say fabulous things and I want you to twitter it out please.’

‘Tweet.’

‘Yes, darling, that’s right.’

‘No... I mean you don’t “twitter” it, you tweet it... OMG who gave old people the internet?’

I waited for a few seconds to see Bella’s reaction, assuming Crimson’s sacking or beheading would be on the menu.

‘That will do, darling,’ Bella smiled sweetly and patted Crimson’s pad indicating she needed to write stuff down. Perhaps Crimson knew where the bodies were buried?

‘Ate the most divine Prosciutto ai Frutti di Stagione at Como Lario last night... the winter fruits were bellissimo. A taste of summer sunshine on a snowy Chelsea night...’

How wonderful, I thought – she has such a great life and she visits all these wonderful restaurants, places I’ve only ever read about in Sunday supplements but doubt I’ll ever eat at.

‘That sounds nice,’ I tried.

‘Yes... my viewers love to know everything about me, and my restaurant tweets always cause a buzz in the twitterati.’

‘Twittersphere,’ monotoned Crimson.

‘Whatever... it doesn’t matter what you call it, I still cause a stir.’

‘Yeah...you could say that. @cheesetits retweeted you twice,’ Crimson said, without missing a beat.

‘Really? Can’t you do something about that, darling? I hate when lowlifes get hold of my tweetings.’

‘How do you know @cheesetits is a low life?’ Crimson said, looking up from her phone.

‘Well, let me put it this way – I doubt it’s the Duchess of Cambridge with a tweeter name like that.’

‘Handle.’

‘What?’

‘The Twitter name is called a handle,’ Crimson repeated, rolling her eyes.

‘I’m sure it is, darling, and I want you to keep a handle on it, if you don’t mind. Stop cheese tits and their ilk from following me and tweeting me up.’

‘Retweeting.’

‘Will you please stop correcting me?’

‘Yeah, when you stop getting it wrong and being a judgemental old witch,’ Crimson said this like she was reading a shopping list, not insulting TV’s Kitchen Goddess.

Bella rolled her eyes affectionately. Yes, affectionately.

I was in shock. Grown men – well, Tim – were crumbling in Bella’s wake yet this stroppy teen was walking all over her.

‘I can’t help being a judgemental old witch, Crimson, I take after my mother. Oh how I hate online social media and the bottom-feeding sock puppets.’

‘Trolls.’

‘Yes you are – now come on little troll and start hashtagging something trendy on the end of my last brilliant twittering,’ Bella sang.