Chapter 3 - Week 2: Biscuit Week (Part 1)

When Rebecca returned to the tent the following weekend, she was proud of herself. She had been a good girl. She was strong and strong-willed and completely under her own control. She hadn't fallen into the temptation of Key Lime nor handsome men. She had boxed the pie and taken it with her, then thrown it in the bin at the services halfway down the motorway. She had completely ignored the pang of regret and buried herself in a salad the moment she got home. She hadn't looked twice at a bakery since.

'How was it, then?' were the first words he asked her when he flopped into her stool early that Saturday morning. 'The pie?'

'Oh, you know,' Rebecca said, busying herself with her steriliser and trying to hide her blush. 'Sublime.'

'Isn't that what the judges said?' Robert asked.

'They were right,' Rebecca said sagely, with a little guilty grin.

She wasn't sure why it mattered so much, that she ate the pie he gave her. Why he seemed so insistent on Rebecca in particular enjoying his baking. She was just a makeup artist. Not a contestant, not a host, not a judge. What she did or thought had no bearing on whether or not he won the trophy. It was his baking, not her taste buds, that mattered.

He's probably a big weirdo and gets off on feeding people, she thought as she rubbed concealer into a red mark beneath his chin. Thank God he wasn't around when I was fifteen. I would've weighed five hundred pounds.

'You all right?' Robert asked, startling her. 'You look a wee bit feverish.'

'Just a bit warm in here,' Rebecca said.

'A bit,' he said, though he frowned slightly, like he didn't believe her. It did interesting and attractive things to the attractive shape of his mouth. 'Did you have a good week, then?'

'Yeah, fine,' Rebecca said. 'Nothing too exciting. You?'

'Aye. Trees, wood, the lot. You know.'

Rebecca did know. Where she hadn't given into the temptation of the Key Lime pie, she had caved to the lure of the contestant info binder in the production tent, and had pored over Robert's profile with something akin to fervent devotion. Thirty-three, a manager at a lumber mill. No wife, no live-in girlfriend. A dog. Close to - and often bakes for - his sister.

Single.

'I'd love to work with wood,' Rebecca said.

'Would you, now?' Robert said in obvious surprise. 'What is it that appeals to you so much? The saws? The dust? The sexy hi-vis?'

'I actually have a fetish for those massive ear defenders.'

Robert laughed. Rebecca warmed through at the sound of it.

'Besides, I'll have you know I was top of my class in DT,' she sniffed. 'I built this enormous clock which is still on my mantle' (fake mantle, over fake fireplace in her tiny Coventry flat) 'and hand-carved the numbers and everything.'

'That is impressive,' he said. He added wryly, 'I failed woodwork.'

Rebecca grinned. 'Aced food tech?'

He grinned back. 'How'd you know?'

'Just a hunch.'

They looked at each other for a brief moment in the mirror: Rebecca rosy-cheeked and milky complexioned; Robert weather-beaten and with a gaze so intense that she pressed her thighs together beneath her skirt.

She looked away, her round face blushing harder.

Robert was the first to break the silence. He let out a long breath. 'Biscuit week,' he said. He sounded suddenly nervous. 'Never thought I'd shit myself over wee fucking biscuits.'

'You'll be fine,' Rebecca said, though it seemed an inadequate platitude. She said it to all the contestants.

'Maybe,' he said. 'Which one's your favourite?'

'Sorry?'

'Y'know. Biscuits. Round things.'

The heat in her face flared again.

'Peanut butter cookies.'

His dark eyebrows shot up in surprise. 'You like all those American flavours, then?'

'Love them,' she said.

'Hm,' Robert said, and the hum of it both thrilled and unnerved her.

*

It was raining. The brandy snap variety challenge had contestants in tears. George's had melted off the sheet in the oven. Everyone's moods were darkening as quickly as the sky.

'Shit,' Rebecca snapped at her mobile. Her sister was ringing. She knew she wasn't supposed to unless something had happened to Mum. The plain blue RACHEL on the screen immediately cracked open a pit of dread in her stomach. 'Excuse me,' she said to no one, hurrying to the production tent.

'Rachel?' she said, ducking into an empty room. 'What's happened?'

'Jesus,' Rachel snapped, then softened. 'Nothing. Ouch. Sorry. You don't need to shout.'

'I wasn't shouting.'

'You were...never mind. Are you alone?'

'Ye-es,' Rebecca said. She crossed her arms against herself, chilled. 'What's wrong?'

'Nothing's wrong,' Rachel said. You're not driving or anything, are you?'

'Does it sound like I'm driving?'

'It sounds like you're in a white noise simulator set to rainforest. Oh! You're at work, aren't you? Sorry, completely forgot. How's it going? Is your favourite still there?'

'Ssh,' Rebecca urged her. 'Just tell me what you want.'

'You're sure you're okay?' Rachel said.

'RACH! For fuck's sake. I won't know until you tell me, will I?'

'Right,' Rachel said, taking a breath to collect her thoughts. 'You remember Jono.'

'Fuck do I remember Jono?' Rebecca said. 'We lived together for two years.'

'Right, yeah. So I ran into him at ASDA this morning--'

It gave Rebecca a sudden pang of glee to hear that her accountant ex was slobbing through ASDA on a Saturday morning instead of M&S, though part of her wondered how the great one had fallen so low.

'--and, oh, Becs, he was with someone.'

'Really?' Rebecca wasn't sure how to respond. How did she feel? She didn't know. They'd broken up eight months ago. At the time she had left a drunken message on his answerphone: crooning Adele's Someone Like You and then sobbing, slurring that she hoped his next girlfriend would be thin enough for him. It wasn't a memory she liked to entertain often, and she really hoped that he didn't play it to their ex-mutual friends at parties. 'What was she like?' Rebecca asked her sister.

'Well...'

There was a long, strung-out silence.

'Rach?'

'Her e,' Rach said. 'I'll send you a photo.'

'Rach, you really shouldn't take photos of people without them knowing--'

'Oh, eff off. You'll thank me when you see it. Here.'

There was the sound of distant tapping and swearing on the other end of the line, followed by the swift vibrating sound of a message received on Whatsapp.

Rebecca opened it.

'Oh my God,' she said.

'I know,' Rachel said.

'She's...'

&apo s;HUGE.'

'Not _huge_,' Rebecca said, though while it was more polite, it was not necessarily truthful. The photo was a bit blurry, obviously taken while Rachel was pretending to check her mobile for her shopping list at roughly waist-height, and as such the proportions were slightly out, but undoubtedly, there was Jono, leaning on a shopping trolley in jeans and a cabled cashmere jumper that Rebecca had bought him for Christmas. By his side was a blond woman with - to take inspiration from Bridget Jones - a bottom the size of Brazil, and the breasts to match.

'Is she a glamour model or something?' Rebecca said.

'Fuck if I know. Are you okay? I know with everything that happened--'

'I'm fine,' Rebecca said. She looked toward the opening of the tent, where it still poured down with rain. 'Look, I got to go.'

'You sure you're okay?'

'Bye!'

Rebecca hung up and stared at the photo for another ten seconds. Studied it. The hair. The bum. The boobs.

The belly.

'FUUUUCK!' she screamed, and threw her phone against the side of the tent, where - both frustratingly and thankfully - it refused to shatter.

She knew how she felt now. Every inch of her burned with it.

Rage. That was what she felt. Not hurt, not lonely...just pure, unadulterated rage. How DARE he. How DARE he leave her, walking out the door and calmly telling her that she was too fat. She was too fat. At her largest (as an adult, in any regard) she'd been half of the size of the woman at his side in that photograph.

And it wasn't just that.

Something else. Something that Rachel might not have noticed, as dim as she could be.

The woman wasn't just fat.

She was pregnant.

About eight months along.

Rebecca breathed deeply, evenly, her mobile shaking in her hand.

She deleted the photo.

And then she stomped back to the baking tent, absolutely ravenous.

*

'You all right?' Shana asked when Rebecca bundled in with a tube of lipstick, cross with Odette for having drunk tea and ruined her colour.

Shana's skin shone warm mahogany, her perfect eyes bright and cat-like, mouth generous and red. She and Robert would have made a handsome couple, Rebecca had thought, if Shana were into men. 'You seem a bit...off.'

The cameramen had wandered off for a moment, giving them a brief moment of privacy, though the boom mics still loomed above them, capturing every word they said.

'Don't worry about me,' Rebecca said with a pasted-on grin. 'How are the oat biscuits going?'

'Hard as rocks.' She gave the oven a little kick with her ankle. 'Hey, we're all going for a curry tonight. Comradely thing. D'you want to join?'

'Isn't that a contestant thing?'

'Think we're allowed to invite you?'

Rebecca sneaked Robert a sideways glance. He had his back to them, staring down at the oven, but the back of his neck looked suspiciously red. She looked back to Shana, who wore a raised eyebrow and a knowing twist of the mouth.

'Sure,' she said.

'We'll save you a chair,' Shana said.

'Becs, out of shot!' Will shouted.

Rebecca retreated to the treat table and stuffed her fingers into the tin of broken brandy snaps. She watched proceedings, barely thinking of the promise of an evening curry, hardly seeing anything in her mind except the deleted photograph, the woman, and the man she'd been too fat to keep.

When she looked down, the entire tin was gone.