“What do you mean, ‘things’?” he asked impatiently.

“You know”—she stared at her sandwich, which was the only object in a ten-foot radius she could trust not to have strong opinions about her life choices—“that I’m whatever sort of person you think the sort of person who gets pregnant at university is.”

“I . . . I don’t understand.”

“I just . . . ” The words fell pathetically out of her like socks out of a laundry basket. “I just didn’t want you to think less of me.”

He gave her a look that was colder than any look she’d thought he was capable of giving. “I’m not sure that makes it better. Because not only did you lie to me, but you also apparently think I’m the kind of man who’d judge you for a mistake you made when you were still a teenager.”

It was nothing she hadn’t heard before. But there was something about the word “mistake” that always made her feel queasy. I never planned for this to happen was too close to This should

never have happened, and then it stopped being about Rosaline’s past and started being about Amelie’s future. And the thing was, she couldn’t say any of that. Because, right here and right now, Alain wasn’t wrong. By every standard she’d ever been taught, she’d messed up her life. She’d had everything going for her, and she’d thrown it away on a careless night with a guy she wasn’t even that into. Worse, she’d been ashamed of herself for so long that here she was projecting her own mess onto someone who would probably have been fine if she’d had the courage to trust him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry.”

Alain’s mouth, with its generous curve and its tantalising brackets, was particularly expressive when he was upset. “So you keep saying. But what exactly am I supposed to do with that? Or with you?”

She’d ruined it. She’d completely ruined it. “I don’t know. Can we . . . can we start again? I mean, I’m still me. I just haven’t been to Malawi.”

“You sat next to me last night and let me reassure you that being on this show wouldn’t get in the way of your fake medical degree. Are you really so desperate for . . . for I don’t even know what . . . that you have to gaslight people into telling you things are okay?”

Oh God. Had she done that? She hadn’t meant to, but did that make a difference? If this had been the kind of movie where their leads got tangled up in a dog park, then being insecure enough to tell someone she fancied a pack of lies would be quirky and amusing and forgiven with a kiss in the pouring rain. But now she’d accidentally behaved that way, it was . . . it was hurtful.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I don’t know what to say.”

He gave a sharp laugh. “Whatever you said, would it even be true?”

“Alain, I . . .”

“I’m sorry. I’m not doing this.” He turned and walked away into the mellow afternoon sunlight.

And Rosaline had no choice but to follow him because the technical crew were hurrying them back to the ballroom.

Selfish and self-defeating though it seemed, Rosaline wasn’t in a fit state to pay much attention to the judging. It mostly boiled down to people having done a little bit either side of fine. Dave, however, had skewed far enough into not-fine that Rosaline was at least slightly more confident about her chances of surviving week one.

Despite serving up two tiers of what was clearly intended to be a three-tiered cake, he somehow managed to look at once defiant and defeated, as if his whole body was saying I dare you to admit this is as shit as we all know it is.

“So you had a bit of an accident wi’ one o’t layers,” began Wilfred Honey, smiling his most grandfatherly smile, which, for a man so grandfatherly it was like his whole body was made of Werther’s Originals was very grandfatherly indeed. “But that doesn’t matter as long as the taste is right.”

They cut into it, and Marianne Wolvercote nibbled a delicate forkful. “The taste isn’t right.”

Dave rocked back on his heels a moment, nodded, and then said, “Well, fuck you both very much.”

The whole set had gone quiet, like everybody knew there was a wasp in the room and nobody knew where it was. It was just that in this case the wasp was named Jennifer Hallet, and there was very little ambiguity about who was going to get stung.

“David,” she said in a voice that could have split cake batter and set meringues, “a word.”

The judging proceeded as normal after that, only slightly interrupted by occasional half-caught phrases like “contractual obligation,” “caustic piss-storm,” and “faster than your first shit after a salmonella pasty” drifting in from outside.

Once Jennifer Hallet had finished politely explaining to Dave why his conduct had been unprofessional and might have negative repercussions, she brought him back inside, pointed at the spot in front of the judges’ table, and said: “From Marianne’s last line. Thanks.”

“The taste isn’t right,” Marianne Wolvercote repeated, with exactly the same intonation as the first time. “Rosewater is a delicate flavour that’s easy to overdo, and you have most definitely overdone it.”

There was a really long silence.

Dave picked up his two-thirds of a cake. “Mmhm. Thanks.” And so it went on. Anvita did well, and Rosaline was just focused enough to be happy for her. Then her own turn came around and with a kind of detached relief, she realised that she was too emotionally battered to be nervous.

Marianne Wolvercote peered at her offering with the eye of a connoisseur, which, when Rosaline thought about it, she was. “Now this looks good, but it is quite simple, and so I’m not totally certain good will be enough.”

Rosaline’s shoulders hunched slightly. She knew that already. As long as she didn’t actively tell the judges to fuck off she would probably get through, but “Good enough isn’t good enough” was the Palmers’ unofficial family motto. And here she was demonstrating her not-good-enoughness all over again.

The judges sliced into her cake and Marianne Wolvercote poked it with a knife in a way that Rosaline, already raw from the process and Alain and everything, found weirdly invasive.

“Nice lightness,” said Wilfred Honey, still chewing enthusiastically. “Tasty and with a really smooth, moist texture to it.”