“Mmhm,” said Nora. “Thanks.”

Finally, it was Alain—bearing his usual tray of trying too hard.

“So,” he announced, “I’ve prepared coconut panna cotta with spiced pineapple, a pineapple mint sherbet with fresh fruit, and a vanilla bean and pineapple lattice tart.”

Oh fuck. It all looked great. Of course it looked great. He was a smug prick, but he was annoyingly good at baking.

“I’m probably going to be a bit prejudiced about this,” said Wilfred Honey, “because I do love a tart.”

“Don’t we all, darling,” put in Grace Forsythe from the sidelines.

“You’ve got a lovely even bake on it,” went on Wilfred Honey, “and the vanilla bean really softens the acidity of the pineapple. This is just perfect.”

Alain smiled modestly. “Thank you.”

“You’ve outdone yourself, Alain.” Marianne Wolvercote was testing the wobble on the panna cotta. “I particularly appreciate that you went for a sherbet, which, of course, is another dessert that was popular in the period. In fact, I like it so much that I’ll forgive you for going back to the herb garden for the mint.”

“The texture on the panna cotta,” went on Wilfred Honey, “is exactly where it needs to be. And I like that for this one you’ve used the pineapple more as a garnish so that you get it incorporated differently into each dessert.”

Marianne Wolvercote nodded. “I absolutely agree. I think the way you’ve used the flavours across all three dishes shows a real subtlety of touch. Each one gives us a different side of the pineapple, and that’s exactly what we’re looking for.”

So he won. Of course he fucking won.

Grace Forsythe still did the enormous rambling speech where she hinted it might be somebody else, but he fucking won.

“And that,” Grace Forsythe went on, “brings us to the sad part of the afternoon. It’s always difficult to say goodbye to somebody this close to the end.”

Nora was looking crestfallen. The three-cake gambit had clearly not been the right call in this situation.

“But I’m afraid, and you’re all wonderful bakers, we have to lose one of you. And this week it’s Harry.”

Everyone looked shocked. Except Alain, who looked borderline triumphant.

“It’s . . . Harry?” said Nora.

Grace Forsythe cleared her throat. “It was a very close week and the judges felt that the last place in the final had to go to the more consistent performer over the whole competition.”

“Makes sense.” Harry got off his stool in preparation for the farewell scene. “I’d be first to admit I ballsed up a bunch of times.”

Colin Thrimp fluttered into view. “Um, actually, we might want to use some of this footage so if you could keep the balls to a minimum, that would be very helpful.”

“Well deserved, Nora,” offered Alain with infuriating sincerity.

Harry drew Nora into a hug. “Yeah, well done.”

“All in, please,” trilled Colin Thrimp. “Show the viewers how much you’ve bonded.”

And they had in a way. With one notable exception.

“This is bullshit,” yelled Rosaline, bursting into Jennifer Hallet’s trailer. “No one who watches the show is going to believe that Nora stayed in this week because she baked better than Harry.”

Jennifer swung her chair round from her wall of screens. “Magic of editing, sunshine. And I’d rather not have had to do it. But let me remind you that your Cockney goatfucker of a boyfriend fucking punched a fucking contestant in the fucking face. And if Jeremy Clarkson can’t get away with it, he certainly can’t.”

“But Alain apparently can.”

Leaning back, Jennifer Hallet adopted an expression of mock horror. “Oh no. A middle-class white man might get away with pressuring his girlfriend into doing sex stuff she wasn’t into. What an unexpected development. My understanding of the world, it is shaken.”

“Don’t act like this is out of your control,” said Rosaline, pointing in a way that was probably ill-advised. “You’re in charge here. You get to decide what happens.”

“And is that what you want? For me to kick Mr. Streak of Piss and Lemongrass off the show so he can always be the guy who should have won season six of Bake Expectations? You want to send him home? Beat him. Then get on with your life.”

Rosaline wasn’t much good at righteous indignation at the best of times. And this wasn’t the best of times. She drooped. “What about Harry?”

“What about him? The little bit of rough who’s there to give forty-five-year-old women something to whack off to and to make everyone else think, Oh, I’m surprised he bakes. It’s a miracle he made it past week three.”

“Is this how you see everyone? Is Nora just the comforting granny and Alain the guy you want your daughter to marry? Am I just the nice girl with the sad life story for the eighteento thirty-five demographic?”

Jennifer Hallet threw back her head and unleashed a grating laugh. “Think very carefully about this, sunshine. Do you really want to hear the answer to that question?”

As it turned out, Rosaline did not need to think very carefully. “No. No I don’t.”

“Fabulous. Now fuck off. Because I’ve got to make this completely avoidable shitfire look charming and relatable.”

In the car park, she found Harry waiting for her.

“Ready to go?” he asked. Followed by, “What’s wrong, mate?”

Rosaline was struggling with tears—she hadn’t expected yelling at Jennifer Hallet to help, but now she’d done it she’d run out of actions and was stuck with nothing but emotions. “I got you kicked off the show.”

“I got kicked off ’cos it’d be unfair for Nora to go out from one bad week and ’cos I lamped Alain one.”

“But you only hit him because of me.”

“I didn’t. I hit him because where I come from, bloke puts his hands on you and you tell him nice to take ’em off and he don’t, you hit him.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I didn’t like the way he was treating you, mind, but I reckoned you was already dealing with that on account of you leaving. What happened between him and me was between him and me.”