The Art of Baking Blind (32 page)

It is a crestfallen Jake who greets her. The arrogance he has worn like a shield over recent months has been discarded revealing him to be more boy than man: soft-featured, vulnerable, scared.

Barefoot and beltless, he seems diminished, his six foot two-inch frame bent over.

‘All right, Mum?' His greeting is hesitant. The ironic ‘Ma' is missing. He bows his head, shame at his behaviour and at the incipient tears engulfing him.

She goes to put her arms round him.

‘Whatcha doing?' He looks, briefly, mortified then surrenders.

‘All right, my darling. It's all all right.'

His long, lanky frame in her arms, she realises she has not held him like this for at least four years – since he was twelve or thirteen. Latterly, if he has touched her it has been momentary, a clutch given ironically when fooling around with his friends, or a brief squeeze, his body held away from her, bestowed under sufferance.

He draws away, aware he is being appraised by the inspector who has made quite clear his contempt for him.

‘That's not to say Dad and I aren't bloody furious.' She says this partly for the officer's benefit and partly for her son's. She doesn't want them to think he is a rich kid whose misdemeanours will be paid for by Mummy and Daddy – however true this is. Hours later, she will curse him when she becomes embroiled with the insurance firm and finds herself explaining that her car was taken and written off but that the police are not treating it as theft of a vehicle. The threat of the insurance claim not being met hangs heavy and, in the privacy of her shower, she rails against his privilege. But, for now, there are no recriminations. She feels nothing but relief.

She goes through the necessary paperwork with Jake and the custody officer. Can she vouchsafe for him not absconding? It doesn't appear that he is liable to harm himself or to intimidate her, and he has shown that all-important remorse, and so he is bailed until the juvenile court hearing in two weeks.

Jake signs for his belongings, handed over in a labelled plastic bag. His wallet and iPhone; socks, belt and house keys, pitiful in the plastic. The car keys are signed for by Karen, the weighty key fob thrust deep in her handbag, out of sight, out of harm's way.

‘You know that your car's not roadworthy now, madam.'

‘I am aware of that, yes.'

‘You'll need to contact the garage.'

They go through the practicalities; mind-numbing, exhausting, necessary, while, by her side, Jake is eaten up with shame.

By the time they reach the car, across the street from the police station, Jake is crying properly: silent sobs that rack his body, and which, in a rush of irritation, she imagines are put on for effect.

She is silent, unlocking the Porsche, opening the passenger door for him, getting in on her side. It is only when both doors are closed, and she is assured of privacy, that she can trust herself to talk to him.

‘So?' Her tone is cold. Anger submerges relief – not just at him writing off the car but at him putting her through all this.

He blurts out a sob. His eyes are red-rimmed and puffy now, his top lip doused in snot and tears.

‘Oh, for God's sake, blow your nose.' She hands him a neat tissue from a packet, then another. He sniffs gratefully, tries a watery smile. It is as if, she thinks, looking at him more dispassionately, he is a five-year-old again.

‘Why did you do it, Jake? How could you be so stupid, so irresponsible? You could have got yourself killed – or killed someone else. Christ, you could be facing charges of death by dangerous driving.'

He gives another sob but when he looks at her, there is anger and incomprehension in his eyes to match hers.

‘Why do you think I did it?'

‘I've no bloody idea. Because it seemed like fun? You weren't drunk. Were you high? My God…'

‘No, nothing like that. Honest. The police did a blood test.'

‘Well, why then? To get at me?'

‘Yes.' He is crying properly now.

‘Yes?' She is dumbfounded. ‘Yes?' Her voice escalates.

‘Do you really not know?'

‘No.' Though of course she knows and her fear is now a certainty.

His voice comes out in a rush. ‘Because of Jamie.'

‘What about Jamie?' She feels winded.

‘He boasted about it…'

She wants to retch. The response is physiological not merely psychological. She opens the car door, leans out; waits, breathing in the crisp early morning air until she has calmed herself, averted a catastrophe.
You're fooling no one, Ma. You're fooling no one.

The move buys her time. She turns back to Jake, whose sobs have become quieter, a gentle riff filling the silence.

‘He boasted about it?'

‘On Friday night. I bumped into him in town. At the Wetherspoons. Don't think he said it to everyone … least I hope not. But to me and Sam. “Your mum's hot,” that sort of thing …

‘I told him to lay off and he just said, “Well, she don't mind. She puts it about.”'

He winces; glances at her to gauge her reaction. She looks pale, and angry.

‘I tried to deck him, but he just laughed. He laughed at me. And he said, “I'm talking from experience, Mummy's boy.”'

The confession comes out in the rush of a sob. For a moment, a blub fills the Porsche. He wipes a bubble of snot away with his sleeve.

‘I tried to deck him again – and got kicked out. Later he sent a text saying: “Sorry, mate. Only joking.” But he wasn't, Mum. I know he wasn't.'

‘Of course, he was.' The lie is automatic.

‘Don't fucking patronise me. I'm not stupid.'

His eyes, huge and hazel, fill with tears and resentment. ‘I know, Mum. I know…'

You're fooling no one, Ma. You're fooling no one.
Can't she try, just one last time?

But there's more. ‘You were always flirting at the pool with him.'

She sighs, relieved. ‘Oh, flirtation … You know what I'm like; that's just harmless…'

‘And there was that time I came home early on a free period … He was cycling out of our drive and he ignored me. I couldn't work out why he was here and didn't want to see me …

‘When I came in, you seemed a bit flustered. You'd been baking – custard tarts, I think, my favourite – and a couple had been eaten. I remember being surprised that you'd tasted them, let alone had two, and you said he'd dropped by with some information about Livy's swimming and you'd given him a couple. To be honest, I was jealous – I couldn't work out why you'd chosen to give the gym lifeguard a coffee, spend time with him. I was jealous you were giving him fucking custard tarts baked for me …

‘Then you went upstairs for a shower and I realised the real reason you wanted him and how fucking stupid, how fucking juvenile I'd been.'

She is silent. There seems nothing to say. He appears to have conclusive proof. In other circumstances, she would lie but she knows she will not convince Jake. She watches Southampton wake up through her windscreen; dog walkers and joggers returning with the Sunday papers, early churchgoers, dressed smartly for 9 a.m. services, walking briskly across the street. Outside the solid cocoon of her 4×4, life continues. Inside, life has been turned upside down and now appears to be suspended. Yet the digital clock marks another minute.

It is she who breaks the limbo. ‘You're not stupid. You're very astute.'

She watches him take in the confession. ‘I'm very, very sorry.'

She is not the type to go in for self-flagellation; to prostrate herself in front of others. If there is to be self-recrimination – as she knows there will be – it will be done alone, in the privacy of her bathroom with the taps running.

Nevertheless, her apology feels inadequate: four words that cannot convey the depth of her penitence.

She repeats it, as if repetition will make things better. ‘I'm so, so sorry, Jake.'

*   *   *

For the rest of the day, she is numb. She listens as Oliver contacts an old college friend – a criminal QC specialising in getting celebrities lenient sentences for driving offences – and secures his agreement to represent Jake at his juvenile court hearing. She expresses relief as her husband tells her that Jake is likely to get a £300–£400 fine for driving without insurance and eighteen months' disqualification before he can take his test. She cooks carefully, lovingly, dutifully: roasting a chicken, making buttery mashed potato, green beans and wine-rich gravy for a son who has refused to eat all day but who, by early evening, is quietly ravenous. She watches as Oliver – having expressed his fulsome disappointment in his son but still ignorant of his wife's role – drives back to London. She checks on Jake, hunkered under the duvet, monosyllabic and exhausted, but safe, under her roof; in bed by 9 p.m.

It is only once she is sure he and Livy are asleep that she retreats to her sanctuary: her bathroom, minimalist and spa-like; as sterile as that of a boutique hotel; little evidence of her complex personality here. She wraps herself in a waffled bathrobe, scrutinising her stomach and thighs as she does so, checking her hip bones jut out at a definite angle so that her thumbs can rest between them and her flesh. Then she takes in her face: hard, lined, cloaked in exhaustion. She slumps to the floor, warmed by the under-floor heating but still shaking – chilled by distress and fear.

The retching does not seem to be enough, tonight, or it does not satisfy. She has been incapable of eating and finds herself vomiting pale saffron liquid: her stomach juices. Distressed, she seeks oblivion in a bath, the water just about bearable; a degree or two from scalding. She lowers herself gingerly, then relents and turns the cold tap, submerging herself so that the water roars in her ears, a momentary distraction. Her hair unfurls like seaweed, swirls around her: no pre-Raphaelite Ophelia but a tense, reddening Medusa.

When she emerges – gasping for air – the tears come. Hot, angry sobs of guilt, of shame, and of self-pity. Despite her frantic scrubbing, she cannot rid herself of the smell of the police station: the stench of bleach and institutional hot dinners; anxiety and despair.

She plunges under the water again, frantic to cleanse every orifice. She tries to scrub at her nostrils, but ends up spluttering. She emerges then sinks back, her shoulders covered, her hands clutching them in a parody of a lover's embrace.

The image that stays at the front of her mind as she lies there, cocooned in the water, is not of Jake, his voice breaking as he detailed Jamie's taunting; nor of Oliver, his manner cold and efficient as he managed to pull the necessary strings. It is not even of Jamie and herself, stretched across her marital bed one bitter December afternoon – perhaps the day when Jake spotted them – her body still resonating like a bowed viola after a particularly satisfying bout of lovemaking.

It is of a figure she has sought to block from her mind for thirty years. The custody officer at Southend police station. A man of medium height but broad-shouldered. Strong and compact: someone who you would not want to take on in a fight. His eyes were dark and knowing. They had sized her up the moment she been dragged, handcuffed, into the station. But it is his belt buckle that she most clearly remembers: matt, brass, heavy; a belt that could cause damage, and which pressed into his flesh, delineating his stomach and groin.

‘I can see a way to dropping the charges,' he had leered. ‘A quick blow job and no one's the wiser.'

‘You've got to be fuckin' joking,' she had spat with the bravado that she wore as standard at seventeen.

‘Suit yourself. It's your first time in here, isn't it? For shoplifting? The beak are coming down hard on that at the moment. Clever girl like you doesn't want to blot her copybook. Get yourself a record. But if you make my night more interesting, we could wipe the slate clean…'

He had unzipped his fly, pulled out his penis, already priapic, thick and winking. With a meaty paw he had gripped the back of her head.

Thirty years on, it is the smell of it she remembers; sour with dried urine, white sediment unfurling underneath the foreskin. That, and the taste.

She hurls herself at the toilet bowl, and retches once again.

34

There will be moments in your life when the very last thing you feel like doing is baking. But do not leave it too long. On the rare occasions I have felt disinclined to bake, I soon miss it and find I am like a ewe separated from her lamb.

‘She's not doing it.'

‘What do you mean she's not doing it?'

‘Karen – she's dropped out of the competition. The Search for the New Mrs Eaden.' Vicki has wasted no time in phoning Claire to pass on the news.

‘What do you mean, she's dropped out?'

‘Just that. She phoned Jenny to say she was giving her a clear run and wasn't taking part any more. Jenny rang me.'

Despite her excitement, Vicki cannot quite get rid of her irritation that Karen didn't see her as the major competition. OK, so Jenny is the likely winner but it would have been courteous if Karen hadn't been quite so explicit about thinking this and if she had contacted them all.

‘But, did she say why?' Claire still seems to be struggling with the concept that anyone would want to bow out of the contest. ‘I mean, she was so good. She won at puddings, didn't she, and her YouTube hits are the highest. No offence, but I thought it would be her or Jenny who'd win.'

‘Her son's in trouble with the police for stealing her car and writing it off.' Vicki still can't believe it, and stating the bald facts only makes them more incomprehensible.

There is a pause while Claire digests this. When she speaks, she too is incredulous.

‘Karen's son's a joyrider? Oh. My. God.'

‘I know. Well … it was her car, not anyone else's.'