The Baking Life of Amelie Day (12 page)

Or die.

I feel really scared now.

I cling onto my rucksack.

The train grinds into Waterloo and comes to a screeching halt.

Chapter Thirteen

I’d forgotten how busy London can be.

Once I’ve dragged my rucksack off the train and got it back onto my aching shoulders I stand on the platform disorientated and dizzy as people rush past me and bang into my back and sides. They’re like a swarm of ants all trying to run in different directions.

Dazed, I walk towards the ticket barrier. My rucksack gets caught in the automatic gates and I have to go backwards and try again and then my ticket is spat out of the slot and a beeping noise comes out of the machine. A man behind me tuts and gestures in the direction of the ticket inspector.

‘He’ll let you through.’

I push my way through to the gates on the end. Everybody else seems to be shoving and barging in, so I decide I might as well join in. I get a lot of rude noises and glares from the people I’m hitting with my rucksack, but I’m beyond caring.

All I want to do is get to the hotel and draw the curtains, lie on the bed and cry.

***

First I’ve got to negotiate the tube.

I put my rucksack down in front of me on the escalator, but it sticks out and nearly trips up the people rushing down the inside. I lift it up and try to hold it in front of me but my chest is hurting and I’m struggling to breathe. At the foot of the escalator I have to stop to put it on my back again and a load of people behind nearly catapult over my head.

‘Great place to stop, you stupid girl,’ says a woman in high heels. She clicks off, swinging her briefcase and shaking her head in annoyance.

I fight back tears. I’d give anything to see a friendly face – Mum, Harry, even any kid from school – but that’s not really likely down here in the smelly bowels of the London Underground, so I drag myself off to find the Northern Line after a quick look at the directions I printed off earlier.

The tube is packed to the brim with people, even though it’s Sunday evening. Most of them look like tourists. They’re holding rucksacks like mine or staring at the map of the underground above my head and shouting at one another in loud, foreign voices.

I stand with my hand on the greasy pole in the middle of the carriage and try not to panic. Mum’s always told me to keep away from the underground because it’s a hotbed of germs and viruses and with CF I spend most of my time trying not to catch anything. We used to live in London but Mum moved out when she and Dad broke up and her main reason was because of the increased risk of infection.

I push my way off and change onto the Piccadilly Line. My B&B is in a part of London called Bloomsbury. I chose it on the internet because it looked close to the studio where the baking competition is going to be filmed. I reckoned that ‘Bloomsbury’ sounded cool – kind of pretty and old-fashioned with lots of cherry trees and cobbled squares.

Yeah, right.

There’s a horrid lift at Russell Square station and I have to cram into it with loads of other bleary-eyed people all trying not to look at one another. The lift judders, stops, starts and creaks to ground level, before we’re all spewed out into the station and then out into the humid, stale-smelling London air.

I slide my rucksack off my shoulders to give them a rest. Then I look left and right and consult the map I printed off the Net this morning. The roads are crammed with traffic and people and I can’t see the street names at first, so I set off in what I hope is the right direction and after about five minutes of struggle I end up at a small grey concrete building that sits at one end of a square with railings around it. There’s a flight of steps leading up to the front door and I just can’t face them at the moment so I cross the road and go to find a bench in the square.

There’s a statue of a woman’s head in one corner. She’s got a beaky nose and a thin, sad-looking face. The head is made of bronze and is covered in pigeon droppings. I look at the plaque underneath. It’s somebody called ‘Virginia Woolf’ and she used to live in a building on this square. She looks about as miserable as I feel. I wonder if she had CF?

I sit next to Virginia, lean back and drink loads of water from one of my bottles. I feel like I need a snack but I’m scared to eat too much without my Creon, so I nibble on the corner of a Mars Bar and then fold the wrapper back over the rest and put it away again.

I drag myself back over the road and up the stairs into the B&B reception.

The building is very modern. When I booked it I pictured an old-fashioned Victorian sort of building, with hanging baskets and a friendly woman on reception with maybe a hotel cat perched on the desk.

There’s nobody at the small reception desk inside the door, so I ping the bell and wait.

A dark-haired woman with olive skin and large gold earrings shuffles down the hallway in a pair of oversized fluffy slippers.

‘Yes, love?’ she says.

‘I’m booked in for three nights,’ I say, breathless. ‘I think.’

I don’t really know. It all depends whether I get past the quarter-finals tomorrow.

‘You look very young,’ says the woman.

‘I’m nearly sixteen,’ I say, drawing myself up as tall as my short body will allow me to. I put my purse on the desk and raise my eyebrows at her, tapping my fingertips on the polished wood in what I hope is a grown-up, impatient fashion.

‘I’m booked in,’ I say again. ‘Melanie Smith.’ It’s all part of my mega-plan of deception. I don’t want anybody ringing up this B&B and somehow finding out that I’m here. Or at least – I didn’t. None of this seems quite such a good idea now that I’ve lost all my medication.

My chest is making the noises that mean that any moment now I’m going to start to cough and not be able to stop.

The woman gives me a small smile. I reckon I look pretty pale and washed up.

‘You’re checked in,’ she says. ‘You pay when you check out. Breakfast is from eight until ten. Continental only, I’m afraid.’

The way my stomach’s feeling, that’s probably a good thing.

Then the woman hands me a key and tells me that my room is on the first floor.

There’s no lift so I drag myself up the stairs, my lungs tugging on every step. I open the door to Room Eight and shut it behind me.

I stand by the bed and look around.

The room is very small. The double bed with its dull brown bedspread pretty much fills most of it. There’s a tiny television on a table in one corner and a dressing table on the wall nearest the door. A white door leads into the smallest bathroom I’ve ever seen. There’s no room for a bath, just a shower which drips onto a mat in the corner. On the shelf over the toilet are three tiny plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner and a shower cap.

I stare around me at this dismal picture for a moment or two and try not to picture my pretty bedroom at home with its white soft duvet, oak desk and bedside lamp. Then I open the zip on my rucksack.

‘Might as well unpack,’ I say, although there’s nobody to say it to. I hang up my new dress in the cramped wardrobe and put my t-shirts and jeans on a shelf inside it. Then I arrange all my snacks and drinks on the little table by the bed.

‘Too bad I won’t be able to eat you,’ I say to them. My stomach is growling with hunger and anxiety all at once.

I get my recipe notebook out and perch cross-legged on the bed, with my hair half-falling over my face. I run through what I’ve got to do a couple of times until I feel more confident. I had to email the television studio about two weeks ago with a list of all the ingredients I’m going to use and I’ m hoping that they’ve got everything I need.

At ten o’clock I stop and lie down. My chest feels tight and clogged and I’m missing my inhaler already. I look at my mobile but can’t bring myself to switch it on. Round about now Mum will call Gemma to ask why I’m not back yet, because we’ve got hospital in the morning. And Gemma will have to confess her part in all this and tell Mum to go and read the note on her pillow.

I feel sick with a sense of my own daring when I think of Mum reading that note.

‘Breathing,’ I say to myself. ‘At least I can still do that.’

I lie on my back and do forty minutes of the autogenic drainage exercises like Tom showed me. The rattling in my chest is dreadful today. I don’t think that CF reacts very well to stress.

After I’ve finished my exercises I eat a couple of biscuits and eye up the treacle tarts that I made yesterday. They look good cold, but I know if I eat too much without Creon I’m going to be in agony in the middle of the night. I eat one bite from one of the tarts and then wrap it up again. I drink another high-calorie milk drink from one of my little bottles and then I get into my sleep t-shirt and huddle under the thin bedcovers, with the cheap curtains doing a bad job of blocking out any light.

Down below my room London continues to roar with life right into the next morning. The traffic in the square hoots and roars and brakes squeal. About a million fire engines blaze past with their sirens blaring every half an hour or so, right through the night.

At three in the morning I get up again and have another drink. My stomach feels tender when I press it and I’m struggling a bit for breath. I sit by the window and gaze down on the lights of London until I feel tired.

Then I hop back into bed and at last fall asleep just before it’s time to get up.

***

When I wake in the morning I do my breathing again and put on the small plastic kettle that I found inside my wardrobe. I make myself a cup of coffee with sugar in it to try and make up for the lack of sleep.

I get out my best red t-shirt and skinny jeans and lay them on the bed while I take a shower. The water only seems to come out lukewarm, but I haven’t really got any other option, so I wash as best as I can and use the free conditioner on my hair because I’ve left my own bottle at home.

All the time I’m getting ready I hum loudly. I’m trying to block out the thoughts of Mum that keep popping into my head. She’ll be furious. And worried out of her mind, and embarrassed because she’ll have to call the hospital and tell them that I won’t be coming in for my operation after all.

At least she won’t be able to find my B&B. I didn’t even tell Gemma where I was staying. And I hid the letter with the details of the competition on them in a hope that Mum won’t have remembered where it was taking place.

I make a face at myself in the mirror. I look dreadful. My skin is white and dry and there are dark furrows under each eye. My hair has gone lank from the cheap conditioner and I swear my face looks thinner than it did yesterday. I wish I could eat.

I wish I hadn’t lost my black leather bag on the train.

I manage a few squares of dark chocolate with my coffee. That will have to do for breakfast. I’ve got to get to the studios by half-past nine and it’s already nearly nine.

I stuff my purse, phone and recipe lists into one of my pockets and two bottles of milk drink into the other. I haven’t got a small bag to carry my stuff in and I don’t really want to turn up to the competition with that enormous rucksack on my back so it will have to do.

I take a last look round the poky room and leave it with relief. I get the lift downstairs, go past reception and out into the bewildering mess and noise of Bloomsbury. I search about a bit and find a line of black taxis so I get into one trying to look as if I know what I’m doing and I give the driver the address of the studios. Then I sit back and attempt to look like a healthy, confident and streetwise London girl who hops into black cabs every single day. I see the driver look at me once or twice in the mirror and I know that this is not what he’s seeing, but I keep a silly fixed smile on my face and look about the streets with what I hope is a knowing sort of look on my face.

The cab ride costs over twenty quid which seems a lot for such a short ride, but I pay it with the same smile on my face and then turn round and prance into the building in front of me as if I’ve known it all my life.

I find myself standing in a vast glass entrance hall with a shiny black desk right at the very end of it. There’s a blonde woman sitting behind it so I go and give her my name and she writes me out a plastic badge and tells me to put it on and wait on the black sofas.

I sink into the soft black leather and gaze up at the giant TV screens in front of me. Loads of trendy looking people rush into the reception area and flash their security passes at a machine to get into the main building behind it.

I sit with my legs clenched together, chewing my lip and looking around. Hope they haven’t forgotten about me. I’m finding it hard to believe I actually made it to London all on my own, spent a night in a rubbish hotel and then found my way here.

‘This is it,’ I whisper to myself for confidence. ‘Flour Power!’

I feel a bit better when I think of my favourite catchphrase, but not for long. There’s the familiar, dreaded shifting in the centre of my chest and the feeling of something catching.

‘Oh no,’ I mutter. Then I double up with my head towards my knees and cough for England. The noise echoes around the vast polished entrance hall and seems to bounce off the white walls and come back to me, like a cough boomerang. People stare at me as they walk past but nobody stops.