Chapter Text
Part I: Style Over Substance
When she looks back on it later, it’s not entirely clear to Charity how it happened. How she ended up here, on this picnic blanket with Johnny on her lap, Moses running hysterically around them, Noah perched beside her with his leg jiggling, Tracy obsessively checking her makeup in the mirror on the bench behind them, and her own heart in her throat, worrying obsessively about bloody cake.
What she does know, however, is that it’s all Tracy’s fault.
***
March
Charity looks up as the door slams open and a small yellow ball of fury marches into the pub, briefly surveying the early-evening punters and then narrowing in on who she’s looking for, sitting at the end of the bar close to where Charity is doing a crossword.
“You!” she says so loudly several conversations stop, and Charity puts her pencil down because this looks like it’s going to be fun.
Tracy looks up from her fish and chips. David beside her freezes with his pint half way to his mouth. “Vee?”
“Don’t you Vee me!” Vanessa exclaims. “Can you explain why I’ve got my hands full of Mr Peterson’s Pomeranian’s gall bladder, when Pearl tells me that Channel 4 is on the phone for me?”
Tracy lets out an ungodly squeal, making Charity flinch.
“Oh my god, I knew you’d get picked!”
Vanessa steps closer, face like thunder. Charity pulls out a packet of crisps: nothing makes her hungrier than watching other people argue. Especially if for once she isn’t involved.
“So it was you?” Vanessa growls. “I did think only one person I know would send in an audition tape on my behalf without telling me!”
“Come on, Vanessa!” Tracy whines, still beaming from ear to ear. “Your cakes are amazing. And after that ginger caramel cake you made at Christmas David and I just thought –“
“Leave me out of this,” David says quickly, holding up his hands.
“You’re way better than those idiots on TV! You’re so talented!”
“Tracy, I don’t want to be on television!” Vanessa exclaims. “I get nervous speaking at a conference with ten other people in the room!”
Rolling her eyes and sighing dramatically, Tracy looks around for support. “Charity!” she exclaims, and Charity pauses with a mouthful of ready salted. “You’ve had Vanessa’s baking! Don’t you think she’s good enough to be on Bakeoff?”
Charity has eaten quite a few of Vanessa’s cakes over the years. Much to Marlon’s chagrin, they’ve become somewhat of a hot commodity in the village, and he was most put out when Paddy asked Vanessa to make his last birthday cake rather than him.
“To be fair,” she she says, swallowing her mouthful, “you do make a good red velvet.”
Vanessa scowls. “You are absolutely no help,” she tells Charity, before huffily collapsing on a bar stool. “I’m not doing it,” she says. “I’m not going to the audition.”
***
April
Charity’s waving off the drayman one crisp, wet morning in April when she sees headlights parked down the road. There’s never usually anyone about this time in the morning, and she squints to see the car. It’s blue, and vaguely rounded, and despite the cold she hurries over the street and knocks on the window.
Vanessa, who is staring at her phone as if in a trance, jumps satisfyingly before winding the window down. “Give me a heart attack why don’t you,” she mutters. “Everything ok?”
“Just meeting the drayman and saw your car. Bit early for you isn’t it?”
“How’s that any of your business?”
Holding her hands up in surrender, Charity steps back. “Excuse me for checking on a neighbour. I’ll just let you get back to staring into nothing in peace.”
“Sorry!” Vanessa sighs, head leaning back. “I had a call-out and then I checked my phone and had a voicemail from the producers. I had that second audition the other week and now they want me on that show.”
Leaning back down, Charity puts her hands on the open window. “So Tracy wore you down, did she?”
Sighing deeply again, Vanessa lets her head drop forward. “I figured it was the easiest way to shut her up. I never thought I’d get picked, there were so many people there!”
“Well, are you going to do it?” Charity hasn’t ever spoken much to Vanessa beyond general pub banter, but the idea of someone from their little village being on TV is quite exciting. Even if it is only a stupid baking show.
Vanessa looks at her, indecision written across her face. “I don’t know. I didn’t think I wanted to, but then…”
“But then you were faced with the prospect of weeks of filming with Sandi Toksvig and your gay heart can’t bear to miss out on that?”
“Oh, give over,” Vanessa replies, face pulling into a scowl.
Laughing, Charity leans further into the car. She’s been watching Vanessa’s parade of tinder blind dates with a mixture of amusement and pity ever since she decided to give it a go with women.
“You know I’m only teasing.” Charity’s been there, dating women in a place this small, and she knows the looks you can get sometimes. “And hey, maybe being on TV will let you meet a proper hottie and not just what’s left at the bottom of the Hotten gay barrel.”
“Charming.” Still, it makes Vanessa huff out a little laugh. “You know, I don’t think I ever said, but I appreciated what you did the first time I brought a date to the pub.”
Shrugging, Charity looks off into the distance, focusing on village beginning to stir. She finds it difficult, sometimes, to talk to people when they’re being so sincere. “Forget it.”
Vanessa leans out of the window. “No, I mean it. I wish I was more like you, what you said that day. That it’s all the same, gender. Would have wasted a lot less time.”
Scuffing her shoe along the road, Charity shrugs again. She hadn’t really done much, just told the village busy bodies to back off a bit, when they were getting all up in Vanessa’s business.
“Hey, if you get on TV, you can thank me by giving a shout out to your local!” They could really do with an increase in business, especially since Charity’s disastrous last one night stand who had cleaned out their till before he left. And he hadn’t even been any good in bed.
Vanessa laughs. “Deal.”
***
May
“Swings!” cries Moses at the top of his lungs, leaping into the nearest puddle with his dinosaur wellies.
Sighing, Charity glances at her watch. “Yeah, alright, but only for a wee bit, ok?” She hopes the playground has dried from the rain shower this morning or she’ll have to change him again when they get home. Spring is such a mucky time.
But when they get to the playground, there’s someone already there. What looks like a film crew is crowded around the swing set, and Charity can hear crying.
“Johnny!” Moses calls enthusiastically, and sprints around the cables and the man holding the microphone over to where Vanessa is pushing a red-faced Johnny on the swings.
“Cut,” a woman in a black blazer shouts, sounding exasperated. “Let’s take a break.”
Charity stalks over there Moses has clambered onto the swing. “What’s all this then?”
Vanessa sighs. “They’re shooting background stuff for the show. You know, meet Vanessa, single mum with no hobbies and no love life.”
Charity tilts her head. “You’re a vet! Can’t they just film you holding some animals?”
Wiping at Johnny’s runny nose, Vanessa glances over her shoulder at the crew. “We tried filming at the vets, but Paddy and Pearl were there…”
Charity shudders. “I take it that went about as well as you would expect.”
“Worse.” Vanessa strokes Johnny’s head. “Tracy was supposed to be in these shots, but her and David had a massive barney so she left me hanging.” She looks close to tears. “We’ve got about a million shots of me and Johnny but they say they need something else, otherwise it’s dead boring.” She looks up at the sky. “Everyone is going to hate me.”
“Stop being melodramatic, babe, that’s more my forte than yours,” Charity says.
“Babe?”
Charity turns round to face the blazer-wearing woman who has appeared beside them.
“Is this your girlfriend, Vanessa?” The woman’s face has lit up. “Or, sorry, partner? Wife?”
“No,” Vanessa says, at the same time as Charity says “Yes.”
“Charity!” Vanessa exclaims.
“Sorry, babe.” Charity’s mind is whirling, a plot is coming together quickly. “It’s quite new,” she tells the woman who she assumes is the producer.
“We love the gays on bakeoff,” the woman exclaims, her earlier glum expression gone completely. “Don’t we, Robbie?”
Robbie, who appears to be the camera man, nods solemnly.
“And we don’t have a lesbian yet this year!” She seems utterly delighted.
“Great!” Charity pretends to think. “Hey, I own the local pub in the village. Why don’t you come and shoot some scenes there?”
“Perfect!” The woman turns to the crew and begins directing them and Vanessa tugs on Charity’s arm.
“What the hell?” she hisses. “Why are you doing this?”
Charity leans down a little so she can whisper back. “It’s win win! You get to have a hottie as your girlfriend and I get to have my pub on TV!”
Jaw dropping open, Vanessa uncrosses her arms. “We can’t go on TV and lie!”
“Why not?” Charity opens her arms wide. “People do it all the time! No one wants reality, babe, they want a better world.”
“And this is better, is it?” Vanessa helps Johnny out of the child swing. “Pretending to be a couple so you can get some publicity?”
“And you don’t look like a saddo who can’t get a date!” The pitch of her voice rises; sure, she’s doing this for the Woolpack but it’s not like Vanessa’s getting nothing out of it. “You get to broadcast that you’re gay and can bake a fine cake to the world, then when you go out three weeks in-“
“Charming vote of confidence there!”
“-you just say the pressure got to our relationship, you’re single and looking, and they’ll be queuing up to be your rebound.”
“I’m not that desperate,” Vanessa mutters, but she’s biting her lip and Charity has always been good at persuading people. She can tell she’s almost won.
“Please,” she tries. Vanessa’s a helper, she knows that. “The pub’s really struggling and Debbie’s not been able to work much with Sarah being unwell and I really want to be able to help her financially and-“
“Fine!” Throwing her hands up, Vanessa surrenders. “Fine.”
***
“Let’s try another one,” Alice the producer shouts. “Charity, why don’t you come out of the pub holding the pints this time, and the sit on the bench next to Vanessa, then you two toast each other.”
“Make sure you’ve got the pub sign in every shot,” Charity hisses at the camera guy as she passes him.
At least she knows she’s looking good today: her tightest jeans, a red shirt and black blazer. And she knows the takes are getting better.
At first, Vanessa looked like she’d swallowed a stick, she was so damn uptight. But Charity snuck her a cheeky shot of whisky ( “I can’t!” “Yes you can!”) and things have been improving since. The boys are playing together out of shot, and they’ve had a few good takes already.
As they’re finishing the current take, Charity improvises and reaches for Vanessa’s hand which is lying on the table between them. She feels Vanessa jump like she’s been shocked, but Charity keeps holding it until they hear ‘cut’.
“You guys make an adorable couple,” Alice tells them. “I think that’s a wrap for now, but if you get past week five we’ll need to come back and shoot more.”
Vanessa nods, relief all over her face at the fact that filming is over for the day. “Alright, thanks.” She lets out a long breath as Alice moves away to make a phone call, and runs her fingers through her hair.
“So, are you my new stepmum?” a voice asks behind them.
“Noah!” Charity looks around but the crew are packing up and can’t hear them. “Why aren’t you in school?”
“Because it’s half past four?” He sidles up to Vanessa. “So are you moving into the pub or are we moving in with you?”
Panicked, Vanessa widens her eyes at Charity. “Noah, you know your mum and I aren’t really…I mean, we’re not actually a couple.”
“Oh yeah!” Charity rolls her eyes at his antics, watching the fake realisation spread over his face. “That’s right. I forgot for a minute that you guys never speak and you were on a date with someone else last week.” He cups his fingers around his chin in fake thoughtfulness. “But wait! How come you told those guys with the cameras that you were a couple?”
“Alright.” Charity’s had enough. “What are you after?”
“You’re going on that baking show, right?”
Vanessa’s eyes widen. “That’s supposed to be a secret! Everyone’s had to sign non disclosure agreements!”
Noah shrugs. “I’ve not signed anything. And the way I see it, I can either forget that you’re not actually dating my mum, or I can go and tell those nice camera people the truth.”
“He is definitely your son,” Vanessa growls, giving Charity a dirty look. “Are all you Dingles like this?”
Half proud, half annoyed, Charity quirks her head. “Are you actually trying to blackmail us?”
“All I want is to be your taste tester.” He crosses his arms. “You’ll be baking loads to practice, right?”
Vanessa nods silently.
“Well, consider me as having dibs on all cakes.”
“That’s it?” Appalled, Charity stares at her son. “Have I taught you nothing?”
Noah shrugs. “Have you tried Vanessa’s lemon drizzle? I had it at Jacob’s the other day and it was amazing!”
“You’d think we don’t feed you over here.” Charity is a little outraged. But then she sees the relief in Vanessa’s face and her annoyance fade.
“Fine.” Vanessa bends down to pick up Johnny. “I’ll need to do lots of practice bakes anyway.” She looks at Charity and there’s a hint of a uncertainty in her face. “So I’ll see you around then?”
“What, no goodbye kiss?” Charity sends her a wink and ignores Noah’s fake gagging beside her.
Blushing, Vanessa rolls her eyes and heads across the road, Johnny in tow.
“What was that about?” she asks her son as they watch Vanessa put Johnny down to unlock the door.
“Shouldn’t that be my question?” Noah asks. “Why are you fake going out with Vanessa?”
“To get a bit of publicity so we don’t go bankrupt and become homeless,” she replies glibly. “And I’m talking about you going easy on Vanessa. Since when are you nice to people for no reason?”
Noah shrugs. “I like cake. And it would be cool if someone from Emmerdale was famous, wouldn’t it?”
“Hmm.” She glances across the street again, at Vanessa trying to persuade Johnny to come inside and not take whatever it is he’s just picked up off there ground with him. Her hair is coming out of her ponytail and her face is pink from the cool spring air.
Charity supposes she does have a face for TV. She just hopes Vanessa manages to stay on the show long enough for the pub to get a decent plug.