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It was the hottest day of the year and my shirt was clinging to me like the stench of burnt bread. There was no mercy to be had from the heavy air, packed with enough particles of flour to make it burst alight with the smallest spark. I sensed the ghost of it then and there, the damming dawn of a case I should never have taken.
Some weeks ago it had found me, delivered in the form of a woman named Mary. There was nothing holy about her or the way she presented her two perfect buns; Temptation the only name I could think of. A hint of cinnamon bound us together and the soft texture I found when I buried my nose in the rich gold of their skin. Mary just watched me, a victoriously wicked smile disappearing as quickly as icing on a hot cake.
I leaned back in my chair, hiding the treacherous sound of empty wrappers with a cough. The hand on my stomach gathered some stray crumbs as I waited for her to speak. It wasn’t a new tale - rivalry and suspicion and the promise of fame - but she played her cards like a man of old films, brought up in stuffy salons, making it impossible for me to resist. We worked out a plan, simple and tailored to the few strengths I still possessed, a mirror of the now-stained shirt I happened to wear. When she turned to leave, heading for the blazing brightness of the world, I bit into her down-payment of tiny pies, pleased to see there was no soggy bottom.
My first week in the tent was a lazy lull of friendly banter that created enough shadows for me to hide in later. I had seen the bakers mess up the easiest tasks, prodded their bread while pointing out where they went wrong. The proofing drawer is a cruel mistress – too little attention and you won’t get a rise, too much and the bubbles of inflation will cause everything to collapse in on itself. I also witnessed the familiar sadness of the clowns and been ever-aware of Mary’s eyes on me, sharp enough to slice the richest ham as thin as a hair. She was smoothing out the creases of my shirt with skilful hands and cakes in those days. I still didn’t know her role in this game.
Then the mercury rose once more, shifting perceptions and bringing out subtleties in everyone. Not even Mel and Sue, the glue of this small, constructed world, were able to fix it. It was a quick storm of fiery temperament, too tangled and tinged with emotion to grasp it at once. The stifling heat had claimed its victims, clouded judgments, left characters exposed. My case had revealed itself like the pattern on a cross bun in an oven. I gave everyone time to cool off, but then I brought the tongs to turn over red-hot lies slung at me with cunning calm.
When I came out of my short sleep in the afternoon, the room had gained more edges just as the stubble on my face stood thorn-like against enemies invisible. An empty tin of cookies caught the white heat singing siren songs, luring me outside, Mary’s voice a whisper. The sun-singed path to the tent cut mercilessly through the open lawn, poisonously green. I braced myself for what was to come.
The bleached dome stood gleaming against a sky void of clouds, leaving every corner exposed, withdrawing the hand of hope from those desperate to press into a sliver of grey. The fabric was bulging with the tension of halted breaths and open hatred when I stepped in front of the bakers. I was much more the accused than the accuser after my true purpose had been explained to them.
Mary sat to one side while Sue addressed the two people who had been singled out. I have had my eyes on them for some days and now Iain and Diana looked ready to choke each other just like the air inside the tent was tightening its grip around my throat. Hephaestus was working me in his forges, the hammers echoing in my head, boiling my blood. I whipped out my note pad; blank pages and the faint smell of sandwiches helping me fight off the saturnine forces.
Chetna caught my attention. She was looking up at me, eyes big like black forest gateaus and just as sweet. Then Richard beside her took the pencil from behind his ear and handed it to me. I hadn’t even noticed mine was missing. I took the blue olive branch and started to go down the line-up first, picking them out like raisins from a Christmas cake.
Luis and Norman were as much help as a salt is to yeast. They had both been too focused on what they each thought of as a daring design, their ideas of that uneven like the texture of focaccia.
What my case needed was a push in a certain direction and I found it in Nancy. She was like a good doughnut: her outside coated in powdery sugar of niceness but a streak of jammy mischief under the surface. With blunt confidence she told me how she and Diana had looked into their freezer, desperate to give their ice cream as much time to set as possible.
There was a twinkle in her eye, when she came to the part of Diana asking her whose ice cream was already inside.
“It was Iain’s, I said it loud enough for anyone to hear.”
Though her tone didn’t give away much, everything else told me how indifferent she was to the whole situation. It didn’t touch her, elusive like the hint of orange flavor in a dark chocolate that only stays on the tongue long enough to be registered subconsciously.
I caught the short gleam of glee before it disappeared, recognising it for what it was. In the past I would have mistaken it for an attempt to flirt and distract just like I had conned myself into thinking a piece of velvet cake would bury my troubles. Or four pieces. But by then I had always lost count already.
“The next thing I know, Iain is asking where his bowl is. It was right where it was put a minute before: at the end of Diana’s work station. It was only out for a minute, really. And Diana did apologise!”
Diana gave a short nod, thanking her ally for putting emphasis on that part. She looked petrified but fear was not the cause. For the whole time we had come together that afternoon, she never truly looked at Iain, resisting the actions of Orpheus or Lot’s wife but meeting the same fate nonetheless. Her face remained a mask, a transparent, rough skin like the one that forms when you do not shield dough from drafts.
“Why would you take it out of the freezer?” Iain murmured, repeating the mantra like a wizard’s spell.
It hung in the tense air like the smell of fresh garlic bread and moved just as slowly through the room. Finally, Diana spoke up, her red top raising the temperature of body and mind even more when the words left her mouth.
“Well, you did have your own freezer,” she stated, shrugging, her conscious clean as a bowl after children have had their fingers on it.
I looked at the older woman. Her skin was flecked with the brown marks of spoilt apples. I held my breath but the putrid smell I had anticipated didn’t come. Light reflecting off her glasses hid her eyes behind a wall as blurry as the line between feeling stuffed and being able to eat all the sweets in the world. Combs gave her hair a Medusa style and I knew this was as much of a confession as I was going to get.
The rest of the bakers just sat there vacuous, like scarecrows in a parched field.
Sue had been listening intently, her eyes full of curiousness and understanding, twitchily wiping away strands of hair that had escaped her artful quiff.
“It looked a bit of a mess. There was a block of ice just floating around in the tin. I tried to make him see the funny side but then-“
Mel put her hands on Sue’s shoulders and said “Breathe! Deep breaths!”
Sue gave her a grateful look and then turned to the baker at the centre of the firestorm.
“-then he took the whole thing and chucked it in the bin before we could do anything about it.”
She drew in the shaky breath of the drowning. “Oh, Iain!”
His name came out as a whispered gurgle, water trying to douse the fire. The steam it created and the little smile she tried to master with raised eyebrows worked as another dose of sedatives on all the people in the room. Even Mary, who I had only been able to see from the corner of my eye – ever the succubus with glistening liquorice wings –, opted only to give everyone a stern look.
“We were shocked!” Kate said and then added “Shocked and worried.”
“No one had ever expected something like that to happen,” Nancy interrupted; changing the atmosphere in the way opening the oven door during a bake does, leaving everyone deflated.
“He threw it in the bin.” Richard looked at Kate, who put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. He was still not able to comprehend what had happened. I knew that feeling and swallowed it down like you do with all the diet pills that never work.
The clues told me starkly different stories but they all had the same ending: A Baked Alaska as ruined as the description ‘baked ice cream’ conveys to the uninformed ear.
I remembered the painful moment he had lifted the lid, giving the mixture permission to flow over the polished wood in streams of white, black streaks tainting everything. My past had caught up with me and I could no longer hold back.
I looked at the man with the bronze hair and beard, his apron like the tattered armour of a Greek soldier, Apollo betrayed by his sister.
“Did you have a problem with the sponge?”
“No,” he replied almost confidently.
“With the meringue?” I explored, fixing him with a stern look.
“No,” he whispered, realisation in his eyes.
“With the ice cream?”
He shook his head in defeat.
“So where is your sponge? In there?” I angrily pointed at the bin next to the table, a beacon of both madness and boldness.
“We could have tested the sponge.” My anger had given way to disappointment, feelings parted like the Red Sea.
“I know. I didn’t cope with the situation very well. I regret it.”
Iain looked broken, like a man does when his pride gets chipped away like rusty paint or when finely spun caramel hits the ground. My words did not wound him or just enough to toughen the skin where the daggers had pierced it. Like taking a fork to dough to create an even bake, or slicing the top layer of a pie to let out just enough steam, I had handed him another tool, another technique to strive. He could pull himself out of it by his own hair if he wished; the robustness of reinvention was his gift. Sometimes, you have to do a slightly bad thing to achieve something good. Or so I hoped.
The following week Diane was struck down by a mystery illness, the perfidious fingers of fate gripping at reality with dark claws.
I close the crooked door to my office and find a small packet at my feet. How Mary knew something was going to happen when she came to me I will never know. The only thing I am sure about is the cake arriving every month without fail. It may be a sign of thanks, it may be to tempt and mock me, it may be to lay a path of crumbs for an even bigger case. Until then, I will keep counting the plates, struggling to keep upright, pressing against chocolate-coloured dreams.