“My word.” Grace Forsythe gazed at her with unabashed adoration. “You must have the best-run classroom in the country.”
Tanya laughed. “Compared to my year nines these guys are nothing. Now get to it or you’re all coming back to see me at lunchtime.”
“Um.” This new interruption came from Colin Thrimp, who seemed a lot less pleasant now Paris had hit someone in the face with a fridge. “While this is all very lovely and I’m sure we can work with it, the rules do say that you’re not supposed to talk to each other during the blind bake.”
“ButIhithiminthefacewithafridge,” Paris protested while, at the same time, Grace Forsythe offered the more succinct, “Oh, do shut up, Colin.”
“This man is bleeding,” said Tanya firmly. “He needs a first aider and everyone else was too busy filming him.”
“Filming is their fucking job.” Jennifer Hallet came striding in from whatever monitoring station she’d been using to watch Paris mess everything up. “Colin, tell me we got as much of that as possible. As for you”— she pointed at Tanya— “the takecharge thing was cute and it’ll play well in the home counties, but this is a competition so fuck off back to your biscuits.” She descended upon the injured contestant, who was still following Tanya’s nosebleed instructions. “Everything okay here?”
“I’ll be fine”— the fridgee’s voice was getting increasingly burbly— “I just need one of those blue plasters on my whole face. Is my dough all right?”
“Chilling like a villain who is certain her crimes have gone undetected,” confirmed Grace Forsythe happily.
Jennifer Hallet glared. “Just to remind you, Tariq, Bake Expectations is in no way liable for any incidents that take place on set. Colin, get him to a first aider.”
Colin Thrimp wrung his hands and then began guiding Tariq out of the ballroom.
“Bub by dough!”
“The dough doesn’t matter.” Colin Thrimp’s eyes were wide. “We can’t have you bleeding everywhere. We’ll be sued.”
“Nobody is fucking suing anybody,” insisted Jennifer Hallet.
Tariq gave an outraged bubble, but since blood was beginning to seep between his fingers, he didn’t really have much room to protest.
“Your dough’s in the fridge,” said Grace Forsythe, “where it must remain for a length of time we’re not allowed to tell you, but is certainly long enough for you to go and get your nose reattached.”
“What should I do?” asked Paris plaintively.
“Darling.” Grace Forsythe put a hand on his shoulder. “I know you might find this difficult, but the best thing you can do for everybody is to not hit anyone else in the face with a fridge.”
“Oh my God,” Paris told a production assistant tearfully, “that must be the worst first day anyone has ever had. I mean, I hit a guy with a fridge and I’m sure my cookies were underbaked. Let’s face it, I’m probably going home.”
Released from his interview duties, Paris wiped his eyes, kicked himself for crying— partly on principle, partly because it seemed particularly inappropriate when he wasn’t the injured party— and drifted after the rest of the contestants towards the hotel, where a wraps-and-sandwiches-style lunch was laid out on a series of silvery cardboard trays. Honestly, with the spectre of his terrible cookies and inevitable public disgrace hanging over him, Paris wasn’t sure he could eat.
Because this, this right here, was exactly why he’d hesitated to come on the show in the first place. Okay, not exactly this, even in his worst nightmares— and he’d had several, not all of them involving public nudity— he hadn’t actually maimed anybody. But there had, on bad days at least, been this general sense that he was definitely going to fuck it up and that people were going to laugh at him.
Staring forlornly at a curly sandwich, Paris tried to recapture that sense of not-everything-being-awful-forever that he dimly recalled feeling when he’d first arrived only a couple of hours earlier. Except he couldn’t. He knew that there had been a time— even a fairly recent time— when he didn’t feel miserable and hate himself, and he knew that there would be a time— perhaps even quite soon— when he’d be unmiserable and self-nonhating again. But he knew it in the same detached, abstract way that he knew that his whole body was made entirely of empty space held together with electric fields. It might have been true, but it didn’t really mean anything.
For a moment, he sort of hovered, wondering if he should hide in his room for the next half hour instead of showing his face-fridge-hitting face amongst the other contestants. After all, they probably had better things to do than talk to the guy who hit the other guy with a fridge and was probably getting eliminated for hitting a guy with a fridge and making crap cookies so there was no point getting to know him anyway. Of course, then he’d be the creepy hovering guy.
The creepy hovering guy who hit a guy with a fridge.
Desperately needing something to do with his hands, he pulled out his phone and texted his mum.
You know how I told you I was going on that baking show? Well I’m on that baking show.
He waited a minute or two. It was fine to wait for a minute or two. Staring-at-a-phone guy was way better than hovering guy. Besides, he didn’t even know what time zone his parents were in at the moment. Or even if they were in the same one.
I don’t think I’m doing very well.
He waited another minute. Maybe she was in ...Australia? It would be really late in Australia. Especially if she was in Adelaide or Kingston or somewhere.
“Hello.” Someone actually pounced on him from behind. Like a full-on Tigger pounce, rainbow fingernails hooking gently over his shoulders. “You hit me in the face with a fridge.”
Paris froze, not quite daring to turn around. “I know. I’m really sorry. Are you okay? Is anything broken?”
“Yes, I’m scarred for life. I’m going to have to wear a Phantom of the Opera mask forever.” Tariq emerged from behind Paris, his arm cast melodramatically across his brow. “I’ll have to live in the cellar beneath a bakery and there’ll be a young ingénue who can smell my baking and one day the senior baker will throw a strop and refuse to bake anymore so the ingénue will bake something amazing, and I’ll be sitting there in the shadows, going bravi, bravi, bravissimi.”
“You realise,” Paris said, “this scenario doesn’t end well for you.”
“I don’t know. I get a cool lasso.”
“Which is ironic. Because you really should have kept your hand at the level of your eyes today.” Paris raised a hand to indicate the lasso-and-fridge-door-blocking gesture he was suggesting.
“Did you just make a joke,” Tariq asked, “about my very serious facial injury that you caused?”
Yes. Yes he had. He was awful. He was an awful person who made jokes about other people’s suffering. “Shit shit sorry no, I didn’t, I mean— ”
Tariq was getting that look that Paris saw a lot. The look that said there’s something wrong with you, and I’m not certain I like it. Then he laughed. “Honey, it’s fine. I’m fine.”