4

      The studio lights were harsh on Nicola’s pastry. They were so bright they bleached the golden-brown colour from the blintz’s shell and made it appear pale and undercooked. When Carlos Fielding cut into a corner of the blintz, breaking easily through the layers of puff pastry and securing himself a mixture of steaming apples, seasoned with cheese and cinnamon, the dessert still looked too pale to be really appetising.

      Fielding seemed untroubled.

      He winked at Nicola as he raised the forkful to his mouth.

      Nicola watched him with breathless expectation.

      Fielding had the dessert in his mouth for less than ten seconds before he spat it out. He was shaking his head and holding his hand up, as though surrendering.

      ‘Cut!’ he cried. ‘For Christ’s sake, please. Cut.’

      The director echoed Fielding’s cry, then, red with fury, stormed over and pointed a warning finger in Fielding’s face. ‘Stop being such a diva,’ he roared. ‘You’re not the one who tells my crew to cut.’

      Fielding sneered at the director. ‘And you’re not the one with a mouthful of irradiated dog shit testing their gag reflex. So, unless you want live footage of me puking all over your Master Baker set, you’ll stop filming for a moment so I can get a drink and get this piss-awful taste out of my mouth.’

      Surprised by the onslaught, the director stepped back.

      Fielding paused and flashed a thin smile at the bewildered Nicola. ‘No offence,’ he added coolly. ‘I’m sure this would be a lovely delicacy in a prison or in some sort of zoo where they don’t like the animals.’

      Nicola studied him with an expression of pained horror.

      Fielding placed a hand over his mouth as though he was holding back involuntary reflux. He steadied himself and then asked, ‘What the hell did you put in that blintz? Did you really want the filling to taste partially digested?’

      Nicola ran away sobbing.

      The director was walking away from Fielding, signalling for the filming team to take five and telling the studio audience that they’d be resuming as soon as Carlos had recovered from his ‘ordeal’.

      Trudy watched as Fielding waylaid one of the studio runners and demanded a bottle of water. Quietly she muttered a prayer, desperate for any gods listening to make sure she never ended up being as big a diva as he was. She wondered what it would be like to be so self-obsessed and care so little for the feelings of everyone else. It couldn’t be a pleasant way to live.

      ‘He looks more butch on TV,’ Daryl told Trudy.

      Daryl was on the set in her capacity as Trudy’s PA. She wore a Michael van der Ham miniskirt, the pattern an abstract blend of blacks and silvers on silk jacquard. She handed Trudy a bottle of mineral water so she could get a drink before filming resumed.

      ‘You say that everyone on TV looks butch,’ Trudy reminded her. ‘I think you have a thing for butch TV stars.’

      ‘Except you,’ Daryl corrected. ‘You come across as very butch on TV. But I don’t have a thing for you.’

      Trudy didn’t know whether to be relieved or crushed.

      ‘Do I really come across as butch?’

      ‘Not really. You’re possibly the fairest judge on the set. Carlos is too quick to be rude for the sake of being rude. Tom is a sucker for a story of hardship or personal bad luck. But you make judgements based on the proper criteria of the competition. You base your judgements on the food alone.’

      Trudy considered this and realised that was exactly how she was trying to judge the competition. She gave Daryl a grateful peck on the cheek and thanked her.

      Daryl looked quietly pleased with herself.

      They were filming the last of the Master Baker preliminary rounds. Two of the winning contestants from this evening’s show would go on to the semi-finals in the following weeks. During the semi-finals, as had happened in the previous rounds, contestants would be whittled down by their ability to produce quality desserts. Considering the way Nicola was now crying over her disrespected blintzes, shouting promises of retribution and refusing to let Carlos Fielding insult her again, Trudy thought she knew the name of at least one contestant who wouldn’t be going through to the next stage.

      A clatter of dropped pans snatched her attention to the studio’s third stage set. The evening’s final pair of contestants were preparing their workstations in readiness for the next round of filming. A blushing man knelt over a set of empty pans he had dropped. He picked them up and Trudy saw that one of his fingers was bandaged by a blue plaster. There was something about his posture that seemed familiar. Even more maddening, when he half-turned, she recognised his face but she didn’t know where she knew him from.

      ‘Who’s that guy?’ she asked Daryl, pointing.

      ‘Which one? The unsuccessful pan juggler?’

      He was standing up and had turned so she could now see him properly. He wore a badge that identified him as Victor but the name was of no help. Trudy figured, if she’d met him before, she either didn’t know him well enough to know his name, or had known him by a different name.

      ‘I don’t know him,’ said Daryl.

      Trudy felt sure she had met him somewhere before. She tried to picture him without the bald head and the goatee but her imagination refused to participate in the identification game. There was something in his eyes, narrow and unsympathetic, that stirred a prickle of unease.

      ‘Do you want me to go and find out who he is?’ Daryl asked.

      ‘No,’ Trudy said. ‘I’m sure it will come to me eventually.’

      Tom Yates joined them. He was shaking his head in bewilderment over the ferocity of Carlos’s outburst and asking Trudy what they could do to address Nicola’s upset. ‘The poor lass is in bits,’ he confided. ‘And she’s so angry. She says it’s a shame Carlos didn’t choke on her blintz.’

      Trudy shrugged sympathetically. She could see Tom was getting ready to ask a favour and she had a foreboding of what it might be.

      ‘The director will be over here in a moment,’ Tom explained.

      Trudy shook her head.

      ‘He’ll want one of us to taste Nicola’s blintz,’ Tom went on. ‘Are we going to toss a coin or draw straws? Or do you have a penchant for sampling something that’s been described as irradiated dog shit?’

      ‘Tom,’ she began, ‘if Nicola’s blintz tastes as bad as Carlos made out, I’m not sure I want to eat it.’

      Tom dismissed her objection with a wave of his hand. ‘You know what a drama queen Carlos is about these things,’ he reminded her. ‘It’s an apple blintz. How bad can it really taste?’

      Probably not too bad,