Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1)

by Alexis Hall

Rosaline blinked, caught off guard by the magnitude of this beverage-based catastrophising.

“They named you after a nun in a play what isn’t even in the play?”

Oh God. Oh help. He was doing kindness at her. Rosaline couldn’t cope with people doing kindness at her. It made her feel like she’d shoplifted a lipstick. Except the lipstick was made of time and emotional energy.

“I mean, I wouldn’t call him a stone-cold hottie,” Anvita went on. “But he’s definitely chilly.” “I’m a full-time mum. Chilly is probably all I can keep up with.” “Don’t sell yourself short. You can have hotties of whatever temperature you want.

“Can’t you be a modern independent woman who wins a baking show and also gets together with a delicious mansnack?”

“Ah, yes. A love story for the ages. She was a young woman trying to find her place in a world that had wronged her. He . . . wasn’t married.”

“You know what’s really mature? Calling yourself mature.”

And she did that maybe-kiss-me-now signal where you angle your face a bit and hope.

“Oh, Roz”—Lauren gave a deep shudder—“heterosexual sex sounds excruciatingly dull.”

“How?” asked Rosaline. “Do I text him back and say Sure, but can we also step outside the social paradigm into which we’ve both been inculcated from birth? ” “Well, I’d certainly find that hot.”

It’s going to be an unlubed arsefuck of an evening to whisk this chunky diarrhoea you call footage into something approaching watchable television.”

There was a pause that, while not quite pregnant, was definitely pissing on a stick.

Anvita was staring at her creation much as Dr. Frankenstein may once have stared at his. “It’s Big Ben, isn’t it?” “Darling, technically, Big Ben is the bell. And technically, that is a bell end.” “Oh f—fu—fellatio.” Anvita hung her head.

“It’s me. I’ve done it. I’ve made a penis. I’ve made an enormous bread penis. Someone always makes a penis. And this year it’s me who made the penis. My nan is going to watch me lovingly mould a penis with my bare hands on TV, probably with all her friends.”

Picking up the bulbous top of what everyone was still determinedly pretending was Big Ben, Wilfred Honey inspected it closely. “Now this,” he said, squeezing, “has a nice firmness to it. It feels good in your hand. But of course, what matters is if it’s good in the mouth.” Anvita was screaming behind her eyes as the nation’s grandfather fondled the glans of her giant bread penis. “Now this takes me back in a way,” Wilfred Honey continued, now chewing, “because when I were a lad you’d only get a loaf like this when the baker’s boy came round your house on a bicycle and gave it to you hot.

ALAIN LIVED IN a chocolate-box English village called Something-on-the-Wold or Whatever-on-the-Water,

“Is that lavender?” He nodded. “It’s delicious. Not too ‘old lady’s bedroom.’” “Thank you. As we’ve established, avoiding old ladies’ bedrooms is one of my highest priorities.”

Great. Shamed on TV by her own kid for being a biscuit bigot.

“That’s the thing with putting yourself out of your comfort zone: once you get there, you’re like, Now I’m uncomfortable, what am I supposed to be doing?

“Well, I’m glad I mean as much to you as a humorously shaped vegetable and a man you’ve told me several times is a knob.” “That’s gender socialisation for you.” He shrugged. “Can’t talk about feelings, so it’s all knobheads and funny potatoes.”

“It’s pretty. And it makes you look like a princess.” “I thought princesses were undemocratic?” “They are. But yesterday when I didn’t want to wash my hair you said this family isn’t a democracy.”

“Everybody”—Jennifer Hallet’s voice cut through Alain like a machete—“shut the fuck up right the fuck now. I don’t give a dead rat’s limp cock what happened or why or who was to blame. What I care about is making a lovely fucking TV show about lovely fucking people making lovely fucking cakes. And you’re ruining it with your goat fiddling and your macho bullshit because you both want to spaff on the same woman’s tits.”

“You’re not back at the Oxford Union. This isn’t a debate. You can’t use logic and evidence to prove to me that you didn’t make me feel sad and worthless.”

Normally too much of this sort of thing left Rosaline self-conscious, not wanting to be greedy or selfish, or take too much of her allotted time in the unspoken negotiation of who got who off when.