Bella's Christmas Bake Off Read Online Free PDF Page B

gone from a big family Christmas with kids, their partners and my husband to just me. Even Auntie Anne had declined my offer of escaping the old people’s home and coming to mine for Christmas lunch. Mind you, she was under the impression I was Margaret Thatcher when I’d asked her, so I didn’t blame her for saying no.
     
    A couple of days after my visit to St Swithin’s with Sylvia I asked her if they might need help serving the lunch on Christmas Day, if indeed the budget was going to stretch to lunch.
    ‘Need people to help? Do birds fly? We always need people,’ she said.
    ‘Then count me in,’ I smiled and, to my surprise began to feel a little shimmer of festivity for the first time since Neil had left. I’d been dreading a Christmas alone, but this would mean I’d be helping people, I’d be with friends and I wouldn’t have to think about Neil and her having sex on a bed of prickly tinsel. The people at the shelter had made me realise that despite my current problem of a disappearing husband, I was one of the lucky ones.
    That evening I glanced back at the TV as Bella poured half a bottle of the finest brandy into her bowl of cake batter, I waited for tinselly anticipation to land like snowflakes all around me, but I felt nothing. Even when she produced what she described as ‘a winter landscape of European cheeses’, sprigged with holly and a frosty snow scene, I failed to get my fix.
    ‘Ooh this is a juicy one,’ she said, biting seductively at a maraschino cherry she’d earlier described as ‘divinely kitsch’. She swallowed the cherry whole, giggled girlishly and raised a flute of champagne. ‘Why have cava when Champagne is sooo much more bubbly? Cheers!’ she said, taking a large sip of vintage Krug.
    ‘I know, I know...it’s a little indulgent,’ she sighed, putting down the crystal flute and wafting her hand at the camera dismissively, ‘but a girl needs something sparkly at Christmas.’
    ‘A girl also needs a meal and a bloody coat to keep her warm,’ I huffed, thinking of Maisie.
    I opened the fridge and took out some cheese for a sandwich, making a mental note to do a food shop. It wasn’t like me to leave the fridge empty, but as there was only me living here now why bother? Besides, there was only my income coming in now, but the mortgage and the bills would be pretty much the same, so I would have to be very careful with my budget. It took my breath away to realise that my life was just a couple of pay cheques away from Maisie’s life.
    I decided on a cheese sandwich and as I spread my homemade chutney on the cheddar realised what an impact the visit to the shelter had made on me.
    Okay so I didn’t have – money, a husband, a fulfilling career, a perfect body or the flexibility to wrap myself around a bedroom pole, but I had my health and warmth and a roof over my head – those people had nothing. And as Bella waxed lyrical about ‘the finest ingredients’ and ‘little indulgences’, and slugged back half a bottle of £500 champagne ‘because it’s Christmas’, I began to feel angry. All the hurt and resentment, the disappointments of my own life and the reality of meeting such desperate people was whipping up inside me.
    I wanted to turn off the TV but that little girl in me who loved Christmas and missed her mum wanted the sparkle, the promise of the season. So I continued to watch, trying to feel Christmassy while forcing down my cheese and pickle sandwich as Bella Bradley danced around the screen like a bloody Christmas fairy on acid.
     
    I n the same way that I watched ‘Bella’s Christmas Bake Off’, my mum had watched TV chef Delia Smith prepare for Christmas in the late 80’s. ‘Delia Smith’s Christmas’ was a tradition in our family and usually repeated during December for years. I was about ten years old when we first watched it together and I recall Mum taking down notes by hand, working out timings and portions – it was all pre-Internet and