#2024MakeAMonster(I don't recommend this one if disordered eating is a sensitive subject for you.)
Cake
There's a woman in the neighbourhood who does the most elaborate decorated cakes for YouTube. Daisy Makes, it's called, and she's Daisy - she never used a last name. When I say decorating, we're not talking fondant sculpture, that paste that looks great but nobody actually likes to eat. We're talking buttercream, the real stuff, soft as mousse and rich as velvet, piped into the most elaborate designs you can think. She does florals, but what she really likes is the odder plants. She did a set of Venus flytrap cupcakes the other day, and you'd swear you could hear them snap.
I'd followed her channel for a while before I realised she lived near us. I enjoyed them; she had a very soothing manner, and she also had this nice charity thing going on at the end: once she finished the cakes there'd be a little bit of her taking them to a local shelter for other people to enjoy. She'd turn to the camera and smile, saying her catchphrase: 'Enjoy your making - and what you don't want, you give away.'
Well, YouTube videos are a business and the fact that she always looks perfect on-screen wasn't very surprising: glossy lipstick, succulent curls, the trimmest figure you'd ever seen. I had no idea how she stayed so slim, baking the way she did; I supposed she gave away the cakes after she ate them, but she did bits where she tasted the buttercream for flavour, so she can't have been an absolute sugar-teetotaller. But it turned out that was just her - that was what she looked like. I'd see her in the Co-op or at the post office, belted in to her smart coat, and her face was painted just so, her hair bouncing, and the camera didn't lie - her figure was amazing.
I thought she must be catering to some kind of traditional market, or at least trying to have a cross-market appeal, because while she was so very pretty she always dressed modest. Ruffles up to her neck, sleeves down to her wrists even when she was cooking. A bulgier woman would have looked like a pillowcase, but on her it was just elegant tailoring.
So our street had a party for May Day, and weren't we in luck - because Daisy said she'd do some cakes. More than that, she had a stall for the children where she showed them some techniques. She had piping bags laid out with different nozzles - flat ones for leaves, curved ones for petals, star-shaped ones for traditional. There was a bit of a drama because the star-points were so sharp and one of the children cut a finger on them. Everyone was worried about blood in the cake, but Daisy didn't turn a hair. She fed the smudged cake to the pigeons gathered round, and whipped out a knife to cut the tip of the piping bag off; once the bloody smudge was removed she handed the bagful of buttercream to the weeping kid's mother and told her they could use it themselves in their own time.
The mother was harassed and grateful because her daughter was crying, but Daisy was very pleasant. 'It's only making,' she said. 'What you don't want, you give away.'
I don't know why it bothered me. It wasn't like Daisy wasn't taking part or anything. She was kind to the kids, and when she took a break she ate as much as anybody else from the stalls - she had nice things to say to all the other bakers about how good their creations were. You just don't usually see that on-screen smile so bright in the real world, not when everybody else is running around getting flustered.
So I know I shouldn't have looked. It's just that my house backs on to hers, and that night I was in the bathroom and I realised I could see into her kitchen from my window. The place wasn't bright; she had candles all over, and it shone out with such a pretty light.
She was washing up, to begin with. The piping nozzles she'd used at the stall, including the sharp ones. There was a big bowl set out too; I could see puffs of icing sugar as she emptied a bag into it.
When she unbuttoned her dress, I should have looked away. I would have, except that at first I thought I must have been mistaken, that what she took off was just a cardigan - because I could see a set of buttons underneath it.
Flesh doesn't look so much like flesh in candlelight. She was a bit plumper than I'd thought, you see; I figured it must be clothes hanging loose. You don't know what you're looking at right away. And the buttons across her chest and tummy - from a distance, they didn't look like scars.
It was only when she picked up the empty piping bag and fitted its bladed tips into one of them, and then worked it like a pump. I could see it filling up, and her skin beneath slowly deflating as something buttery was sucked out into the bag, ready to mix in the sugar-bowl. More icing for her cakes that she'd decorate and donate on the next Daisy Makes.
What you don't want, you give away.
