What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty [161]
Maggie laughed. “It’s all your doing, Alice!”
One of the bemused workmen operated the concrete mixer while the mothers separated yolks from whites.
“Add the egg yolk and process,” ordered Nora.
Once again the woman lined up to add their egg yolks. A few minutes later a massive glob of yellow dough was upended from the concrete mixer and onto the floury surface of the center table.
“Knead until smooth.”
The women gathered around the table, kneading and pulling at the dough. This pastry is going to be inedible, thought Alice, watching inexpert hands pushing and pulling. Cameras flashed.
“Now we really should be putting the pastry into the fridge for half an hour, but today is all about quantity, rather than quality,” said Nora. “So we’re going to go straight to rolling out the pastry.”
The workmen carried over the giant rolling pin.
Alice stood back and watched as three women stood on each side of the rolling pin, took a firm grip of the handles, and began to push forward, as if they were pushing along a broken-down car.
There was giggling and shrieking and yelled suggestions from the audience as the women went off in different directions, but, incredibly, after a few minutes, the dough began to flatten. It was working. It was actually working. A huge sheet of pastry, the size of a king-size bed, was emerging.
“Now, the hard bit,” said Nora. “Line the pie dish.”
We’ll never do it, thought Alice, as the women gathered around the sheet of pastry and lifted it into the air, with their palms flat, as though they were carrying some sort of precious canvas. Every woman had the exact same expression of terrified concentration on her face.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” said the woman with the birthmark, as the pastry began to sag in the middle. Another woman rushed to try and save it. They were treading on each other’s toes, calling out sharp orders like “Be careful there!” and “Watch that part there!”
No one smiled or laughed until the delicate sheet of pastry was safely placed in the massive pie dish. They’d done it. No serious tears or cracks. It was a miracle.
“Hooray!” cried the crowd, and the women shared ecstatic grins as they used their thumbs to push the pastry against the sides of the dish. Next they covered it with sheet after sheet of baking paper and weighted it down with rice, and the workmen lifted the dish and placed it into the oven.
“We’ll bake that for ten minutes,” said Nora smoothly, as if it weren’t at all surprising that they had got this far. “And in the meantime our clever mums will make the meringue.”
The ladies went back to their tables and began to whisk egg whites, gradually adding the sugar as they did so.
The tent filled with heat from the giant oven. Alice could feel her face flushing and beads of perspiration forming at her hairline. The fragrance of cooking pastry filled the air. Her head ached. She wondered if she was coming down with the flu.
The smell of the pastry was making her want to remember something. Except it was somehow too large to remember. It was like the huge sheet of pastry. Too big for one person. She couldn’t find an edge to grasp so she could pull it in front of her. But there was definitely something there.
“Are you okay?” Maggie’s face loomed in front of Alice.
“Fine. I’m fine.”
The pastry shell was pulled from the oven to a round of applause. It was golden brown. The baking paper and rice were removed and the vat of lemon-colored filling was poured into the pastry. Next came the meringue. The women seemed tipsy with relief. They danced around the pie like schoolgirls, pouring their frothy white meringue mixtures over the filling and using wooden spoons to create snowy peaks.
More cameras flashed.
“Alice?” said Nora into the microphone. “Do we have your approval?”
Alice felt like the world had been wrapped in some sort of gauzy material. Her vision was slightly blurred, her mouth felt full of cotton wool. It was as though she’d just woken up and was trying to clear her