Sugar Crash

"Did I go overboard with the cakes?" Daphne says, angling her Battenberg next to her Victoria Sponge.

We spent the morning festooning the riverboat with bunting and balloons. And now the cakes – and the sun! – are out. I can't imagine a more perfect day for the Windlesham Ladies High Tea and Boating Society's Annual Cake Bake.

I swipe a bluebottle from my Black Forest Gateau. I am determined that nothing will spoil our day.

"Hello girls! Not late, am I?"

Daphne and I shade our eyes towards the elegant figure of Helen Asquith-Frobisher making her way across the gangplank.

Her lemon-yellow dress is radiant in the sun. Her swanlike neck is draped with pearls. Her gamine features are framed by oversized Dior sunglasses, and her brown tresses are coiled in a high bun.

She's like Audrey Hepburn on steroids, I find myself thinking.

She carries a multi-layered multi-coloured cake, frilled with lace-effect piping, topped with pure white meringue balls and glistening glace summer fruits.

"Room for a little one?"

"Well, the deadline was yesterday," begins Daphne. "And the rules stipulate entries must be homemade–"

"I'll squeeze it in juuuuuust here," Helen says, nudging Daphne's Battenberg towards the edge of the table.

I can see the vein at Daphne's temple bulge.

I've known Daff for decades. We've been inseparable since we each had our youngest. We're each other's spa buddies and WeightWatchers sponsors. We just started bi-weekly champagne and Ozempic evenings.

"There!" says Helen. "Gosh, you two... don't you look ravishing! Daphne, have you lost weight?"

Daphne doesn't like confrontation, but I've seen her when she snaps. When the gardener left grass trimmings in the border. When the neighbour's tractor tore ruts in her back lane. When her ex-husband Peter insisted on doing his own laundry.

I step in to diffuse – or 'defuse', I'm never sure – the growing tension.

"Helen, where did you get that dress?" I say, leading her by the elbow.

"It's an old thing Stella made for me. You know, Stella McCartney?"

"Oh, that Stella..."

I'm relieved when we finally set off. We're heading up the Thames, through picturesque villages and old locks and bridges. There's about sixty women on board. No husbands. No children. The Windlesham Ladies High Tea and Boating Society is a safe space.

There are canapes laid out for those intolerant to wheat, gluten, sugar or food dyes. I notice that Daphne is on her second plateful.

"Daffs, my love, are you keeping track?"

She looks at her plate then immediately looks disgusted with herself.

"It's the stress. Every year. All the organising. All the cajoling people to take part. Like it's a fucking punishment to eat cake on the river."

She eats one last crumbed prawn then drops the plate on a nearby table. A piercing laugh comes from the far end of the deck. Daphne stiffens.

"But mostly it's her, isn't it?" I venture.

Helen Asquith-Frobisher is laughing with the Lady Mayoress (who is no doubt talking about the time Barack Obama visited Windlesham).

Helen moved to Windlesham six months before Daphne's ex-husband Peter upped and left. Helen and Peter shared the same social circle, the same Yacht Club, both often overnighted in London. But Daphne could give me no reason, no evidence, for Peter having an affair with Helen.

"Only means, motive and opportunity," Daphne had responded, darkly.

Daphne has always been insecure around younger women. First they were competition, then they were a threat. I usually tried to douse her paranoia, but it never lasted. In the end I concluded that Daphne just needed a reason, any reason, for why Peter left her. Helen was the unlucky target when Daphne needed one.

I try to shift her mind onto another subject.

"Shall we start judging?" I ask.

"I'm not judging. But I know women like her. No job, no kids, nothing to do all day except other people's husbands."

"I meant the cakes."

"Oh. Good idea."

Some of the cakes are drooping in the heat. Layers splay as their fillings ooze. A fondant fairy collapses into a green splat.

Daphne taps a champagne flute with a fork. A little too hard, I think. Everyone turns towards the bow deck.

"Well, ladies, you have outdone yourselves. What an extraordinary display of talent in our little community."

"Just tell us who's won!" a voice shouts.

It's Helen Asquith-Frobisher. She's tipsy. Annoyance flickers on Daphne's face, slight enough that only I notice.

"Good things come to those who wait!" she says brightly.

Helen turns to the Lady Mayoress and whispers, not quietly enough, "I don't think she's ever waited for cake in her life..."

"What did you say?"

My stomach drops. Daphne heard. We all heard.

Helen looks from side to side, as if she's looking for the person who said the words which had come out of her mouth.

Daphne picks up Helen's extravagant cake. The platter wobbles on her palm.

"Helen, this was your cake, correct?" Daphne says.

Helen is suddenly alert.

"I wonder if you could tell us... Are the meringues piped or moulded?"

"Oh, um, moulded," says Helen, shakily.

"And the lace fondant, how did you roll such a delicate pattern?"

Helen falters. "Oh, y'know, like anything... just practice!"

Polite applause erupts. Helen smiles. Daphne is not happy that Helen is getting recognition for what is obviously not Helen's work.

As Daphne holds up the foil-wrapped cardboard cake platter, she notices something on the underside. I see it too. It looks like a barcode.

Daphne tries to take a closer look, but the angle and weight of the cake on her wrist suddenly become unsteady. I watch, frozen in dismay, as the cake slides off the platter and hits the deck. Literally.

Helen screams. "Noooo! Oh my god!" She lurches through the shocked audience.

But the shift in weight has caused Daphne to lose her balance. Her hand flies upwards, propelling the now-empty platter into the air and overboard, hitting the river's surface with a loud clap.

She stumbles against the rail, her boat shoes slipping and crunching through fondant and moulded meringue balls.

"What the fuck?!" Helen screams. "You've destroyed my cake!"

I weave around the mess of broken cake to help Daphne up, recovering her balance if not her dignity.

"I can't fucking believe it... You stupid cow!" spits Helen.

"I know you didn't make it!" splutters Daphne. "You bought it!"

Sixty women gasp in unison.

"What are you talking about?" yells Helen.

"I saw the barcode! On the platter!"

"On the platter? Of course I bought the platter. I didn't make the fucking platter. Are you insane?"

Daphne is lost for words. I immediately feel sorry for her.

Helen goldfishes at the remains of her cake. Her hands alternate between her hips and her forehead, between fury and despair. I've never seen her so vulnerable before – like she has lost something that actually was hers.

The sun feels oppressive now. Flies are landing in droves on the heap of sugar and dairy. The boat continues lazily upstream. None of us wants to break the silence. None of us dares look Helen in the face.

That's why none of us sees the low bridge we're approaching.

Helen is facing backwards, looking down at her shattered cake, the high bun of her hairstyle raised in the air. A narrow girder on the underside of the bridge aligns neatly with her hair and hooks her up.

Before we understand what's going on, Helen is yanked off her feet and is dragged by her head along the length of the boat.

Her screams would curdle cake mix.

Her shoes trail cream and fondant across the deck. She dangles through the parting crowd of women, like a ghost in a haunted house, gathering bunting as she goes.

Her hands grab at the girder, trying to lift herself, trying to fight physics. But the bridge won't let go.

The boat's steady, relentless progress is pulling her towards the table of canapes. She is unable to avoid it. She scrambles and tumbles through and over the smorgasbord of savoury edibles, her legs smearing dips and hummus as she goes. But still the girder does not drop her.

At the centre of the deck is a slightly raised section of skylights for the lower decks. We watch – helpless and utterly entranced – as Helen is unceremoniously hauled up one side of it and across the transparent ceiling, her limbs squeaking and jumbling against the fibreglass, before being dumped off the opposite side.

Her yellow Stella McCartney dress is shredded, but also augmented by strings of balloons and pastel flags. I hear the patter of broken pearls showering the deck.

The rest of us are either too shocked or heat-dazed to scream. The sight of Helen marionetting her way along the length of the boat has us spellbound.

Someone shouts, "Go on, Helen!" though I'm unclear what they are encouraging her to do.

Then, somehow, Helen manages to get upright. She's trying to jog on her bare, cream-covered feet to keep up with the conveyor belt that is the wooden deck. Her hands grab futilely at her head. Whatever miracle strength products she uses ensure that the tug of war between her hair and the bridge's underside is not over.

But she's running out of boat. The rear rail is rapidly approaching. With admirable resilience, Helen squares up to the rail, and – in an image backlit by a gorgeous sunset which I will never forget for the rest of my years – she hurdles it.

The boat emerges from the bridge's underside. Some of us have run to the back now, watching Helen's writhing, receding silhouette hanging from the bridge.

We remain gobsmacked, awestruck. None of us speak until I muster the words: "My god, Daphne, we have to turn around!"

Daphne has regained some composure. She straightens her own dishevelled dress and narrows her eyes towards Helen.

Then something gives and Helen plummets the dozen feet into the wake-roiled surface of the Thames. Gasps go up all around.

Moments later, she resurfaces, coughing and flailing. Her dress floats around her like a giant yellow lilypad. Several men in motor launches are already heading in her direction.

"No," says Daphne, coldly. "We'll get her on the way back."

Written for Vocal's "Overboard" Challenge

Write a 600-2,500 word fiction story set on a boat that ends with a key character going overboard.

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