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The first time Edwina Fray, TV cook and punk gourmet celebrity, saw the green dragon, it was stood on her shocking pink marbled kitchen work surface, next to a plate of organic French goats cheese. “That smells awfully strong,” the dragon said, in a deep, female voice with clipped pronunciation. It nodded towards the cheese, which had been matured in fermented vine leaves. The dragon was small and bright emerald green with a long spiked tail. Edie was short and curvy with blonde pin-up hair, seven tattoos and Wicked Black Cab varnish on her nails. Edie glanced at the dragon, as from between its jaws came a puff of smoke and an orange flame. Then, it disappeared. As she returned to her evening meeting to discuss her latest show, ‘Edie Bakes Cakes’, Edie wondered whether too much cheese, work, alcohol, pills and many late nights were provoking hallucinations, or just making her fat and grumpy. Her black leather skirt was cutting into her waist. She went back to the dining room to her food photographer Elias Green, her TV producer, Helen Shoemaker, and her goddaughter, Flo. Edie thought she must ask Poppy, her secretary, to book her a doctor’s appointment. It was a week later, as she was about to drunkenly whisk egg white into her crepe batter that the green dragon appeared for the second time. Edie had had a dreadful day, first bumping into her recently estranged husband Marcus buying ketchup in Harrods Food Hall, then breaking a black nail whilst getting into a taxi, only to find herself late for a Radio Four interview after being stuck in traffic behind demonstrating pig farmers. “Bloody country bastard bumpkins”, she had almost shouted through the window, only remembering, in the nick of time, her supermarket campaign to buy local. In the advert, Edie was standing by hay bales wearing wellington boots, a fifties style headscarf, a tight black cocktail dress and bright red lipstick. Hideous. The radio interview, to promote ‘Edie bakes Cakes’ had, initially, been a great success; the interviewee had pronounced Edie’s retro Black Forest Gateau “Divine,” and the walnut, turmeric and beetroot cake “Uber.” However, after the show, the producer’s assistant, who had eaten most of the cakes, had been violently sick in the toilets and was currently ill in bed with a high fever. The word “salmonella” was being whispered in the corridors of Radio Four.