The greediest of them all? Entrant 6: Kari Carter

Some people marry for love. Others marry for looks. Still others marry for money, security or fame.

Kari married Tim for salted-caramel cheesecake.

In her defence, there were other reasons. Chocolate mousse domes with pistachio nougatine, for one. Dom Perignon infused truffles dipped in chocolate ganache. Ricotta-cream puffs, glazed cannolis, fudge brownies, homemade donuts and pretty much every soft sponge, sticky pastry, trifle, tart, pie and crumble to flow - with wafts of melted sugar and flaky promise - from her husband's ever-humming ovens.

It's little surprise her stomach wobbles with every step.

Indeed, were it not for the distinctive cheekbones and big waves of golden hair, few who saw Kari now would recognise her as the waif-like tennis prodigy she was throughout her teens who, like all the other girls at her club, dreamed of one day gracing centre court at Wimbledon. But even then she was different. Where her teammates and rivals pictured themselves lifting the golden shield, Kari’s fantasies took a different form: dazzling images of prize money, celebrity status and, most of all, huge sponsorship and advertising deals. Already well aware of her growing beauty and the less than professional glances and technique demonstrations from her male coaches, the slender blonde dreamed of seeing her own face on magazine covers and billboards, of appearing at red carpet events in dazzling dresses. And in pursuit of these goals, she trained just as hard and was perhaps even more ruthless and competitive than her peers.

At eighteen, her dreams were crushed by a hard-nosed and (at least in Kari’s eyes) bitter and envious old coach, who dismissed the beautiful blonde as 'a cut-price Kournikova, better suited to serving tables than serving aces’. A recurring ankle injury, which flared up just before an important tournament, ended Kari's hopes of professional tennis. By then she was dating a promising goalkeeper from a Championship football club, and her friends and family fully expected her to settle into a life of ease as a footballer’s wife, possibly with some part-time modelling contracts.

In this, though, they were mistaken. Having watched her investment banker father cheat repeatedly on her mother and eventually leave them both with nothing but a pitiful allowance, Kari revolted at the thought of being dependent on anyone, whether loving boyfriend or venal modelling agent. She would make her own money - and lots of it.

She soon found the perfect way of doing so, the perfect outlet for her ruthless competitive nature and intelligence: market trading. Graduating from LSE with a first in economics, Kari caught the eye (in more ways than one) of one Tobias Lincoln, owner of a wealth management firm on the outskirts of her native Cheshire. Impressed by Kari’s drive and seeing her beauty as a huge asset to the firm’s otherwise stuffy image, Tobias kick-started her career: taking her on vastly expensive business trips and showering her with  bonuses.

This taste of the high life was a pumping bellows to the flames of Kari’s greed. But if Tobias Lincoln hoped that it would lead to her falling for him, he had another think coming. Yes, Kari had an affair with her boss; she slept with him in return for an inflated salary and fat bonuses. But all the while she was learning, flattering him into revealing trade secrets to her, developing her knowledge and skills, and building her own lucrative share portfolio. Though young, she was always the one in control, and would never fall into the trap of being a subservient trophy wife like her mother, Julie, who by then had begun dating another deadbeat - a young, failing baker called Tim.

Kari had met Tim once or twice, and barely given him a second glance. Indeed, when he came round one evening to cook dinner for Julie when Kari happened to be visiting, she couldn't even remember his name.

All that, however, changed the moment Kari tasted Tim's roast lamb. After that, she remembered his name very well and spent the rest of the evening giving him a lot of glances - and not the kind that Julie was particularly pleased about. But Kari didn't care. Julie could steam from the ears as much as she wanted. By the time Kari was licking the remnant of tiramisu from her plate (winking coyly at Tim as she slid her tongue along the porcelain) she'd decided that he and his cooking were far too good to be wasted on her weak and dependent mother.

It wasn't much of a contest. Though pretty and witty, Julie was forty two, the bags under her eyes deepened by her previous husband's serial infidelity, her once-trim waistline thickened by several months of dating an aspiring baker. Kari, meanwhile, was everything her mother had been twenty years ago, and more: slim, busty and excessively sexy, rich, and with a confidence, born of a sultry beauty that had always gotten her everything she wanted. And she was blonde, too. The kind of blonde who could make the Pope kick a hole in a Sistine Chapel window. It would have taken a mighty will and unerring moral compass to resist her. And Tim possessed neither. Within a month, the unlikely lothario had broken things off with the mother and was dating her daughter.

Still, in the months that followed, Julie's bitterness became tempered by a suspicion that maybe, just maybe, her unfaithful boyfriend had gotten more than he'd bargained for. Certainly if Tim had been expecting any similarities in personality, he was in for a shock. Where Julie was cheerful and easy-going, Kari driven and demanding. And while she was happy to prop-up Tim's barely profitable baking business from her own sizeable wage, she expected him in return to do all the household chores: ironing her Gucci blouses and pencil skirts until they were perfectly crisp, keeping her heavily mortgaged mansion spotless, serving her and her girlfriends drinks and snacks while they relaxed in the hot tub at weekends, mowing perfect stripes into the the lawn at least once a week, and - above all - cooking for her.

For Tim soon discovered that it was no accident Kari's interest in him had begun when she'd tasted his tiramisu. His stunning sweetheart proved to be as obsessed with food as she was with money, with an appetite for tasty desserts as vast and greedy as her appetite for profitable shares. Entrusted with a multi-billion dollar Asian growth fund shortly after they were married, Kari spent weeks jetting off to exotic locations, where she was fawned on by wealthy executives and business owners desperate for her to invest in their companies. She was treated like a visiting royal - penthouse suites in the finest hotels, VIP tickets to sporting events, exclusive nightclubs - and she developed such a taste for Michelin-star cuisine that she practically demanded that Tim replicate the same quality in her meals at home. The rationale, of course, was that it would improve his baking and make his business more profitable, but the truth was that Kari had become a gourmand, a glutton whose appetite had become spoilt and pampered with the finest foods in the largest quantities. Indeed, Tim often joked (though only to himself) that there were really three people in the marriage: himself, Kari, and Kari's belly. Of which the latter was by far the most significant.

And growing more significant with every heaped, luxurious helping - whether at home or abroad. Indeed, after four years of marriage, it seems to Tim that the only thing expanding faster than his wife's share portfolio is her waistline, her obsessive, all-consuming pursuit of wealth, comfort and status causing the blonde investor to pile on flesh at an almost alarming rate, until without really realising it, she'd grown into a bulging, wobbling embodiment of consumer capitalism.... just in time for the Covid crash.

Combining Emily’s stress-eating with Gemma’s sweet tooth, Kari loves more than anything to gorge on the incredible desserts and sugar-dusted delights Tim so lovingly and slightly fearfully prepares for her. Like Abby she has a jealous streak, silently resenting the thought that other people get to enjoy her husband's baking. As a result, no new cake or experimental pie is safe from her hungry jaws. In a fit of drunken jealousy she once demolished an entire Swiss roll intended for a local baking competition after returning home from a night out, inflicting upon herself a huge case of indigestion - although it did taste so good.

No wonder Tim struggles to squeeze a profit out of his business and Kari struggles to squeeze into those Gucci pencil skirts.

Gluttony rating: 🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨🍨