“Well, he’s not married, and he’s never cheated on me. Which puts him ahead of you in at least two areas.”
“Ah, yes. A love story for the ages. She was a young woman trying to find her place in a world that had wronged her. He . . . wasn’t married.”
Rosaline gritted her teeth. “Look, he’s a charming, successful, good-looking guy who clearly has his shit together and who, if I’m not completely terrible at this, might like me. And it’s a little bit hard to know what I have to offer someone like that. So I freaked out and tried to offer him Malawi.”
“Just tell him the truth. If he’s not an utter prick, he’ll be fine about it. And if he is, the problem rather solves itself.”
She was right. She was right. Being right was one of Lauren’s worst qualities. “I will. But maybe not exactly this second. Because I’m going to the bar to have a drink. With grown-ups. Who I’ve met. In my life that I’ve got.”
“Good for you. Now I really need to call Allison, so bugger off and enjoy your evening.”
They exchanged hasty goodbyes, the phone clicked. And off Rosaline buggered.
Inside the bar, Rosaline found several of the other contestants huddled around a circular table, nursing an array of beverages and swapping tales of woe from the day’s baking.
“I’ll be honest,” Josie was saying, “when Marianne looked at my cake like that, I thought I was going to poop my knickers.”
Florian rolled his eyes theatrically. “Darling, you have nothing to complain about. She said my almonds were limp. I’ve never been limp in my life.”
“It happens.” Ricky squidged over to make room for Rosaline in front of what looked like the promised glass of cheap wine. “Wait half an hour. Try again.”
“It’s Rosaline, isn’t it?” Josie—a posh, comfortable woman in her mid-forties—extended a hand over the table. “Don’t think we’ve actually met.”
Rosaline gave what she hoped was a respectable handshake. “Yeah. I was delayed. I got stuck with Alain at a train station and we had to spend the night with a farmer.”
“Oooh”—Josie lifted her brows salaciously—“how’d you explain that one to the husband?”
Wait. What? “I don’t have one. So . . . quite easily? Or, from a different perspective, with great difficulty.”
“Well, willy bum piddle.” Josie actually covered her mouth with her hands. “Sorry. Anvita said you had a daughter so I assumed . . . Is he not in the picture or are you being terribly modern?”
“He’s . . . on the edge of the picture. Like, he’s in Amelie’s life, but we’re not together or anything.”
“My word. What a prize scuzzbucket. You think he’d at least have done the decent thing.” Josie sighed with a world-weariness that Rosaline suspected she had in no way earned. “But that’s men for you. Only after one thing and the moment they’ve got it—poof!”
Just once Rosaline would have liked to be able to talk about this aspect of her life without people treating her like a fallen woman in a nineteenth-century novel. Which was to say either a terrible victim of the cruelties of the world or a giant slut. “Can you not call my kid’s dad a scuzzbucket? Tom’s actually a really nice guy, but we were both very young and I don’t think getting married would have been right for either of us.”
“Yes, but”—Josie wasn’t letting this go, was she?—“he’s every bit as responsible as you are. Why should you be the one left carrying the can?”
“I suppose,” said Rosaline, trying not to lose either her temper or her self-respect, and fearing she might only be able to hang on to one, “I don’t think of Amelie as a can.”
Josie patted her gently on the arm. “No, no, of course not. I just know what it’s like. I’ve got three of my own and it’s hard enough with two of us. You must be terribly brave.”
It was technically better, Rosaline supposed, than thinking that she was some wanton strumpet determined to sponge off the state, but at least when people looked down on her she could cleanly dislike them. It was when they pushed the “such a hero” narrative that it got difficult because they clearly expected her to approve. “I’ve got quite a lot of support. My parents are . . . Well, they’re always there if I need them. And my ex and her wife are”—what was Lauren exactly?—“a lot more helpful than I have any right to expect them to be.”
“Sorry.” Josie blinked rapidly. “Probably being a bit provincial, but did you say your ex and—”
“I’m really rather weary,” cut in Florian so abruptly that Rosaline was sure it was a deliberate rescue, “of everyone assuming marriage is the default end state of the human condition. I’ve been with Scott for twenty years and, ever since it was legalised, our friends keep asking us when we’re getting married, and we keep saying never and they don’t believe us.”
It was probably wrong for Rosaline to feel relieved that Josie’s attention swung to Florian. But she did. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to,” said Josie in the sort of tone you reserved for four-year-olds, “but you just interrupted me and that’s a little bit rude.”
Florian gave a slightly catlike smile. “Oh no, I fully meant to. Perhaps I shouldn’t be presuming, but I’d rather we didn’t treat each other’s sexualities as topics of interrogation.”
“I’m not interrogating. I’m taking an interest.”
“No.” Florian sounded like a man who had several distinct flavours of no he reserved for different occasions. “Taking an interest is when you ask somebody how their runner beans are doing. When you persistently ask someone to explain why their life experiences don’t exactly match yours, that’s an interrogation.”
For someone in a floral blouse, Josie could bristle quite impressively. “I was expressing sympathy. You wouldn’t understand because you don’t have children.”
Rosaline felt a bit like she’d blundered into quicksand and, when Florian tried to help her, dragged him in afterwards. “Why do you think he wouldn’t have children?” she asked.
“Well, because—”
“To save you finishing that thought, dear,” said Florian quickly, “I don’t. But that’s because I’m a misanthropist, not because I’m a homosexual.”
There was a long silence.
Then Ricky started dramatically, “Is that marmalade? Have I got marmalade on my shoulder? How long have I been going around with marmalade on my shoulder?”
“Probably since you dropped that jar of marmalade?” suggested Anvita.
“But how’d it get up there? I dropped it on the floor.”
“I’m not a man of science”—Florian took a sip of his rosé—
“but experience suggests that splashback is a bitch.”
The conversation, having been resolutely steered from the state of Rosaline’s life to the state of Ricky’s clothes, should have felt safer. But it didn’t. And so Rosaline was left sitting there feeling small, and slightly naked, and like she was probably overreacting, except she didn’t know how to not. Because, for fuck’s sake, this was a stranger she’d need to see ten times at most. Why did she care what Josie—or, indeed, anyone else—thought of her.