“So, my little pastry protégés, it is time for the moment of truth. And we begin, as always, by celebrating the achievements of this week’s winner. It’s someone whose St. Clement’s pie still owes us five farthings, but whose sweet pie was the apple of our eye and whose spectacular spicing stole the show. I speak, of course, of Anvita.”
Anvita made the obligatory face of surprise and delight. And she was radiating such sincere joy that it was hard for Rosaline to be jealous. Hard, but not impossible.
“And now,” continued Grace Forsythe, once reactions had been shot, “to the sorrowful moment wherein we say farewell to one of our valiant baketeers. This person has brought joy and levity to the ballroom, but, unfortunately, when he tried to bring colour, it melted all over the plate. We’re sad to lose you, Florian, but I’m afraid you’ve come to the end of your rainbow.”
This time the hugs felt a lot more authentic and a lot more earned. A couple of people actually cried. And Rosaline, remembering the way Florian had come to her defence last week, couldn’t help but feel she was losing an ally she hadn’t quite deserved.
In one of life’s small mercies, Allison was busy for the whole weekend, which left Lauren free to take over picking-up-Rosaline duty. She arrived, as Rosaline had expected, slightly late but looking nowhere near as tired or frustrated as she could have done. And after a brief hello, she opened the back door of her car to release a child-shaped missile that barrelled into Rosaline with a force that she should have anticipated but didn’t.
“Missed you times a million.” Amelie beamed up at her not, if Rosaline was honest, looking hugely like she’d missed her times very much at all. “I had a lovely weekend with Auntie Lauren and we played games and watched television and made sandwiches and”—she cast Lauren a conspiratorial glance—“I always went to bed on time and ate very healthily.”
Bending down to put her arms around her daughter, relieved to be back with her family, where she belonged and made sense and it was only her parents making her feel like a failure instead of the whole nation, Rosaline detected a certain stickiness. “Were they, by any chance, jam sandwiches?”
Amelie nodded.
“I got the worst of it,” Lauren observed, still leaning against the car bonnet. “Remind me to wear a cheaper jacket next time.”
“It’ll wash out.”
“It’ll have to dry-clean out.”
Folding her arms in mock indignation, Rosaline smiled. “Well, if you will let her play with fruit preserves . . .”
“I was encouraging creativity.”
Before Rosaline could devise a suitably devastating reply, she heard an “’Allo there” from a little way across the car park. She, Amelie, and Lauren turned together to see Harry wandering towards them carrying a sports bag that seemed to contain far more . . . stuff. . . than any reasonable person would actually need for a weekend stay in a fully equipped hotel.
Is this him? Lauren mouthed hastily at her. Him here was doing a lot of work for a single syllable since it needed to convey Is this the guy you spent the night with in a strange farmhouse, fraudulently told you’d lived in Malawi, and with whom the status of your relationship is the textbook definition of “it’s complicated.” Rosaline shook her head as subtly and efficiently as possible.
With a swift smile in Rosaline’s direction, Harry squatted down to get on Amelie’s eye-line. “Is this your mummy?” he asked.
Amelie looked up for reassurance, and Rosaline made a brief It’s okay gesture.
“Yes she is,” Amelie announced proudly. “She’s going to be on television because she makes the best cakes.”
“I know she does,” he said with a smile. “I’m going to be on television with her.”
This seemed to confuse Amelie. “Do you make cakes too? You don’t look like you make cakes.”
“Amelie,” Rosaline cautioned, “be nice.”
Harry looked up. “It’s okay, I know she don’t mean nothing by it. ’Sides, asking questions is how they learn.” He turned back to Amelie without missing a beat. “What do I look like?”
“Footballer?” Rosaline could see Amelie running through her quite short mental list of jobs she knew about. “Soldier? Fireman? You look like you’d be strong, so maybe you could be a miner or a Viking.”
“I was going to be a Viking,” Harry explained, “but I went up the job centre and they didn’t have nothing, so I thought I’d go into electrics instead.”
There was a long pause, then Amelie said, “You should have gone back the next day.”
“Oh, blow it.” Harry made an exaggerated silly me gesture. “You’re right, I should’ve.” Carefully, he stood up and produced a piece of cardboard from his back pocket. “So”—he waved it vaguely at Rosaline and she took it almost by instinct—“I was just thinking. Do you want my number?”
Rosaline gave him a cautious look. Maybe he thought that once he stopped calling her “love” she’d be suddenly up for it. “Why would that be a thing I might want?”
“I wasn’t, like”—he’d gone pink to the ears—“trying anything. But like I told Amelie, I’m in electrics, and I’m pretty handy, and I know it can be rough for a single mum.”
This caught Amelie’s interest. It was, perhaps, the worst thing that could have caught her interest. “Why is it rough for Mummy?”
Harry squatted back down. “’Cos she’s got a lot to do. She can’t work a job and take you to school and do her baking and fix the boiler all the same time.”
“I could fix the boiler if we learned it in school,” Amelie mused. “But we have to do spelling instead.”
“Spelling’s important. If you can’t spell proper, people’ll think you’re a knob.” He started and glanced back up at Rosaline. “Sorry, mate. Just slipped out.”
Lauren made a languid gesture. “It’s fine. She gets worse from me every fucking day.”
His head whipped around. “Sorry, lov—sorry, haven’t introduced myself. I’m Harry, I’m on the show with Rosaline.”
Before Lauren could introduce herself back, Amelie intervened. “That’s Auntie Lauren. She used to go out with Mummy, but then she left her for another girl who didn’t even really have red hair. She’s been looking after me.”
Rosaline inwardly face-palmed. She was very open about her sexuality, but she also liked to control when she was open about it and who she was open about it to. And she genuinely wasn’t sure how Harry would take it.
“Oh, right.” He seemed to be processing. And also seemed to be close enough to Amelie to notice the stickiness. “Are you the one what got her covered in jam then?”
“It builds creativity.”
Harry shook his head. “It don’t, mate. It just attracts wasps. Anyway, got to go. My nan’s expecting me. Give us a bell if you need anything.”
Looking only a little flustered, Harry ambled away leaving Rosaline, Lauren, and Amelie alone. They piled into Lauren’s car—Amelie stubbornly insisting in the face of all the evidence that she had put her seat belt on perfectly well and didn’t need any help with it—and set off back home.