“I’d probably say one of them things that’s not allowed anymore like, Cheer up, love, it might never happen.”
“Why don’t we,” suggested Rosaline, on the assumption that Harry was probably right and Anvita would prefer a differently phrased encouragement, “ask if she wants to come to the village with us?”
“Yeah. All right. Why don’t you do that, and I’ll . . . kinda stand next to you.”
She gave him a confused look. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
“Nah, I’ll come. It’s just I don’t want her to think I’m trying to pull her.”
“Well, she won’t?”
“I know. I just . . . I have the worry.”
“You mean”—she smiled up at him—“that she’ll think you’re an utter ballsack?”
“Yeah.”
“Fair enough.” She set off towards Anvita’s Sad Tree of Sadness. “I’ll be a ballsack for both of us.”
Harry’s arm nudged gently against hers. “Mate, the things you say.”
“It was your ballsack originally. I just made use of it.”
“I really would like us to stop talking about my ballsack if we could.”
“Why,” asked Anvita, who they suddenly realised was now within earshot, “are you talking about Harry’s ballsack?”
Rosaline sat down on the grass next to her. “We were wondering if you wanted to come to the village with us.”
“That doesn’t answer the ballsack question.”
This was probably a sign that Anvita was feeling better. “You’d almost think it was a deliberate choice.”
There was a pause. “Is this a ‘pity’ let’s go to the village?”
“It’s a We finished a bit early, I thought it might be nice, and you’ve had a bad day let’s go to the village.”
Anvita sighed. “I knew I was going to fuck up patisserie. I mean, who thinks, I’ve got some people coming over this weekend. I know what’ll be nice, I’ll make twenty-eight mille-feuille and a croquembouche?”
“You’ve still got tomorrow, though, ain’t you?” said Harry. “It’s just a big cake with biscuits on it.”
Anvita made a visible, though not totally successful, effort to be cheered.
“How about,” suggested Rosaline, “we discuss how much we will or won’t fuck up tomorrow on the way to the village?”
Climbing to her feet, Anvita dusted the grass off her jeans. “What’s with you and the village? Do they have, like, an orgasm museum or something?”
“I think they have, like, a pub? Maybe a nice tearoom?”
“So instead of staying in the hotel having a drink in the bar the way we usually do, your special make Anvita happy treat is to walk twenty minutes up the road so we can have a slightly different drink in a slightly different bar.”
“Yes,” said Rosaline. “Yes it is.”
“All right. I’m in.”
They set out for the nearest village, which rejoiced in the name of Crinkley Furze. Rosaline wasn’t sure, but she suspected its economy had been ever so slightly distorted by the popularity of Bake Expectations because there were an awful lot of cake shops, although it was late enough in the day that most of them were closed. And even if they hadn’t been, cake was not something that any of them were feeling a particular lack of in their lives.
Crinkley Furze had two pubs, one of which—the Duke’s Arm’s—had that “local pub for local people” vibe that suggested three stray reality TV contestants would be decidedly unwelcome, and the other of which—the Rusty Badger—was the kind of place that put prosciutto on its burgers. They went Badger and found the choice of non-TV-grade food slightly overwhelming.
“What even is ceps?” asked Harry, picking up the menu. “They use it on MasterChef all the time, and I’ve never worked out which bit it is.”
Anvita, too, claimed a menu. “Isn’t it that long green stuff?”
“Nah. That’s samphire. Which I know ’cos they only do it with fish ’cos it’s a sea vegetable. And apparently they’re all too good for mushy peas.”
“When I’m done with the show,” said Rosaline, “I’m going to go on MasterChef and my signature dish is going to be ceps served five ways, and I’m going to call it Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ceps but Were Too Afraid to Ask.”
That made Harry laugh. “Bit long-winded for me. I’d probably go with The Joy of Ceps.”
“Sounds delicious,” added Anvita. “I might go so far as to say I Want Your Ceps.”
There was a pause as they menued. But Harry apparently still had ceps on the brain. “It’s in a coco bean and ceps soup. So it must be something what goes well with coco. But it’s not like marshmallows, is it? It’s probably like . . . another bean? Or a type of pepper maybe?”
“We could google this.” Anvita was already pulling out her phone.
But Rosaline firmly covered it with her hand. “No. It’s a mystery. I’m not having spoilers. What else is in the soup?”
“Cavolo nero.”
“I know that one,” said Rosaline. “It’s fancy kale.”
“Mate, all kale is fancy where I come from. If it’s not fancy, it’s called greens. And there’s also Parmesan in it. So it’s gotta be something that goes well with coco, cheese, and greens. I don’t think anything goes with coco, cheese, and greens.”
Anvita obligingly turned her phone facedown. “Weirdest Only Connect round ever. And I think Harry should order the soup and we should bet on what the ceps are.”
“Why am I,” asked Harry plaintively, “the one what’s ordering the mystery soup?”
“It’s your punishment for doing better than us in the blind bake.”
He sighed. “Fine. I reckon it’s a type of bean what isn’t a coco bean because they always put more beans than you want in bean soup.”
“I don’t care what it’s been,” interjected Rosaline in a moment of weakness, “I care what it is now.”
“Mate.” Harry shook his head. “I can’t believe I thought you was a classy bird.”
“I’m still a classy bird. But one of the tragedies of being a single mother is you have to do your own dad jokes. Anyway, I think ceps are . . . They sound like they’d be a bit like capers.”
“What?” cried Anvita. “That would be horrible with kale and coco beans. It’d be all briney and yick.”
“I said like capers. Sort of little round things that you don’t know what they’re called or what they’re bringing to the dish. Now come on. What’s your pick?”
Resting an elbow on the table, Anvita screwed her face up thoughtfully. “Judging by the flavours already in the dish, you’d need something earthy to tie it together. So it’s probably some kind of mushroom?”
“You think”—Harry gave her his flattest stare—“it’s chocolate mushroom soup?”
“I’m not sure, but I suspect coco beans without an ‘a’ are different from cocoa beans with an ‘a.’”