“Hang on.” Rosaline did a Hold your horses gesture. “Are you going double or nothing here? Are you committing to the prediction that not only are ceps mushrooms but also that coco beans aren’t cocoa beans?”
“Hell to the yes. What do I win?”
There was a silence.
“Our marginally increased respect?” offered Rosaline.
Anvita’s lip curled. “You must be really fun at poker night. I’ll see your respect and raise you slightly more respect.”
“Okay. Losers will buy the winner another drink because this is already quite expensive and I’m not going to let my child starve because Mummy is bad at food trivia.”
“Fuck, yeah,” shouted Anvita, startling an innocent waiter who had just set down a bowl of mushroom soup in front of Harry.
Rosaline held up a finger. “Hold on. It could be brown because of the cocoa beans.”
“There”—the excitement in Anvita’s voice was almost adorable—“that thing on the top. That’s definitely a mushroom. And it must be a cep. Because those are Parmesan flakes and that’s cavolo nero and I bet there’s beans in it and I bet they’re not chocolate.”
Nervously, Harry dipped in a spoon. “She’s right. They ain’t.” “Who da . . . woman? Who’s got two thumbs and can correctly identify slightly obscure cooking ingredients.” Anvita turned the digits in question towards herself. “This person.” She turned them upright. “Suck it. Now buy me a drink. Buy me two drinks. Because you are losers.”
Trying not to take more than her share, Rosaline spread some of the mackerel pâté she was splitting with Anvita over a piece of toast. “So how are the mysterious ceps?”
Harry shrugged. “It’s mushroom soup. It’s nice mushroom soup, but I’m not sure I’d pay seven quid for it. I mean, apart from the fact that I will, ’cos otherwise that’d be a crime. But it’s not what I’d normally have on a Saturday night.”
“What do you normally have on a Saturday night?” asked Anvita. “Is it two lagers and the bird next door?”
“Well, Mrs. Patel is eighty, and she’s a nice lady, but I don’t think she’s into me that way. Sometimes, I’m out with the lads and I’ll get a pie from the chippy. And sometimes, I’m at home and I’ll make myself . . . ” He paused and thought for a moment. “Actually, I’ll usually make myself a pie.”
Anvita gazed at him, still slightly perplexed. “I don’t know why I’m surprised by this because I see you baking every week.”
“Yeah, it’s not just something I do on telly. It’s how I eat. Like, I sometimes make a little one for tea, or a medium-sized one to last me a couple of days, or a big one if the family’s coming round. It’s pies, mate, not rocket science.”
Their starters finished, the waiter Anvita had scared came back and took away the crockery. Harry had the look of a man resigning himself to having paid way over the odds for a bowl of mushrooms, and Anvita, without the distraction of telling her friends to suck it, was falling back into the doldrums of her poor showing in the blind bake.
“So”—Rosaline attempted to rouse her companions—“what’s everyone got planned for tomorrow?”
Harry shrugged. “Like I said. Big cake with biscuits on it.”
“No, but”—if Anvita hadn’t perked up, she was certainly doing a good impression of it—“you’ve got to have a theme, right?”
“Well. Um.” Harry fidgeted. “It’s sort of a . . . like . . . it’s gonna be a bit blue. And maybe a bit sparkly. Gonna have some fondant on it. Which I might shape and stuff.”
If he’d been trying to discourage Anvita’s interest, he’d picked exactly the opposite of the right strategy. “Why are you being weird about this? Is it a secret? Are you making a secret cake? Is it going to be decorated with the nuclear launch codes?”
“In sparkly blue fondant,” Rosaline added.
“No,” he mumbled, “it’s a bit . . . hard to describe.”
Anvita plonked her elbows on the table and subjected him to an interrogative glare. “You’re embarrassed, aren’t you? You do remember this is going to be on television?”
“Yeah, but I’ll be braced for it then.”
“Blue and sparkly and a bit embarrassing,” repeated Anvita. “We must be able to work it out from that. Is it Magic Mike–themed? Are you going to be baking with your shirt off?”
“What? On the BBC? At eight o’clock on a Tuesday. Not bloody likely.”
“You mean”—Anvita’s eyes were sparkling—“you would bake with your shirt off after the watershed? Are you aiming for a spin-off called Dobson After Dark?”
Harry seemed genuinely appalled. “I know you’ve had a bad day, but you’re going to stop this right now.”
“It’d be brilliant, though. You could be the male Nigella Lawson.”
Without her telling it to, Rosaline’s brain put together a quick mock-up of what a male Nigella Lawson would be like. And to give it credit, it did get to Harry pretty quickly.
“You could be all,” Anvita went on, “What you need to do is knead it firmly, but tenderly, caressing the dough with your thumbs and fingertips.”
“Mate, that’d make rubbish dough.” Harry paused. “Also, if that’s what women find sexy, I’ve been doing it very wrong.”
Rosaline grinned. “If it helps, so have I.”
To Harry’s visible relief, their mains arrived a moment later. True to form, he’d gone for the pie, she’d gone for the cheapest thing on the menu, and Anvita had taken the dish with the coolest name, which in this case had been a pan-fried skate wing.
“I was expecting it to be wingier,” admitted Anvita. “But it just looks like a fish triangle.” She stuck a fork in it. “It’s all right, though. Fishy. How’s the tagliatelle?”
Currently, it was dangling from Rosaline’s mouth in a thoroughly indecorous manner. “Mmmestly mmwishing—” She managed to partially de-pasta herself. “I’m wishing I’d chosen something less messy.”
“Don’t worry about it, mate.” Harry glanced up from his two-bird pie. “I know there’s a bunch of long words in the menu, but at the end of day, it’s just a pub, init? Anyway. It’s your turn. What you doing tomorrow?”
“How can it be my turn?” protested Rosaline, half convinced she had mascarpone on her chin, but not sure how to wipe away something that might only exist in her imagination. “When you totally wouldn’t tell us what you were doing?”
“I did tell you. It’s blue and sparkly and a cake. And it’s got macaroons on it.”
“Is it Elsa from Frozen?” asked Rosaline. “I promise, we’ll let it go if it’s Elsa from Frozen.”
“I did think about doing Elsa, but—oh right. Yeah. I get it. Very funny, mate.”
“Is it,” Anvita suggested, “unicorn poo?”
Harry’s brow crinkled. “Why would unicorn poo be blue?”