“Because they’re magical.”
“And magical things have blue poo?”
“Or”—something bubbled up from the lake of Rosaline’s “was going to be a doctor” factoids—“they’ve all got porphyria.”
“You what?”
“I see that ‘you what’ and raise you an ‘I beg your pardon?’”
“Porphyria,” Rosaline explained. “It’s the thing George III might have had. It turns your poo blue.”
Harry gave a heavy sigh. “Mate, I have to tell my nieces not to talk about poo at the table, but they’re all under ten.”
Something clicked in Rosaline’s brain. “You have nieces. They are under ten. And they’re girls. And you’re not doing Frozen. It’s a mermaid, isn’t it?”
“Bloody hell.” Harry went pink to his ears. “Yeah, all right. I’m doing a mermaid. I thought it’d be nice. I’m doing it diving into the cake so you just see the tail bit. ’Cos that way I don’t have to do boobs on telly.”
Anvita nodded sagely. “Good call. Because otherwise the judges would come round and say, What are you doing, and you’d have to say, I’m moulding a pair of fondant whammers.”
“I mean”—Harry had yet to return to his original shade—“I wouldn’t have said it exactly like that.”
Unable to resist, Rosaline asked, “So how would you have said it?”
“I think I’d have gone with . . . ‘This is my mermaid. Right now finishing off her bra area.’”
“That’s my favourite name for them.” Anvita was noticeably giggling. “I love it when my boyfriend tells me, ‘Anvita, your bra area looks great in that dress.’”
“I’m not trying to pull the mermaid,” muttered Harry. “I’m trying to talk about the mermaid on telly without saying ‘tits.’”
To be honest, Rosaline could have carried on teasing Harry about his hypothetical fondant boobies for quite a lot longer. But he had fixed her electricity for free. “I’m doing space,” she announced.
Harry slanted her a mischievous look. “Ah, so blue and sparkly as well then?”
“Maybe more purple and sparkly? And with macaron planets.”
“Well,” said Anvita loftily, “these are nice ideas. But I—I should warn you—am going to smash it. I’m making a three-tiered vanilla-bean sponge with Swiss meringue buttercream icing and macarons cascading luxuriously from top to bottom.”
“But what’s its theme?” Harry’s imitation of Anvita’s tone was not especially accurate. “I thought you had to have a theme.”
“The theme is Marie Antoinette.”
There was a pause. “How is a bunch of macarons like Marie Antoinette?”
“Because”—Anvita tossed her head proudly—“they’re fabulous.”
In the end, Harry had picked up the bill. Not, as he insisted, because he was the only bloke but because Rosaline was a single mum with a minimum wage job and Anvita was still a trainee.
“When you both get rich and famous,” he said as they walked down the main street of the village in the deepening twilight, “you can pay me back.”
Anvita eyed him curiously. “If I’d known electricians were this flush, I’d have picked a different career. Though, that said, I do look hot in glasses.”
“It’s just the family business.” Harry gave one of his slightly self-conscious shrugs. “It’s what we do.”
They strolled on a little farther, the path wending lazily round the hill towards Patchley House and Park. During the day, pretty as the village was, the cars and the road and Tesco Express made it hard to forget that you were in the twenty-first century, a short train ride from London, and about twenty minutes from the filming of a popular television show.
Now, though, the magic of streetlight and shadows made the old stone and the bare fields real in a way they hadn’t been before. They’d come out of a mediocre gastropub, but in the pale orange glow from its windows, it looked like it belonged in a fairy tale. Tucking her hands in her pockets, Rosaline gazed up at the sky. The stars were so naked when you weren’t in the city. It made the whole world feel different. Newer, somehow.
“Let’s take a shortcut,” announced Anvita. “It’ll be fun.”
Harry did not seem to share her faith that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime thrill ride. “It’s twenty minutes up the road.”
“Okay. So not a shortcut so much as a let’s-take-an-exciting-walk-across-some-fields-in-the-dark-cut.”
“And you don’t think”—Harry still sounded unconvinced—“it’ll turn into a let’s-fall-in-a-ditch-and-have-to-do-tomorrow’s-episode-hopping-cut?”
“It’s fine. I was a girl guide. I can do orienteering.”
“And I’ve got my silver Duke of Edinburgh award,” added Rosaline. “What can go wrong?”
“Lots of things could go wrong. We could step in cowpats. Get done for trespassing. Or walk for half an hour and then realise we’re on the wrong side of the bloody river.”
Anvita brandished a finger. “Counterpoint: if we go back now, I have to spend the rest of the evening sat in my room, sobbing over the failure of my gougères.”
“Fine, but when we get back to the hotel and you’re covered in brambles and mud, don’t blame me.”
So they took a sharp right turn over a stile, which, according to the little green sign, led to some kind of public footpath. Sceptical as Harry had been, Rosaline was glad for the walk—they’d spent the last five weekends at the same hotel, alternating between extreme stress and mild boredom, and the minimal freedom offered by a short ramble through the countryside was, well, it wasn’t much, but by God she’d take it.
“We should sing a song,” said Anvita. “Like that one about how you love to go a-wandering.”
“You mean . . . ‘I love to go a-wandering’?” asked Rosaline, half singing.
“That’s the one. ‘Something something ack. Something something something something knapsack on my bag.’”
“‘Val-deriiiiiiii,’” they both burst out. “‘Val-deraaaaaa.’”
Harry pulled on the collar of his polo shirt like he was trying to hide behind it. “Leave it out, people live round here. We’re going to be them annoying tourists what walked past their back gardens shouting ‘val-deri’ at ’em.”
“Okay, fine.” Anvita paused for zero seconds before coming up with a new idea. “I spy with my little eye . . . something beginning with ‘g.’”
“Grass,” suggested Harry.
She scowled. “Right. Give me a second. And watch out because this is going to be hard. I spy with my little eye . . . something beginning with ‘t.’”
“Trees,” suggested Rosaline. “Or trousers.”
“No.” Anvita shook her head. “But good one.”
“And not trainers or T-shirt or anything else any of us are wearing?”
Anvita managed to project smug through the gloom. “Do you give up?”