A strange and ominous grunting came from the shadows.
“Oh shit,” whisper-screamed Anvita, “it’s provoked.”
“You want me to run at it?” asked Harry.
“No, it will definitely kill you. We need to run away in a zigzag.”
“I thought that was crocodiles.”
The thing in the dark was moving towards them now, and quickly. Rosaline also tried to pick up the pace, but Anvita’s ankle had other ideas.
“I can’t go any faster.” Anvita gave her a little push. “Leave me. Save yourselves.”
“I’m not going to leave you in a field,” protested Rosaline.
“You’ve got a child. Think of your daugh—”
At this moment, Harry swept Anvita off the ground and into his arms. “All right. I’ve got her. Peg it. Don’t look back. You’re not supposed to look back.”
Rosaline did not, in fact, look back—just raced through the grass, convinced at any moment she was going to hear the thud of hooves behind her and then the grisly crunch of Harry and Anvita getting ground into tapenade by an enraged bull. She hit the fence and, although still concerned for her safety, couldn’t help being a little proud of the agility with which she managed to vault over it.
Harry arrived a moment later, bundling Anvita over the top before clambering across himself. They had a few moments to ride the adrenaline wave together, breathless and giggling with relief, before the goat caught up with them.
It gave an aggrieved bleat. Then started nibbling the edge of Harry’s shirt.
“Did you see that?” yelled Anvita. “He totally superheroed me out of that field. He literally saved my life.”
Harry scratched his jaw awkwardly. “I mean, from a goat.”
“It was a bull at the time.”
“I’m pretty sure it was always a goat.” He tried to get his shirt back, which the goat was not happy about. There was a brief tug-of-war and the bull impersonator managed to tear a strip off the bottom. “Oh bloody hell. Now that is gonna show up on TV.”
Given their evening’s activities had consisted of going to a pub and taking a short walk, they made a disproportionately tragic party as they returned to the hotel, with Anvita limping, Harry’s shirt torn, and all of them covered in mud.
“Right,” said Anvita the moment they got through the gates. “Bar.”
“You don’t think”—Rosaline did her best to keep up with Anvita’s increasingly enthusiastic hobbling—“maybe see a first-aider?”
“Oh come on. It’s fine. You said it wasn’t broken and you must know what you’re talking about because you nearly did two years of a medical degree.”
Somehow, Rosaline felt she wasn’t going to win this one. “I said, ‘It’s not broken.’ Not ‘Feel free to get drunk and run around on it.’”
“I’m not going to run around. I’m going to have a glass of wine, maybe two, and then see if I can persuade Harry to carry me to my room.”
Harry frowned thoughtfully. “I reckon carrying another bloke’s bird is all right if you’re escaping a bull—”
“It was a goat,” Rosaline reminded him.
“—but I think if I was carrying you up to your bedroom, your boyfriend might have a problem with it.”
“Don’t ruin this for”—Anvita tried to stamp her foot and then yelped—“ow—me. How often do you think I get carried places in my life?”
“How about,” said Harry, “we go to the bar, you put your foot up, I stay on the lemonade so I don’t get pissed and drop you down the stairs, and we see how you feel?”
“Works for me. How about you, Dr. Rosaline? Want to come along and keep me under observation?”
She did, in a lot of ways. Because honestly she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a night like this—one of going out, being silly, and doing things you’d at least half regret in the morning. But she was also beginning to feel a bit bad for having jaunted off, leaving Alain stuck in his room to brood about meringues. Of course, he had said he’d wanted the time alone, but looking back, that probably hadn’t meant Fuck off to the village and ignore me for several hours.
“Actually . . .” She gently disentangled herself from Anvita. “I should probably go check on Alain.”
“Check on, eh?” Anvita waggled her eyebrows. “You mean, check on his penis with your vagina. Sorry, that sounded way better in my head.”
Rosaline stared at her. “I don’t know how to leave now. Because whatever I say will be weird by association.”
“You’re right. Let’s try again. Have a lovely evening. Say hi from me.”
“I will. Thank you. Goodbye. And I really appreciated the way you avoided mentioning anyone’s genitals.”
Anvita’s hand swished through the air like she was swiping left on cosmic Tinder. “Pshaw. Who’d do something like that?”
Somewhat regretfully—not that she should have been regretful—Rosaline trudged down the hill towards the Lodge and then up the uninspiring whitewashed staircase to Alain’s room. She knocked on the door more sheepishly than she’d intended.
“Rosaline.” Alain was looking a little tousled, which suggested he’d just woken up. A suggestion reinforced by the fact that he was wearing black lounge pants and no shirt. “I didn’t think you were coming.”
“Sorry,” she said instinctively. Though since she hadn’t told him to expect her and he plainly didn’t she wasn’t quite sure what she was feeling guilty about. “We went for dinner. Are you feeling better about tomorrow?”
“I think so. It’s going to be one of those ‘all about the execution’ days, but I’ve done all I can.”
She dithered on the threshold. “Great. So, should I . . . can I?”
“Of course.” He stood aside for her. “If you wouldn’t rather be with your friends.”
Well, fuck. She’d messed this up. She’d met a hot guy, with his own house and a good job, who liked baking, and it’d been going well, and then she’d gone all mixed-signalsy for no reason and now he didn’t know where he stood.
“I’d rather be with you,” she said, slightly more decidedly than it really warranted.
And to prove it, she pushed him gently towards the bed, sat him down, and straddled him. Cupping his face between her hands she kissed him deeply.
“Much as I love indulging your wild side”—he drew back slightly—“you’re covered in mud.”
“Sorry. I went for a walk with Anvita and Harry and she fell over in an I-Spy-related accident—”
He blinked at her. “In a what?”
“Okay, so we were playing I Spy in the dark”—out of nowhere, Rosaline started giggling and couldn’t quite stop—“and Anvita said ‘t’ and Harry and I tried everything and then she said it was tractor and we said there wasn’t a tractor and she said there’d been a tractor a couple of minutes ago when she’d said it . . . ” Rosaline was still giggling, which made it difficult to weave a coherent word picture.