“Then”—Alain plucked two room keys from the stranger’s unresisting hands—“you probably shouldn’t be keeping us talking.”
The man, who eventually introduced himself as Colin Thrimp, assistant to the producer, Jennifer Hallet, resolutely led them away from the beautiful eighteenth-century manor house to a set of squat, 1940s-looking outbuildings tucked discreetly behind a copse of trees.
“This is the Lodge,” Colin Thrimp explained, with the speed of someone who really, really needed to be somewhere else. “You’ll all be staying here. Room numbers on the keys. Breakfast on the terrace in—oh, oh gosh, about six minutes. So please do hurry. Filming starts in an hour.”
“Well”—Rosaline watched Colin Thrimp scurrying away—“there go my hopes of staying in a swanky hotel for a couple of weekends.”
Alain raised an eyebrow. “On a BBC budget?”
“Girl can dream.”
He leaned in and brushed a kiss over her cheek in that effortless, vaguely continental way that the real Rosaline always screwed up but international traveller Rosaline should probably have been totally used to. “Good luck today. I’ll see you on-set.”
While Alain had seemed pretty nonchalant about the possibility of being late to breakfast, Rosaline had a deeply ingrained fear of being late that her recent experiences had done very little to alleviate. So she hurried to her room, had the fastest possible shower, and only slowed down to make sure that when she got changed she didn’t put anything on back to front or inside out.
As she emerged into the corridor, a door opened a little farther down, revealing someone she assumed was another contestant. There was a moment of mutual faff as the pair of them wrestled with their keys and then the other woman gave Rosaline an enthusiastic wave.
“Hi,” she called out. “I’m Anvita. Are you going fooding?” “Yes. And, um, Rosaline.”
They fell into step together. Her companion seemed to be a few years younger than Rosaline and was wearing an aggressively pink T-shirt that she was somehow managing to carry off. Her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail and she sported a pair of those oversized glasses, which shouldn’t have been cool but apparently were. The light occasionally glinted off a tiny diamond nose-stud that Rosaline couldn’t help finding a little bit sexy.
“So.” Anvita cast her a glance at once teasing and speculative. “Are you an I’ll just be happy to get through week one or an I’m going to win this whole thing?”
“Aren’t we all supposed to be just happy to get through week one? This isn’t The Apprentice.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m going to make it to week five, and the judges are going to love my bold flavours, but then they’re going to ask me to make a traditional suet gobbins, which everyone else will remember from their childhood, and I’ll have no idea what it is, and then I’ll fuck it up, and get booted.”
Rosaline laughed. “Okay, I think I’ll get all the way to week six by being consistently mediocre and then people will finally remember I’m there and I’ll have to leave.”
“Aim high, girlfriend.” It was mildly impressive how much irony Anvita could pack into three words.
There was a brief pause, and it wasn’t totally uncomfortable. “I think,” Anvita went on, “I’m socially mandated to ask what you do. I’m training to be an optician, which is less boring than it sounds, but not by much.”
This is it, Rosaline. Tell the pretty young woman you aren’t doing anything cool or interesting with your life. Don’t make up an elaborate personal history again. Stop pretending your child, who you love, doesn’t exist, because that’s fucked up. “I’m . . . a single mum and I work in a shop.”
“Which shop?”
“Chain stationery store. Living the dream.”
“How old’s the kid-slash-kids?”
“Kid. And she’s eight.”
“Oh, that’s the good age.” Anvita seemed to have at least a vague idea where she was going, leading Rosaline confidently out of the Lodge and towards the main house. “Old enough they’re fun to talk to, but young enough they’re not a complete prick. I’ve got a nephew who’s seven. He’s the best.”
“Yeah, Amelie’s amazing, but I have no idea what I’m going to do when she’s a teenager.”
“Wait until she’s stopped being a teenager?”
It wasn’t the worst parenting advice Rosaline had ever encountered. As they tramped up the hill together, they passed a small village of vans, temporary gazebos, and bits of scaffolding that had taken over a far corner of the grounds—somewhere that would be artfully invisible from the house to maintain the illusion of unspoiled pastoral beauty.
“Yikes.” Anvita was also staring at the tangle of crap from which televisual magic would apparently be wrought. “This is actually happening, isn’t it?”
“Well, I’m not naked, so I’m pretty sure it’s not an anxiety dream.”
“Have you had a chance to scope out the competition yet?” asked Anvita, with an air partway between playful and ruthless.
“Not exactly. I met one guy yesterday. But I more got stranded with him than scoped him.”
“You got stranded?”
“There was a whole big train thing and we wound up having to crash at a farmhouse overnight.”
This earned her a look of mock reproach. “You spent the night with the guy and you know nothing about him?”
“I didn’t realise I was supposed to be doing intelligence gathering.”
“Fine.” Anvita sighed heavily. “I’ll share my secret stash of opposition research with you out of pure pity.”
“Good thing I have no pride or I might object to that.” Leaning in close, Anvita dropped her voice to an urgent whisper. “Okay. So. Most importantly, there are two stone-cold hotties.”
“I mean, good to know? But how relevant is that from the perspective of a baking show we’ll both just be happy to get through the first round of, but secretly want to win?”
“It’s very relevant from the perspective of me enjoying myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got a boyfriend and I love him to bits, but a girl likes to window-shop.”
There was, as far as Rosaline could tell, no real reason not to go with this. “Okay, tell me what’s on sale.”
“So, there’s Ricky. He’s a student at Southampton—something something material science something. Bit young, but tall, locs, good cheekbones, great smile. He plays football or whatever and you can tell. He’ll look great when he’s whisking.”
“I feel like I know him already.”
“Then there’s Harry. I haven’t been able to get much out of him, but I think he fixes things. With his hands. His strong, manly hands. I hope he makes it to bread week.”
“Have you spoken to anyone who wasn’t an attractive man?” As questions went, Rosaline knew this was slightly hypocritical.
“Yes. I’ve spoken to Nora, who’s a gran, so I bet she’s going to win. And I’ve spoken to Florian, who I’m sure is attractive to some people, but I think he’s about fifty and really quite gay.