Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,124

be honest.”

“We could go to the pub again, but that didn’t end well last time.”

“We won’t have Anvita, though, so there’ll be no one to cheat at I Spy and get us lost in the dark.” He paused. “Sort of miss her, mind.”

“Me too. It’s so strange with the four of us. It feels like you’ve survived some horrible catastrophe and then you remember everyone else has just gone home and is fine.”

Harry nodded. “I had Ricky round to play FIFA the other week. Good bloke. Not very good at FIFA.”

“Did he make it explode in the oven?” asked Rosaline.

“Nah, but he kept getting own goals. I think he was doing it deliberately at the end.”

They watched Alain disappear into the hotel.

“Do you fancy . . . ” Harry jerked his thumb backwards. “There’s a chippy in one of the villages we went through. We could drive out and grab something.”

“Actually, that sounds really nice. As long as we don’t punch anyone, trespass anywhere, or upset any livestock.”

“I reckon we can give it a go. Come on, mate.”

They climbed into Harry’s van and wound back through the countryside until they found the chip shop, which was, in fact, called the Old Village Fish and Chip Shop. Once they’d received their newspaper-wrapped parcels of steamy goodness, they decided it was best to get somewhere inconspicuous and unobjectionable in case they got hauled up in front of Jennifer again. And so they drove on to a quiet lay-by near a little hill and a copse of trees, where Harry parked and opened the rear doors of the van. The two of them sat side by side in the back, next to Harry’s neatly packed shelves of electrical supplies, eating their fish and chips in quiet satisfaction.

It was another beautiful evening—English and golden, and full of hope and birdsong. And for once Rosaline wasn’t running late for anything or trying to catch up with anything. Well, she had a certain amount of Jennifer Hallet’s goodwill to claw back. But for now this moment was just for her. And she got to share it with . . . with a friend. With someone who mattered to her.

Maybe it was the quiet and the wide-open sky, but a sense of contentment was settling over her, warm in the summer haze. And the strangest thing about it was that it didn’t feel unfamiliar. It felt like a cup of tea at the end of a long day. Like taking Amelie to the park and watching her claim the big tyre swing before anyone else. Like singing along to Mitski while she did the washing-up on a Wednesday afternoon. It was the scent of cupcakes fresh out of the oven. It was Lauren and Amelie bickering over a jigsaw spread across the dining room table. A soft thread of certainty that had always been there.

If only she could allow herself to believe in it.

Sunday

IT WAS A tense weekend of baking. The theme of the week, as tended to be the case in the semifinal, was highly spurious. In this case, Regency. And the blind bake had been, of all things, Turkish delight—which was apparently big back then, and not even Nora had made it before. As far as Rosaline could tell, it involved stirring continuously for a full hour and created a strange glutinous substance that just about stood up and tasted a little bit of roses. She’d come first sort of by default in that hers had been the least awful. But nothing anyone had put forward that round would have tempted an annoying child to sell his siblings to a witch. Probably he’d have taken one look and gone back through the wardrobe.

On top of which, being endearing on camera was borderline impossible with that much resentment seething between three quarters of the cast. Nora, at least, was on good form, grumbling placidly that life was too short to spend this much of it whisking cornflour, and she would know because she’d had most of hers already.

Another night’s sleep had helped a little, and today’s marathon challenge to produce “three distinct desserts that celebrate the pineapple” was going better than Rosaline had feared it might.

When Colin Thrimp appeared at her workstation she dropped into narration mode without thinking. “So I’m making the pineapple filling for my pineapple-shaped pineapple biscuits. Which, now I say it out loud, might be too much pineapple even for a pineapple challenge. What I’ve got here is pineapple juice, sugar, and