Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,45
back?”
Amelie’s eyes widened in outrage. “No. I can be interested in more than one thing. I’m polyamorous.”
“I don’t think that’s the word you mean,” put in Rosaline quickly.
“Yes it is. It means loving lots of things.” Her daughter’s expression of misplaced pride was, at once, adorable and unhelpful. “I worked it out like we were taught to in school with prefixes. Poly means many and amor means love in French and is also from Latin.”
Oh God. Now Rosaline was going to have to tell her daughter what polyamory was in front of her parents, who probably also didn’t know what polyamory was. At least not on any level beyond the etymological. “It more sort of means loving lots of people.”
“Well I do love lots of people. I love you and Granddad and Grandma and Auntie Lauren.”
“Maybe it’s better to say”—Rosaline could feel St. John Palmer’s eyes burning into her—“it means being in love with lots of people.”
“Oh.” Amelie considered this. “Then I’m not polyamorous. I’m polylikesthingsareus. Can I have my present now?”
The present turned out to be a book called Real Life Monsters: Creatures of the Deep, which was filled with pictures of supremely ugly fish. Amelie loved it. And two minutes later she was happily curled up on the sofa, looking at goblin sharks, while Rosaline tried to make her parents a cup of tea that said I am aware that your actions have created an obligation, but I would very much like this interaction to be over quickly.
“So what’s this about the boiler?” asked her father, prowling into the kitchen while Rosaline desperately washed the mugs she should have washed that morning.
She cringed into the sink. “It’s just being a bit weird. I got someone out to come and take a look at it and he said it needs a service.”
“And how much did he charge you for telling you your boiler needed a service?”
The problem with being a perfect daughter until the age of nineteen was that Rosaline had never learned the skill of lying to her parents. “A hundred and twenty pounds.”
St. John Palmer shook his head in what it did not feel melodramatic to describe as despair. “Saw you coming a mile away, didn’t he?”
“What was I supposed to do? Say, Sorry, strange man with whom I’m alone in my house, I, a small woman armed only with a cheese grater, demand that you leave without the money you’re asking for.”
“You’re not funny, Rosaline. What kind of example are you setting for Amelie if you keep letting people take advantage of you?”
Rosaline turned the kettle on with a vengeance. “Sorry. It just happened. I’ll try and do better next time.”
“Try to do better. And do you even have a hundred and twenty pounds to waste on tradesmen who do nothing?”
“Clearly yes,” she told the tea bags, “because I did.”
“So you won’t need any help with your mortgage this month?”
It was about that point that she decided she would sell her hair and her teeth on the streets of Montreuil-sur-Mer before taking another penny from her father. Well, not for a while anyway. “I’ll be fine. Now, can you take this through for Mum?”
He collected two of the mugs and left without further commentary. Rosaline picked up her own mug, realised her hands were shaking, and put it down again quickly. For fuck’s sake, she was twenty-seven. She wasn’t going to cry in her own kitchen because she’d disappointed her father. Again.
A few minutes later, she made it into the living room. Amelie was still on the sofa, a Grandparent on either side of her, all three poring over Real Life Monsters in a scene you could have fucking framed.
“That’s a moray eel,” Amelie was saying. “It says here it’s thirteen feet long.”
Cordelia Palmer followed her granddaughter’s finger across the page. “That is big. Do you know how many Amelies that is?”
“Probably not many. Mummy hasn’t measured me for a month and I’m much bigger than I used to be.”
“I don’t think you’re quite thirteen feet yet,” said St. John Palmer, laughing.
“I might be. I could be having a growth spurt.”
“Well, I would guess,” Cordelia Palmer told her, “that you’re about four feet tall. So how many Amelies is thirteen feet?”
Amelie screwed up her face. “One Amelie is four. So two Amelies are eight. And three Amelies are twelve and four Amelies are sixteen. So more than three and less than four. So three Amelies and a leg.”