Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All #1) - Alexis Hall Page 0,99
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?”
“Yeah,” Harry sighed. “We give up.”
“No we don’t.” Probably if Rosaline had been going to get hypercompetitive over anything, it should have been the television competition she was on. Not a spontaneous game of I Spy in the dark. But her honour was at stake here. “I can totally get this. Tortoiseshell butterfly. Thistles. Tyre tracks. Somebody’s thumb.”
Harry put a gentle hand on her arm. “Seriously, mate. You get one more guess and we’re cutting you off.”
“Toad. Tawny owl. Tannenbaum.”
“Um,” said Anvita. “It’s tractor.”
There was no way, Rosaline was certain, she had missed a large piece of agricultural machinery. “What fucking tractor? There’s no fucking tractor.”
“Well, there was when I said it. It was across the field.”