There it was again, that eerie sense of echoes across time. Audrey was just old enough that she could meaningfullyremembertwenty years ago. But to have lived a whole life with somebody, had children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and for that to have still ended so long ago… It was almost unencompassable. “I’m sorry.”
“He had a good innings. What about you? Got one of your own?”
“A husband?”
Doris nodded.
“No.” This had the potential to be awkward. “I’m sort of single. And also sort of entirely gay.”
“Oh.” Doris went quiet for a moment. Then said, “Good for you.”
As reactions from the over-eighties went, it was one of the better ones. “Thanks. Neither of them are by choice though, really.”
Doris nodded again. “Fair enough, fair enough. Still, maybe you’ll find a nice girl on the show.”
This seemed very unlikely. Audrey began running down the options on her fingers. “Well, you’re a bit too old—no offence—and Alanis iswaytoo young; Meera’s very, very married; and Linda—I’ve not really talked to her, but I think I wouldn’t be her type.”
“Look at you having everybody’s name down.” Doris was smiling again. There was something warm in her smile, something that reminded Audrey of her own grandparents, and possibly also of a kind of cosmic meta-grandparent that spoke to her soul. The same Jungian archetype that Wilfred Honey had made his career by embodying. Possibly since the age of forty. “I stilljust remember people by what colour top they were wearing and how tall they are.”
At last they arrived at the main hotel, or at least at the hurry-up-and-feed-yourselves bit of the hotel that was the designated dining area for contestants. Honestly, Audrey wasn’t entirely hungry and so, having picked at some lukewarm spaghetti bolognese, she made her excuses and set off back to her room. About a quarter of the way down the hill, though, she stopped, looked back up the slope, and changed her mind.
* * *
“What part,” said a loud, irate voice from inside the trailer on whose door Audrey had been banging for what felt like six minutes, “ofI don’t want to fucking hear itdo you not understand?”
“You don’t even know what itisyet,” Audrey pointed out. “Or who I am.”
“It’s almost like neither of those things make a difference. Now fuck off.”
Audrey banged again.
“I’m sorry,” said the voice. “Were you taking that as a request?”
“Since you’re not actually allowed to give me orders, yes.”
There was a very brief silence. “Excuse me, sunshine, I can give you all the orders I like.”
“And I can ignore them. I don’t work for you.”
“Everybody on this fuckingsetworks for me.”
The part of Audrey that had never learned to quit while it was ahead dug its heels in hard. The fact that shewasn’tespecially ahead made that easier. “No, I’m a contestant on a show you’rerunning, and I have some concerns I want to raise with you, and I’ll be out of your hair much faster if you just listen to them.”
A sound of angry despair emanated from behind the door. “Fine. Come in. But this had better be really, really fucking good because I have sixty different things to be doing right now and you are none of them.”
“I wasn’t planning on doing you today either,” retorted Audrey.
Stepping inside, she found Jennifer Hallet was sitting in her supervillain chair, frowning at footage. “So you say. But I’ve met you once and I’m already willing to bet you’ve found some way to fuck me mightily.”
Audrey couldn’t allow herself to get sidetracked by thoughts of fucking Jennifer Hallet, mightily or otherwise. “I wanted to talk about Doris. In a non-fucking way.”
Jennifer rotated just far enough to shoot a baleful look across the room. “This is about the granny?”
“The granny has a name.”
“Not to me she doesn’t. Now tell me what was so important that you had to hammer on my door at this time of the evening and bother me about it.”
“I walked up to dinner with her today, and it’s averylong way up the hill for somebody her age.”
