Getting tired of standing, I sat down next to her, and she looked at me like I’d broke some rule I didn’t know about.
“Excuse me, did I invite you to come sit with me?”
“Your dad said we had the run of the grounds.”
“My father isn’t here.” She turned around, going from sitting to kneeling. “This is my riverbank. If you want to share it with me, you have to pay a toll.”
I didn’t have much, but I’d brung what was left of my carrot cake with me. I took it out my satchel and showed it to her. “This do?”
She looked down, more pleased than I’d expected. “It looks very crumbly. Did you make it yourself?”
I had, and I said as much. Though my mum had helped.
“Oh how nice. Very well, your toll is accepted.”
I’d expected her to hold out her hand, but she opened her mouth instead. Not wanting to upset her, I broke off a piece and fed it to her. She took it, and her lips brushed over my fingers like a breeze over leaves.
“I think I shall enjoy you, Doris,” she said. And then she got up and left.
It weren’t ’til she were gone that I realised she hadn’t told me her name.
Sunday Evening
On the way back to her car, Audrey tried to maintain a sensible, mature mindset. Yes, she’d met a nice old woman, and yes, maybe something about that nice old woman had pinged very slightly on Audrey’s gaydar, and yes, that nice old woman had just told Audrey a story with sapphic overtones so blatant that a certain kind of shitty ally would think it was unsuitable for children. But maybe she was projecting. Maybe if Doris had continued the story, the next words out of her mouth would have been “But anyway we never spoke much after that and I’ve only remembered that meeting with crystal clarity a literal lifetime later because I have an eidetic memory.”
Maybe.
And even if Audrey wasn’t projecting, what did it matter? It was just an old woman telling a story. The world was full of old women telling stories and—and somehow Jennifer Hallet was standing by Audrey’s car.
“Slow getting away, Lane?” she asked, arms folded and lips so close to smiling that it seemed like it would be less effort tojust give up and smile. There was a studied air about her that gave Audrey the infuriating suspicion that Jennifer Hallet knewexactlyhow hot she could be if she put her mind to it and chose the most inconvenient times to make the effort.
Audrey did her best not to look flustered or, for that matter, flushed. “Got caught up.”
“Caught up talking to one of my contestants is what I’m told.”
It was Jennifer’s job to know everything that happened on her set, so Audrey didn’t really have the right to feel spied on. But she still felt spied on. “Oh my God. You really do watch everything, don’t you?”
“It may shock you to realise this,” replied Jennifer Hallet in a tone that Audrey suspected was her second least withering, “but when one of my crew spots a woman in her nineties wandering off into the woods, I do actually get somebody to check on her. But apparently you decided to do that little bit of my job for me.”
Despite Jennifer’s earlier instructions, or perhaps because of them, Audrey felt an overwhelming compulsion to get cute. “Glad I could help.”
Cuteness didn’t work. “If you were telling her to make a fuss about the hill I swear to whatever gods you’re stupid enough to believe in that I will—”
“I wasn’t,” replied Audrey, who wasn’t especially in the mood to know what Jennifer would have done if she had. “She was just telling me a story.”
It would be wrong to say Jennifer looked sceptical. A sceptic could be convinced to change their mind. “A story?”
“She’s had an interesting life.”
Jennifer’s lips, which had been flirting with smiling since the start, finally curved into a grin. “She fucking well has not.”
“She fucking well has,” replied Audrey, figuring the is-not, is-too school of debate was at least worth a shot.
The shot missed. “I’ve had you lot vetted so thoroughly I can tell you the shape of your most recent shit. Doris is a boring old woman with a boring old family who lived a life so boring I’m actually boring myself telling you how boring she is.”
“Then,” said Audrey cheerily, “there’s no harm in me listening to her talk about herself, is there?”
And now Jennifer Hallet was glaring again. If Audrey tried really, really hard she could almost believe it was a glare of grudging respect. Almost. “I told you, Lane, I know journalists.”
