Audrey finished up her own interview, but, while she was trying very hard to focus on the competition, the part of her brain that couldn’t stop working and wouldn’t have wanted to even if it could, was gaming out the question of how she’d approach Doris about the whole can-I-formally-write-up-your-life-story plan.
The sun was dipping lower in the sky and the contestants were splitting off into little groups, some headed barwards, some back to the Lodge, some just going to wander the grounds. Doris was walking back down the hill with Alanis, whose ability to move confidently from social group to social group Audrey envied, not because she couldn’t do it but because it was always annoying if a skill you’d work hard to develop came easily to someone else.
“…during the war,” Doris was saying as Audrey caught up with them.
“Audrey”—Alanis looked way happier than she had theprevious week, but time went quickly for teenagers and nothing bolstered confidence like a win—“did you know Doris was evacuated during the war?”
“I did, yeah.” It wasn’t nice, Audrey reflected, to wish a young woman would stop chatting with an elderly woman about said elderly woman’s personal history for fear of being scooped by a child, but journalism wasn’t a nice profession. “Congratulations, by the way.”
Alanis, high on her baguettey triumph, half-nodded. “It’s just really weird, you know?”
“Weird?” Hoping that Doris wasn’t going to take that the wrong way, Audrey gave her akids-will-be-kidslook that Doris singularly failed to reciprocate. Probably, Audrey reflected, because from her perspectivekidsmeant anybody under sixty.
“Yeah.” In an effort to keep both older women in the conversation, Alanis was walking backwards at a slight distance, which made Audrey really worry she’d trip. “Like, I grew up hearing a lot of stories about what my dad and grandparents went through—well, mostly my grandparents to be honest; Dad was pretty young and doesn’t talk about it much—but it’s weird meeting somebody who had to escape a war in this country.”
Doris gave a contemplative nod. “Reckon I had it easier. Your dad’s family had to come halfway across the world. I just got on a train to Surrey.”
Hopping nimbly over a divot in the grass that Audrey had been sure she’d fall over, Alanis made a kind ofhold-itgesture. “Not a competition. Just saying it was interesting is all.”
“You close, then?” Doris asked. “With your grandparents?”
“Fairly. I was when I was little but then we drifted apart a bit. I don’t know why. I think I was just, y’know, busy.” An expression ofalmost wistful melancholy floated across Alanis’s face. The nostalgic yearning of the very young for the life they had when they were very slightly younger. “But I’m making up for it now.”
Together, they walked on a little, Doris sharing fragments of her recollections about Patchley House in wartime and Alanis spinning off from them into anecdotes of her own. Audrey, meanwhile, trailed a little behind them just listening, which was another professional habit she probably needed to shake off. The trouble was she found it so much more interesting to listen to a story she hadn’t heard than to talk about one she’d been over too many times.
“Umm,” Audrey tried to break out of the fly-on-the-wall space, “on the subject of, you know, the evacuation thing?”
“Yes, love?” The look in Doris’s eyes was the very definition of grandmotherly.
“How would you, I mean—look, I know it’s pretty intrusive and you don’t have to, but, well, I’ve been speaking to Jennifer and—”
“Are you okay, Audrey?” asked Alanis, looking more concerned than a sixteen-year-old should be looking about an adult woman with an interesting career. “You sound like you’re choking on a Cadbury Button.”
“Can I write you up for my paper?” asked Audrey very fast.
The fact that Doris didn’t react with immediate betrayal struck Audrey as a good sign. “What paper?”
“I write for theShropshire Echo.” Audrey didn’t expect that to mean very much so she followed it up, as she always did with, “We’re the second biggest regional newspaper in Shropshire.”
Alanis went straight to the obvious question. “Who’s the biggest?”
“We don’t like to talk about it.” Hoping that her credentialswould be solid enough to be reassuring but also small enough to be nonthreatening, Audrey turned back to Doris. “Anyway, what do you think?”
Doris gave the slightest shake of her head. “I don’t know, love, I think people are probably a bit tired of war stories.”
They probably were. But what they weren’t tired of was tie-in stories about popular TV shows. Although having articulated it in her head, it seemed gauche to say out loud. Besides, there were other reasons that Doris’s story mattered. Or at least, Audrey was pretty sure there were. Although it seemed gauche to mention them out loud, too, since Doris hadn’t. “Right,” she tried instead, “but your story is actuallyhere.” She put her arms out and rotated in a circle to indicate as much of the grounds as possible, which got her some funny looks from her companions. “Isn’t that… I don’t know, it feels likesomethingto me. Maybe it’s not a big important exposé about, I don’t know, corruption at the highest levels of whateverthehell, but I think it’s sweet and interesting and people do like things that are sweet and interesting.”
“Itdoesseem like they might, actually,” said Alanis. “My mum loves this show and I think she’d think it was cool to hear that one of the contestants used to live here.”
“Would she now?” Doris seemed to be considering it, but Audrey had been in this game too long not to be able to spot reservations. “Well, I’ll give it a think.” They were approaching the sitting-down log, and Doris took the opportunity to sit down on it. “You two go on without me, I’ll be fine.”
Audrey really, really hoped she hadn’t blown it, but since worrying that you’d blown something—or more precisely acting on the worry that you’d blown something—was often the best way to ensure that blowing definitely occurred, she walked on.Beside her, Alanis followed along talking about the next day’s challenge.
“I’m doing salted honey for sweet,” Alanis was saying. The task, in keeping with the back-to-basics theme of the series, was the classictwelve sweet and twelve savoury rolls. “And sun-dried tomato and herb for savoury. They’re pretty simple, but I figure simple’s what the season’s about.”
It was a good call. At least Audrey hoped it was a good call because it was the call she’d made, too. Even if, privately, she was beginning to worry that her choices of “blueberry jam” and “seeded” might have gone throughsimpleand intobasic. “Feeling prepared?” she asked instead.
“Yeah, actually. I like bread. It’s got a sort of”—Alanis made a cheerful kneading gesture—“plus it’s got this, like, you know—making your own bread.”
