Audrey nodded. “I know what you mean. There’s thatthis-is-something-my-great-grandmother-would-have-donefeeling.”Because your great grandmother, began Natalie,didn’t—
“Right? When I’ve finished university I’m going to have a little house with a garden and I’m going to bake all my own bread, and people’ll come round and I’ll be all,Would you like some bread?and it’ll be a whole big thing.”
“That”—Audrey scrunched her face into a look of confusion—“is a very specific ambition.”
“I mean, I also want a good job and everything, but I’ve still not worked that bit out so much. Bread though, you know where you are with bread, and it’s not like I’m ever going to not need it.”
“True.”
“Compare that to, say, SOHCAHTOA.”
“Bless you?” The moment she’d said it Audrey wished she’dpicked any other joke. But Alanis laughed anyway. It was a bit of an indulging-the-old-person laugh, but Audrey was willing to take it.
“Seriously though, teach a girl to bake, you feed her for life. Teach a girl the cosine rule, you just make her quite bored.”
The walk to the Lodge was short once they were no longer walking at Doris’s pace, and when they got to their rooms Audrey realised that, since she’d only been heading that way to raise thecan-I-ask-you-a-bunch-of-intrusive-questions-about-your-personal-historytopic with an elderly woman, she didn’t actually have much reason to be there. So after about ninety seconds sitting down staring at a wall, she got up again and made her way back up the hill towards the bar.
On the way she crossed paths with Doris, just getting up from the sitting-down log and beginning the second phase of her walk to the Lodge. Not wanting to crowd a potential interviewee, Audrey gave her a polite nod, walked past, walked a little further, caught herself looking over her shoulder for the third time, and then paused.
In an absolute sense, it was none of her business. And there did come a point at which helping people who didn’t want to be helped was obnoxious. Especially if the specific form of help you’d chosen to offer happened to also give you an excuse to see someone who you, at the very minimum, liked looking at. And maybe kind of liked arguing with.
Definitely nothing to interrogate there. Moving on.
* * *
“No,” Jennifer said loudly and clearly through a closed door.
“I’ve not said anything yet.” And since Audreyhadn’tsaid anything, another thought occurred. “Also how did you know it was me?”
“Playing the odds. I’d gone nearly a full day without Audrey pissing Lane showing up at my door to—”
“Yes, yes, I’m shitting in your coffee or wanking over your favourite teddy bear or something—can you just come out here?”
There was a silence, followed by, “Wanking over my favourite teddy bear?”
“Or something?”
“You are fucking twisted. How the fuck did you get to fucking teddy bear wanking?”
Conversations through doors weren’t exactly the thing Audrey liked best in the world, but given how talking to Jennifer usually went, she rolled with it. “By listening to you speak for fifteen seconds?”
“I haveneversuggestedanybodywank over a teddy bear. I told a guy to go wank over a picture of his mum once, but he had it fucking coming.”
“I feel this is getting off topic.” Audrey was really beginning to wish she’d picked a different opener.
Another silence. “Did you meanoveras inphysically ontooroveras inwhile imagining?”
“I hadn’t given it that much thought?”
“And I’m not even sure which would be worse. The idea of you—”
“Okay, stop.” On some level, Audrey suspected, this was a game of vulgarity chicken, butplayingvulgarity chicken was probably just giving Jennifer an intense home-field advantage. “Will you just please come out here?”
“No.”
And now it was a different game. One Audrey hoped she was substantially better at than Jennifer Hallet, on account of it requiring patience. Then again, Jennifer Hallet had stood glaring on her doorstep while Audrey had been stuck in traffic coming out of Telford so maybe she was underestimating her.
She waited. And waited.
