Jennifer Hallet nodded. “Would you look at that? She gets it. Welcome to the magical world where Brexit wasn’t a shitshow, the only minorities who exist are charmingly nonthreatening, and you can only be fat if you’re also pretty.”
Prettywasn’t an adjective Audrey would have used to describe herself. Although that did make her fatally susceptible to its use by other people. “Fuck, am I here to beone of the good ones?”
To that, Jennifer Hallet offered a frankly wicked grin. “How’s it feel?”
“Fine,” replied Audrey, still defiantly unperturbed.
A look of genuine dismay crept across Jennifer Hallet’s face. “I hope you’re not going to make me like you, sunshine. I can’t think of anything worse. Now if we’re done, perhaps you could be sokind as to get the fuck out of my sight.”
It was, Audrey thought, about the most literal example of mixed messages she could possibly imagine. And it left her with the nagging sense that this wasn’t the last time she was going to run afoul of Jennifer Hallet’s highly specific worldview. Along with the still more nagging suspicion that she couldn’t quite tell if she was dreading their next run-in or looking forward to it.
Saturday
The following morning, Audrey was awoken by a frantic hammering on her door.
“Aaaaauuuu-dreeeey,” came Alanis’s voice. “You’re going to be late for breeaaak-faaaaast.”
Rolling over, Audrey checked her phone, whose alarm was scheduled to go off in about twenty minutes. “I don’t think I will,” she called back.
“Okay notlate, late, but come on, it’s the first day. You don’t want to miss the start of the first day.”
This was, in a vacuum, true. Although she didn’t think a little longer in bed would actuallymakeher miss the start of the first day—and even if it did, she suspected that theactualstart of the day wouldn’t be anywhere near as early as Alanis thought. Audrey was used to print media, which was a very hurry-up-and-wait business, and she couldn’t imagine broadcast media being any better. On the other hand, telling teenagers to fuck off was probably a job best left to Jennifer Hallet.
So Audrey got up, dragged her hair into something resemblingtidiness, glad that the show would have professional hair-draggers to do the rest, dressed, and let Alanis tow her out into the dawn.
There were, she had to confess, worse places to be towed, and worse people to be towed by. The morning was bright and the sun danced across the hillside of Patchley House and Park with a joyfulness that was matched only by, well, Alanis, who—having apparently categorised Audrey as closer to the “me” box than the “my parents” box—was full of excited stories about her home (“the boring bit of London”), her friends (too numerous to count), and her planned cake-that-shows-us-who-you-are for Sunday’s baketacular (chocolate and chilli, because “I’m a little bit sweet and a little bit spicy”).
Breakfast, like the dinner Audrey had nearly missed because she was too busy getting dressed down for nothing by a paranoid authoritarian, was being served outside at picnic tables. Tables that were already filling up with people.
Alanis made a kind of “eek” noise. “Ohmygodtheresso-manyofus.”
“Only ten.”
“And there’s so manyoldpeople.”
By Audrey’s count, only one of the contestants—a silver-haired woman who moved through the group with a serenity that might have been confusion—really counted as old, although a couple more were well into middle age. “Yeah,” she said, “we twenty-five-year-olds get about a bit.”
With a social ease that Audrey should probably have expected given how they’d met, Alanis slipped away to join the one member of the party who looked even remotely her own age—a tall, slim man with a goatee and a trilby. That left Audrey momentarily alone, which, honestly, wasn’t a huge problem for her. Being onher own in an empty room would have driven her up the wall, but getting a chance to stand back and people watch was a genuine relief. A personal hobby, as well as a professional habit.
On the distaff side of the equation there was herself, Alanis, the one actually old person in the group, a graying-but-otherwise-young-looking woman who Audrey suspected was taking the role of nation’s favourite mum for the season, and a tousle-haired woman Audrey’s own age who was wearing a ruffled blouse and an expression of panic.
On the something-for-the-ladies side of the coin, there was the obligatory hipster baker who had already monopolised Alanis’s attention, the equally obligatory blue-collar baker—complete, in this case, with a pencil tucked behind his ear—and a man who, although it was probably wrong to judge too much from his failure to eat a bacon bap without spilling ketchup on his shirt, was likely to have been recruited to be this year’s “adorably hopeless one.” Which, since Audrey was still half convinced she’d been cast in that role herself, came as something of a relief.
“Excuse me dear.” That was the old one—the actually old one—leaning past Audrey to the cereal table. “Can you pass me one of them little things of butter?”
Obligingly, Audrey passed the little thing of butter, then introduced herself. “Audrey, by the way. Like Hepburn.”
“Doris,” replied the old lady. “Like Day.”
An unfortunate side effect of her live-to-work years was that Audrey’s brain tended to default to “interview” and it took her a second to adjust to small talk. “So,” she tried, “have you just got in?”
“Oh no.” Doris didn’t laugh, exactly, but she had mirth in her voice. “Too old to make it this far this early. I come in last night. You?”
“Same.”
“Where from?”
“Shropshire. You?” The moment she’d asked it, Audrey realised that it was a silly question.
