“That must have…”
“Sucked?”
“Yeah.”
Audrey nodded. “It did. And it was—I don’t think it was her fault really.”
“It sounds like you were kind of doing what she wanted and not what you wanted.”
That was probably true, but even that, Audrey didn’t really feel Natalie could be blamed for. “If we’d done what I wanted, we’d have never left Shropshire.”
“So?”
“What do you mean, so?”
For a second or two, Alanis just gathered her thoughts. “Well, I don’t know but from what you’ve shown me, you come from this pretty little village that lots of people would love to live in, and I don’t really see what’s wrong with wanting to stay there.”
That was silly. “Wouldyouwant to stay where you were born your whole life?”
“I think that’d depend on where I was born. And even if I don’t want to stay in London forever, that doesn’t mean it’d be wrong if I did.”
“Right, but that’s London.Everything’sin London.”
Alanis took a contemplative sort of breath. “Maybe, but I’ve been talking to my dad’s family more recently and I don’t think being able to stay in the place you grew up in is something you should take for granted either. No matter where it is.”
“Even if it’s Shropshire?”
“Especiallyif it’s Shropshire. I mean, I’ve never been, but I’ve told you, when I’m old and rich I’m moving to a little villageexactlylike the one you grew up in. Getting a little cottage with roses around the door.”
“You know,” Audrey said to the ceiling, “door roses are actually a bit of a pain to look after.”
“I’ll be rich. I’ll pay somebody.”
They lapsed back into silence for just long enough that Audrey started to feel like she’d done a terrible job of whatever it was her job was actually supposed to have been. “Sorry,” she said. “My plan was honestly just to get you to stay on the show. I didn’t mean to dump my extremely boring adult baggage on you.”
Alanis waved a dismissive hand. “It’s fine. I think it helps to realise that grown-ups are just as screwed up as we are.” She sat up. “Come on, we’re going to be late for breakfast.”
Theweinwe’re going to be late for breakfastwas a bit awkward because Audrey absolutely did need to eat, but at the same time she didn’t really feel comfortable eating with the contestants on account of no longer, strictly speaking, being one. Of course since she also wasn’t crew that meant eating withthemdidn’t feel right either. Also, she probably wasn’t technically entitled to eat anything so having breakfast at the show’s expense would be stealing.
Alanis, of course, had been very keen for her to come join her former peers and screw the consequences, but Audrey decided against it. There’d just be too many questions to answer, andwhile Audrey wasn’t sure of much, she was sure she didn’t want to answer them.
So instead she mooched, hovering on the periphery of the production and trying not to feel like she’d lost something irreplaceable. It turned out, however, that melancholy mooching got dull fast, and so with a strong sense of anticlimax, Audrey made her way towards the carpark and settled into her car.
Then she sat there feeling like a pillock.
Deciding that doing something was a good deal better than doing nothing, and that at the very least she needed to eat, Audrey took a short jaunt up to Crinkley Furze and then, because literally everything was still closed, a rather longer jaunt into Tapworth. She arrived just in time to catch the opening of the local Co-op and without quite being able to explain why, she decided that what she really wanted for breakfast was a loaf of crusty bread and a jar of honey.
Tapworth was big enough that finding a decently picturesque sitting-around-and-eating space involved a long walk or a short drive, but eventually Audrey found one. A little field that was probably private property (check that, definitely private property, there was a sign) commanding pretty views over Surrey. Out of deference to the rights of the landowner, Audrey didn’t go into the field, but she leaned on the gate overlooking it and let herself savour the rustic simplicity of her bread-and-honey breakfast.
Not that it reallywasrustic simplicity, of course. Even if the bread had been baked in-store, which the little tag had said it was, the honey was pure off-the-shelf, and while the co-op tended to be okay-ish on its sourcing, it still wasn’t quite the same as a girl in a white dress squeezing a honeycomb with her own fingers as the sun set over the hills.
Where the girl in the white dress had come from, Audrey couldn’t say.
Having made it as far as Tapworth, the logical thing for her to do now would be to go home. It was a Sunday after all, and having a nice, quiet, relaxing day would be good for her. She might even be able to get an early night, which would leave her well set up to go into work on Monday and crack on with—she checked her email to remind herself what the next big story was—ah yes, interviewing a woman whose social media account was documenting abandoned shopping trolleys in Bagley Brook.
It didn’t seem like themostexciting plan, if she was honest.
And it also felt like running away.
