‘Need some help?’ Joe asked, balancing on top of an old tree stump.
‘No, thank you,’ I replied, hoisting my other leg over until I was balanced right on the edge of the wall.
‘Want me to hold your bag?’
‘I’ve got it.’
He hopped off the stump and leaned casually against a tree.
‘Looks like it.’
It wasn’t the longest drop of all time, only about three and a half feet, but I’d never been a fan of heights and, as far as I was concerned, heights meant any time my feet were an uncomfortable distance off the ground. If human beings were meant to be up high, our bones would be made from a much more forgiving material. I shuffled as close to the edge as I could before launching myself into a slow-motion slide down, scuffing my trainers and destroying my dignity as I went. Graceful, it was not.
‘Impressive,’ Joe said as I swiped the muck and moss off my backside. ‘Are you a professional climber, by any chance?’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘I’m retaining my amateur status so I can climb down walls in the Olympics. Now where’s this bloody ice cream van?’
The thought of a man eating soft-serve was a definite ick. Holding the cone, poking the ice cream with a little pink tongue and lapping at it like a Pomeranian with a Puppuccino. Like all great icks, I couldn’t say why but it was one of those weird things that turned my vagina into the Sahara Desert.
Or at least it usually did.
‘With this ice cream, I call an official truce,’ Joe said, holding his cone up high. ‘Deal?’
‘Deal,’ I replied as I tapped my phone against the card machine. ApplePay at the ice cream van, it just felt wrong. ‘At least until you do something to piss me off again.’
He laughed as he turned to walk away. ‘I think that’s exactly what they wrote in the Treaty of Versailles.’
‘Word for word,’ I replied, giving the ice cream man an appreciative smile.
‘What did you get?’ Joe asked. He marvelled at the Franken-Cone in his hand. One scoop of strawberry ice cream, one scoop of salted caramel, multiple flakes, rainbow sprinkles, a bubble-gum ball in the bottom, and strawberryandchocolate syrup on top. It was a crime against god and man.
I held up my regular 99, one scoop of vanilla and one chocolate flake in a cone, and he let out a long, disappointed sigh.
‘Sophie, you didn’t even try.’
‘Can’t beat a classic,’ I argued. I was thrilled with my choice.
‘Not very adventurous, are you?’
‘I’m adventurous when I want to be.’
He wrapped his full lips around the peak of his strawberry scoop then licked them clean. ‘Really?’
Definitely no trace of the ick.
‘Really,’ I replied, looking away. ‘But I also prefer to avoid disappointment and I can’t think of many things more disappointing than ordering the wrong ice cream. What if I ended up with something I didn’t like?’
‘How do you know what you like if you never try new things?’ he countered.
‘There are lots of things I’ve never tried and I already know I don’t like them.’
The ice cream van’s engine revved into life behind us, a tinkling piano rendition of ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ filling the silence.
‘We don’t always know as much as we think we do,’ Joe said with a wicked grin before marching off down the lane. ‘You should be a bit more open-minded. You might surprise yourself.’
‘I can’t believe you said there was nothing around here,’ he declared as we strolled along the lane that ran between two fields, waist-high hedgerows on either side.
‘There isn’t?’ I replied. ‘All I see is sky, dirt and an idiot with an ice cream. That’s it.’
