‘Two. They’re not married but they’ve had more success in dating than me.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Well, they’ve had recent relationships that last months.’
‘Maybe you’re just better at weeding out the wasters than they are.’
She makes a little noise that I take to be somewhere between a yes and a no. I’m not sure I really want to get back onto Patrick and how nice that’s going to be when my hormones are acting up – aka the time I’m most likely to burst into tears – so I change tactics completely. ‘How did you get into being a farmer then?’
‘I’m more of an educator.’
‘You’re not educating the cows, surely? Wow, this farm is incredible.’
She stifles her snort-laugh on the back of David’s head. ‘No, silly. I teach the kids, show them what cows look like. You know one of the kids thought a cow would look snake-shaped? I was worried he was going to have a conniption when I showed him the real thing.’
‘Generation alpha are not okay,’ I sigh.
‘Oh, they’ll be alright. Eventually. I’m sure we were bizarre as children too.’
‘That’s true. I wanted to be a mortician.’
Carys sits up suddenly. ‘Sorry, what?’ She sounds less horrified and more excited than most people are when I drop this neat bit of lore.
‘My mum watched a lot ofSix Feet Under.’
‘And that show somehow made you want to be a mortician?’
I shrug. ‘It sounded cool. Like, you’re helping people in a very tough time, and creating a ceremony that the person would have wanted. I guess it’s technical and arty, in the same way food is,’ I explain. ‘Wait, that doesn’t sound very good, does it?’
‘As long as you’re not eating people,’ she says with a fake shiver. ‘No one needs prion disease.’
‘I feel like that might be horrors territory, so please do not explain what that means.’
She giggles in a way that suggests it might be, very much, the horrors. ‘I understand what you mean, though. It’s about nourishing, caring, providing a service that makes people happy, right?’
The feeling of being seen is a warm light in my heart. ‘Yes. That’s most of it. And I really miss that part. I trained in a really busy kitchen. When I transitioned to creating recipes and food content for social media, which was much more convenient, I missed the immediate feedback ofseeingsomeone enjoy my food. The comments are nice, though people are always doing mad substitutions. Plus the chefs were as likely to say ‘good job’ as throw a spatula at the wall, so I can’t be too rose-tinted glasses about it.’
‘I’d love for you to cook for me,’ she says, not really knowing how much that means to me.
God, this crush is getting out of control.
‘Come on then, what did you want to be then? A vet?’ I kick myself for saying this.
‘No, everyone always thinks that. I wanted to be something way more specific.’
‘Go on, I love specific.’
‘Okay, well,’ she begins, and I see her fingers pitter-patter across David’s fur like she’s playing the piano, making music of her story. ‘Watching nature documentaries was really my thing when I was small.’ She pauses for a second. ‘I didn’t have the best time in school, but I found a lot of comfort in them. I’d watch all kinds, though I always went back to David Attenborough. I’m monogamous, I guess.’
I laugh. ‘Maybe you should be marrying him?’
‘Oh no,’ she says, suddenly serious. ‘I could never live up to his wife Jane, though I think he’d be a very kind husband, which is all I want. Anyway! One day when I was off school, I saw a documentary about how roads cut across natural migration pathways for animals, which is a huge problem. It’s the same problem for badgers in the UK as it is for orangutans on palm oil plantations. It made me so sad for them, but hopeful that we could fix things, now that we understand what we did wrong. There’s always possibility for change, to make things right.’
I don’t think I’ve ever met someone like her before. When she looks at me, it’s like looking at stardust personified, because she glows with passion. Imagine being a person who could make her glow as much as talking about animals does.
‘So that’s what I wanted to do,’ she says, dragging me back to the moment. ‘I wanted to be the person who made the crossings for hedgehogs.’
‘Hedgehogs?’ I laugh a little and I see the stardust falter. ‘No, I don’t think it’s silly. I’m just surprised you chose hedgehogs when you just mentioned orangutans.’
