‘Khaleesi?’ Aled said in Rosie’s ear, and the feel of his warm breath on her skin sparked thoughts that were definitelynotchurch-appropriate.
‘Yes,’ Rosie whispered back. ‘Sorry, I should have said. Mandy and Karl are bigGoTfans.’
‘Not big enough that they’ve watched the final season, it seems. Daenerys burns a city to the ground with dragon fire. She goesmad AF, as Year Eight’s Umair Ansari might say.’
‘Oh, they’ve seen it,’ Rosie assured him. ‘Mandy’s take is that, although slaying civilians isn’t cool, Dany’s look ison fleekright up to the end. She has – and I quote –mad respectfor a woman who can win a war and never have a hair out of place.’
Aled shook with silent laughter as they made their way to the after-party.
‘Don’t say you weren’t warned,’ Rosie said as they reached the bright green door of the outbuilding. ‘Once we’re inside, there’s no turning back – and I seem to remember you claiming that bravery was not your speciality.’
‘You’re worth manning up for,’ he told her, and she glowed. She should be satisfied that he considered her a friend, she told herself; it was enough. It would have to be enough.
‘Rosie!’ called an imperious voice from a plastic chair in the corner. It had been strategically positioned next to the vol-au-vents.
‘Oh god, it’s Great-Auntie Maud,’ Rosie groaned under her breath. ‘Hide. Seriously. Get behind that display of kids’ Easter drawings – she’ll never see you. I’ll take this one for the team.’
Aled glanced at the months-old display of crayoned crucifixions, several of which were alarmingly graphic.
‘Forget it, Spartacus,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m with you. “Once more unto the breach, dear friend”.’
‘Poetry, at a time like this?’ Rosie smirked, trying to ignore the word ‘friend’. ‘Really?’
‘Shakespeare,’ he whispered. ‘Sorry.’
‘Rosie AND BOYFRIEND!’ Great-Auntie Maud shouted, as if to confirm that they hadbothbeen spotted and neither would be suffered to escape. Maud was the sole northerner in Rosie’s family – a migrant from Rotherham who’d come south but had clung to her accent like Japanese knotweed to a building site.
‘Hello, Auntie Maud,’ Rosie said when they reached her. ‘This is Aled. He’s my, er—’
‘Friend,’ Aled put in. Every time he said it, something inside Rosie shrivelled. He was like the children inPeter Pan, inadvertently killing fairies by saying they didn’t believe. She stifled the urge to clap her hands.
‘HA!’ Auntie Maud huffed. She turned to Rosie. ‘I never had a friend who looked like that when I was young. If I had, there’s no way I’d have married your great-uncle Gerald. AWFUL man.’
Aled valiantly turned a burst of laughter into a coughing fit, and Rosie looked around the room in the hope that someone –anyone– would rescue them. No such luck. The only person who caught her eye was Michael, and he merely saw fit to smirk at her before stuffing a sausage roll into his mouth.
‘They reckon you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,’ Auntie Maud went on loudly, in the manner of elderly people who might be hard of hearing but, on the other hand, perhaps just have no more shits to give. ‘To which I say, POOH,’ Maud continued. ‘He was a miserable sod, wasn’t he, Rosie?’
‘Erm … I don’t really remember, Auntie Maud,’ she said, round-eyed. Maud threw her a withering, disappointed glare, as though it were Rosie’s fault she hadn’t been born until two years after Uncle Gerald’s stroke.
‘Don’t say much, do you?’ Maud barked at Aled, changing the subject entirely and gesturing at him with her walking stick. ‘Good job you’re pretty. Where are you from, lad?’
‘Wales,’ he told her. ‘The north coast.’
‘Hmm,’ she grunted. ‘At least it’s north ofhere, I suppose. I don’t understand these flashy southerners, with their fake tans and false eyelashes and breast augmentations.’
‘I don’t think every woman who lives south of the Watford Gap has had a boob job, Auntie Maud,’ Rosie said reasonably.
‘Perhaps not,’ Maud conceded. ‘Some of them are still saving up. You can go on holiday and have it done now, you know. Fly to Turkey and come home with new tits as well as a tan.’
Rosie wanted to die. Aled was staring fixedly at a spot on the ceiling, his huge shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
‘Well, it’s been lovely to see you, Auntie Maud,’ Rosie began, not quite able to believe she’d just witnessed an eighty-seven-year-old woman utter the word ‘tits’ in a community centre maintained by the Church of England.
‘Not so fast, young lady,’ Maud interrupted. ‘I’ve not finished with you yet. What about that lad you brought to your brother’s thirtieth? Jonathon, was it?’
‘James,’ Rosie said. Michael’s thirtieth was a sore point; her parents had organised a big family get-together for him earlier in the year, having done precisely nothing to celebrate Rosie’s big birthday two years earlier.
‘Didn’t like the look of that one,’ Maud continued. ‘Superior sort. You’re better off with Andrew, here.’
