“I should go,” said Alain, leaning in to give her one final kiss. “Liv adored you, by the way. See you Thursday.”

As the car was pulling away, leaving Rosaline alone again, her phone buzzed. Your father has been called into work. I can come and collect you but I’ll be two hours at least.

This was so typical it wasn’t even hurtful. Besides, you’d have to be a pretty shitty person to be hurt by someone else’s medical emergency. Don’t worry, she sent back. Take your time. I can wait at the hotel.

Shouldering her bag, she set off back up the driveway only to meet Harry walking the other way.

“Something happen, mate?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing. Just my dad can’t pick me up and it’s going to take a while for my mum to get here.”

His brows tightened in concern. “Is he all right?”

“He is. Someone else probably isn’t. He’s a cardiologist, and these days he doesn’t get out bed for anything less than a triple bypass with complications.”

“Blimey.” He seemed to be casting around for a more detailed statement on St. John Palmer’s medical career. But apparently gave up. “Look, you don’t live that far from where I’m going, and it seems a shame to run your mum all this way. There’s space in the van if you don’t mind sticking your feet on a toolbox.”

Rosaline was about to say “No, it’s fine, you don’t have to,” except he’d offered and the choice was taking Harry twenty minutes out of his way or Cordelia two hours out of hers. “Actually, that’d be really helpful.”

“All right, mate. It’s over here.”

And so, having just pinged away from the car park, Rosaline found herself ponging back, texting her mum awkwardly with one hand as she followed Harry to the Dobson & Son van. He opened the passenger door for her and she clambered in. A few moments after that he joined her, and a few moments after that they were on the road.

There was something unexpectedly intimate in sharing his space with him—especially when the space itself was small, and she was very aware of how close they were. The soft curl of hair over his forearms. The well-cut line of his jaw with its shadow of fresh stubble. Those deep-set eyes of his, and the long, dark lashes more noticeable in profile.

“Harry?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“Why . . . why do you like baking?”

He let out one of those tradesmen’s I’m not sure what’s wrong with the boiler breaths. “It’s relaxing. And it’s nice to have a thing what you know what you’re doing with. And everybody knows if they bother you while you’re making cakes, they don’t get cakes. So it’s good if you need to calm down and stuff.”

“Amelie hasn’t learned that lesson.”

“Well it’s different when it’s kids, init? Two seconds after Ruby and Amber get in the kitchen—that’s Sam’s kids, by the way—you know nothing’s getting done. But that’s not the point, is it? It’s about, you know, family and that.”

She nodded. “I guess so.”

“What’s brought this on?”

“I don’t know. I . . . I put so much into it, I sometimes wonder if I’m wasting my time, maybe?”

“What, ’cos your dad’s a cardiologist and you ain’t?”

That was the problem with Harry. He didn’t look like he was supposed to be perceptive. But he kept . . . getting her? “And my mum’s an oncologist.”

He thought about this for a second or two. “Bloody hell, you aren’t half a bunch of clever bastards, ain’t you?”

“They are. I got knocked up and dropped out of university.”

“Don’t mean you’re not clever. Just means you made different choices.”

“Maybe.” She sighed. “The thing is, though, they feel like lesser choices.”

“I wouldn’t know, mate. Or maybe I want lesser things as well.”

“How do you mean?”

He shrugged, eyes firmly on the road. “Well, way I was raised, you got a job that pays the bills, you got people around you care about, that’s all you need.”

“Is it though?” she wondered aloud. “Can that really be enough?”

“Well ”—his gaze flicked to her so quickly she half thought she’d imagined it—“there’s a couple of things I’d like what I ain’t got. But that’s life, init?”

“And you aren’t worried there could be, I don’t know, more?”

He laughed at that. “Of course there’s more. But so what? No one can have everything. You’ve just got to figure out what matters. And then not let stuff what don’t matter get in the way of stuff what does.”

It all seemed so simple, so attainable, so . . . right in front of her when he said it. But she knew the moment she got out of the van she’d be swept straight back into an ocean of coulds and shoulds and other people’s expectations.

It didn’t stop her from pretending, though. Imagining for a moment she could have a life like Harry’s. Where your world was whatever you made of it and whoever you let into it and you were allowed to be happy with that.

Week Seven

Semifinal

Thursday

ROSALINE ARRIVED AT Alain’s place a little before eight. To her surprise, the door was opened by Liv, who was wearing another sleek black dress and had a half-empty wineglass clutched in her other hand.

“Rosaline,” she exclaimed, hugging her somewhat unsuccessfully on account of the wineglass and Rosaline not having expected to see her, let alone be enveloped by her. “Hi. Come in. Alain’s in the kitchen.”

Hoping that her feelings of What the fuck? hadn’t reached her face, Rosaline followed Liv into the living room—where she stood looking dazed while Liv kicked off her Louboutins and curled up catlike on the sofa.

“Isn’t it wonderful,” she purred, “to be seeing a man who cooks.”

“Well, I did meet him on a cooking show, so it’d be weird if he didn’t.”

Liv waved her wineglass. “Believe me, you still can’t take that type of thing for granted. Every man I’ve been with since Alain has been very much the ‘lives off takeaway and fucks his secretary’ sort.”