Page 46 of Read My Lips

“Wouldn’t go that far.” Simon shrugged. “Maybe a brace of peacock and a couple of chickens.”

“Pheasants, surely.”

“Certainly not. Peasants are dry. Tough and stringy, barely worth the bother.”

“Peasan-?”

Very slowly, Simon’s eyebrow lifted. “Do try to resist the urge to tell me I mispronounced it. Kills the joke stone dead.”

A flush of heat chased up the back of my neck, making my ears sizzle. Guilty as charged.

“Sorry.” I shrugged. “...Thought you’d be well-up for a bit of uh- peasant.”

“I grew up in a suburban semi. It wasn’t on the menu all that often.”

Simon ducked his head into the stainless steel monster of a fridge. My nostrils flared with the effort of holding in a laugh – fizz in a shaken up coke can.

“Just special occasions then?” I asked when he looked back.

“When the Queen visited, naturally.”

Suburbia. Not what I thought we’d have in common. How had that worked, with Simon dressing the way he did? Rubbing shoulders with the Richards of the world. Could I even ask that kind of question? Our banter might collapse under its own weight. I didn’t want it to go flat.

Stepping in closer, I peered over his shoulder at the cool shelves stacked with posh ready meals in wooden boxes pretended to be home cooked, and fancy ‘oven ready’ dishes in foil trays that would have been a lot better than the pasta-and-sauce-from-a-jar I’d have been having tonight if I wasn’t in my boss’ ex’s country mansion.

Simon caught my eye again, glancing back. “They’re not big on cooking. Any ideas?”

Food. That biological necessity I could learn to live without if Simon stayed exactly where he was, with his body heat arcing at me through his sleeve, and my skin keen for the futile possibility of learning his pulse where we didn’t quite touch. He smelled clean, like fruity shampoo.

“Any of that would be⁠—

“Depressing—”

“—fine.”

“—with an oven like that waiting to be used, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yeah.” More lies. “Definitely.” No way was I disabusing him of the notion I was the kind of adult who cooked more than scrambled eggs and pressed Quickstart on the microwave.

“Ah here we go!” Reaching to the top shelf, Simon nudged a couple of the tray-meals out of the way. “These’ll do very nicely.”

A packet of Cumberlands had never seen such a warm reception. Safe to assume he wasn’t vegetarian.

“Sausages? Got to admit, I did not have you down for Toad in the Hole over gourmet fish pie.”

“God no.” Simon looked properly horrified. “We’re not cooking that.”

We. As in me and him. Together.

I needed my head examining. The only reason we were here at all was because of the messed up trains, and everything he’d got up to with Richard.

“What are we—”I tested it out, and the planet didn’t grind to a halt and fling me off in disgust. The idea of it – that we – glowed through me, like everything I’d always wanted“—making?”

“Rougaille.” A little flair of accent rolled into his voice.

“Right.” I blinked, hoping for a translation to osmose itself into my brain.

It didn’t.