Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All, #1)

by Alexis Hall

The present turned out to be a book called Real Life Monsters: Creatures of the Deep, which was filled with pictures of supremely ugly fish.

Rosaline actually found it pretty easy to imagine Harry making bread on a Sunday afternoon. He’d make it for his sisters, and their husbands, and their kids, and probably his parents, and probably his nan. And they’d be so used to it they’d forget to thank him and he wouldn’t mind because he’d be surrounded by the people who loved him.

“Mate, you do not get it. Better dead than red.”

“I really feel like I’m letting the side down,” said Lauren, “because while I know a great many fabulous and talented lesbians, none of them are electricians.”

“We might need to move the bed.” He struck the universal tradesman pose of mild consternation. “I’ll check the others, but I reckon there’s a socket back there.”

But they were all, in their own way, small people—which was one of the many things Lauren had in common with Napoleon.

Rosaline left them to it and was in the process of securing the planned consolatory G&T when Harry—the man she’d driven from her home with an unsolicited and unqualified mental health diagnosis—claimed the barstool a couple of spaces over.

“Yeah. Turns out bisexuals ain’t like quinoa. You get ’em round my way too.”

“I’m going to tell my grandchildren my whole bloody life story. That time Terry broke his leg falling into a hole outside a pub. That time I found a potato looked exactly like Jeremy Corbyn. That time I let a bloke take me up the Arsenal.”

“Well, I’m glad I mean as much to you as a humorously shaped vegetable and a man you’ve told me several times is a knob.” “That’s gender socialisation for you.” He shrugged. “Can’t talk about feelings, so it’s all knobheads and funny potatoes.”

“What are you doing?” asked Colin Thrimp. What was she doing? “Panicking. Flailing. Running out of time.” He beamed. “I love that. Comes across as really normal and relatable. But as if you’re not answering a question.” “Right now,” she said, too stressed to do anything other than go along with it, “I’m panicking, flailing, and running out of time.”

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.”

“Don’t be daft, mate. I’m just saying you’re worth listening to. And well, you was right. Turns out I’m a mental.” “I don’t think,” she said, “that’s the technical term.” “You don’t get to do that no more. As a mental, I get to decide what to call myself.”

“Well, I’m a simple man myself,” added Wilfred Honey. “And I think an apple pudding in the shape of an apple is just fun.” He carefully selected one from the basket and placed it in full view of the camera. “See. Doesn’t that look fun? And the shine on it is gradely.”