“What do you mean nothing?” she questions.
“I mean nothing,” I tell her. “Last night I had a lovely time with Forrest. I may have been a slower starter when it came to that sort of thing, but it’s quality and not quantity, and that was a resounding success in my book, and I’ve read a lot of sex scenes in a lot of books, so I think I’m somewhat qualified to make a judgement.”
“Right, and you have big feelings about Forrest,” Rani persists. “What do you want to do about those?”
“Nothing,” I repeat. “When you think about it, it was kind of inevitable in a way that I’d get all romantic about it. My first lover, I’m bound to be sentimental. And then when you throw in the castle, the moon, the dresses, and all that, it just heightens itall. Forrest and I even did the whole enemies-to-lovers thing. It plays like a storybook, and I read a lot of books. So, I’m fairly sure these feelings are not really real, they are just my heart acting how it thinks the story should end. If I do nothing and ignore them, eventually they will just fade away. Eventually. In, like, ten to twelve years or something.”
Rani tugs at my hand until she’s hugging me.
“I don’t like this ending for you,” she says. “I feel like there should at least be some sort of race against time to an airport. I mean, have you even asked Forrest what he thinks, maybe even telling him how you feel? In case, you know, he feels the same way.”
“Forrest likes me a lot,” I say. “But he doesn’t feel the same way.”
“How do you know?” Rani asks.
I can’t tell her because he saidSee you laterin a non-specific way, so I say, “I just know. A woman knows.”
“Not this woman,” she says, gesturing at me.
“Anyway, that’s the way I’m going to play it,” I tell her. “And I would appreciate it if you would back me up in that decision because I think it’s for the best.”
“Yeah, of course I will,” Rani says, a little sulkily. “Whatever you need, babe. I suppose it’s not all bad. At least you got laid, so we got that out of the way.”
“It’s not like it was a developmental milestone,” I protest.
“It kinda was,” Rani says, and I find I can’t argue with her. “So, what are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to go and find Hal,” I say. “Check in with him.”
“Are you going to tell him about you and Forrest?” Rani asks. “What if he shoots lasers out of his eyes?”
“Knowing Hal, he probably already knows,” I tell her. “And I’m ninety-four percent certain he does not have laser capacity.”
“Only ninety-four percent,” Rani says.
It takes me a while to find Hal, but then I realise that he is probably in his lab, where I have somehow never visited him, which is slightly because I have to go through the stables to get there, and I am a bit scared of horses. Like, they are very big animals to just have hanging about like a pet. Doesn’t seem sensible to me, but whatever.
Waving at my own lab on the way through the orangery, it occurs to me that I have hardly wanted to visit it at all in the last few days. When I first set eyes on it, I thought I’d spend all of my time in there, and I do still love it. But it doesn’t feel like home anymore. I don’t think I even feel that way about my much less glamorous lab in York anymore. Almost as if coming to the castle made me leave home, literally and figuratively. What I’ll be like after all of this is over, and I’m back living with Rani in our apartment over the shop and trying to come up with my next big idea, I have got no idea, but I do think I want a bit of a better work-life balance, somehow.
Leaving the orangery, I head round to the back of the castle, where the stable block is. On the way I walk along the other side of a fence that borders the swimming pool. Artie and Forrest’s laughing carries over the fence, as does the splashing and Artie’s cry of “Victory for Vikings.” I pause just for a moment to listen and let myself imagine twenty seconds of what it would be like to have them both in my life for more than just a few days. Then I tear myself away and head towards the stable block, which is sortof like its own mini castle, complete with its own turret and live-in stable keepers, or whatever they are called.
To enter the stable block, you have to walk under a grand stone arch, big enough for the carriages that once used to roll under it, and across a cobbled square that’s lined by horse houses, which have all got those split-in-half doors, with the top half open so the horses can chat. I count four long-nosed noble heads hanging over the door watch me as I walk past.
“Hello.” I wave to them. “Just passing through. Please don’t eat me or anything.”
There’s another arch at the other end of the block, and after that a large, round, more modern-looking building, which I assume is the training ring that LadyB referred to back on our first day here when she told us about the labs. It seems like a lifetime ago.
Sure enough, when I walk into the cool air of the ring it is empty, except for the cube of Hal’s lab. I feel a surge of pride for him and in him. What an amazing man he is.
“This is remarkable,” I say as Hal shows me a full lab-grown human heart beating away. “I mean, astounding, Hal.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Hal says, smiling at me. “It makes me feel very happy to know that this can help so many people. Which brings me to something of a moral dilemma.”
“I think it’s okay,” I say. “You’re not playing God here. You’re using science to save life, and you can grow an organ from any human cell. It’s perfect.”
“It’s perfect but that’s not what I meant,” Hal says. He frowns a little when he looks at me. “Are you okay, Ava? You seem tired.”
“I am tired, but you know we are nearly at the end of three weeks of peopling and small talking and parties and shared meals. I haven’t done this much socially since... well ever. It’s worn me out.”
