Page 101 of Secret Paths

“It was an ambush with onions.”

“She means well.”

“She usually does. That is what makes her so difficult to object to.”

Mrs Higgins nods as though this is a known and serious condition. “Good intentions can be very bossy.”

“She thinks I need sorting.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

The answer is immediate.

Too immediate, perhaps, but true.

“I like my life,” I say. “I like my house. I like my work. I like deciding what I do with my evenings. I am not sitting around waiting for a man to make it all bearable.”

“No,” Mrs Higgins says. “You never have looked like a woman in need of rescue.”

“Then why does everyone assume single means available for improvement?”

“Because people are lazy with other people’s lives. A pair looks tidier to them than one.”

I let out a laugh, sharper than I mean it to be. “That is depressingly accurate.”

“Does not make them right.”

“No.”

Mrs Higgins reaches into her coat pocket and produces a small tin. Bernard’s head lifts immediately.

“You are so easily pleased,” I tell him.

“He is alert to opportunity.” She opens the tin, takes out a tiny dog biscuit and gives it to him. “There you are, darling. Sustenance for the journey.”

“He is not on a journey. He is horizontal.”

“All the great journeys have resting points.”

I smile because how can you not?

Mrs Higgins produces a wrapped ginger biscuit from another pocket and offers it to me. “Human biscuit?”

“Thank you.”

“Always best to keep the supplies separate. Bernard has strong opinions about ownership.”

Bernard crunches his biscuit with the solemn focus of a dog conducting important business.

Mrs Higgins brushes a crumb from her glove. “It is a good thing, knowing you are enough on your own.”

I look down at the ginger biscuit in my hand.

“Yes,” I say.

“But it can make sharing feel like surrender.”