Page 6 of The Sugar and Spice Bookshop Bakery

‘Got me,’ he says, and she can tell from his tone that he is smiling. ‘For the record, I’m holding my hands up in surrender. And obviously, I’m wearing a stripey t-shirt and carrying a swag bag.’

‘With a dollar sign on it?’

‘That’s the one!’

She laughs. ‘Well, the till’s empty, I’m afraid, so your luck’s out.’

‘Damn.’ He gives an exaggerated sigh. ‘Truthfully, I couldn’t sleep. I’ve had a lot on my mind. So, do you know where your fuse box is?’

‘Not a clue.’

‘Hang on, I’ll put my phone on.’

In the darkness, she hears him fumbling, pulling his phone out of his pocket presumably. And then he says, ‘Ah. The battery’s dead. What about your phone?’

‘If I had my phone with me, I’d have put it on already.’

‘Fair point.’

‘Maybe the fuse box is in the kitchen,’ she says.

She hears him moving. A chair scraping on the floor.

It’s a surreal experience, standing here in the dark with a stranger. She’s reminded of a trendy dating event that she went to once in London, where you ate dinner with a bunch of other singletons in an almost completely dark venue. Back in the days before she met Graham, when she still believed in real life happy-ever-afters. The idea was that your usual human instinct to judge on appearances was stripped away, so you’d make a more intelligent choice about who you’d like to see again. The reality was that she was so focused on trying to eat a meal that she couldn’t actually see without spilling half of it down her new top that she barely noticed the men at all.

She feels his shoe against her slipper.

‘Sorry, did I just kick you?’

She likes his voice. It’s warm and kind. Reassuring. Although it isn’t a strong Yorkshire accent. It’s softened slightly, as her own is after years of living in London. And if she isn’t very much mistaken, there’s just a hint of something more exotic in there. An almost musical lilt.

‘It’s fine. Not like you can see where you’re going.’

‘Right, now where’s the kitchen?’ he asks.

‘I’m pointing to it,’ she says, joshing with him as he obviously can’t see her.

He gets the joke and laughs.

Good sense of humour, she thinks.

Tick.

And then she reminds herself that this is not one of the eligible bachelors from the dating event – all of whom, incidentally, had been a bit of a disappointment when the lights actually did come on at the end of the evening – and he is most probably a middle-aged Yorkshire sheep farmer. Hint of something exotic indeed!

He’s so close she can hear him breathing. He takes a step and bumps into something, another chair probably. She feels a hand on her arm as he steadies himself.

‘Sorry,’ he says, snatching his hand away. ‘I didn’t mean to…’

‘It’s alright,’ she says, but she’s hyper-aware of the spot where his hand was. Still warm.

She hears him shuffle forwards again. Another chair scrapes. She moves after him, banging into a table with her thigh and then a second later, bumping into him.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t realise you’d stopped.’

‘My brake lights aren’t working,’ he says.

She laughs again. ‘This is hopeless. We can’t even get to the kitchen, let alone find the fuse box. I can sort it in the morning.’