Chapter Seven
Mrs Crocombe Being a Menace
‘So, what do you say?’ Mrs Crocombe tipped her head and blinked innocently.
‘Blind dates?’ Harri asked, incredulous.
‘Double dates,’ the old menace confirmed.
‘And you’ve already asked this Anjali and… who was the other one?’
‘Kit,’ Annie said.
She’d obviously absorbed the details of the matchmaking plan better than he had, including the bit where Mrs Crocombe had unflinchingly announced that Anjali, Harri’s date, ‘is a vet and a She’ and ‘Kit’s a chef and a They’ and she’d wanted to know in a very direct way whether any of that was going to be a problem. Annie had shaken her head, untroubled.
Harri was less inclined to be set up with a stranger, even if she did love animals and is a ‘lovely girl, from one of the best families on the promontory’, whatever that was supposed to mean.
‘I’m not really dating, at the moment,’ Harri said as firmly as he could under Mrs C.’s wily grey-eyed gaze.
‘One date can’t hurt. Not when Anjali’s been on my list for five years and said no to absolutely all my suggestions so far, but she said yes to you.’
‘She did?’ Harri wished he was above manipulation like this, but his heart had lifted a little in spite of himself.
‘It’s just dinner at the pub,’ Annie said.
Of course she was up for meeting two random locals for a meal. She was the dictionary definition of an extrovert. Harri could be found indexed under ‘homey, bordering on antisocial’.
‘Go on, I’ll be with you the whole time,’ Annie cajoled. ‘And you did say you were dying for some fish and chips and a cider.’
‘Best cider in the county ’ere,’ Mrs C. jumped in with a conspiratorial wink thrown at Annie.
‘You’re not going to hear the word no , are you?’ Harri sighed, letting his shoulders drop.
Annie leaned closer to Harri’s ear with a gritted-teeth smile, hissing, ‘If we say yes now, the villagers will place their bets and we can get on with our vacation in peace.’
All it took was a nod of Harri’s head and Mrs Crocombe slashed a pencil line under their names and hobbled right out the door, delighted with herself. ‘Tomorrow, six-thirty at the Siren, table by the fire, booked in the name of Crocombe,’ she said as she went.
Harri fixed Annie with a firm look. She only chuckled and set about her five-minute fix-her-up.
Harri, however, couldn’t settle for the rest of the evening. Not even as Annie cooked and served up his favourite soft-shell tacos, using up the dregs of the red wine from their first evening here in the beef and black bean filling.
He hadn’t had Annie’s cooking in nine years and she’d seriously perfected her recipe in the interim. Everything was delicious, but still the thought circulated in his head; he was going on a real date with someone who wasn’t Paisley. It felt far too much like being out there again, and he really didn’t know how people were supposed to act on a normal date, let alone a double blind date.
Annie had dabbled with Hinge back home and she had a large circle of festival-going friends who she could have her pick of. Harri had gathered they were all devoted to her. Then she’d had something semi-serious with that maths teacher last year, though she seemed to have forgotten about him.
Harri, on the other hand, had lived with one woman for nearly a decade, and before that there’d been a girlfriend who lasted pretty much all through sixth form, but she’d dumped him to go to uni in London, and that was it, the sum total of his romantic experience.
‘I don’t know anything about veterinarian sciences,’ Harri mumbled into his third taco, while Annie topped up his Sprite.
‘Just as well Anjali knows all about that, then,’ she said. ‘That’ll be something you can ask her about.’
Harri observed Annie as she carried on devouring her food. ‘You seem pretty relaxed about this.’
She fixed him with a simple smile. ‘It gets the locals off our backs; we meet some people our age in Clove Lore. We get a dinner. What’s the problem?’ She took another big bite.
‘Just dinner?’ Harri said, a tiny part of him not relishing the idea of watching Annie inevitably charming this Kit person who Mrs Crocombe had described as ‘an absolute looker’.
‘Don’t even have to do dessert,’ she reassured. ‘One and done.’
‘Oh, I expect we’ll want pudding.’ Harri smiled, realising how silly he’d been acting. If he was going to have to start dating again, maybe this was as good a way as any to go about it, with Annie there to help with conversation if it turned awkward or if he ran out of things to say.
Annie seemed excited about the innocent prospect of going out and making two new friends, and since he wasn’t exactly planning on a rebound holiday romance, maybe a friendly dinner was absolutely fine? It didn’t signify a thing.
He raised his glass to Annie’s. ‘To double dates,’ he said, and she smiled before toasting him back.
‘To being each other’s wingmen,’ she said, and seeing his face fall, she laughed raucously. ‘I’m kidding, I’m kidding!’