Whoever was throwing this party was not only an adult, but an adult willing to spend a not insignificant portion of their likely meagre academia salary on feeding a crowd. A true Christmas angel.
There’s a whole tray of roasted gnocchi threaded onto cocktail sticks, bookended with a sun-dried tomato, a little bit of spinach and a tiny ball of mozzarella. Little ramekins of sauces to dip them into dot the table. Freshly baked (or at least warmed-up) fancy breads steam slightly, next to an artfully laid-out charcuterie board, like the ones she’s seen on Pinterest, plus pickles – both the condiment and the vegetables – and more kinds of cheese than Haf has ever seen outside of a supermarket counter. There’s not one, but two baked Camemberts studded with garlic and rosemary, shining with sea-salt crystals. Little hot sausages rolled in grainy mustard and honey. Piles of mince pies – not just the standard ones with normal pastry but someone’s added a batch of ones with puff pastry that are practically Eccles cakes.
Ambrose takes a reindeer-patterned paper plate from the stack, licking their lips as they look over the food, but then, as though they just remembered something important, drops it back onto the table.
‘Erm, I’ve just got to go find someone,’ they say, disappearing back into the crowd before Haf can object.
When in Rome, she thinks. She rescues the plate Ambrose abandoned. The plate is made of thin material and warps in her small hands. She respects the hosts’ priorities of spending lots on expensive food but saving on cheap paper plates, right up until one of the gnocchi detaches itself from its cocktail stick, rolls off the side of the plate and lands with a plop on someone’s very nice shiny shoe.
‘Ohhh,’ Haf groans, both for mucking up someone’s shoe and the loss of a delicious potato treat.
‘How very sad,’ says the shoe’s owner, who bends down to pick up the lost gnocchi.
Normally a five-second-rule kind of girl, Haf is about to retrieve the gnocchi from its rescuer but is struck by his bright eyes. They are the kind of blue you see in photos of Instagram influencers by the sea, almost too blue to be real. Startlingly so.
The colour distracts her so much she only notices he’s popped it into the bin after the fact.
‘May he rest in peace,’ she says, worried that she’s been gawking at this stranger, as though his blue eyes had hypnotised her like the snake fromJungle Book.
‘We honour his sacrifice,’ the man says, with a smile.
He’s objectively, classically handsome. The kind that stops you in your tracks, even though – now she can look past his eyes – he’s not Haf’s type at all. Ambrose says that Haf’s taste in men can be summarised as guys who might live like raccoons and are a bit grubby-hot, like Robert Pattinson now, or anyone from the Italian band that won Eurovision a few years ago. The women she found attractive couldn’t be more different, though – suited, secretly dorky and possibly about to organise a heist. This guy is neither and instead has the clean-cut looks of the lead in a period drama.
‘Nothing worse than a wasted potato,’ says Haf.
‘Really? I suppose I could think of a few things.’
‘Oh sure, but at a jolly Christmas party?’
‘I once saw someone try to serve raw chicken.’
‘Raw chicken? Are you serious?’
‘They said it was “rare”. Sliced it up like sashimi.’
‘Wow. I was thinking like mildly horrifying Christmas jumpers knitted by someone’s granny, you know, like a snowman with a murderous edge to him. But that trumps everything. Who was hosting the party? A wild pack of dogs?’
‘Close. My flatmate at uni.’
‘Christ.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘I hope you threw it out.’
‘The chicken or the flatmate?’
‘Both.’
‘That probably would have been the best idea. He also used to leave dirty pans under the sink.’
‘How’s there always one weirdo who does that in every flat? It’s truly amazing.’
‘Do you need help loading up?’ he says, nodding towards her plate.
‘Oh, would you mind?’
He turns his hands palms up and together, and Haf places the plate gently on them with reverence. His fingers are long and slender, almost girlish. Probably what you’d call pianist fingers if you were the type of person who could even think that phrase without thinking ‘penis fingers’.
