Page 48 of Shroom for Improvement

“Do you enjoy it?”

“I . . .” He paused. “I used to.”

I stayed quiet, waited for him to fill the silence.

“It’s a lot different from when I first started. A lot busier. So many more people in the city, and they’re all in such a hurry. You know? Super-serious people, with their super-important jobs, and their super-meaningful lives. Nobody ever notices me. I’m just... there. Part of the furniture. Well, nobody except y—” Abruptly, he stopped speaking. “Truth or dare?”

I didn’t let myself consider why Claude finished his sentence there. “Truth.”

“Do you like living in the city? Do you think you would ever leave it?”

Woah, where did that come from?

“Honestly, I’m not sure. I moved to Remy because of its world-class bioscience department, and I love my job. And I feel as though I’m on the cusp of something huge. The city itself, well, I guess it’s good if you’re young and single and carefree and living a much wilder lifestyle. I’m not that person anymore, but I wouldn’t want to risk my career by moving too far away from it.”

Claude was quiet, motionless.

I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off.

“My turn again. Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Choose dare.”

“Okay, dare.”

“Tell me about . . . mushrooms, microbes, your allotment. Tell me how you grow . . . anything . . . potatoes, thyme, sprouts even. Just . . . talk.”

I didn’t need to ask Claude why. He wanted, or maybe needed, something to drown out his thoughts. Luckily, I was very good at making idle chit-chat.

“So, sprouts. I’ve never managed a decent crop of sprouts, but usually I get enough for our Winter Fest dinner.”

As I spoke, Claude wriggled down on the bed and pulled the duvet higher around his neck.

I continued my sprouty lullaby. “Basically, you start with a seed. I always sow them into modules and grow them on in the greenhouse. I sow them early spring. Actually, that reminds me, I need to do them when I get back. Usually sow a lot of things during Spring Fest and I won’t be around for this one. Anyway, once they’re ready to go in the ground, you can plant them in rows. They like a firm soil. Pat them in firmly. Stake them, ’cause they can get quite top heavy. And you’ll want to protect them from cabbage white butterflies, so I plant them under a net or cage. Water them, and if they need feeding, give them some high nitrate food. Best thing is my pee-bale.”

Claude didn’t react to my mention of the pee-bale, so either he was not immediately repulsed by a pee-bale as most people were, or he’d misheard or misunderstood, or wasn’t listening to me.

Or he was—

“Are you asleep?” I whispered.

“Not asleep,” he said, though his voice was gravelled. “Tell me more. So you put pee-bale on the sprouts?”

“Well, on the soil around the sprouts, but yes.”

After I finished talking about sprouts, I moved on to tomatoes, because they were another thing I typically planted right about now, and had forgotten all about in my haste to leave Remy and learn more about mushroom magic. Then I spoke about rhubarb, and got overly excited about these antique cloches Holly had bought for me from a reclamation yard.

It was impossible to tell who fell asleep first. Did Claude finally tire of my dulcet tones? Or had my body given up before my mouth?

All I knew is that I woke up with a mop of rust-coloured hair splayed out on the pillow next to mine, an almost painfully hard morning erection, and the contentment of the first good night’s sleep I’d had in absolutely ages.

The Solo Shower Experience That Turned Out to Be Anything but Solo

Claude

Incense and clove and moss with faint traces of spa lavender and lemongrass invaded my nostrils.

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