Page 61 of You Had Me At Pumpkin Patch
The boat should be ready with a picnic basket on board. The basket should be filled with pumpkin-themed food that your date will enjoy. We suggest pumpkin hummus with a light and fluffy pumpkin bread, followed by a baked pumpkin fondue, and finished off with a pumpkin and ginger cheesecake that will set her taste buds racing.
Make sure you tell her that you prepared this food yourself (even if you did not). This will impress your date and make her feel like you care (even if you do not). This will put her in the mood for wild romance. (You’re welcome.)
Now her blood was beginning to boil. If she’d been kidding herself that it was almost sweet for Zain to seek online advice to create the perfect date,thathad put an end to any such mercy. He was using the chatbot to line her up forwild romance? This had been the night of their first proper kiss. Had that been scripted somewhere too?
Maybe the chatbot had churned out a list of sexual positions – no doubt that seventy-four per cent of people surveyed thought were chuffing brilliant.
When the scene is set...
Arrive at your date’s door and take her by surprise.
Check.
When she answers, sweep her up into your arms and tell her you are her chariot. She will like this.
By the bloody book, Zain Kimberkoo. This was outrageous.
Make sure you are wearing a suit and that you’re looking handsome and well-groomed. Keep the top two buttons of your shirt undone, to show a little chest. This will appear enticing. (Prepare to be touched. We do not know how this feels, but we are told it can be magical.)
Seriously? He needed that much detail to get through one single date with her? And he’d followed it too. She remembered with a pang exactly how she’d felt at the sight of hisenticingchest, and how that whole, feet-sweeping date had felt. That was the first point she’d realised she was falling hopelessly in love with him. But she hadn’t been. As she read the next section of the chatbot’s reply, entitled‘What to say’, the dreadful truth hit her. She’d been falling in love with a chatbot. Because the things he’d said to her weren’t his thoughts or feelings at all. They were a computer-generated script.
She swallowed hard, remembering that it had all felt just a little too perfect. Recalling his hand occasionally moving towards his pocket, as though there was something inside it that he’d been desperate to consult. She’d even joked that he seemed worried to gooff script. At that point, he could have taken the opportunity to confess he’d had some help to plan things, but that he was ready to chuck the stupid instructions and be his honest, genuine self. Whoever the hell that was.
As she rifled through the other papers, it was like reading a well-constructed game plan of their whole relationship. Stargazing dates under cosy blankets with flasks of pumpkin-spiced hot chocolate. Early morning walks where they’d listened to the birds chatter and spotted water voles in their burrows by the lake. Making marshmallows together and toasting them around a campfire. She hadknownall that had felt like something from the perfect dating textbook. And she had loved every disingenuously planned minute of it, without thinking to question it.
And it was one thing to get dating ideas from a chatbot. In itself, that wasn’t much different to a bit of internet searching for inspiration. But to follow it word for word like an actual script, and pretend you’ve never even heard of Kimberkoo Chat when it comes up in conversation, even though Kimberkoo is in fact your pissing surname. And then to use exact lines that had been spoon-fed to you by a piece of software.‘Your smile lights up the sky.’ ‘Baby it’s cold outside.’ ‘The stars are incredible tonight. I’d like to share them with you.’
He’d even been having Q&As with Kimberkoo Chat for retreat ideas. Oh look, and there was that whole spiel he’d given to her swim friends when they’d stayed in the treehouses for the practice retreat.‘Being elevated invites you to look up. To see the bigger picture.’Those words had sounded so poetic she’d probably gone weak at the knees. And she should have known he hadn’t come up withshinrin-yoku forest bathingor diningal fresco.
Never mind being a pumpkin farmer. This guy was a first-rate actor. He’d learned his lines without missing a beat. He’d pretended to be someone or somethingthat he wasn’t. And yet again she’d fallen for a man who had an extremely strange relationship with the truth.
No wonder that night in his Prizewinner pumpkin field, when they’d talked before making love, he’d asked if they could start again. He’d wanted to pretend that everything before that moment hadn’t happened. Because heknewhe’d made her fall in love with a lie. He’d taken her for a prizewinning idiot.
She’d come here to get away from all of this. The chatbots, the robots, the pointless tech that was getting too big for its artificial boots. Talk about stepping from the frying pan into the raging electrical fire.
So when Zain barged through the door of his cabin, looking red-faced and ranty, clutching a wad of papers himself, Rosie was fit to explode.
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‘What is this?’
They spat out the same question at the same time, whilst waving their respective wads of A4 paper towards each other. It was absolutely not a sign that she was in sync with this man. If Rosie had ever thought for a second that she was, that had been agargantuanmistake.
She wasn’t even sure if she could articulate what she’d just discovered or how furious she was, so she glared at him, almost daring him to speak. She had no idea what was on the paperwork he was gripping, but she was sure it wasn’t going to trump the Kimberkoo Chat exposé. For once, she was going to win – even if winning would feel exactly like losing everything. She was having quite the season for that.
‘You’ve been documenting our exact relationship, and turning our private life into a novel for the whole freaking world to see?’ His look was incredulous.
With what she’d just discovered, he had some serious cheek.
‘No, I have not,’ she bit back, realising he was holding pages from her latest manuscript. Because she hadn’t, exactly. ‘It’s the story of Josie. And Cain.’
‘Oh, so expertly disguised. No wonder you’re a writer. What a bloody wordsmith.’
Well, that was below the belt. ‘How dare you. It’s just a working draft. I can change anything I want when I do the editing. Shows how much you know.’
‘I do know that this appears to be the same story as a certain Rosie and Zain, other than some bonus sex scenes, which I’m pretty sure didn’t happen – although the one in the pumpkin field did. I expressly told you I wouldhatebeing used as fodder for your novel. And why am I being compared to some dead bloke called James?’
‘James is nobody.’ She had no idea how he’d crept into her work, but she’d soon realised he’d never belonged. It was OK to explore things, before deciding to delete. ‘And as for the sex scenes.’ She felt her cheeks flame red. ‘They call it artistic licence – because Idohave an imagination. Unlike some people.’
