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called
Horses for Courses
.’
    â€˜You’re joking!’ Lesley spluttered. ‘The woman gets worse!’
    â€˜I wish I was joking,’ Beth sighed. ‘But it seems the more crazily off-putting the title, the more people rush to buy it. I think we’re only doing one horse recipe though; the Belgians seem keener on endless endive and vegetable soups.’
    â€˜I’d always had Belgium down as chips and chocolate. I watched Wendy’s last TV series. Len wanted to see it because he thought
Eating about the Bush
sounded rude. How typical is that?’
    â€˜Ha! And what he got was how to cook curried kangaroo tail and emu carpaccio!’ Beth laughed. ‘Poor Len, how very disappointing for him!’
    â€˜And you actually had to cook that, the kangaroothing?’ Lesley sat up and swung her legs down from the lounger to the ground. ‘Wasn’t it just gross?’
    â€˜It was a bit – the tails arrived frozen but they were still whole and furry. The viewing public didn’t get to see that bit. The producer deemed it a preparation stage too far.’
    â€˜Yuck! I couldn’t even touch it.’ Lesley shuddered. ‘I like my meat skinned and plucked and cling-filmed, me.’
    â€˜Wendy prefers to get to grips with the essential animal aspect. Like a sort of international Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. We had at least twelve goes at it ’til she was happy. To be honest it tasted like any other strong red meat; venison’s about the closest. You just try not to think about Skippy. Roo steak is on every bar-food menu in Oz, apparently.’
    Beth wished they hadn’t started on this track. Work, domestic routine, these were the things she’d come here to escape. Now her head was full of wondering about Nick, about how he was getting on all by himself back at home. She pictured him slumped on the sofa, the crumpled, slightly greasy, nineteen-year-old length of him, fast asleep in the middle of the afternoon in front of the Disney Channel and surrounded by beer cans and pizza boxes. One could also, she thought as she crossed her fingers, if masochistically inclined, pull the mental camera back from the sofa scenario to include thirty hung-over, post-party teenagers, many broken windows, something stinking and indelible drying all over the stair carpet and the police forcing an entry. Do not, she told herself, go there. As long as Nick fed the cats and remembered to get up for work, that was the main thing. She should
not
worry about him, for in that direction lay mollycoddling and the formation of one of those helpless, bleating men whoask where their clean socks are. He was past voting age, for heaven’s sake, and only a few final saving-up weeks from flying off to spend months fending for himself in Australia. He’d have to survive well enough there without someone reminding him that tee shirts didn’t wash themselves.
    â€˜Mum! Mum, I need money!’ The long skinny shadow of Delilah fell across Beth’s face and she opened her eyes.
    â€˜What do you need money for? You don’t have to pay for anything here, it’s all included.’
    â€˜For on the beach. There’s someone selling sarongs and I really
need
a blue one. She’s got the exact right thing to go with my spotty bikini. I’ve got money, but it’s English. And it’s miles away up in my room.’ Those two clinchers should do it. Beth could almost see her brain ticking along on a mother-manipulation track, holding out the promise that: a) it was only a loan and b) Delilah was being careful not to overtire herself.
    â€˜OK, how much? A tenner’s-worth?’
    Delilah’s lip curled up sideways in her best ‘I think
not
’ expression.
    â€˜
Muuum!
Twenty, at least! She’s got lots of stuff, shell bracelets and coral necklaces and that.’
    â€˜Twenty then, but I want it back and there’ll be loads of chances to