Page 40 of Plot Twist

I laughed. ‘Do you mean a piggyback?’

‘Becca, I’m still squatting in front of you. Shit or get off the pot.’

‘You’re the one that looks like you’re on the pot,’ I giggled.

He turned around and laughed. ‘I’m trying to be a gentleman here. A human taxi.’

‘I’ll break your back,’ I said. ‘Are you prepared for that? Ivy will come back tomorrow and we’ll be hobbling around with sore arses and broken backs.’

‘Just get on,’ he urged. ‘I do yoga. I can take it.’

I burst out laughing. ‘I do yoga,’ I repeated in a gruff voice. ‘As if you’re a body builder. I’m not sure yoga will save you from the wrath of me plus six pints of Guinness, but you have been warned.’

‘Don’t knock the yoga.’ He grinned. ‘It can save you from all sorts of mud-based injuries. Maybe if you’d done more, you would have gracefully slipped into the splits on our way here.’

‘Maybe if you’d taken me on the walkway, we could have skipped the mud and I wouldn’t have looked like a pig snorting into a pint in the pub,’ I replied.

‘Are you in or out?’ He squatted again.

I jumped up once, twice and then leapt on his back.

‘Arrgh,’ he said, stumbling forward.

‘Arrgh,’ I said, because the shooting pain in my bum was back with a vengeance. ‘Told you I’m heavier than I look.’

‘You’re as light as a feather,’ he replied.

‘Because of all your yoga.’

‘Obviously.’

Once we got into the rhythm of the piggyback, it worked. I bobbed happily on his back, blethering about a Glasgow nightclub I’d spent my university nights drinking in called The Garage, which featured a yellow car sticking out above the front door. He said I’d have to take him sometime.

‘You’d love Glasgow,’ I said. ‘It’s full of good banter.’

‘You’re full of good banter,’ he replied.

And I smiled happily, thinking I’d achieved my goal for the evening.

We reached the main road and he stopped to shuffle me up his back. He strolled home, with me on his back, all the way to Bellinder Cottage.

I jumped down off his back at the front door.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ I said.

‘That’ll be eighteen quid you owe me,’ Riley said, bending down to let me off his back.

‘You can add it to my tab,’ I said. ‘I do need to start paying you, for letting me stay here.’

‘Absolutely not,’ he said, unlocking the door to Bellinder Cottage. ‘You’re my guest. Now, hurry up and take a shower. You still look like you’ve got shit on your face.’

The warm water cascaded over me as the mud and make-up fell away. I scrubbed at my skin while inspecting the large bruise that had already started to form on my bum. It was deep purple with some sort of circle in the middle of it, like I’d tumbled onto a sharp stone.

‘Tell you what, I definitely won the bet though,’ Riley said, as we sat in the living room later, both freshly washed, wearing our pyjamas, still fairly full of Guinness while sharing a packet of biscuits.

‘How’s that?’ I asked, shovelling another chocolate bourbon into my mouth.

‘I had you on your back within five minutes of taking you out,’ he quipped.