Page 31 of Hot Mic

Sienna stared at her, her fingers tight around her glass.

Her immediate instinct was to question if emotional damage was the best way to learn life lessons. But as she looked at Robin, okay with her choices, comfortable in her own skin, the argument died in Sienna’s throat.

Maybe she has a point, Sienna thought. Maybe pain isn’t failure. Maybe it’s just... data.

Sienna wondered what she herself was learning tonight. What was this cottage, this evening teaching her? Was she learning that her ethos was flawed?

Looking at Robin, she realised the most terrifying thing of all: Robin Croft had far more depth and strength than Sienna had ever allowed herself to realise.

‘Well, that’s sixty minutes,’ Robin said, checking her watch.

Sienna nodded. ‘Cool.’

Robin pushed a button on the battery pack, turning it off, and unclipped her mic. Her blue eyes stayed fixed on Sienna. ‘Didn’t really feel like we were recording a show at all, did it?’

Sienna reached up, her fingers trembling slightly as she unclipped her own microphone from her sweater and switched off the recording. She met Robin’s gaze, meaning to find some flippant response.

She had nothing.

‘No,’ Sienna admitted softly, setting the mic down next to Robin’s. ‘It didn’t.’

Twenty-Six

Robin was sitting at a wrought iron table on a café terrace, halfway through a latte, drowning in the third consecutive minute of her mother’s account of her friend Susan’s daughter’s wisdom tooth extraction. It was a weekly ritual. They met at the same café every Sunday and Brenda Croft bored her to tears with tales of people Robin couldn’t have picked out of an identity parade. But Robin never missed it.

As Robin’s eyes drifted away from her mother’s detailed account of a dentist’s appointment she hadn’t even been at—gesturing with a butter knife to illustrate the angle of the impaction—Robin spotted a dark coat cutting through the street bustle.

Sienna.

Robin’s pulse leapt. Ever since she’d reached out and touched Sienna’s hand in front of the fire, the slow-burn crush she’d been trying to ignore had metastasised into something dangerously obvious. Every time Sienna looked at her, Robin felt as transparent as glass.

Their eyes locked as she drew level. ‘Well, well,’ Robin greeted her with forced coolness.

Sienna slowed her pace. ‘Oh! Hi.’

Robin fully expected her to keep walking. But before Sienna could take another step, Brenda pounced.

‘Who’s this, love?’

‘It’s Sienna. We’re working together,’ Robin said.

‘Sienna? Come and sit down!’ Brenda practically screamed at Sienna. ‘We’ve got a spare chair!’

Robin winced. Kill me now. Just roll a delivery lorry over me right here. The last thing her embarrassing crush needed was her mother’s size fives wading in.

She braced herself for Sienna’s polite refusal. Maybe the classic, ‘Can’t stop. On my way to an appointment.’ But to Robin’s jaw-dropping shock, Sienna hesitated, adjusted the strap of her bag and said, ‘I could use a quick drink, if you have room.’

‘Plenty of room, sit, sit!’ Brenda rattled the spare metal chair out from the table with a loud scrape. ‘You must be the Sienna my Robin Egg is working with? She’s mentioned you.’

Robin sank an inch lower in her seat. ‘She’s Brenda, by the way,’ she muttered. ‘And as I’m sure you realise, she’s my mother.’

‘You couldn’t miss it,’ Sienna said, looking between them.

A waiter came, and Sienna ordered tea.

‘So, Sienna, you also have a dating podcast, is that right?’ Brenda asked. ‘Just like Robin?’

Sienna took the seat, placing her bag neatly beside her ankles. ‘Yes, though it’s quite different from Robin’s.’