Page 31 of The Star in Room 7

I watch them carefully, but they seem as carefree as ever. I swear, Puck is a pint-sized ray of sunshine.

“The trick is to make sure you trust the person who’s blindfolding you,” they say, as they scoop the guts of a large yellow bell pepper onto a plate. “If you don’t, it’s not fun at all. Do you want Nate to blindfold you?”

“I think I might.”

“You trust him, don’t you?”

I nod.

They grin. “Then I think you’ll like it.”

We set the hollowed-out peppers aside.

“Can you dice an onion?” I ask.

Puck nods, so I set them that task while I mince a couple of cloves of garlic.

“What’s it like?” I ask.

“Being blindfolded?”

“Yes.”

“Relaxing. When I can’t see, it helps everything else drift away. Hmm… I’m not doing a very good job, sorry.” They’ve chopped the onion pretty coarsely and non-uniformly.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” I heat some oil in a frying pan and then scrape the onions into it. “They need stirring for about five minutes, until they go soft.” I hand Puck a wooden spoon.

“Sorry if I hijacked your evening with Nate.”

“You didn’t. He was going to go home.”

“Oh, so now you get to spend more time with him. I promise I’ll make myself scarce as soon as we’ve eaten.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

Puck beams. “But I will.”

I add the garlic and some beef mince to the frying pan. “Stir it until the mince has browned, and then we’ll drain off the excess fat.”

Puck frowns. “Mince?”

“Uh, the ground beef. Is that right? We call it mince in the UK.”

“Why?”

“Honestly? I have no clue. Why do you call it ground beef?”

They laugh. “Because that’s how it’s made.”

I leave Puck stirring the mince while I drain the rice. I leave it in the strainer to fluff up while we carefully get rid of the excess fat from the frying pan.

“Now we stir in the rice, and some chopped tomatoes, and some herbs.”

Puck giggles.

“What?”

“You say things so differently. Tomatoes. Herbs. Was it hard learning an American accent?”