There’s a long silence, then: “So that was a left at the farm?”
“Do you have a pen?”
He hands me the paper, and reaches back into the car to pull out a biro with a chewed end. I slide the parcel under one arm, and sketch out a quick map. It’s not good, and I realize it was a mistake to try and make the cow-shaped sign actually cow-shaped so I label it “cow”, but at least it should get him to the Hopwood. And away from me.
I pass the paper back and he takes it, nodding. “Thanks,” he says – and hesitates. “You sure you’re okay?”
Am I sure I’m okay?
Ask me that a year ago.
“Fine. Thanks.” I slide the parcel back around to my chest and look down at the floor. “Please just go?”
The almost-smile on his face disappears behind a frown. “No problem. Thanks for…whatever.”
I wince as he slams his door, starting the engine with a loud roar…and just like that, he’s driving away.
And there – coming up the street with perfect timing – is Mira, rounding the corner from her house with her bag over her shoulder, sunglasses pulled down over her eyes and her housekeeping uniform looking like she slept in it. She raises her head and smiles when she sees me, stuffing the envelope she’s carrying into her pocket.
“What’s that?” She nods at the package in my arms.
“Charlie’s anniversary present for Felix. He asked me to pick it up for him.” And on every level possible, I wish I’d said I couldn’t.
Mira makes a thoughtful noise as – tyres screeching – the green car goes past the other way, vanishing around the corner behind the village primary school with its row of sunflowers along the front wall.
“What happened to your uniform?” I ask, but Mira just shakes her head.
“No asking questions, thank you,” she mutters – and when I open my mouth to do exactly that, she growls something in Polish at me. My Polish is non-existent, but this being Mira, I’m willing to bet that what she said is very, very rude.
See? Everything’s normal. Everything’s fine.
Except she’s eyeing me suspiciously. “You’re not right.”
“I’m perfectly right, thanks.”
“Also a terrible liar. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Honestly.”
“No. Really.” She peers at me over her sunglasses. “You had one of your mad head things?”
“Can we not call them that?” I drop my bag from my shoulder and squeeze the parcel into it, forcing the zip of my backpack shut over the top.
“But that’s what you called them!”
Which is true, because how else was I meant to explain the stuff that goes on in my head to my best friend? Charlie knows all the proper words for it, and what they all mean, because he’s my big brother. I know all the proper words for it and what they all feel like because…well, it’s my head. But how do you explain the inside of your mind to somebody else – particularly when it doesn’t work quite the way it’s meant to? Besides, nothing seemed to do the job of describing the anxiety or the swings between crazy energy and slow heavy despair better than “a mad head thing”. Trying to describe what my brain is doing at any given point to someone who isn’t inside it is kind of like…trying to explain the point of an octopus to an apple.
“You’re okay, yes?”
You’re okay, Flora. You’re okay. Be okay.
“I’m okay.”
“Good, because…you know. Tick tock.” She waves her wrist in front of my face, trying to make a point about the time.
“Your watch is on upside down.”
More Polish swearing, but at least she’s laughing as she switches it round. “Upside down or not, we’re going to be late. Tell me whatever it is bothering you on the way. And you’ve got your parcel, so?”
I sling my bag back up onto my shoulder, wondering if becoming friends with Mira was some kind of cosmic trade-off for losing everything else. I nod. “So. Let’s go.”
We take the usual shortcut round the back of the village and head for the grounds of the hotel, clambering over a stile and cutting through a field. The tall grass is splashed with patches of red poppies, and swifts screech and wheel overhead as I tell Mira about the bus and about the guy with the green car. She nods, and even though I know she can’t completely understand why it’s set me so much on edge, she understands that it has – and that’s all I need. When I get to the bit about the guy turning out to be a guest, she winces. When I admit that I told him I work at the Hopwood, she laughs as we climb over the low wooden fence marking the Hopwood estate boundary into the woods.
“But you know he will already have forgotten you, right? Staff don’t have faces to them. We’re just…part of the furniture.”
“Them” being the kind of people who come to stay at Hopwood Home. And she’s right. Nobody notices us.
Which is one of the reasons I came here.
The hotel grounds unspool over miles of gardens, woods, fields, river, deer park – even estate cottages for some of the staff, like the one I live in. Hopwood Home used to be one of those big wealthy family mansions before the First World War, but now it’s a hotel: one of, according to the brochure, the top thirty-five boutique country house hotels in the country. Which has always sounded like a bit of a weird number to me, but I don’t write the marketing material. All I have to do is clean the rooms.
Also, not be late.
After working here for nine months full-time, and a whole year of weekend and summer hours before that, I’m still struggling with that second one.
I try a change of subject. “What was that post you had?”
Even from behind her sunglasses, I can feel her blinking at me. “Post?”
“When you were coming up the road earlier.”
“No?”
“That envelope you put in your pocket – I mean, god, I’m just trying to make conversation.”
“Oh. Junk mail.” She straightens her sunglasses and sniffs. To anyone who doesn’t know Mira like I do, it might seem like she’s kind of grumpy – but I do know Mira, and that’s not it at all. If she was really grumpy or prickly, she wouldn’t be so patient. She wouldn’t be the one who crosses her arms and tells me I’ve got into “one of those bad thinking circles” when my thoughts start spiralling down into the darkness, or that I’m being an idiot when my mania kicks in – because that’s what it looks like from outside. The thing about Mira is that mostly she’s just not good at mornings – which I guess is a bit problematic when your job is all about mornings.
The woods give way to the gardens: mown and rolled lawns spread out like green velvet around the gravelled drive, still sparkling with dew, and the sun makes the front of the hotel looks like it’s glowing. We walk round to the staff entrance at the side, down the narrow stone steps and along the corridor to the locker room. Already in her uniform, all Mira has to do is throw her bag and sunglasses in her locker, leaving me to cram my backpack into my own with one hand while yanking out my uniform on its hanger with the other. Miraculously, I manage to change into my dress and apron, kick off my trainers and shove my feet into my work plimsolls and make it into the staff room a full five seconds before Mrs Tilney walks in with the worksheets for the day.