If only I wasn’t so out of breath, she might have thought I’d actually been there ages.
She hands out the day’s room lists, checking off our names on her clipboard as she goes, and giving Mira a very long hard look as she passes, one eyebrow raised. Mira tries to smooth some of the creases out of her dress with her hand. It doesn’t work. Between us, we’ve got six rooms to do – all changeovers, needing a full clean and fresh sheets and towels ahead of new arrivals – and something on the list that I’ve not seen before. A room marked with a green star.
When Mrs Tilney asks if there are questions, I raise my hand. “Mrs T? What’s the mark next to room fifteen?”
“Hmm?”
“The star. Is it important?”
“Oh, number fifteen. Yes. I wanted to talk to you and Mira about that one.” She looks over her shoulder at the rest of the staff – three of them today, all pretty new. “The rest of you can go make a start,” she says, before turning back to us. “Room fifteen. It’s a long-stay booking – ten nights – so it needs a few extras.”
“Ten nights?” Mira says it, but I’m thinking it too. Ten nights here is a long time – nobody ever stays for ten nights. Two or three, sure. Four at the very most. But ten? Out here? Being in the middle of nowhere is one of the things Hopwood Home sells itself on – other than a handful of villages and a couple of National Trust houses, there’s nothing but fields and trees for miles around. No big towns, no cities, nothing.
The perfect place to escape from absolutely everything. The kind of place to run away to.
And whatever the reason they’re coming, a ten-night stay means they’re obviously loaded.
Room fifteen is up on the second floor of the hotel, overlooking the gardens at the front. For guests, it’s lovely because it’s reached by the grand staircase in the lobby, then by another secret, narrow, wooden one hidden behind a bookcase at the end of the first-floor landing. Checking in and being led up the stairs for the first time must be pretty magical. For housekeeping staff, however, who have to get a laundry trolley up there, the journey is slightly less magical because it involves the ancient freight lift, which can only take one person and a trolley and always sticks between the basement and the ground floor. I draw the short straw and get lumbered with the trolley, so by the time I get to the room Mira is already waiting, the key in her hand. She tosses it to me, then knocks on the door. We both wait.
“Who do you think it is coming? Somebody famous?”
“Why would somebody famous – who could go literally anywhere – come here?” With no answer from the room, I fumble with the keys until the lock clicks and the door swings open.
We’ve just finished stripping the bed and straightening the mess left by the last guest when a scraping noise drifts up through the open window, along with faint whistling. Someone’s working on the flower bed below.
Charlie.
His parcel! The parcel I promised I’d drop off with him before I started my shift!
Mira hears him at the same time I do. “You didn’t give it to him, did you?”
“I completely forgot. With the bus, and the car, and then being late…”
“It can’t wait until we’ve got a break?”
“No. It’s…” I lower my voice, just in case. “It’s their anniversary today.”
“He forgot?” Mira’s eyes widen.
“Again. Felix will kill him.”
“Go.”
“Two minutes,” I promise, backing out of the room. “I’ll be quick.”
I make it down to the locker room, grab the parcel and run out to Charlie in record time. He leans on his rake as he watches me sprint round the corner from the staff entrance, his wavy hair pushed back from his face by a green bandana that matches his gardener’s uniform.
“Did you get it?”
“Here,” I pant, holding it out to him.
“I owe you one. I don’t think Felix would forgive me if I forgot again this year.” My older brother winces, taking the box and tucking it into his wheelbarrow.
“What is it, anyway? It better be worth it.” I decide not to tell him any more about my morning – despite the quizzical look he shoots me – and point at the parcel in the wheelbarrow. “It’s not another T-shirt, is it? Tell me it’s not another T-shirt.” Felix’s collection of Metallica shirts is already out of control.
Charlie beams. “Original nineties Burn your fingers design. He’s wanted one for years.”
“Oh.” As presents for Felix go, that one’s pretty much perfect.
Charlie studies me carefully. “What’s wrong?”
Obviously my attempt at misdirection has not worked.
Above us, Mira sticks her head out of the window of room fifteen. “Tell him.”
“Mira!” I hiss back up at her – but it’s too late. The damage is done, and Charlie’s expression has already changed from interest to concern.
“Tell me what?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“I said it’s nothing. It was just the school bus, that’s all. It went past. No big deal.” I shrug and try to wave the question away, wave the whole memory away…but it hovers above me like a stubborn wasp.
“Flora.”
“And then there was this guy with a car, and…” I pause to choose the right words; ones that won’t make Charlie freak out and tell me to go through the checklist. “And it was…fine?” This comes out less confidently than I had hoped – mostly because as soon as I even start thinking about the bus and that guest with the car, my stomach turns cold and fills with acid and twists itself into a tangle.
It all replays inside my head, scene by scene in bright colours and extreme close-up. The faces inside the bus. The car hooting. The guest getting out of his car. Oh, god. Was I all right? I told him to leave, didn’t I? Is he going to arrive at the hotel and tell them how awful I was?
The questions form a staircase, each step lower than the one before and leading me down, down, down inside my mind.
Is this a balanced reaction?
Charlie leans his rake against the barrow. “You know you’re meant to tell me if something—”
“I said I’m FINE!” I snap.
Charlie just blinks slowly at me, his expression carefully neutral. Waiting.
“I was coming out of the post office, okay? And the bus was there, and it stopped, and I saw a bunch of people from school, and they saw me. And they were staring, and basically it sucked. Okay? And I didn’t want to have to come running to you and talk about it, because it sucked.”
“I understand that. Have you gone through your checklist?”
“I don’t need the checklist.”
“It’s part of the deal. Anything that upsets you, you’re supposed to go through the checklist and decide whether you’re reacting to it…” He hesitates – then stops altogether.
I finish his sentence for him. “Like a not-crazy person?”
“I was going to say, like someone who has a more balanced view of the world. But sure…” He smiles at me. “Not-crazy works too.”