The same uneasy feeling stays with me through the rest of my shift, and all the way back out of the staff entrance that afternoon. The idea of having to spend time with a stranger, doing…whatever it is he’s trying to do…makes my teeth jangle and the inside of my skin itch. It’s not what I’m here for. I tip my head back and stare upwards.
“It’s not part of the deal!” I tell the empty sky – but it doesn’t answer, so I carry on heading home. Unlike most of the other staff, I don’t have to walk all the way back down into the village or down the long, sweeping drive to the bus stop – because Felix’s house is part of the Hopwood Home estate, right in the middle of the hotel grounds. So I get to cross the gardens around the old hedge maze, then take the little bridge over the end of the lake and wander out through the deer park…and there, at the end of an avenue of chestnut trees, is Charlie and Felix’s cottage. Home. It’s ridiculously pretty, considering it’s just an old gardener’s cottage. It was a bit tatty and run-down when Felix took it over five years ago, but apparently he went through the whole house with a hammer and a crowbar and just…ripped everything out. By the time my brother moved in with him, there were floors and occasionally working plumbing, but it was Charlie who fixed the chaos Felix had made – even down to the rambling roses and the honeysuckle he planted either side of the front door. They climb up the walls and around the windows, and when my bedroom window’s open in the summer, the scent of flowers drifts in on the warm air. It was Charlie who made it home.
Felix is already in when I kick the door shut behind me, his feet up on the table in front of the unlit stove.
He glances up from the tool catalogue he’s reading, and grins at me. “D’you reckon I can convince Barney we need a new trailer for the estate?”
Before I met Felix, if anyone had asked me to describe the kind of guy my brother would fall for, I probably would have described someone a lot like Barney, with his combed-back hair and his suits. Despite being our boss, he’s only a year older than Charlie – they’re actually pretty good friends. But then one day I came home from school and it was like someone had lit a lamp inside my brother, and he told me he’d met someone. The One. Which turned out to be Felix, with his questionable taste in T-shirts, arms covered in tattoos, his eyebrow ring and hair that looks like he’s been through seven hedges backwards in a high wind…And as soon as I met him, I realized the thought of Charlie being with anyone else was just impossible.
I shake my head and drop onto the sofa beside him.
“How was your shift?” he asks.
“It was.”
He waits for more, then – realizing that was the entire sentence – peers at me. “Charlie told me about the bus.”
“I’m fine. It’s not that.”
The catalogue drops to the floor with a thump and Felix folds his arms across his chest, fixing me with an expectant look.
I hold out as long as I can, but there’s just something about Felix’s face that makes him impossible to ignore. “Barney’s told me I’ve got to help this guest,” I mumble, picking up the single ancient scatter cushion that lives wedged in the corner of the sofa and turning it over and over on my lap. “He’s got some historical research project and apparently because I put my history prize on my job application, I’m supposed to be useful.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. Makes a change from cleaning rooms, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but…”
“But what?”
“I don’t know him!”
“You don’t need to know him! Besides, if he was that awful, Barney wouldn’t ask you to help him out.”
“Wouldn’t he?” I rub at a worn patch on the edge of the cushion. “Anyway, he’s people, and I don’t do people,” I add.
“Mmm.” He gives me a long and meaningful look.
“Look, I don’t want to talk about it. Happy anniversary, by the way.” I lever myself off the sofa and head for the shower. As if today’s not been rubbish enough, I’ve got to go back in later and do the turn-down shift tonight too.
Felix’s voice bounces up the narrow stairs: “You should give this thing a chance. You never know – you might actually enjoy it!”
I close the bathroom door and lean against it. Then I crank the shower up as hot as it will go and step into the stream of water, letting it pour over me and wash other people’s dust and dirt away and down the drain.
Shower done, I hop across the landing and into my room. The mid-afternoon sunlight floods in, filling it with warmth and making the posters pinned up on the white walls glow orange. Sometimes, I wonder if they’re really “me” any more. I put them up out of habit when I moved in, because I felt like I should – the giant Grand Budapest Hotel poster that Mira thinks is so funny (I guess it kind of is given the hotel thing) and the blow-up of Teleman’s Brilliant Sanity artwork that I got at one of their gigs at the Thekla in Bristol. But maybe they’re just relics of where I was, who I used to be.
Looking out of my window, I can just make out the roof of Hopwood Home through the trees of the deer park and gardens. It’s peaceful. It’s familiar. It’s safe and it’s stable.
I know where I am now, and that’s all I need.
Knock-knock-knock.
Pause.
I already wish I hadn’t agreed to do the turn-downs. The hotel at night is different – there are too many people drifting through the lobby or wafting gently up and down the stairs. Too many eyes not to catch, too many polite and semi-invisible smiles to make.
Today has apparently been full of bad choices – and all of them have conspired to drop me outside room fifteen.
Knock-knock-knock.
Pause.
Just keep it together. Pretend everything’s normal. Pretend you’re normal.
“Good evening? Housekeeping?”
Pause.
Knock-knock-knock.
“Housekeeping? Turn-down service?”
There’s a scraping sound from the other side of the door, then something like papers shuffling…then footsteps. “Just a minute…” The door cracks open, and a familiar face peers around it at me.
“Sorry to disturb you. Did you want the turn-down service this evening?”
Beyond him, the room is an explosion of paper. Even through the narrow gap between the door and the frame, I can see sheets of it covering every flat surface. Desk, bed, chair, floor. Everywhere. There are little Post-it notes stuck to the walls.
“Turn-down service?” He frowns, staring at me. There’s a flicker of something behind his eyes.
“Fresh towels? Turn down the corner of the sheets?” I lift the arm holding the towels a little, trying to keep my own eyes fixed on a spot in the middle of the doorknob. “Some guests say they find it welcoming.”
“I know what a turn-down service is, thanks. And I think I can manage to get into bed without you making it welcoming…” He stops suddenly and his eyes widen as he mentally plays back what he just said, getting redder with every passing second. “Oh. God. No. That didn’t…I didn’t mean…That came out…” He stops again and sighs. “I’m so sorry.”