I shake my head, trying to keep a straight face. “Right. You don’t need the turn-down.” I go to walk away but something stops me. I turn back to face him. “Do you want the chocolate anyway?” I rummage in my pocket and pull out what I’m relatively sure is a chocolate and not a soap – because they do look pretty similar, whatever Mrs Tilney says – holding it out to him. “Here.”
“Oh. Thanks. Thank you.” He takes it. “And…you know. Sorry. Again.”
“No problem. Goodnight.” I want to go. I do. But I…can’t.
The door doesn’t close. I can hear it creaking, like he’s leaning on it, waiting for something. “This morning – it was you, wasn’t it? In the village.”
“Me? Oh. Yes.”
A pause. “Thanks. For the directions.” Another pause. “Look, I’m sorry – I should have…” He sighs and bites his lip.
There’s an awkward silence and then: “By the way, I’m Hal. Henry. Hal – Hal Waverley.” He smiles, and it changes everything about him. His face, which was long and almost too angular, brightens and warms.
“Flora,” I say in return. “Welcome to Hopwood Home. Have a good night.” I step back from the door, but as it starts to close I glance back over my shoulder and, in the narrowing gap, I see him thoughtfully turning the square of chocolate over in his fingers.
The latch clicks.
Goodnight.
The Hopwood Home hotel library is supposed to look just as it would have done when this place was a house. There’s a polished wooden floor scattered with antique rugs, a handful of enormous sofas and armchairs upholstered in velvet and leather, a big stone fireplace with an open grate and a row of French windows opening onto the terrace and gardens at the side of the hotel. There are lamps everywhere: little ones with old-fashioned glass shades on side tables, wood and brass floor lamps in the corners, and a row of old library lamps down the centre of the huge, dark, burnished oak table that fills the middle of the room. And – of course – there are the bookcases. They line the walls, stretching up to the ceiling, heavy shelves groaning with books. Some of those are antiques, covered in cracked red leather, some are newer, and some, tucked carefully behind the door and mostly out of sight, are the books left behind by guests.
“Here we are!” Barney says brightly, clapping his hands as we walk in together at nine o’clock. The room swallows the sound. At the far end of the big table, bending over a pile of folders and notebooks, is Hal Waverley. His red hair gleams as he leans into a shaft of sunlight cutting in through the window. He straightens and looks round at us – seeing first Barney, then me. There’s a flash of surprise, and then his face does something complicated – like a mask slamming down across it in that second when he saw me. Obviously he didn’t know it was me helping him – and maybe he could hide it last night outside his room, but in here…there’s no disguising the fact he hates the idea of crazy, rude Flora helping him with this. Whatever it is.
“Flora, this is Hal Waverley, who’s looking into the history of…” Barney’s voice slides into white noise and I’m back on the pavement in the village, the car stopped in the middle of the road. The look on his face when I asked him to just go. That “Whatever” as he got back into the car. The screech of tyres as he tried to get away as fast as possible. And now here he is, stuck with me.
“…this is Flora Sutherland, who’ll be helping you,” Barney says, holding a hand out to indicate me.
Eyes the colour of faded denim look straight at me…then, almost as quickly, they look away.
“We’ve met,” says Hal Waverley quietly.
“You have?” Barney’s question is loaded, but before I can say anything Hal cuts in.
“I stopped to ask directions to the hotel, and the person who gave them to me was…” There’s the faintest break in his words, then: “Flora,” he finishes.
“Oh. Well. Good.” Barney’s already giving Hal his best management smile. “Flora’s part of the housekeeping team – she’s been with us almost a year now – but she’s a local and she has a little experience with historical research, so she’ll be delighted to help you with anything you need.”
Hal nods. I look at a spot in the middle of the table, waiting for him to mention my standing in the road, or how he’s glad I’m not as rude now as I was then, or whether I’m – you know – okay.
What would Barney do then? Send me back to Mrs Tilney? Pull a face and lower his voice, whispering something about me having had “a difficult time” lately? The sensible bit of me says that Barney would never think that, let alone say it out loud. The less-sensible bit of me, the bit that I have to square with the looks on those faces through the bus windows, is less confident.
There is an awkward silence that stretches on and on and on.
“I’ll…ah, leave you to it then, shall I?” Barney says at last, looking from one to the other of us. “Anything you need, just get reception to give me a buzz.”
Hal nods again, says thank you…and just like that, Barney’s gone and it’s me and Hal Waverley alone in the library.
The silence seeps from the shelves, from between the pages of the books. It slides out and down to the floor, piling up and threatening to bury us. He’s just standing there. And so am I. But what else am I supposed to do? Barney told me I have to help, so here I am.
“A year?” he says, suddenly.
“Sorry?”
“You’ve been here a year. Working.”
“Oh. Yes. Maybe a bit less, but…” I know it’s less than a year – a year ago, at the end of that July, I was still stitching myself back together, figuring out which piece fitted where. I was less person, more puddle. But he doesn’t need to know that.
“When I saw you before I thought it was just, sort of, a summer job? You seem pretty young. To be working, you know?” He blurts it all out in a hurry.
I wonder whether he’s judging me, weighing me up based on what he’s seen so far.
Is this a balanced reaction?
Maybe he’s just trying to make conversation.
I shake my head gently, carefully avoiding his gaze. “It counts towards an apprenticeship, so I can work instead of being in sixth-form college.”
He considers this. “And helping me with this…” He jerks his head towards the piles of paper on the table. “Does that count too?”
“I doubt it,” I mumble, only half-hoping he won’t hear me.
The corner of his mouth twitches and he runs his hands back through his hair, brushing it away from his face. It flops right back into his eyes as he slides a sheet of paper out of the folder closest to him and places it gently on the table in front of me.
“Okay. Right. I guess I need to tell you what I’m – we’re – doing. So. I’m looking for something. A house. A specific house,” he says. “And I think I need someone who knows the area. I asked if there was anyone who could help, and your manager said…” He gestures to the page. It looks old.
“I don’t know how much I can help, but okay.”