is it or isn’t it?’
I gulped and started to panic. ‘I did explain in the information we sent out …’
He rolled his eyes in exasperation. ‘Did you? Fascinating. Look, can I talk to William Summers? I understand he is the organizer here.’
This happened all the time; thanks, Mum, for giving me a weird name.
‘I’m Billie Summers,’ I said, ‘and I’m the organizer. Well I’m one of them, you see …’
Organizer? I should have been struck by lightning.
Oliver gave me a look that clearly showed he didn’t believe me and turned back to his hapless assistant.
‘Pippa, put my case in my room. It’s over there behind the kitchen. I checked on the floor plan. And then put my phone on charge. It might be useless but … well.’
He limped after Pippa as she rolled the case across the flagstone floor and into the downstairs bedroom, which already had ‘Elaine’ printed on a picture from Swallows and Amazons that Helena had taped to the door.
‘Um, sorry this isn’t your room,’ I said, scurrying after him.
He pulled Elaine’s name card off the door, looked at it, and then handed it to me.
‘It is now,’ he said and went in, closing the door behind him.
Helena and I stared at each other, gobsmacked.
‘What!’
‘He can’t do that!’ Helena said. ‘It’s Elaine’s room. She asked specially.’
‘Well, I know!’
We went up to the door and listened. We could hear Mr Charm rattling off instructions to Pippa, telling her where to put things. After a moment’s hesitation, I knocked and opened the door. Mr Charm turned to look at me.
‘Er, do you mind?’ he said.
I hesitated; he was a lot bigger than me.
‘This is Elaine’s room,’ I said bravely, ‘not yours. You’re Oliver Forest aren’t you? You’re in the upstairs front room. I told you so in the email.’
Pippa drew in an appalled breath at my insolence. I swallowed hard and waited for the full force of his bad temper to fall on me.
He sighed and pointed to his leg. ‘And how am I to get up the stairs?’ he said.
‘I’m sure you could manage,’ I said. ‘If there was a winning lottery ticket up there on the landing you’d get to it wouldn’t you?’
‘Is there?’
‘Well no, but I was just making a point. If there was …’
‘You’re expecting me to get up and down the stairs with my leg in a boot? Really?’ He fixed me with a hard stare.
It was only the utter unfairness of his attitude that kept me from running off. ‘Well, Elaine has arthritis.’
‘Who is Elaine?’
‘The person who had …’
He waved an impatient hand at me. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t got time for this. Now would you excuse me? And by the way, I don’t want these.’
He limped across the room, put the dish with the bedside chocolates into my palm, and closed the door in my face.
I turned to look at Helena.
‘Bloody hell, what a rude sod!’ I hissed, unwrapping a Belgian truffle and handing the other to Helena.
‘Sssh! He might hear you.’ Helena is always more concerned about other people’s opinions than I am and she pulled me away. ‘What shall we do?’
We stood and thought about it for a moment.
‘I’ve no idea. He’s bigger than us,’ I said. ‘We could wait until he comes out and then move all his stuff?’
‘We can’t do that!’
We looked at the closed door for a few minutes until we realized there was nothing we could do. Not without a couple of beefy companions and a cattle prod.
Suddenly the oven timer beeped and I dashed across the kitchen to rescue the second lot of cookies.
‘What can we do?’ I said, darting a fierce look at the closed door and trying to get the cookies off the baking tray without burning myself again.
‘We must keep cool and think,’ Helena said, stretching her hands out in a calm-down sort of gesture. ‘He’s a paying customer after all. He did pay didn’t he?’
‘Yes he did,’ I muttered and made a different sort of gesture. ‘Unbelievable. I can see this week’s going to be a barrel of laughs. Didn’t you say he was allergic to shellfish? Well let’s hope I don’t accidentally buy a lobster.’
I once made the mistake of telling my boyfriend how hard it was to write a book and get it published, and Matt sneered and said writing was just drinking coffee and making stuff up. Why would that be difficult? He then added some pithy comments about how many Mint Clubs I had been getting through recently under the guise of plotting. In my defence they were on a BOGOF offer, and of course once they’re in the cupboard …
We broke up soon after that – I put up with a lot from him in our two years together but even I have my limits – still, I think he was partly right. I like Mint Clubs. I’m not ashamed to admit it. OK, I like most things that mix chocolate and biscuits, if I’m honest. Perhaps that’s why my figure is always slightly out of control.
It wasn’t a very merry Christmas last year. We had been about to go to New York as he had finally persuaded me there were holidays to be had outside Europe. I was fizzing with excitement. These sorts of trips were few and far between but Nan had left me a small inheritance that I’d been hanging on to and I’d just been paid for some private pre-Christmas catering, so for once I had some savings.
Unfortunately, I gave the money for my part of the holiday to Matt and I still haven’t got it back. Swine. We had been living together in the tumbledown Cotswold stone cottage my grandmother had been in the middle of renovating when she died. When we split up he left with my holiday to New York, most of my DVDs and all the decent towels.
New Year’s resolution: never do anything spontaneous.
My sister inherited the picture-perfect holiday house in Cornwall. Typical. In her will Nan said Josie ‘needed’ it more than I did. I guess that’s because Josie and Mark have two boys and their school has longer holidays than some members of the British aristocracy, while I had no kids and no prospect of any.
*
