I squirt a generous amount of golden syrup on my pancakes and take an even more generous bite. OK, these are great.
‘With that in mind… we have a problem.’
My stress comes charging back – not that I’d let go of much of it.
‘What?’ I ask through my first – and probably only – mouthful of breakfast.
‘We had more to drink when we got back last night,’ he says. He places a bottle of whiskey on the island in front of me. About a quarter of it is gone.
‘I’ll stick with syrup, thanks,’ I say.
‘Oh, now who’s making jokes,’ he replies with a grin. But then his smile drops. ‘This is a problem though. We drank this. This was a new bottle. I just looked it up, to see where I could replace it.’
‘Don’t tell me you can’t buy it,’ I reply.
‘Oh, no, you can buy it,’ he says. ‘But it costs £1,600 a bottle.’
I place my head in my hands and massage my temples.
‘I’m guessing you can’t afford to replace that either?’ he says.
‘Nope,’ I reply. ‘And it will be even harder to do when I’ve lost my job.Or from prison.’
My God, this just gets worse and worse.
‘Any ideas?’ he asks.
‘Just, let me think for a second,’ I insist. ‘Just let me…’
How have I got myself into such a mess? How am I going to get myself out of it?’
‘I’ve got it,’ I say. ‘When my sister and I were younger we used to sneak sips from our mum and dad’s bar.’
‘Oh, how fancy and rebellious,’ he says sarcastically.
‘OK, first of all, it’s not fancy, it was just a wooden cupboard in the dining room that opened up when we had company or whatever, and all teenagers do stuff like that. Second of all, shut up, I’m trying to help.’
‘Sorry,’ he says, retreating. ‘Go on.’
‘We would top up bottles from other bottles,’ I explain. ‘To replace what we had drunk. You could only do so much with water, before you could tell it had been watered down, but if you moved it between bottles – especially from the less used ones…’
‘So, you’re saying we need to refill it?’ Chris says.
‘Yes, we just need to find the right thing to replace it with,’ I say.
‘OK, great, see now you’re getting into the spirit of things,’ he says with a smile.
‘No, clearly it was last night when I got into the spirit of things, today is about damage control. So, I’m going to drink this coffee, and then I’m going to set about seeing what I can find,’ I say, trying to be practical, because what choice do I have?
Tonight is New Year’s Eve and I was supposed to be going out with my friends. I’m just hoping the snow clears up as the day goes on. Then I can get a taxi to the train, a train home, and I can leave Chris here to sort out this mess.Hismess.
There’s no way I’m letting him take me down with him.
Chapter Four
It’s hard to imagine growing up on a tidal island. I wasn’t massively familiar with the concept, until I looked it up briefly, while I was reviving my phone with the iPhone charger that thankfully lives in my boss’s bedroom – the one I’m ‘staying in’. Thankfully Chris has agreed to sleep in one of the other room. I did consider sleeping in a bed that didn’t belong to my boss but weirdly it’s the only part of this house that feels familiar to me. Well, that and the bathroom, with whom I am even better acquainted. As guilty as I feel about ‘making the most of it’, I am thinking about having a nice, relaxing bath later. Come on, give me a break, Iamtrapped here.
As far as I could tell from my quick search, the people who live here are often stuck here, depending on the tide. When the tide is in the island is shut off from the rest of the country – pretty cool on face value but it must be a nightmare to live with.
