I took a sip of coffee. Not that I needed any chemical stimulus adding to my jitters. Daniel looked devastated. I couldn’t let him go on thinking I’d taken what he said the wrong way.
‘I didn’t run away because I thought you were being creepy.’
He gave me a sharp look, a forkful of egg halfway to his mouth.
‘I left because I didn’t trust myself not to act creepy when in the same bed as you, in the dark, with no top on.’
Then I picked up my empty plate and mug and ran away.
* * *
Having put away the last glass and wiped every stray crumb I could find off the kitchen surfaces, I couldn’t keep hiding any longer. I met Daniel coming down the main stairs, jacket and boots on, Hope in the sling. We both automatically paused when we saw each other coming, but Daniel was the first to start moving again, affecting what I think he considered to be a nice, normal expression.
‘Are you going out?’ I asked, my freewheeling thoughts not being able to grasp anything beyond stating the obvious.
‘Yeah, I thought we’d go on a walk, see the lake. Give you some space to catch up with your parents.’
‘Oh, we did that, last night. Dad already asked if there’d been an emergency and I said no. Nothing more to catch up on.’
‘Right. Okay. Do you… want to come with us?’
While I appreciated the invitation, and under different circumstances I might have been tempted to say yes, the look on his face was enough to have me making my excuses about wanting to go over the booking system before I scuttled into the office.
‘Ah, Eleanor, there you are!’ Dad came in a few minutes later, his solid stomach leading the way. ‘Gadwall, Pintail and Goosander all need a changeover.’
We had ten rooms in total, most named after a bird that normal people had never heard of.
‘I’m just going over some of your admin processes, if that’s okay.’ I shuffled the office chair an inch or two closer to the desk, to prove my point.
He frowned, baffled. ‘Room changes are done before admin, you know that.’
‘Dad, I’m here visiting, not as a temp staff member. I’ve already helped with breakfast.’
‘You’re either here as family, and all family pitch in on changeovers, or you’re here as a guest, in which case that’ll be ninety pounds a night. You can have Pintail, as of this morning it’s unoccupied.’
‘Are you serious?’
I pulled my eyes away from the numbers dancing across the cranky old desktop screen. Dad stared back at me. Of course he was serious. I supposed that if I helped change the beds and clean the bathrooms I might be able to wangle some information as we went.
One sparkling, spanking clean Gadwall, Pintail and Goosander later, I had garnered the following.
The systems and processes employed by the Tufted Duck were in place because they’d always been that way, and why change something that worked? With that attitude, I was impressed they’d progressed to a computer. I did manage to gather some dribs and drabs on how they managed accounts and budgets, but honestly there was nothing I couldn’t have found in half the time by looking on the internet. Mum did, however, reveal something of genuine significance.
‘Did that person manage to get hold of you?’
‘What person?’ I focused very hard on smoothing down the fresh sheet on Pintail’s bed as my heart began tap-dancing in my chest.
‘They called asking to speak to you.’
‘What did you say?’Could have been an old friend. Someone from the town… one of the staff at theCumbrian Chronicle.
‘Well, I told them you weren’t here, of course.’
‘And?’
Mum flicked on a duvet covered in frolicking forest animals with expert speed. ‘And what?’
‘What else did they say?’
