‘Stop worrying; you’ve not done anything wrong,’ Isaac said, pulling out a chair for me to sit on.
‘You’re about to find it’s precisely the opposite!’ Arthur said, with a tentative chortle.
‘Do you want tea?’ Elliot asked, flicking the kettle on.
‘Yes please. But if it’s nothing bad then why do you all look so shifty?’
‘Shifty?’ Isaac repeated, sounding offended. ‘I’d say keen to get started.’
‘Started with what?’
‘Maybe a little nervous?’ Arthur asked, rubbing the wisp of hair on his chin.
‘How about deeply uncomfortable?’ Elliot suggested.
‘Started with what?’ I asked again, feeling increasingly uncomfortable myself.
Isaac slid a plate across the table. ‘Tiffin?’
‘I really wouldn’t,’ Elliot said as he placed my tea on the table. ‘Finlay McAllister sneezed on that plate earlier.’
‘Which sort of proves my point,’ Isaac said, getting up and dumping the cakes in the bin.
‘What point?’ I asked, my voice about an octave higher than usual. ‘Will someone tell me what this is about,now?’
Arthur and Elliot, who had sat down opposite me, both looked at Isaac.
‘It’s your idea,’ Arthur said.
‘One I have massive reservations about,’ Elliot added.
‘Okay… so we have a proposition,’ Isaac said. ‘Which solves several problems for all of us.’
‘Go on. And speed it up, please,’ I said, wishing I had a piece of that tiffin.
‘Problem one: you wanted to earn some extra money by working for me, but I’m not going to take you on.’
‘Isaac, no. Please. You know how much I need the money. I fell asleep today because it was a warm afternoon; I’d had a really big couple of weeks with moving house and starting at the Barn and—’
‘Jessie, at one point a cockapoo licked the crumbs off your bare arm and you didn’t wake up.’
‘What? Ugh. That’s… I think I dreamt something like that was happening…’
‘Anyway, I’m not budging on this. We also agreed that Mum and Dad had to give the okay, and they aren’t happy with it either.’
‘Great. I guess I’ll just have to find something else, then. Either that or secretly move into the Barn storeroom.’
‘Well, that’s not really going to be a secret now, is it?’ Arthur said, with a sympathetic frown.
‘Problem two,’ Isaac continued. ‘The three of us have become a bit…’
‘Like a bunch of lame losers,’ Arthur chipped in, again.
‘Insular,’ Isaac said, glaring at him. ‘In…’
‘Inbred,’ Elliot finished for him.
‘We could really do with an outsider’s opinion…’
