“What do you mean you’re driving to the hotel? We only have one hotel, and it’d be faster to walk.” I tugged her over to the window and pointed at it. “See? It’s above the pub.”
There was a hotel/pub like this in every small town in rural New Zealand. The settlers had all gotten together and agreed that all you needed in order to be able to call a place a town was a community hall and a pub. Sometimes only a pub.
Lyssa shook her head. “That’s not my hotel. I’m staying in a riverside garden oasis with Clydesdale horses and archways dripping with flowers. It’s a picture-perfect countryside retreat.”
“What? Show me.”
She glared but pulled up the booking on her phone.
I immediately realized the problem.
The listing was for the old Blossom & Bramble Café, which I knew well. I’d turned a year older in that dining room every year from the ages of nine to nineteen. It was a Holliday family tradition that you got to pick a place to go to lunch on your birthday, and I always chose the sprawling old villa that was a hotel before it was a café. It was a ten-minute drive into the countryside, and my mum used to have monthly lunches in the gardens there with her friends. They would dress up in fancy hats and Mum would joke they were off to the Queen’s. The mental image of Mum waving gaily as she drove down the drive, massive hat on her head, was my clearest visual memory of her. That, and her scooping ice creams into cones for Caroline and I after dinner. Her rule was you had to finish all your veggies to get an ice cream, but if there was a veggie I really didn’t like and I ate it anyway, Mum gave me an extra big scoop. It had instilled a murderous sweet tooth in me.
Fucking girls and eating ice cream used to be my two main vices. Now I only had the one, and god help anyone who tried to curb me of it.
Blossom & Bramble had gone out of business a few years ago when the highway closed due to landslides. Last I’d heard, Priscilla, the owner, was going to revert the sprawling farmhouse back into accommodations and put it on Airbnb, but that hadn’t happened yet.
“That place isn’t open yet,” I told my sister’s pig-headed friend. “Cilla is still doing it up.”
“This is what I booked,” she said stubbornly, clutching her phone to her chest. “And I’m driving out there.”
“Is there wool in your ears, Princess?” I growled. “I said you’re not fucking driving. You couldn’t park a car in a space the size of Bigfoot’s ass, there’s no way you should be on the open road. Get your shit. I’ll drive you to your fake accommodation. That way, you won’t kill anyone on your way there, and I can say I told you so when you see there’s no fucking hotel.”
Lyssa scowled at me but didn’t move. So I tugged her keys out of her hand and stuffed them in my pocket.
“Hey!”
I headed out back to my truck. “Let’s go.”
“My bags!” She trotted—that was the only word for it, her high shoes were silly as fuck—after me.
“Don’t worry about them. You’ll be back here in twenty minutes. Hey, Aroha,” I waved to get her attention. “I’m heading out for a bit.”
Aroha gave me a thumbs-up and a knowing look, which was everything I was afraid of. I didn’t want to be known as the guy who took girls home for nooners—not anymore.
My truck was unlocked because only tourists locked their cars. I settled in the driver’s side, then pushed open the passenger door for Lyssa, because there was no way she could open a handle with her goofy nails.
During the short drive to the old Blossom & Bramble, she was resolutely silent. I was quiet too, fighting the urge to throw her rental keys into the river when we drove past it.
We pulled up in the parking lot of what was very clearly a construction site, and Lyssa’s mouth fell open.
Blooming violets wound over broken trellis, and the paint job of the lopsided Victorian-style manse was cracked. There was scaffolding over the far wing and a bunch of offcut wood on the ground by the building that used to house the Clydesdales Lyssa had been excited about.
There wasn’t a single tradie in sight—no builders, no electricians, nothing. It was midday and midweek, so the place should have been heaving with people in high-vis, talking shit and working. My mate Dave was a builder who had been working on this job. I looked around for his familiar head of orange curls, but there was no sign of him. Or of anyone.
I studied the property. Her bones were proud, but her dressing needed some love. Cilla definitely had her work cut out for her, but I could see the vision, and if she could pull it off, the place would be grand.
Lyssa should have been falling over herself to tell me that I was right, but she was still doing an impression of someone in a silent film.
I climbed out of the truck and cupped a hand around my mouth. “Oh concierge! Where is your bellboy to take me to my room?”
A bunch of sparrows flew out of their nest in the gutter.
I kept going. “After lunch in the courtyard, I’d like to go for a leisurely ride through the hills. Please have your finest steed saddled for me!”
Lyssa climbed out of my truck. “Shut up, Mike.”
I’d heard this phrase so often it felt like my legal name.
