“Mmm?”
“Are you out in the Land Rover?”
“Why?”
“We…” I look at Hal. “…slightly broke down.”
“You broke down?”
“Yes. In a ford.”
“How—?”
I cut him off. “And we really need a lift. And maybe a tow?” Beside me, Hal nods. “Definitely a tow.”
“Out of a ford?”
“Please?”
Charlie sighs. “Which one are you in?”
“Umm…the one on the edge of the King farm.”
He does not take this particularly well. He puts on his Older Brother Voice. “Flora.”
“Yes, yes, I know.”
“Do you?”
The car roof wobbles ominously as Hal tries to stand up for a better view. There’s a loud creaking noise – the sort metal makes when it’s really quite unhappy – and he sits down again quickly, wrapping his arms around his shins and pulling his knees up to his chin.
I make an executive decision to ignore everything Older Brother Voice implies. “You told me I’d enjoy this project – and you know what? I am. I really, really am.” Before he gets the chance to say anything else, I carry on, because I don’t want to have this conversation while I’m sitting on a car roof, and I definitely don’t want to have this conversation in front of Hal. “So, you know, you were right and I was wrong and the fact I’m actually saying that means that you have to be supportive now because I’m being self-aware and everything and that’s part of the deal. And also, you get to be smug.”
There is a very, very deep sigh on the other end of the line. And a bit of swearing.
“In the spirit of supporting you, exactly where are you in relation to the ford?”
I peer down at the water bubbling around the wheels of the car.
“Like I said, very, very in the ford.” The sound on the other end of the line might be laughter, or it might be swearing. It’s hard to tell. “Sorry,” I add, hoping that’s enough.
It must be, because finally my brother says, “All right. I’m on my way. I’ve got to drop some plants off, and then I’m coming. Five minutes, ten max. Just…stay put.”
“Yeah, I don’t think we can do anything else.”
I put my phone away. “Charlie’s coming. He’s not very sympathetic, but he’s coming.”
Hal nods. “You like your brother, don’t you?”
I picture Charlie, scowling and swearing in the driver’s seat of the Land Rover. “I do, actually. He’s a nice person. Not every big brother would have said it was okay for his annoying little sister to move in with him when their mum moved away. Lucky for me he did, really. Lucky for her too.”
Hal’s look is a question – but one he can obviously tell I won’t answer. So he asks a different one. “You couldn’t live with your dad?”
“No. He’s never been a part of us. Not really. He got married again after he and Mum broke up – apparently I’ve got a couple of half-brothers and -sisters I’ve never met. One of them’s only just younger than me.”
“Oh.”
“The way I see it, some people are just very good at compartmentalizing their lives. They finish one thing, they’re done with it. They close the door or shut the lid and they move on. My father’s one of those people.”
Hal doesn’t say anything but he nods. Something I’ve said must make sense.
He’s given so little about himself away, beyond what’s obvious. The clothes, the car…the hair. The fact he’s got money. But other than that, all I know is that he cares about his grandfather. That and he’s a city boy. Nothing real about his family, nothing about who he is. Only pieces of clues, tiny little fragments – like something seen through a keyhole.
Unless this feeling I have about him counts…
This is my chance, isn’t it? I mean, we’re not going anywhere for a while. So…
“You don’t have any brothers or sisters?”
He shakes his head as though he only half-heard me. “Just me,” he says – and then in a voice not quite his own, “carrying on the family name, the family business. Whether I want to or not.”
“What?” He said something like that before – I thought he was talking about Albie, but maybe not.
“Sorry?” His attention snaps back to me, to here and now. I’m not sure he actually realizes he said something out loud.
I try to see a little more, just a little. “You were saying – it’s just you?”
But he’s already closed that door. “Mmm. Sorry you didn’t get to see much of the gardens and stuff. Or look at all the archive,” he says, shuffling a little in his spot on the roof. “I feel bad you wasted your day.”
“It’s not wasted. It’s the opposite of wasted.”
His hand is splayed on the metal between us, the long fingers outstretched. Slowly, carefully, I reach out and place my own lightly on top of his, matching them, fighting the immediate panic, the urge to snatch them away again.
Should I have done that?
Why did I do it?
He doesn’t move his hand. He doesn’t move at all.
Is this good?
I guess seeing as he hasn’t leaped from the roof of the car screaming, that’s a yes…?
Try not to go into my head. That’s what Charlie said, isn’t it? Don’t go into my head. Perhaps if I say something…?
“So what do we do now?” Way to go, Flora. That’s the spirit. Not sounding like an idiot at all. “About the papers, I mean.”
Hal thinks about this. “I guess we go back to Hopwood and keep looking. We know Iris and Albie were together – and they weren’t meant to be – but there must be more.”
“I can ask Barney if we can go check the attics? There’s loads of boxes up there.”
“That isn’t all of them? The stuff in the library?”
“No – he’ll have just had the obvious ones brought down for you. There’s probably loads more up there. My supervisor, Mrs Tilney, mentioned it when I started at the hotel. Health and safety, or whatever.”
“You think he’ll let us check them?”
“I don’t see why not. If you find something, it’s probably good for the hotel. Plus you’re happy and he’s all about keeping guests happy, so there’s that too.”
There is the slightest hesitation before he nods…
And then his fingers shift and twist, turning over to close around mine.
He. Is. Holding. On. To. My. Hand.
On purpose.
Act normal, Flora. NORMAL.
Do. Not. Freak. Out.
And there we are, sitting on the roof of a car in the middle of a stream and holding hands, when from just around the corner there’s the growl of an old Land Rover being driven by someone in a very bad mood.
Midway through edging the Land Rover round the little squashed-frog car, Charlie pauses to peer through his window and raise an eyebrow at me, perched on the roof. “Really?”
“It’s not my fault, is it?”
He mutters something under his breath and pulls the Land Rover around in front of us.
I get up as cautiously as anyone standing on the roof of a car would. “Come on.”
Hal looks up, watching as I hop down onto the bonnet and lean out to open the back of the Land Rover. Charlie creeps the truck forward so there’s space for the door to swing all the way open – but the problem is that this leaves quite a big gap (and more cold water than I’d like to meet today) to get over from one to the other. I take a good, long look at the distance…and jump, my breath knocked from my lungs as I hit the side of the bench seat in the back. Dusting myself off, I look back to see Hal balanced on the very front of his car, his bag slung across his body.
“Come on, it’s not too bad – just jump!”
Hal looks over at me. My definition of not too bad is obviously a world apart from his…but then I’m not the one whose car has just been given its own interior water feature. His face set with concentration
, Hal shifts his weight back and forth a couple of times – and jumps.
I don’t know if his foot slips or his shoes don’t grip enough or if he’s just not had much practice when it comes to jumping into the back of Land Rovers, but even before he leaves the bonnet of the car, I know he’s not going to make it.
He might have said I don’t look like I need rescuing – but I’m pretty sure one of us does right now…
My hand closes around his wrist in mid-air, and it’s the easiest thing to pull him into the safety of the back of the truck, his shoulder crashing into me and his hair in my face and the two of us piled on the cold metal and laughing. Again.
“You two all right back there?” Charlie has one arm draped around the back of the front seats, looking at us as we pick ourselves up. I nod, sliding onto the bench behind me. “What do you want to do about your car? Want a tow?”
Hal smoothes his hair back from his face, peering out at his sad, soggy car sitting in the middle of the ford. “You know, I think it’s probably better if I get the breakdown service to pick it up. I’m guessing it’s going to need more than just a tow before it’ll go again. Will it be a problem if I leave it there for a bit?”
Charlie shakes his head. “It’s pretty quiet round here.”
“I’ll call them when I get back to the hotel.”
“Sure?”
Hal nods.
“Okay then. Flora? Door.” Charlie straightens up and revs the engine as I lean out of the back to slam the door shut – and Hal’s little car is lost behind the bend of the lane.
It’s only once the door is closed that we get to collectively appreciate the Land Rover’s smell.
I lean over to the driver’s seat. “Is that…sheep I can smell?”
“Yes. Sorry. Blame Felix.”
Our car is forever being used to cart something weird across the estate. It could be worse – in the spring, Charlie was using it to haul horse manure from the stables on the other side of the valley to the gardens and one of the sacks split. Even though we spent ages hosing it out afterwards, the smell stuck around for weeks…so on balance, I’ll take the sheep. Hal wrinkles his nose as he perches on the narrow bench, but he’s too polite to comment.
The ride back is too rough and too noisy (especially the way Charlie drives) to talk, or even to try – and the overwhelming sheepy smell feels like another passenger sitting in the back with us. But it’s only when we pass the Hopwood-in-the-Hollows sign that I realize I don’t really care. Not about the smell or about the state of the truck, or any of it.
I could care. I could worry that this guy, this smart and smooth and city-shiny boy, won’t understand; I could worry that this life of mine that he’s stumbled into will look weird and that he’ll judge me by it…But I don’t. It’s not the outside that bothers me. It’s never the outside.
I worry that he’ll judge me by my invisible broken places if he sees them, by the cracks and the fissures that skitter across the surface of my mind, by the scars that have hardened over them. Maybe it doesn’t even matter that the bolts on the doors at Fallowmill were taken down. Someone still lined them up, still screwed them in place. Still used them. In my head, at least, they’ll always be there.
Charlie swings the Land Rover around the last curve of the hotel drive, scrunching across the gravel, and pulls up outside the front door. The engine dies with a diesel-y cough and Hal shoves the back open and jumps down.
“Thanks for the lift. I owe you.” He smiles awkwardly at Charlie, who laughs, bad mood forgotten. They never last long.
“No problem – and you don’t owe me anything,” he says, leaning out of the window to watch me hop down onto the drive. “She does.”
I pull a face at him and he grins, pulling his head back inside.
And Hal turns to me, ruffling his hands back through his hair then stuffing them into his pockets. He doesn’t know what to do with them.
Mine have balled themselves into fists and somehow found their way into the pockets of my dress. I didn’t even tell them to.
“So,” he says, his pale eyes meeting mine. I wonder what he sees looking back out at him? “That was all…weird.”
“It was.”
“But…nice?” He makes it a question, not a statement.
“Yes. Nice. No, wait. Better than nice.”
Hands in pockets, hair in eyes. We are the echo of each other, standing just that little bit too close together for this to all be in my head surely, and that little bit too far apart for it to be more than it already is. He sees it too, and he starts to laugh. Which makes me laugh again, and just like before it’s enough to block out the rest of the world, the rest of my head.
It’s enough.
And in this moment, I’m enough. Just as I am.
Charlie drops a hand out of his window and bangs on the side of his door, calling to me.
“Oi! Come on, Flora. Let’s get a move on!”
I shoot him a death-glare which he ignores. Lift or not, I may have to re-evaluate my feelings about my brother.
Hal lowers his gaze, still smiling, and then he turns and walks away from me towards the hotel. As he reaches the porch, he stops and looks back over his shoulder. At me.
“You need to go up to the attics as well?” Barney doesn’t do as good a job of hiding his surprise as he thinks.
“Yes. Sorry.”
“You know it’s a disaster up there, don’t you? That’s why we keep it locked…”
“I know. But Hal’s sure there’ll be more.” I’ve been over this conversation in my head at least twenty times since getting back from Fallowmill yesterday. I have every angle covered.
“‘Hal’ now, is it?” Barney’s eyebrow arches. “You’re getting along all right, then? I hope it’s not too difficult.”
Every angle except that one.
Umm.
“The project, or getting along with him?”
“All of it.” His chair creaks as he shifts his weight behind the desk. “I know you weren’t exactly keen on this, so thank you.”
“Oh. No. I mean, yes. He’s…it’s interesting.” I swallow the words that almost made it out of my mouth.
Don’t start telling the boss how Hal held your hand. He doesn’t need to know. You don’t need him to know.
Nobody needs to know. Just in case it was all a mistake.
It wasn’t a mistake – was it?
“And you’re sure you’ll be comfortable working up there with him? You’re a long way from the rest of the staff, and I don’t want to put you in a difficult position.” Barney blinks across the desk at me.
Is he kidding?
He blinks again.
He’s not kidding.
“It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Does that mean it’s okay?”
“Well, if it’s okay with you…” He rummages in his desk and pulls out a key ring with a couple of big, old-fashioned keys on it. “Any problems – any problems – you know where I am.” He holds the keys out across the desk – but when I close my fingers around them, he doesn’t let go. “I mean it,” he says, fixing me with the kind of look that I thought only Charlie could do.
“I know.”
He lets go of the keys. “How’s the research going so far then? Found something good?”
“I think so. It’s…hard to say. These will help – thanks.” The keys jangle when I wave them at him.
“You don’t have to thank me. The Waverleys are big names in the trade and if we can help them, it’s good business. And speaking of business…” He twists in his chair and slides an envelope out of a different drawer. “You’ve not forgotten this, have you?”
My heart sinks as he pushes the envelope, with my name written on the front, across the desk to me. I had forgotten. On purpose.
“‘All the staff’ doesn’t include me, though, does it?”
“Yes, Flora. It does. ‘All the staff’ does indeed include you. Word’s come down from on high –” which is how Barney always
refers to the Hopwood’s owners – “that this anniversary party is going to be a big deal. They’ve got photographers coming, people from the press…They’ve even had me bring in caterers and waiting staff, so there’s no excuse for any of you to skip it.”
“It’s an anniversary? What anniversary?”
“Ten years since they bought the hotel – which, in hospitality, is as good as a hundred years – and they want to make a splash.”
Barney picks up the envelope again and waggles it at me until I take it.
“You could have just put it in my pigeonhole in the locker room,” I mutter, dropping it into my lap.
“Where you could pretend you didn’t see it? I don’t think so.” The corners of his mouth twitch.
“Okay, okay.” I gather up the envelope and the keys and haul myself out of my chair.
“Good luck in the attics – let me know if there’s anything we can use for marketing, won’t you?”
Access to the attics isn’t easy; they aren’t somewhere a guest could just stumble into. From the second floor, tucked away at the very back of the house and behind a plain white door that looks exactly the same as the service cupboards, a small narrow staircase heads up to the top floor of the Hopwood.
“It must have been the stairs up to the original servants’ quarters,” Hal says, running a hand along the bare wooden banister. The stairs are plain wood too – not even varnished – and they couldn’t feel more different from the sweeping staircase down into the lobby, with its glossy carved banisters and soft carpet. This feels like another world.
Another door at the top of the stairs opens onto a bright, narrow corridor with a window at one end. At the other is a closed door. Hal walks over to it, his hand hesitating over the handle before trying it.
“If you’re going to find the rest of Albie’s story,” I say, reaching around him and slotting an old-fashioned brass key into the lock, “this is where it’ll be.”
There’s a click as the lock springs open, and I give the door a push.
The room beyond smells of still air and the warm wood of the roof beams and floorboards. Unless the layer of pale grey dust counts, there’s no carpet, and the walls are bare – just ancient plaster with the odd lump of horsehair mixed in, smoothed over narrow strips of wood. Slim shards of sunlight slip through the wooden shutters on the dormer windows, puncturing the gloom.
The Pieces of Ourselves Page 12