by Fiona Grace
It was teatime when she reached the Lodge. She wasn’t surprised to discover there was nowhere to park. The B&B must be fully booked for the festival. Lacey knew Suzy wouldn’t mind her taking up a spot in the staff lot, so she drove around the back.
The staff lot was actually pretty busy too. Suzy must’ve hired more staff to deal with the extra work from the festival. Lacey spotted a couple of unfamiliar vehicles parked alongside Lucia’s run-around and Suzy’s four-by-four. A bright pink mini with fluffy pink dice caught her attention in particular.
She parked alongside it and cut the engine. Chester followed her out of the car.
As she headed in through the patio doors of the dining room, she was hit by a wall of noise. Every single chair at every single table was occupied by a designer-clothes-wearing, loud-talking person. The Lodge’s wait staff were darting all over the place trying to appease their every whim.
“Darjeeling!” she heard a man shout. “What do you mean you don’t have Darjeeling?”
The poor girl waiting at his table stammered, “We’re all out.”
“Then I’ll have an Oolong.”
“We don’t sell Oolong,” the girl said.
“No Oolong?” the man yelled. “This is preposterous! Next you’ll be telling me you don’t have Matcha!”
The intimidated girl shook her head. “Sorry, we don’t.”
Lacey couldn’t just stand by and watch. She approached the table. “Sir, I know a wonderful tearoom on Wilfordshire’s High Street,” she said. “It’s called Penny’s. You won’t be disappointed. Tell Penny that Lacey from the antiques store sent you and to put the tea on her tab.”
The man regarded her suspiciously. Then he stood. “Fine. I will,” he barked, before marching away. His seat was promptly taken by another man who’d been waiting.
The waitress flashed Lacey a look of gratitude, and Lacey headed off in search of Suzy.
The corridors of the Lodge were as equally busy and loud as the dining room, with people coming in and out of the drawing room and elevator. Lacey’s head spun from the busyness of it all. She had no idea how Suzy was coping with everything.
“Lacey!” a voice squealed suddenly from behind.
Lacey swirled to find Suzy skipping toward her, beaming from ear to ear. Far from looking harried by the influx of tourists, Suzy appeared to be taking it all in her stride. Her floaty white summer dress made her look like a ballerina, and Lacey couldn’t help but feel proud of all her young friend’s achievements. How odd that she’d once thought of Suzy as a spoiled rich kid, because here she was, running a successful business in the most demanding of conditions.
Suzy embraced her. “I’ve not seen you in ages! How are you? Are you looking forward to your birthday? The big four-oh!”
“Don’t remind me,” Lacey replied. “I’ve been trying not to think about it. Besides, there’s not much time to, with the festival.”
“Gosh, I know,” Suzy replied, glancing around. “We’re rushed off our feet here, too. Fully booked all week and both weekends either side.”
“That’s amazing, Suzy,” Lacey told her earnestly. “You deserve it for all your hard work.”
Suzy grinned proudly. “So why are you here?” she asked. “I’m guessing you didn’t come in for a quiet cuppa.”
Lacey chuckled. “No. I was actually wondering if you might be able to help me with something.”
“I can certainly try. What is it?”
“I’m holding an auction,” Lacey explained. “Taryn seems to think there’ll be more people interested in coming than I have the space for. Which got me thinking. I could put the auction online, and have people attend and bid virtually. Do you think you might be able to help me set that up?”
Suzy started to laugh. “What makes you think I can help?”
“Because you’re young. All young people are good with technology.”
“And since when did thirty-nine count as old?”
Lacey laughed. “When it comes to technology! Believe me. My technological competence is on a par with Gina’s.”
Suzy laughed again. “Well, funny you should mention that. My neighbor’s kids are staying at the Lodge with me at the moment. Gabe, the younger one, just finished his A-Levels and was wasting his summer sitting in his room on his computer. The daughter decided to drop out of university. Basically, their parents got sick of it and asked me if I could give them some work here, you know, to see if a bit of hard graft might turn them into more rounded individuals.” She chuckled wryly. “I needed help for the festival anyway, so I’ve put them up in the overnight staff rooms. Anyway, Gabe’s a total tech genius. He’s been headhunted to do a computer sciences degree at UCL. I bet he’ll be able to help you. Oh, speak of the devil. Gabe!”
Lacey looked over. Coming down the staircase was a tall, lanky boy with long brown hair that hung around his ears and partly obscured his eyes. His oversized jeans hung too low on his backside, showing off more of his boxer shorts than Lacey cared to see.
He turned at the sound of his name being called, casting a wary eye over Suzy and Lacey.
“Gabe, come here a second!” Suzy insisted, with the sort of friendly enthusiasm teenage boys balked at.
He approached cautiously.
“Yeah?” he asked, head down, eyes on the floor.
“This is Lacey,” Suzy said brightly. “She has an exciting work opportunity for you.”
“I’m holding an auction,” Lacey explained. “And I want to set up an online auction place where people can watch live and bid in real time, without having to be in the actual room.” She struggled to put into words what she really wanted, looking at Gabe in the hopes he’d be able to fill in the blanks. “Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” was all he said.
“So it’s not totally out of the realm of reality?” she pressed, attempting to get more clarification. “It’s something a tech genius like you would be able to make?”
“Yeah,” came his simple, monosyllabic reply.
Suzy jumped to Lacey’s rescue. “I think what Lacey’s trying to ask is whether she can hire you to do the work.”
Gabe shrugged. “Sure.”
Lacey looked over at Suzy, speechless with surprise. She couldn’t quite believe this monosyllabic teen could make her pipe dream a reality, but it was a risk she was going to take.
She turned back to Gabe. “Wanna start now?”
Gabe flicked his fringe of greasy brown hair from his eyes and shrugged. “’K.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lacey drove Gabe to her store, explaining the ins and outs of her vision as she went. Gabe barely said a word beyond grunting that he could definitely make the system as she wanted. Chester looked suspiciously from the back seat at the stranger sitting up front where he was supposed to.
As soon as Lacey entered the busy store, Gina put her hands on her hips and glared at her.
“What is going on?” she demanded. “Where have you been?”
Lacey gestured to Gabe. “Meet our newest staff member, Gabe. He’s going to do some temporary computer work for us, setting up an online auction system.”
Gina looked aghast at the lanky, greasy teenage boy standing next to Lacey. “And you made this decision without asking me?”
Gabe glanced awkwardly from one woman to the other, clearly uncomfortable to be caught in the middle of their conflict.
“I did,” Lacey said.
“Because that’s just what we need right now when we’re so busy,” Gina huffed. “More work.”
Lacey frowned. Gina’s reaction was worse than she’d been expecting. Yes, they were busy, but not too busy for one extra person. Gina had probably taken on more gardening work than she could manage, Lacey reasoned. She was spending more and more time out in the greenhouses, after all. She always got grumpy when she couldn’t tend to her “special flower friends” as she called them.
“You’re just going to have to trust me on this one, Gina,” Lacey s
aid with finality, ending the discussion there and then.
She led Gabe into the auction room.
“What do you think?” she said.
He grunted—the meaning indecipherable to Lacey—then sat, unfolded his laptop, perched it on his knees, and started tapping away at a million miles a second.
“Do you know how many people will be logging on?” he asked Lacey without looking away from the screen. “Because that will determine how much bandwidth I need.”
“No, I don’t,” Lacey said, stammering over her words because she was so surprised to hear Gabe say so much in one go.
“Do you have a website? We can put out an ad and see how many hits it gets. That will give us a rough idea.”
“Website? Yes, I have one of those. Somewhere…”
Tom had helped her set it up. It was supposed to be idiot-proof, involving little more than choosing a pleasing color scheme, then dragging and dropping text boxes into place. It was still all a bit beyond Lacey, though.
She gave Gabe the address. He typed it in and her website popped onto his screen.
“Okay, no offense,” Gabe muttered. “But your website sucks. So does your Wi-Fi connection. You need a better provider, just my two cents. How much traffic do you get on average?”
Lacey shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Gabe made a scoffing noise from the back of his throat. “Kinda vital information…” he muttered under his breath.
Lacey bristled at his rudeness. But she reminded herself he was only a teenager. His frontal lobes weren’t fully developed yet. And most geniuses had terrible social skills, didn’t they? She’d have to give him a pass.
Gabe finally looked up at her. “Right. Here’s my assessment. For this to work I need to sort out your internet first, then update the website, then find out how many people are interested, then go back to the internet and make sure there’s enough bandwidth to host it, and then set up the system. Okay?”
Lacey blinked. She’d understood approximately ten percent of what Gabe was talking about. “Do whatever you have to do,” she said, giving him free rein.
“’K,” he grunted, turning his focus back to the screen.
He started tapping away again, falling completely silent, his whole attention absorbed by the task.
“Shall I come back later?” Lacey asked.
Gabe said nothing. She took that as answer enough, and headed back onto the main shop floor to patch things up with her disgruntled employee.
*
Gina stayed grumpy for the rest of the day, and Lacey was quietly relieved when the clock struck five and she could send her home. Once she was gone, Lacey headed back into the auction room to see how Gabe was getting on.
He glanced up briefly from his screen as she entered, then launched into a monologue without so much as a greeting.
“I set up a calendar to sync with yours, and it will tell you every time someone adds the event to their calendar.”
Lacey hastened over and peered over his shoulder. He tapped away and showed her around a now seamless website, with a separate section about the upcoming auction and a visitor counter at the bottom of the page.
“Wait, you did all this in a day?” Lacey exclaimed. “It’s like magic!”
Gabe didn’t react to her comment. “I used the donkey from your poster so they know it’s the same event.”
“Oh,” Lacey said, shaking her head. “No. Could you actually maybe change that? The donkey was a mistake.”
She felt bad asking him to do more work, but Gabe shrugged like it was no big deal. “Sure. What do you want?”
“The Isidore Bonheur jockey sculpture would be better. It’s the main piece on sale, and the biggest lure.”
“This one?” Gabe asked. He’d already typed Isidore Bonheur into a search engine while she was speaking and pulled up a photograph of the sculpture.
“That’s the one!” Lacey said, stunned by his speed.
He tippy-tapped again, and just like that, the image was displayed on her website. Lacey stopped herself from uttering “magic” again, since it hadn’t gone down well the first time. But it really was magical to her.
“I’m adding some SEO,” Gabe continued, his fingers flying over the keyboard like he was playing a piano. “That’s search engine optimization. Basically it means when people search for bronze jockey sculpture, or jockey sculpture for sale, or auctions selling sculptures, et cetera, they’re more likely to hit on it. See.” He pointed at a string of numbers—one amongst several on his screen of computer code—that seemed to be multiplying.
“What am I looking at?” Lacey asked, clueless.
“IP addresses. Where people are located. They’re all local so far, which probably means we’ve only reached people already here for the festival. I can do some other things to push your website up the search engine results, and open this thing out to the rest of the world.”
“I’m fine with just Wilfordshire,” Lacey quickly said, before he had the chance to start typing again and she was suddenly faced with an influx of global visitors. One thing at a time.
“’K,” he said with his nonchalant shrug.
“What does that mean?” Lacey asked, pointing at the red exclamation point. “And the two hundred next to it?”
“That’s an alert,” Gabe explained. “It tells you how many people have synced the event to their personal calendar. We have one alert for people physically attending, another for virtual. That’s the virtual one.”
“You mean that’s how many people will be watching me online?”
“Yup.”
“But it says two hundred.”
“Yup.”
Lacey’s mouth went suddenly dry. Taryn was right. There were way more people interested in the auction than she’d anticipated. Two hundred! She’d been expecting a few dozen more than her auction room could handle. But now it all felt extremely daunting. How would she manage a crowd that large? Especially the ones on the virtual platform?
“Anyway, that’s everything done,” Gabe mumbled, snapping his laptop shut. “The streaming stuff is self-explanatory really. You just turn everything on and press go.”
He shrugged, like this was all so simple. But Lacey was in a tailspin.
“You have to come back,” she stammered, feeling like she was suddenly lost at sea without a life raft, and this grunting teenager was her only chance of survival. “On auction day. Tomorrow. I’m useless with technology. What if it breaks down? I’ll be so embarrassed.”
Gabe gave a look of disdainful alarm. “I can come back,” he said.
“You can?” Lacey asked, exhaling with relief. “Thank you. I’ll pay you obviously. Thank you.”
“Sure,” he mumbled, scurrying away as if to get away from the crazy panicking woman.
The bell jangled as the door shut behind him, and Lacey looked over at Chester.
“Come on, boy,” she said to her pooch, snatching up her keys. “I think we’d better get out of here before I go bananas.”
They exited the store and Lacey locked everything up after her. To think, when she was back here tomorrow it would be auction day. Her third ever auction. Her third and most attended auction by a country mile!
The more she thought about it, the more she managed to whip herself into a frenzy over the number of people interested in the auction. She really needed a pep talk from Tom. Some reassurance. She was also still quietly carrying the burden of her new lead on her father on her shoulders, and it might be time to share it to let a bit of the pressure off.
She crossed the cobblestone street, Chester by her side, and weaved through the hordes of people toward the patisserie. If she’d thought the streets looked like a blown up liquor store before, now it looked as if a meteor made of wine and beer bottles had crashed into the middle of the street! Amber liquid ran between the cobblestones and into the gutters. And every which way she turned, there was another person, and another feathered fascinator to poke her in the eye. The
festival really had turned Wilfordshire into a party town. It took her a good few minutes to negotiate her way through all the obstacles.
She pushed open the patisserie door, and the smell of baked goodies made her stomach growl. She suddenly realized just how hungry she was. She’d been too busy with her preparation to even stop for lunch today.
“Only me!” Lacey called as the bell tinkled above her.
Tom peeped his head out from around the kitchen partition. His eyes registered recognition and a huge grin lit up his face. “Lacey.”
He still managed to look handsome, even after a long, grueling shift and while lightly dusted with flour.
Lacey maneuvered around the counter and entered the kitchen. The whole place was a mess of pots and pans. Discs of sponge cake in varying sizes—presumably the tiers of a wedding cake—sat cooling on the ledge. A big bowl of pink frosting sat beside them, the spoon still inside.
“How’s it going?” she asked, eyeing the chaotic scenes.
Tom pointed at a pile of broken gingerbread horses, lying in halves like the front and back ends of pantomime costumes.
“Try one,” he said. “That’s the discard pile.”
For obvious reasons, Lacey chose a front half. She popped it in her mouth. It tasted just like Tom’s signature cookie dough but with the addition of spiced ginger, cinnamon, and cloves. And instead of just sugar, she picked up the distinctive flavor of dark molasses.
“Very good,” she said through her mouthful, nodding her approval.
Tom grinned. “So are you all ready for your auction?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Lacey said. “Suzy lent me a teenage tech genius to set up an online auction thing.”
Tom carried on working as she spoke, taking a batch of doughy horses to the oven and replacing the silver tray of golden-colored ones with it. He laid the new, intact horses on the counter, and their gingery scent filled the room.
“That sounds very sci-fi,” he said, his focus on his gingerbread cookies.
“It is. My auction room is full of cables and screens and devices.”