How casually could I go into the dining room and take one of his books from the shelf?
‘Was everything cleared out of the dining room last night?’ I said airily. ‘I’ll go and check we didn’t miss anything.’
I took a damp cloth, went into the dining room, and pulled the curtains back to let in the pale morning sunshine. The room smelled of old beams and dust and I would have opened the window if I had been tall enough to reach the catch. There were a couple of wine glasses on the mantelpiece to take and I wiped a handful of crumbs off the table. Then I went to the bookcase and pulled out The Dirty Road.
The cover was pretty much what I had expected. A dark-haired man, his forehead smeared with dirt, squinting against the sun, a scarf around the lower half of his face. It’s called a shemagh by the way – I looked it up. In the background there was a well-endowed woman in need of a bra fitting, crouched on the ground looking hopefully towards our sandblasted hero, and what looked like an oil refinery on fire in the distance. So far so predictable.
I heard a burst of laughter from the kitchen and the unmistakeable sound of Vivienne’s hooting laugh. I winced. Oliver would love waking up to her racket.
I stuffed The Dirty Road up my jumper and dashed up the back stairs to put the book under my pillow for later.
In my absence everyone, except Oliver of course, had arrived. It’s like being on holiday; at home you’d skip breakfast and have two cups of coffee but in a hotel you feel honour bound to go for it. This morning we were offering Danish pastries and croissants and by the looks of things our guests were hoovering them up as fast as possible. Jars of apricot and raspberry jam were flashing around the table at high speed and the new block of butter was covered in stab marks and flakes of pastry.
Helena was already making more coffee and the chat was all wonderfully lively and book-related. Which is one of the great things about writers: they will talk for hours about their work in progress and other writers will listen and make helpful suggestions. Everywhere else people’s eyes glaze over and they ask when your book is going to be in Waterstones.
‘No sign of Oliver?’ I asked as I took a new batch of croissants to the table.
‘Not a squeak. Do you think he’s dead?’
‘Well if he is I’m not going to look. Not after the last time!’
‘Oh yes, you never did tell me what happened,’ Helena whispered. ‘Go on.’
‘I made a complete tit of myself in every sense of the word,’ I said.
‘Huh?’ Helena’s face screwed up in confusion.
‘I fell over and spilled a jug of water. Remember? I was soaking and you thought I’d had a shower?’
‘Yes that sounds like you. More coffee, Nick?’
Helena sailed off to where Nick was sitting happily larding slabs of butter onto his croissant and she topped up his mug. They exchanged a shy smile and I shook my head at her. Everyone knows you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure, don’t they? I speak from bitter experience; I went out with an electrician once and my immersion heater never worked properly again after he mended it.
At last everyone was sorted and we sat down to join them, eager to hear everyone’s plans for the day.
Nancy was going to resume her plotting; Vivienne was still busy with the handcuffs scene and was wondering if it was possible for her heroine to unlock them with a safety pin in her teeth. Vivienne admitted when she was seventeen she had once successfully picked a lock with a crochet hook so she could get at her father’s sherry.
‘I’d quite like to go up the church tower tomorrow if anyone fancies it?’ Nick said.
Helena jerked in her chair with the prospect.
I saw Vivienne and Nancy exchange a meaningful look.
‘We’re not very good with steps either are we, Nancy?’ Vivienne said.
‘And it’s a bit wet for me,’ Elaine said.
Helena tried to appear casual. ‘I’d love to … if you didn’t mind …’
‘No, it would be lovely,’ Nick said, his freckled face flushed with pleasure, ‘so I’d better get on with some actual writing today. I promised myself I’d get past fifty thousand words this week and I’ve got a way to go.’
He jammed in the last of his breakfast, made some half-hearted attempt to help Helena tidy up, and went off upstairs to get his laptop. Several cups of coffee later the others followed suit and Helena and I were left to clear away the breakfast things. It was nearly nine-thirty.
‘What about Oliver?’ Helena said.
I shrugged. ‘I’ll arrange some things down this end of the table and wait and see if he comes out.’
I set to with my cloth, wiping up jam and making the table look reasonably attractive again. Helena loaded the dishwasher and washed the baking trays. Still there was no sign of him. I rinsed out a cafetière, loaded it up with fresh coffee, and put Oliver’s hideous bucket-mug next to it. Then we both went upstairs to get our laptops and tidy ourselves up. I for one had a blob of apricot jam on my shirt.
‘So you’re off with Nick Fitzgerald again?’ I said.
Helena tried and failed to look cool.
‘We’re just going to look at a church and go up the tower,’ she said. ‘That’s all. Not as though we’re going clubbing is it? OK if I grab a shower?’
‘Of course, and I don’t think he’s the sort to go clubbing any more than you are,’ I said, scrabbling in my suitcase for a clean shirt. There were three, all of them a bit crumpled. I never seemed to get properly unpacked at these things. The week always ended with my clothes in a big untidy heap as though someone had stirred the contents of my suitcase with a giant spoon.
Helena on the other hand had hung all her tiny clothes up in the wardrobe and filled two drawers. Perhaps that’s why she always appeared neat and crisp and I usually looked as though I’d just come back from a jumble sale?
(Point 3 on my to-do list would soon sort this out.)
Anyway, it was early days so I still had a chance of appearing relatively tidy. I had yet another cake to make too – better get on with it.
Downstairs the kitchen was pretty much as we had left it except the cafetière and the bucket-mug were missing. I think there were also a couple of pastries fewer. So Oliver had taken the opportunity to come out, grab some breakfast, and disappear back into his room again. Honestly, we weren’t so bad were we? Did he really need to sneak about avoiding us? How childish.
I worked on in silence for a while until the cake was in the oven and I was taking the first batch of cookies out when Oliver’s door opened.
He stood there for a moment watching me and then he held out his cafetière towards me accusingly. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. He just shook the cafetière towards me as though I was psychic. I wiped my hands on a tea towel.
‘Can I help you?’ I said.
I knew I was being stroppy. I knew exactly what he wanted. Personally, I would have thought he’d had more than enough caffeine for one day and it was only ten-fifteen.
‘What do I have to do to get this refilled?’ he said.
I went over to where he stood, and took the coffee pot from him.
‘You could ask nicely?’ I said with a saccharine smile. ‘It’s usually a good starting point.’
‘I assumed you would have been a bit more on the ball by now?’ he snapped and went back into his room, slamming the door behind him.
‘Well you know what they say about assume,’ I muttered.