Page 125 of The Wake-Up Call

Nobody has said the wordrewardyet. But everyone is thinking it.

We wait. Harper keeps smiling. One of her security guys checks his watch.

“Now, since I’m here,” Harper says, looking between us and dialling her smile up a notch, “how about a little set?”

“A set! Right!” Mrs. SB says brightly. “Lovely.”

Izzy and I exchange a glance.Noreward? But Harper Armwright must be worth about half a billion pounds.

“Ollie!” Mrs. SB calls suddenly.

I turn to see Ollie standing open-mouthed in the doorway.

“Is that...” he begins, voice hoarse.

“Yes, dear, Harper Armwright,” Mrs. SB says briskly. “I’m going to need you to help her get set up for a performance.”

“Per... formance...” Ollie whispers, clutching at the door frame, as though perhaps he might otherwise not be able to remain standing.

“My fans will be so excited—we’ll do a reel, yeah?” Harper says to one of the members of her team, who nods enthusiastically,whipping her phone out. “I’ve already told them how super-cute this place is. It’ll be perfect.SoChristmas.”

Barty’s phone sings out the old Nokia theme tune. Harper jumps slightly and then stares in fascination as he pulls out his 1990s mobile phone.

“Sorry,” Poor Mandy says, coming to life and snagging her glasses down from the top of her head. “You told your fifteen million followers that our hotel is super-cute?”

“Yuh-huh,” Harper says as she waits for her security guy to declare she’s safe to leave our lost-property room. “Can I get one of those?” she asks a member of her team, pointing to Barty’s phone.

“Apparently our website has stopped working,” Barty says, phone still at his ear as the security guard looks left, right, left again, and then gestures Harper through after Ollie, who seems to have remembered how to be a functional human being.

We all turn to stare at Barty.

“It says there is ‘too much traffic.’ Apparently, we’ve had one hundred bookings in the last six minutes.”

Mrs. SB lowers herself slowly onto a box. Harper beams around at us from the doorway.

“Oh, that’s so nice!” she says, then waves goodbye over her shoulder, her hand just about visible behind the gigantic bald man in sunglasses who follows close behind her.

Slowly, as one, we turn to look at Poor Mandy. The lights on the tree shine through the door from the lobby, alternating red and green, flashing in Mandy’s glasses.

“Sorry,” she says. “You said do the social media. Did I go too far?”

“Mandy,” Mrs. SB says, voice choked. “Dearest Mandy. I am so sorry.”

Poor Mandy looks baffled as Mrs. SB pulls her into a hug, and then Barty and Izzy join them, and then, because it’s Christmas,and because Izzy loves me back, and because Mandy has just saved my job, I pile in, too.

“What are you sorry for?” Mandy asks from inside the hug.

“When someone doesn’t value themselves, dear,” Mrs. SB says, pulling back and wiping her face, “it’s far too easy to take their word for it. But you’re absolutelybrilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that you’ve saved Forest Manor Hotel from oblivion.”

“Oh, I’msoglad to have helped,” Mandy says, looking overcome. “I did wonder... but I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, and...” She breathes on her glasses and then wipes them on her reindeer jumper. “Anyway, it was all Izzy and Lucas, really. It was all the Ring Thing. I just spread the word. I have to say, I’ll be very glad to delete Twitter now,” she says, just as Mrs. SB cuts in to say, “I’ll be promoting you to Head of Social Media Marketing with immediate effect!”

“Oh,” Poor Mandy says, looking stricken. “Really?”

“Well, you have such a knack for this!” Mrs. SB says, waving her phone.

“Right,” Poor Mandy says forlornly. Then, after a deep breath, she lifts her chin and says, “Actually, I’d rather stay on reception, if I may.”

“Oh!” Mrs. SB looks at Mandy with surprise. “Yes! Ofcourse.”

---