Page 14 of The Wake-Up Call

After a moment, she starts again, more slowly. “Unsorted. Unsellable. Upcycling—so, like, stuff I think I can glam up. This is stuff for Poor Mandy to take pretty pictures of. And this is for the car boot, Etsy, Gumtree... Then these need washing, and that’s for the rubbish bin.”

I follow this time. I hate it when the language barrier slows me down—it’s rare now, though it happened all the time when I first moved to the UK three years ago. Nowadays I even think in English most of the time. Myvôwould have been horrified to hear that—my grandfather believed no language is more beautiful than Brazilian Portuguese. But I like English, for all its awkwardness. It is usually worth taking the time to learn something difficult, I find.

I watch Izzy as she taps away at the keyboard, making an irritated noise when the system takes a moment to load. I can still see the woman I thought she was last year. Independent, stubborn, but kind and funny, too.

And then I remember her screaming at me across the hotel lawn last December. The countless times she screwed me over in the last year, the petty point-scoring, the way her humour turns barbed the moment it’s turned on me.

I look away to sort the next box. Noteverythingdifficult is worth the time.

Izzy

The next few days are a blur of restaurant service, odd jobs, and building dust. Lucas and I come to a rare and begrudging agreement on one thing: if we must share shifts, we should be as far away from each other as possible. So one of us gets on with some of the four billion things that need doing around here, and the other covers the desk, even if that just means keeping an ear out from the kitchen and sprinting when the phone rings.

Slowly, items from around the hotel begin to disappear. An antique wooden dresser; several paintings of old men whose importance was long ago forgotten, which they would probably have found very upsetting; and the vases. I never thought I would miss those vases, but every time someone comes to collect another one, I feel a teeny twinge in my chest.

Meanwhile, I am making rubbish progress with the Ring Thing. It’s actually a lot harder than I thought it would be, though of course Lucas is under the impression that I’m seconds away from returning every single one. I do get one promising email about the diamond engagement ring from an address that’s a garbled string of letters and numbers. It says,Hold fire, I’ll call upon return to UK.No name, nothing. All a bit weird. But nobody rings, so I forget about it, lost in a flurry of lost-property items, rain, and social obligations.

When the phone call comes, I am talking through a new lunch menu with Arjun, who now has a very limited number of people with whom to discuss these things (Ollie suggested we should serve Doritos with Arjun’s forty-eight-hour chilli and has been banned from having opinions).

“The bitterness needs offsetting,” Arjun is saying.

“Right, totally,” I say, bubble-wrapping a vintage snow globe that just sold to someone in Northumberland for a satisfying £85. It’s a great price, but I hate selling this stuff—especially the festive decorations. I want the hotel to look like it did on my first Christmas here: glowing, gorgeous, its mantelpieces laden with thick fir branches and golden lights.

“I’m thinking salt-crusted parsnip?”

“Salt-crusted,” I say, tearing the Sellotape with my teeth. “Perfect.”

“Are you humouring me?” Arjun asks, eyes appearing from behind the menu, which is held about two inches from his face. He’s so overdue a visit to the optician that I have considered booking one for him and luring him there by pretending I’ve found a fantastic new deli.

“I’m giving you what you need,” I say, “which is a sounding board and some validation.”

The menu drops further. “Will you swap jobs with Ollie?” Arjun asks. “Please?”

“Ollie’s great. He’s just new, and you never like new things. You thought I was annoying for atleasta year.”

“You have always been my favourite!” Arjun says, outraged at the very suggestion. He has a selective memory for his own bad-temperedness.

“Give Ollie a chance.”

“Puh,” Arjun says as he nabs my pen to scribble down a note about parsnips. “You give Lucas a chance, then.”

He looks up and laughs at my expression. Arjun is usually the last person to suggest going easy on anyone. I remember the first time Drew popped in to see me while I was at work—she’d been hoping for a free lunch. Arjun eyed her through the kitchen door and said,That’s the flatmate you’re always bending over backwards for? I say cut her loose. She’s ordered three sides, Izzy. That is a woman who takes what she can get.

The phone rings before I can respond to Arjun.

“Forest Manor Hotel and Spa, this is Izzy speaking! How can I help you?”

“Hello,” says a gravelly male voice. “Full name, please?”

“Umm. Izzy Jenkins? Isabelle Jenkins?”

“And can I ask you to confirm the address of your place of work?”

I blink. “Am I, like, going through security for something here?”

There is a slight pause. “I got an email,” the man says. “And I need to confirm that I’m speaking to the correct person.”

“Was the email about a wedding or engagement ring?” I say hopefully.

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