Page 25 of Christmas Spirit
Roland was still staring out of the window, still clutching his coffee exactly as he had been when Georgie had woken up. Georgie wrinkled his brow. The sunlight. That was wrong. Roland had wanted to be out of the hotel by 7.00am, when it would have been more dark than light.
“Did we sleep through the alarm?”
It would’ve been odd, because he was such a light sleeper. A fly scratching its arse, or a moonbeam farting, were more than enough to wake him up and keep him wide-eyed for hours. Unless something had given him cause to sleep long and deep.
“My alarm didn’t go off. In fact, when I woke up about twenty minutes before you did, and saw the time, I assumed I must have slept through. When I checked the alarm, it wasn’t set,” he said, his face expressionless, distant, and definitely not that of a man who’d spent the night screwing his brains out.
Roland, did we or did we not have hot and off the charts sex last night?
Georgie suppressed a nervous giggle. That was one question he wouldn’t be asking any time soon. Because he didn’t need to. Because it had never happened. Had it?
Georgie cleared his throat.
“I saw you do it, but we were dealing with the power outage and it would have been easy to have made a mistake, I suppose.”
“In the dark, yes. But the room was alight with candles. I didn’t make a mistake. I double checked it. I’d set the alarm, but this morning there was no alarm.”
So you made a mistake…Georgie wasn’t about to contradict him. Everything about Roland was tight and tense, closed off, and if he said too much, he might just end up having his head bitten off, chewed up, and spat out. They might just as well have been back at Pendleton Manor.
“So, erm, when do you want to set off?”
“Soon, but you may as well have breakfast first. Help yourself. I don’t want it.”
Georgie gazed greedily at the little trolley parked next to the coffee table. Heaped with bacon, sausage, eggs, hash browns, toast, and little pots of jam and butter and honey, his stomach rumbled. There were also a couple of croissants. And a large cafetière half full of coffee, coffee that was filling the air with its rich, nutty aroma.
“You don’t want any? But you ordered it. Which means you must’ve spoken to Nicholas. So, have the roads have been cleared?” Georgie said, as he piled his plate high. God, he was starving, but he wasn’t going to let himself think why that might be.
“I didn’t order it. This was here when I woke up. I’ve not left the room so, no, I haven’t seen or spoken to Nicholas.”
Georgie’s hand froze, clutching onto the fork midway between the plate and his mouth. Even he, a humble, lowly kitchen boy, knew that you just didn’t wheel in a tray of breakfast to a guest’s room, especially when the guest hadn’t ordered it.
“That’s — odd.”
And what had Nicholas, or whoever, seen when they’d crept in? He gulped back a big mouthful of coffee, too much, coughing and spluttering, his eyes watering.
Roland huffed. “Yes, it is. But why doesn’t that surprise me? This whole place is odd. As soon as I can get an internet signal, I intend to do a little digging. Five more minutes,” he said putting down his coffee cup, “then we need to get going.”
Roland pulled on his waxed cotton jacket, before he turned back to staring through the window.
Georgie ate quickly, wrapping the croissants up in a paper napkin. He’d add them to the bread rolls he’d just about managed to rescue from the lunch buffet before it had been cleared away. Was that only the day before? It felt like a lifetime ago.
“Ready,” he said, getting up and pulling on his own jacket, which definitely wasn’t waxed, before grabbing his rucksack.
Roland spun on his heel, strode across the room, and threw open the door, leaving Georgie to follow in his wake.
They creaked their way downstairs, their footsteps the only sound in the otherwise silent hotel. There should be people milling around, making their way to breakfast but, just as last night, there was no sign of anybody. Like Roland, as soon as he could, he was going to google the place. But what would he put into the search engine? He didn’t know what it was called and he didn’t know where they were.
“Hello?” Roland called, pulling out his wallet as they approached the reception desk.
Nobody and nothing answered, except for the heavy tick of the ornamental clock.
“I’ll see if he’s in the lounge.” Georgie put down his rucksack and headed into the room where he and Roland had shared dinner, and where Roland had let slip a side of him Georgie hadn’t even guessed at.
A fire burned in the grate, and the plaster Santa stood guard. Still smiling, eyes still twinkling. Georgie swung around — and staggered straight into Roland.
“Careful.” Roland’s hands clamped onto his arms, before falling away a second later. Roland didn’t step back, nor did Georgie.
Georgie gazed up into pupil-blown eyes, their green no more than a thin outer rim. Inhaling a deep breath, Georgie’s senses were drenched in the warm spice aroma of Roland’s cologne. An aroma that had been twisted up in the bed sheet. An aroma that in the darkest hours of the night had been mixed with a scent that had been more basic and primitive. Georgie had to know. He had to know if his dream was really a memory.
