The Wake-Up Call(97)

Lucas


It’s Christmas Eve: party day, and my second day as Izzy Jenkins’s boyfriend.

I am the sort of happy I would have previously considered unobtainable—and I am very close to making today absolutely perfect.

“If you could just try to remember . . .” I say, glancing up towards the hotel’s main entrance.

“Are you actually calling me at eight in the morning on Christmas Eve to ask me if I remember a celebrity staying on my floor at your hotel in 2019?” says the woman on the other end of the line.

It is a refreshing and necessary reminder that I might be trying a bit too hard.

“My apologies,” I say. “If anything comes to mind, please do get in touch by email.”

“Right,” the woman says, and I wince at the click as she hangs up.

“No luck?” Poor Mandy says sympathetically, popping up from the front of the desk, where she is doing what Izzy refers to as “festooning.” Everyone is either festooning for Izzy or chopping vegetables for Arjun right now.

“No luck,” I say.

Poor Mandy pats my arm. She has been patting me a lot since the Christmas-card debacle was cleared up. I think she feels responsible for Izzy and me torturing one another for a year. Which she is, a bit.

“Do you know what, dear?” Mandy says, beginning the arduous process of checking her phone: glasses coming down from her head, hand going into her pocket, a lot of wriggling and bouncing up and down in her chair as she eases the phone out from her jeans, the case flipping open, her glasses dropping down her nose and up again . . . “I may be able to help you.”

I appreciate Poor Mandy—she is always reliable, she’s very popular with the guests, and she works all the worst shifts. But I am almost certain that her idea will involve tweeting to our 112 followers, and I simply cannot see that helping.

“Thank you,” I say. “Feel free to try.”

“Any luck?” Ollie calls as he dashes past with a tray of jellies.

“Not yet,” I call after him. “Do you know if Izzy is having—”

“I’m Switzerland!” Ollie yells over his shoulder. “You’re getting nothing out of me!”

“Anything on the ring?” Barty calls down the newly functioning stairs as he dashes along the landing. Everyone is dashing today. It is giving the hotel a faint buzz, as though someone has dialled all the appliances up at once.

“Not yet,” I call. Everyone’s support is appreciated, but also, when I have no updates, slightly irritating.

“Lucas! Anything on the—”

“Not yet!” I snap, and then look up to find the cool gaze of my girlfriend.

“—Christmas party menu that’s vegan?”

“Oh.”

I soften instantly. Izzy looks amused.

“Yes. Here.”

I show her Arjun’s latest scribbled version of the menu. She scans over it and I watch, hungry for the sight of her. All that time I spent thinking I could do without Izzy Jenkins in my day, and now I truly cannot have too much of her.

“Have we—”

“Yes. They’re set up in the orangery.”

She taps her bottom lip, still scanning the menu.

“Does Arjun know about the—”

“Yes. He swore a lot, but we got through it.”

Izzy nods. She looks up at me.

“And—”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t actually—”

“I am confident that it is already done.”

“It’s not, because—”

“Have a cup of tea. Stop thinking so hard.”

“I was going to say, have I told you that I love you today?”

“Oh. No. You haven’t.”

“See?” She looks smug as she turns away. “Told you it wasn’t all done yet. Mr. Townsend! How can I help you?”

Mr. Townsend is making his way over from his armchair. He is doing a remarkably good job of dodging various members of the housekeeping team, as well as a small chihuahua that arrived with Dinah today. “Doggy daycare problems,” she announced as she walked in with it on a lead. “Do not give me shit about this.”

“It’s Lucas I need, actually,” Mr. Townsend says. “Will you join me in the orangery? I’d like to try out those new sofas.”

He smiles as he takes my arm.

“Oh, fine!” Izzy says, shooting me an arch look, as if to say, So you’re the favourite now!

I raise my eyebrows back at her—Of course I am. Then my phone buzzes in my hand, and I look down to see Ant?nio calling. My breath hitches. It’s Saturday. I didn’t phone him on Thursday. I didn’t forget—I just didn’t want to.

And I don’t want to speak to him now, either. I have noticed that the more I value myself, the less grateful I feel to my uncle, and the more I wonder why I put myself through these conversations at all. For now, for a while, he will have to wait until I feel ready to talk to him.

The call rings out as Mr. Townsend and I make our way through to the orangery. I exhale slowly.

“I have something for you,” Mr. Townsend says as I settle him on a sofa.

Izzy found this sofa on Gumtree, being sold . . . by us. It’s an old one from Opal Cottage—once a bold shade of red, it is now russet and faded, but somehow it has come to life again under the patterned cushion covers that Izzy created from an old set of hotel curtains. She has such a gift for this: bringing out the best in things.