“You’re only leaving him the kitchen porter?” I say, unable to help myself. Arjun is not going to take that well.
“Raw talent,” Mrs. SB says briskly. “He can mould the boy in his own image. Now . . .” She sniffs, reaching her hands out. I take one first; Lucas hesitates before gripping her other hand in his own. “That’s enough business talk,” she says. “May I remind you that we are a family here. Whatever happens, that won’t change. If Forest Manor has to close, I will do whatever I can to help you. Whatever I can. Please know that the two of you will always be very dear to me.”
I’m tearing up. Mrs. SB knows exactly how hard it is for me to have a conversation like this, and she squeezes my hand tightly. For a second I actually let myself think about it: drinking my last coffee-spiked hot chocolate with Arjun; packing my box o’ bits into my car; hugging goodbye to Barty and Mrs. SB, the people who made me feel at home when that mattered more than anything.
“Absolutely,” I say. My voice is a bit squeaky. “And I’m here for you for as long as you can have me. Just name a job, and I’m on it.”
Lucas nods once. “Whatever you need.”
“Wonderful. Well”—Mrs. SB gives us a small, tired smile and releases our hands—“we’re selling as much as we can. That’s step one.”
I widen my eyes. “And Barty’s . . .”
“Very upset about it,” Mrs. SB says, lowering her voice and glancing towards the kitchen. “But if we can’t raise funds, we will lose the hotel. So some of those old Bartholomew pieces have to go. Can I put you two in charge of the lost-property room?”
“In charge of, as in, of selling it all?” I say. The lost-property room started out as a lost-property box, but over the years it grew, and now there are hundreds—if not thousands—of items in there. We’re not big on throwing things away here at Forest Manor. “Can we even do that?”
“I’ve had a look, and the law is a bit vague, but I think as long as we took steps to return the items—which we always do when something new lands in there—and a reasonable amount of time has passed, then we’re entitled to call it ours. And if it’s ours . . . then I don’t see why it can’t raise us some money. It’s a bit of a mess in there, but you never know, there might be some gems. Can I count on you two to get it all sold off? I’m sure Poor Mandy will help.”
“Absolutely,” Lucas says. “I look forward to it.”
My eyebrow twitches. Lucas hates the lost-property room. He calls it “the bin.”
Mrs. SB sits back with a long sigh, then notices she has her cardigan only half on and says, “Oh, bother. What a day. I’m going to need you two to really step up now. I hope you’ve realised this means you’ll be working shifts together five days a week.” She brings her glasses back down onto the bridge of her nose and adopts her sternest expression. “Can you both do that?”
Neither of us makes eye contact with the other.
“Of course,” I say brightly.
“Yes,” Lucas says. “Yes, I can work with Izzy. No problem at all.”
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
The next day, I realise what Mrs. SB means when she says mucking in. We’re in the kitchen: I’m suddenly a sous-chef and Lucas has just been enlisted to wait on tables at lunch. There is a gold-trimmed notice on the front desk that reads, Please ring for assistance and we will be with you in a jiffy! in Barty’s curling cursive. I suspect that note is going to be on the desk a lot in the next few weeks.
“It will not fit,” Lucas says, voice muffled from inside the polo shirt he’s trying to pull on. The issue is that Lucas is enormous, and the waiting uniforms are not designed for people who tower over everyone and have those weird extra muscles joining their neck and their shoulders.
Arjun shoots me a gleeful glance over the pot he is currently stirring. Looking gleeful while slowly stirring a pot does make you look a bit witchy, so I try to stay poker-faced on the other hob. Arjun’s making his black dal, which has to be prepared in an extremely precise way. He’s already yelled at me five times and apologised seven times.
Arjun is a sweetheart, he just acts like a dragon. If Forest Manor is my family, Arjun’s my overbearing older brother. He always thinks he’s right, and annoyingly he often is—he was the first person to tell me Drew wasn’t a good friend to me. But he’s softer than he seems. Every year, he makes me a special batch of brownies on the date of my dad’s birthday, because I once told him brownies were Dad’s favourite, and if he clocks I’m having a rough day, he always slips a teaspoon of sugar into my tea.