Finished with the toast, Freya had moved on to the box of nail varnishes on the bedside table. “Oh. Just Lucas. Is this quick drying?”
“It says 60 seconds on the bottle but I’d leave it five minutes. And also: who?”
“The guy who started in the kitchen a few weeks ago.” Freya tested the varnish on her little finger. “The one I get on with.”
The way Freya said it made it sound like Sophie should know who they were talking about, so she muttered a vague, “Of course”, but if Lucas’s name had come up, it hadn’t been when Sophie was listening.
“So … what’ve you been saying about him?”
“Ugh! Nothing.” Freya screwed the lid back on the bottle and gave it a violent shake.
Freya’s moods had always been as fickle as her focus, but today Sophie felt like she was missing something bigger. Like only realising there’d been a storm by looking out the window and seeing puddles.
“Freya, I wasn’t—”
But Freya interrupted her. “Sorry.” She put the nail varnish back and gave Sophie’s foot another squeeze through the duvet. A double this time. “It’s not you I’m cross with. It’s just … people. Am I not allowed to talk to a boy without it being suspicious?”
“Apparently not.”
“Ha.”
Sophie wasn’t sure how to make this better. Freya was a flirt and that was fuel for people who preferred to speculate about other people’s drama rather than admit to their own. Until she’d started seeing Kellan, it hadn’t been an issue.
“Presumably you haven’t been doodling Lucas’s name in your notebooks and drawing hearts around them when I’m not there to stop you?”
Freya grinned then. “Actually I’ve been practising my signature for when we’re married.” She left it a beat. “Because whoever I marry I’ll be keeping the name I have now, thanks very much.”
But she went serious again, frowning down at the pattern on the bedding, tracing a spiral with the newly varnished finger, the light from the window bringing out the pearly sheen of the polish.
“I feel like I’m being watched all the time, everyone waiting for me to make a mistake.”
“Maybe don’t post so many photos of your boyfriend on your Insta and all the girls at school will stop checking in to see if you’ve broken up?”
This got a proper, wolfish grin and Freya grabbed her phone, holding it out to show Sophie the most recent upload, even though she’d been the first to comment with a good-natured #goals like someone who actually had the energy to think about dating.
“But he so pretty…” Freya crooned.
“And this Lucas chap isn’t.” It wasn’t exactly a question. Except it was.
“I never said Lucas wasn’t pretty,” Freya said, attention back on her phone as she scrolled through more of the comments. “But it’s not like that. I’m just excited about having a new work buddy. Someone the same age who doesn’t make dirty jokes or patronise me. Someone I can be me with. You know?”
“The way you are with me?”
“Don’t be daft.” Freya was still looking at her phone. “Nothing like I am with you.”
WIN
When they passed the turning for their estate, Sunny made a very loud case for being allowed to go and get changed out of her uniform before Win silenced her with the threat of dropping her home and leaving her there. Sophie remained quiet until they passed the petrol station by the roundabout.
“Freya and I used to walk from hers to go and get ice cream here.”
Win nodded like this was new information and not something she’d seen more than once, when she’d been sitting in the passenger seat herself, Mama at the wheel, driving Win over to one of her babysitting jobs.
“Win’s lactose intolerant,” Sunny said from the back, entirely unprompted. “Ice cream makes her fart.”
Exactly the sort of personal information Win liked to share with attractive, popular girls from the year below. But Sophie just smiled across at Win before turning to look out of the window at the fields zipping past faster and faster as the speed limit approached sixty. Eventually, just past the next village, an elegant sign with gold lettering on a green background directed them through a sweep of parkland to Rabscuttle Hall – Hotel & Brasserie.
“What? Do they sell bras?” Sunny snickered away at her own joke.
The hall was as imposing as its name: a stately home-turned-hotel with ivy-clad stonework and three floors of long, elegant windows leading up to a skyline of well-proportioned chimneys and crenellated gutters. At ground level, a row of sleek and shiny cars tucked themselves into its shadow, their hub caps worth more than Mama’s little silver Dacia.
Taking extra care, Win edged into a space, as Sunny announced, “There’s a dish here costs eighty quid!” thrusting the menu she’d been Googling on her phone through the gap between the seats.
“I’m trying to park, Sunny.”
But Sophie glanced at the screen and shrugged. “I’ve been here a couple of times – the food’s not all that.”
Win killed the engine and exchanged a loaded glance with her sister in the rear-view mirror. Rabscuttle Hall was a far cry from Sunday dim sum or birthday dinners with a sparkler cake at Remy’s.
As befitted someone who saw themselves as a customer, not staff, Sophie made straight for the main doors, carrying herself like someone who feasted on foie gras and kumquat foam every other Friday.
“Hello?” Sunny’s voice cut through Win’s thoughts. “Are we going inside or are we just going to lurk out here like car thieves?”
“You can’t drive. How exactly are you going to get away?” Win picked up the pace. “Break in and wait for the police to give you a lift?”
Inside was as classy as the façade. The floral arrangement spilling out of the fireplace could have rivalled Chelsea Flower Show and the air thrummed with the gentle walla-walla-chuckle-backslap of people in suits fresh from a successful meeting. As Sunny’s head threatened to swivel off her spine, Win threaded her study of their surroundings with surreptitious glances at Sophie, arms folded comfortably on the slab of marble, leaning in as she talked to the person behind the reception desk.
Once they found Lucas and handed over the parcel, that would be it. Win would offer to drive Sophie home and she’d become nothing more than a once-used number on Win’s phone.
“Oh yeah?”
“Mm?” When Win turned, Sunny was wearing a wily smile that brought out her dimple.
“Sophie Charbonneau…?”
“Shut up.”
“You like her,” Sunny hissed, too busy trying to laser the information out of the side of Win’s face to realise that Sophie was coming back.
“I said” – Win lifted her foot and leaned all her weight onto her sister’s toes – “Shut. Up.”
“Come on,” Sophie said, nodding back out of the entrance, oblivious to the way Sunny’s face contorted in pain. “There’s a door round to the kitchens we can use.”
SOPHIE