I stop and look at her. “I wish you’d said something.”
“Oh.” Mira stares at the ground, rolling a bit of gravel around under her shoe. “I wanted to, I think? I didn’t mean to not tell you.”
I remember her face across the kitchen table. “You were waiting for the right moment.”
“Yes? I didn’t…” She looks thoughtful, and I know she’s trying to pick her way through the minefield that is Talking About Flora’s Feelings. “I didn’t want you to think it was about you. You understand? You have this way of taking everything and making it personal. Anything bad, anything that makes you sad, it has to be a punishment for something you’ve done. Like you deserve it. And you hold on to that in your head and you tell it to yourself over and over and over until you believe it. And it’s not true.” Mira sighs. “I didn’t want to do that to you, so…I was waiting for a good time to tell you.”
“I don’t think there ever would have been a good time,” I say. “Not with this head.”
She puts her arm around my shoulder, gently cuffing the side of my head. “Tell you a secret,” she whispers, pulling me alongside her. “I think your head isn’t right about you deserving to be sad. You should remember that.”
She’s right – as usual. But she’s still leaving.
We cover the rest of the driveway together, and she changes the subject. “So what is it that’s so interesting in the library all of a sudden? Two days ago, you were hating it…”
“I never said I hated it, exactly…”
“And now you’re here, practically sprinting back to all the boxes.” A slow grin spreads across her face. “Or is it not so much the boxes but the boy?”
“He’s not a boy, Mee.”
“Ah! I knew it!” Her elbow digs into my ribs.
“I meant that he’s the same age as you, so ‘boy’ doesn’t exactly sound right. And you know it.”
“Meh. But it is him you’re making such a rush for, yes?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Can you just drop it? It’s not funny.” I yank my bag up on my shoulder. Someone has opened the first of the library’s French windows. An image of Hal striding across the library and reaching for the handle of the window fills my mind, captured in slow-motion. I can feel the movement of the air as the window opens, see the sunlight flash on his hair, catch the scent of him as he turns back from the window towards me – his hair falling just in front of his eyes, his hand outstretched, reaching for mine, and…
“Hello? Flora?”
Hal’s face is replaced by Mira’s, her eyebrows raised expectantly at me.
“Sorry – what?”
“I said, what did you find? More houses?”
“No. We think maybe we found the soldier he was looking for after all – maybe.”
“Good! This means he’ll be gone soon, and I get you back. Mrs Tilney keeps pairing me with Ursula on the rota, and she’s so boring.” Mira drops her voice to a stage-whisper. “And she smears the mirrors.”
I take a breath to tell her about the flashes of something I’ve seen in Hal – the glimpses of whatever it is underneath the surface. But as soon as I open my mouth, there’s a shout from behind us, and jogging up the drive from the village is a figure dressed in black-and-white chef’s trousers and a red T-shirt, a satchel thrown over his shoulder. Philippe, one of the sous-chefs from the kitchens.
“Hey! How’s it going?” He turns his beaming smile on us, looking from me to Mira.
“Oh, you know. It’s going.” She waves a hand vaguely in the air.
Everything I was about to say to Mira turns to jelly in my mouth, sitting on my tongue and clogging my throat. I shrug, and fiddle with the strap on my backpack. Philippe’s arrival has dimmed a bulb in my head. Because however nice he is, he’s someone else. Like pretty much the rest of the world. And with him comes the constant scratching feeling under my skin – a reminder that I have to keep up my guard. Don’t get manic. Don’t get depressed. Keep being normal.
But as the three of us fall into step, Mira and Philippe already moving towards the staff entrance on the left of the drive, me towards the hotel’s main entrance ahead, I realize that the entire time I’ve been in the library, I’ve not felt like that.
I’ve known Philippe the whole year I’ve worked here, and I still feel edgy around him. It’s not personal, it’s just people. But I’ve known Hal Waverley about five minutes…and I don’t feel like that at all.
Maybe it’s the stranger thing – just the same as he knew he could tell me something that felt secret. Maybe it’s because I know that when he’s gone, he’s gone. I’ll never have to see him again after this.
Then, as the three of us are about to go our separate ways, there’s a movement behind the French windows and suddenly Hal appears on the terrace. One hand shades his eyes from the sun, the other is clutching a piece of paper. He scans the driveway and spots me. I feel it. I can see it in the way he straightens, as though a weight has fallen from his back.
He’s found more.
Something in my stomach knots and lurches, the way it does at the first drop on a roller coaster.
“Flora! Come on!” The hand that was shielding his eyes is waving now, beckoning; the other holding up the page. “You have to see this!”
With a mumbled, “Got to go – see you,” to the others, I jog towards the terrace steps.
As soon as I make it to the top of the wonky stone steps he clears his throat and starts reading.
“‘The ball may only have lasted a few hours, but our dance has continued every night since in my dreams. I hear the music, feel the floor beneath my feet, just as clear and as real as it was that night. The only thing missing is you.’” He looks up from the page expectantly.
“What is that? What ball?”
“You’re going to love this – come and see.” With a grin, he darts through the open French window into the library.
“Love what?” It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to coming indoors from the bright sunlight. When they do, I see he’s cleared most of the papers that were spread out across the table and re-stacked at least half the boxes in neat piles on the far side of the room. Now, three boxes are sitting on the table, lids off, the contents piled in front of each one.
“When did you do this?”
“Oh, last night.” He’s already grabbing for another piece of paper.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” I wonder if this is what it’s like for Charlie, talking to me?
“Apparently not. Here.” He holds the page out to me. Like on most of the other papers from the boxes, the ink has faded over the years, but it’s still just about clear enough to know what I’m looking at.
“It’s a shopping list. A big one.” Bottles of wine, fruit, meat, eggs, flour…and a whole load of things I don’t recognize. But whatever they are, there’s a lot of them. I look from the page to Hal, and back again. “It’s for a party, right?”
“A party or a…?” He waits for me to finish his sentence. Which I would, except I have no idea what he’s talking about. After a long, long pause, he bites his lip and looks up at me from beneath his fringe. “No?”