On Monday morning, I broke the zip on my suitcase with six days still to go.
I had been sitting on it at the time. That was probably relevant.
The split ran right across the front, leaving a sleeve hanging out like a small white flag. I took a photograph and sent it to Callum.
He rang before I had got off the floor.
“Tell me you haven't packed the kettle.”
“We haven't bought one for Eastmere.”
“Exactly. Room for improvement.”
I hooked the sleeve back inside. “It's all my winter things. I'm trying to be organised.”
“How's that going?”
“Shut up.”
He laughed, and I smiled at the broken case.
“We'll find you another one,” he said. “After work. Don't buy anything until I've looked at it.”
“You can't mend a zip with your teeth.”
“You've never asked.”
Someone knocked on my door. I told him I had to go, and he made a kissing noise down the phone, deliberately loud enough to be heard in the corridor.
“Was that the sea lion?” Tess asked when I opened it.
She wore her reception blouse with a cardigan over it and held two mugs. She passed me the one with the chipped handle.
“My boyfriend.”
“Same question.”
I let her in. She looked at the suitcase, then at me.
“You do know Sunday isn't today?”
“I want to be ready.”
She stepped over a pile of jumpers and sat on the edge of my bed. There wasn't much else to sit on in a staff room at Harbour House. I had a narrow wardrobe, a little bedside table, a washbasin, a window that stuck in wet weather and, until that morning, one functioning suitcase.
On Sunday, Callum and I would have a room together in Eastmere. A proper double bed. A window overlooking a street instead of the bins. He had a job at a boat-hire place, and I had housekeeping work at a bigger hotel. We had looked at the photograph of the room so often that I could picture the blue curtain with my eyes shut.
“I can take that jumper,” Tess said, pointing with her mug. “Save you some space.”
“You gave it to me.”
“I'm a generous person. I can do it twice.”
I threw it at her. She caught it against her mug and swore when tea spilled on her thumb.
By the time we went downstairs, my shift had started and hers was about to. Mara was waiting outside the linen room with the laundry delivery. At forty-something, she could move an entire hotel through breakfast simply by standing in the wrong person's way.
“Morning, Lena. I'll need you on the second floor first.”
“All right.”
“And Ruby's back from today. Show her which rooms we've changed round.”
I stopped with my hand on the linen-room door.
“Ruby?”
Mara glanced past me. “You remember Ruby.”
Of course I remembered her.
She had taught me to make the beds when I started nearly six months earlier. She could get a duvet into its cover in about twelve seconds, and she'd once taken a guest's damp towel off my shoulder with two fingers and said, “You don't have to wear it home.”
She was also Callum's ex. He and I had been together for about five months. Ruby had left the hotel not long after we'd started going out openly.
And there she was, coming up the passage with a black holdall bumping against her leg.
Her hair was shorter. The ends had used to sit on her shoulders; now they curved under her jaw. She wore the same small silver hoops I remembered and a grey sweatshirt with one cuff pulled over her hand.
“Hi, Lena.”
“Hi.”
I looked at the holdall. A pillow was tucked through its straps.
Mara took a key from her pocket. “Room at the end, Ruby. Put your things up there, then come back down. Lena's finishing on Saturday, so I'd rather you knew the floor before she leaves.”
Ruby nodded. “Thanks.”
I held the linen-room door open while she passed. She smelled faintly of the sharp orange hand cream she'd always kept in her pocket.
“Didn't know you were coming back,” I said.
“Only sorted it last week.”
She gave me a quick smile without quite meeting my eyes, and went upstairs.
Mara lifted a bundle of sheets from the delivery cart.
“The vacancy's been up for a fortnight,” she said. “She knows the work. Saves us training someone through the last busy weeks.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“Your face did.”
I picked up two bundles at once and took them into the cupboard.
For most of the morning, Ruby was exactly as I remembered at work. She checked under the beds without being asked. She found a lipstick mark on a pillowcase I had missed. When the wheels of our trolley caught on the lift's brass strip, she put her foot against the frame and pulled while I pushed.
“Still trying to kill people, then,” she said.
“Only staff.”
The lift shuddered around us. She smiled properly that time.
It almost made things worse. I had prepared myself for someone difficult. Someone who would ask about Callum while we tucked sheets, or tell me she knew him better.
She asked whether we still kept spare blankets in the downstairs cupboard. She asked what time lunch was. She didn't mention him once.
At half past twelve, I came through the back door carrying a bag of empty cleaning bottles and found him waiting in the yard.
His blue jacket was open over his kiosk T-shirt. He had a paper bag in one hand and my water bottle in the other.
“You left this on the counter yesterday.”
“You've come all this way for a bottle?”
“And to announce that lunch is served.”
He held up the bag. Warm pastry smelled better than anything in the yard had a right to smell.
I set the empty bottles down. “You've got ten minutes?”
“Twelve, if I run back.”
I stepped close and brushed crumbs from the front of his shirt. There weren't many. I wanted an excuse to touch him.
He bent his head and caught my fingers against his chest.
“They're future crumbs,” he said. “You're wasting your time.”
The door opened behind me.
Ruby came out with another bag of bottles. Her eyes went straight to Callum. She paused on the step, her arm still holding the door.
His hand moved from mine to my waist.
“Didn't know you were back,” he said.
“Well. I am.”
Ruby brought the bag to the recycling bin and tipped the bottles in. One dropped beside it. She crouched to get it instead of looking at either of us.
I put my hand on Callum's neck and kissed him.
He tasted of coffee. His thumb pressed lightly into my side, and for a second I forgot why I'd done it. Then Ruby stood up and I remembered.
“We've got to find a suitcase later,” I said, too brightly. “Mine's broken.”
“We'll find one.” Callum leaned his forehead against mine. “You can have half of mine if we don't.”
“You have two T-shirts and seventeen pairs of trainers.”
“Six. You've counted both shoes.”
I laughed. Ruby was already going through the door.
“See you upstairs,” I called.
“Yeah.”
She let it close behind her.
Callum unfolded the top of the paper bag. “What's she doing here?”
“Working. Mara gave her the vacancy.”
He looked at the shut door for a moment, then handed me the larger pastry.
“Right. Eat that while it's hot.”
We sat on the low wall together. His knee bumped mine, and he told me about a customer who'd asked whether a hired paddleboard came with paddles. I laughed with my mouth full.
When he left, he kissed the corner of it and wiped a flake of pastry off my chin.
Upstairs, Ruby had finished the next bed without me. She was folding the spare blanket into a neat square.
“I could have helped with that,” I said.
“It's done.”
She lifted the folded blanket and went past me to the wardrobe.
I wanted to say something about the kiss. Nothing I thought of would make it sound less deliberate.
So I took the other side of the bed and smoothed a sheet that was already flat.