Chapter 4 #2
‘Oh, I’m nobody,’ Hunter says easily. ‘But I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say you’re being unfair to them both. It sounds like it was an honest mistake.’
OK, now I do want to look at him, so I can show him how grateful I am for this defence that I absolutely do not deserve. But he’s too busy watching Sabrina to return my glance.
‘It was,’ says Luna, with a tremulous smile in Hunter’s direction. ‘It really was, Sabrina, I promise. Summers, Winter . . . Like Zara said, it’s an easy mistake to make. Don’t you think?’
Sabrina looks like she really wants to disagree with this, but Hunter shifts on the spot, as if to remind her of his presence, and she closes her mouth again.
‘OK,’ she says, with a theatrical sigh. ‘Luna . . . I mean, we invited the wrong Rosie. So now we just have to invite the right Rosie. Yes?’
‘Um, no,’ says Luna in a whisper. She holds up her phone. ‘I just checked her Instagram,’ she goes on. ‘Rosie Summers is at another spa hotel. In Iceland. Apparently she’s landed some big campaign for WanderNest – you know, the hotel chain?’
There’s an audible intake of breath at this piece of news.
Dante in particular looks like he’s about to explode at the sheer audacity of someone deciding to visit a hotel that isn’t his.
For a moment, I almost forget I’m the cause of all this drama, then I happen to catch Hunter’s eye in the mirror, only for him to swiftly look away again, casually reminding me of my ongoing humiliation.
‘Wait!’ says Luna frantically, with the air of someone about to save the day. ‘I was just thinking, Sabrina. Maybe it’s a good thing that we have the wrong Rosie.’
Sabrina’s lip curls in derision. To be honest, I’m not exactly loving the title ‘Wrong Rosie’ myself, but it’s better than the many alternatives I can see lined up on Sabrina’s lips, so I let it go.
‘No, seriously,’ Luna’s saying now, her eyes lit up with an almost religious fervour as she fights for her job – and possibly her life, if Sabrina Bates really is as fearsome as she seems. ‘Think about it. We don’t have an average girl yet, do we?
And people love seeing an average girl in these campaigns.
It reassures them that they could do all the things they see the influencer doing, too.
So, maybe Rosie could be our Ms Average? ’
‘Hold on a second,’ I interject, not sure I like the sound of this any more than I liked the Wrong Rosie thing.
But Sabrina’s nodding again, her teeth bared in what she presumably thinks a smile looks like.
‘People do like average, for some reason,’ she says, pronouncing the word as if it’s an ancient enemy she’s been locked in a feud with for decades. ‘I suppose it could work.’
‘You can’t be serious?’ says Bex Foster, who’s wearing a long black evening gown that makes her look like the star of a film noir. ‘You’re not paying this . . . impostor person . . . the same as you’re paying us, are you?’
Wait: they’re all getting paid for this? To stay in a luxury – albeit possibly haunted – hotel for free?
Wow.
There was definitely nothing in the email I was sent about getting paid; a thought which seems to occur to Sabrina at the same time as it does to me.
‘We do need five influencers for the competition,’ she says thoughtfully.
‘And we’ve kind of maxed-out the budget already, now that we have Mr Bex here on board.
Oh, it’s not a problem,’ she adds gushingly, turning to the Fosters.
‘You know we’re absolutely thrilled to have you both here.
But because Bex and Daniel share an account, they can only really count as one influencer,’ she goes on, speaking almost to herself now.
‘So I suppose it would be helpful to have a fifth person who wasn’t going to cost much. ’
Beside me, Hunter shuffles his feet against the tiled floor. ‘That hardly seems fair,’ he points out mildly. ‘If you’re paying everyone else, you should surely be paying Rosie, too?’
‘Oh, no, that’s OK,’ I gasp, too dizzy now to think straight. ‘I don’t need money. I mean, I do need money, but . . . um, I wasn’t expecting to get any for this. So if I’m allowed to stay, that’s absolutely fine by me. Being allowed to stay would be all the payment I need.’
My voice is shaking by the end of this short speech; I’m so horribly aware of everyone’s eyes on me that it’s all I can do to get the words out.
But the fact is, I didn’t come all this way, and pretend – albeit briefly – to be someone else just because I fancied a trip to the Highlands.
I did it because I need this. I need this opportunity to change my life, just like the email said it would.
I mean, I’m a twenty-nine-year-old office manager who hates her job, and just got dumped.
I don’t have anywhere to live. I had to max out my credit card to buy that bag of Haribo at the station, and my next direct debit is going to bounce so hard it might hurt someone. Probably me.
So yes, I do need the money, as it happens. But, even more than that, I just need a break. I need the ‘life-changing journey of reinvention’ the email promised. And, now that I’m here, I’m not about to let myself be bullied out of it.
For once.
‘It’s also probably worth remembering that Rosie’s just had quite an ordeal in the sauna,’ Hunter says, politely refraining from mentioning the fact that he had quite the ordeal himself when he walked in on me.
‘She could’ve been seriously hurt. You’re lucky she’s not threatening to sue the hotel for negligence. ’
‘Oh, no, I wouldn’t want to—’ I begin, stopping abruptly when he elbows me sharply in the side. ‘I am very thirsty,’ I say instead, truthfully. ‘And is it just me, or is the room a bit wobbly right now?’
‘Here.’
Zara Harris appears at my elbow and hands me a bottle of water in a Chrysalis-branded glass bottle; a small act of kindness which would be enough to make me cry if I wasn’t basically just a dried-out husk of a person at this point.
I take the bottle and practically pour it down my throat, gasping in pleasure at the icy coolness of it.
I’m not acting – I really am so thirsty I was considering drinking from one of the vases of flowers that are dotted around the foyer until Zara stepped up – but the sight of me guzzling away is the final straw for Sabrina, who gives a single nod, followed by her signature evil glare.
‘Dante?’ she says, looking at the hotel manager, who’s been watching all of this silently, but in a way that suggests he’s taking notes in his head for later. ‘It’s your call. What do you want to do here?’
Dante’s dark eyes move slowly up and down my sauna-flushed body, finally landing on my mascara-streaked face. I can almost feel myself shrinking under his gaze. There’s no way this man’s going to let me stay here. Unless . . .
‘I say we let her stay,’ he says at last, with a shrug which tells me he’s only doing this because he knows it’ll annoy Sabrina, and not because he actually wants me here.
No one actually wants me here; a thought that would be more than enough to make me leave of my own accord, if I wasn’t too weak with dehydration to make it further than the front door.
‘Fine,’ Sabrina says, waving her hand dismissively at me. ‘You can stay. You’ve missed dinner, though, so you’ll have to make do with room service. Dante will get someone to show you to your room.’
My shoulders sag with relief as everyone stands and starts gathering their things, ready to leave.
‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ Sabrina adds, spinning on her heel and addressing the room at large. ‘Breakfast is at 9 a.m. sharp tomorrow. And we need everyone there, because we’ll be giving you the details of the competition. We couldn’t do it at dinner because not everyone was there.’
She looks pointedly at me, then turns and strides off, Luna trotting at her heels in the same way Stevie does with Hunter.
After a few muddled seconds, the rest of the influencers follow her, and Dante steps back behind the reception desk, leaving me alone with Hunter, who turns around to face me, his arms folded defensively over his chest.
‘That wasn’t a mistake, was it?’ he says bluntly, glancing over at Dante to make sure he can’t hear us. ‘The invitation. You knew it wasn’t meant for you, didn’t you?’
‘I . . . um . . . it was just addressed to “Rosie”,’ I begin weakly, but he cuts me off.
‘I asked if you were Rosie Summers back at the station,’ he says. ‘You said you were. Why? Why did you lie?’
I look up at him, grabbing onto the back of a nearby chair in order to keep myself upright.
What am I supposed to say to that? How do you explain what it’s like to want to run away to someone who lives in a place like this, and seems so sure of who he is, and what he’s doing with his life, that I’m willing to bet he’s never once lain awake at night trying to come up with an escape plan?
But I have.
And this is it. This is my escape plan; random and ill devised though it may be.
‘I just needed a break,’ I tell him in a croaky voice that’s only partly due to the dehydration. ‘And I don’t mean a holiday; I mean I needed a chance.’
‘To do what?’ His arms are still crossed, but there’s a genuine curiosity in his tone that gives me the courage to go on.
‘To be someone else,’ I say simply. ‘Somewhere else. This place claims to be able to do that.’
Through the window behind him, I can see the tips of the distant mountains, now a soft pink to contrast with the greenish-blue of earlier. The clock on the wall tells me it’s past ten o’clock, but there’s still light in the sky and magic in the air.
I’m not lying when I say I believe coming here could change my life.
It kind of has to.
‘Aye,’ says Hunter, following the direction of my gaze. ‘The Highlands have a way of changing people. I would know.’
He bites his lip, as if he’s trying to stop himself saying something else. I really want to ask him what it is, but, before I can find the courage to actually do it, he whistles to Stevie, who comes bounding over from where he’s been curled up in front of the fire.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ says Hunter, abruptly bringing the conversation to an end. ‘Make sure you drink plenty of water. You’re going to need it.’
Without waiting for a response, he turns and goes striding towards the double doors of the hotel, Stevie at his heels. I stand there for a second, wondering what I said that made him want to get away from me so quickly, until another thought arrives to wipe Hunter Stuart completely from my mind.
What was it Sabrina said to all of us before she went clacking off in her spindly heels earlier?
Competition?
Didn’t she say something about a competition?