‘Heather,’ he says, lifting his head. He’s still lucid. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘Ah, no.’
‘He’s still in the kitchen,’ says Bill with a rueful smile. ‘Hiding, I guess.’
He thinks I was looking for James.
‘I didn’t ask Tim to come. He just turned up,’ I say.
I head towards my room and decide tonight is not the night to get into any kind of conversation with Bill. I push my door open. ‘Goodnight, Bill.’ But he moves towards me, and I can’t get away without slamming the door in his face. ‘Is there something else?’
‘Are you going somewhere?’ he says, looking over my shoulder into the room.
‘Um.’ My cheeks flush red, and I think quickly. ‘Weekender in Inverness.’
‘Are you taking everything with you? Including your wine book?’ he says, and I spin round to see that myWine for Newbiesis sitting on the top of the clothes in the open case. Is Bill angry? I can’t tell.
‘Well,’ I say, forcing a laugh, ‘now you know my secret! Don’t tell the Wine Society.’
‘I do know your secret,’ he says plainly. ‘I’ve known since the first week.’
I stare at him in shock. He can’t mean …
‘It’s Elizabeth, right? You’re her friend. The real Heather’s friend.’
I just blink, with my mouth open.
‘You shouldn’t leave,’ he says.
I step backwards and collapse onto my bed, my head in my hands.Fuck, fuck, fuck!
‘You have to do the Wine Society night.’
‘What?’ I say, shaking my head. ‘No, Bill, no, no.’
‘I’ve not told anyone, don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I mean, I couldn’t, could I? You’ve involved me as well, haven’t you?’
I look up, expecting to be confronted with rage, but instead see a familiar look: self-loathing and sadness. My dad.
‘I’m sorry, Bill,’ I say. I feel a strange mix of shame and relief.It’s over.
‘It wasn’t hard to figure you out,’ he continues. ‘By the second day I realized you knew practically nothing about wine.’ Then he laughs.‘So then I did a bit of digging. Heather has many friends in hospitality, as you might imagine, so it wasn’t hard to figure it out – if you thought to look. I mean, if you thought someone would pretend to be someone else. But who would do that?’
‘Oh, Bill. I’m so sorry. I didn’t expect the hotel to be so … It was supposed to be a lark, a jolly. If I’d known how important the role was.’ I shake my head. ‘It was a stupid thing that got out of hand.’
‘What I’m unsure of, though, is if Heather knows. She’s like a ghost on social media.’
‘She doesn’t know,’ I say.
‘Well, well,’ he says grimly. ‘Isn’t that a pickle?’
‘Please don’t tell Irene,’ I say pitifully. ‘Just tell them that I lied to you, and I can go, and it can be over.’
‘Well, I can’t – even if I wanted to. Irene thinks Heather was properly vetted and that we had an in-depth Skype interview. I can’t tell her I slept through the interview, can I? And then not to have told her, for all these weeks? She’s given me so many chances, and I can’t …’
‘Oh God,’ I say, feeling the air flush out of my lungs. He was hungover and missed Heather’s interview.
‘Anyway, there’s no time to go over all this now,’ he says more firmly. ‘Time to get yourself together and finish what you started. The Wine Society Highland Fling. You have to do it.’
