“Did it break?”
“What?”
“The plane,” she clarified, giving him a wary look.
“Uh, no, well... nothing I can’t fix. I’m good with planes,” he told her, and she crossed her arms over her legs.
“I thought you just said you crashed one?” she queried, and Tom’s stomach flipped again. Something about her face, about the way she spoke, was familiar to him, in the same way her father had been. Was she an actress too? he wondered. A child one? With a famous father, that sounded right.
Relieved without knowing why, he nodded sagely. “The weather was against me yesterday. I flew into a storm.”
She nodded. “We flew in this morning. There were no storms though.”
“You flew in?” Tom asked her.
“From London,” she explained, before peering at him. “Have you been?”
“To London? No. Not for a long time, anyway.” He swallowed, staring at her eyes once more, wondering where he’d seen them previously. “That’s a big journey for a girl like you.”
“Yes,” she said, and there was a hint of ruefulness to her voice that made Tom sit up. “I’m really hungry now. I haven’t eaten since the plane. We were supposed to get breakfast but then the car stopped working.”
“I’m sorry,” Tom replied.
“Do you have anything to eat?” she asked him curiously. “I like chocolate biscuits.”
“I don’t have anything. I was on my way home when I saw your dad’s car and—”
“He’s not my dad,” the girl interjected. “He’s my uncle.”
Ah,thought Tom. That explained the difference, not only in their accents but also their looks.
“Right,” he said. “Well, I don’t have any food, I’m sorry.”
The girl sighed, shifting her head and trailing her hand over the grass. “I guess I’ll just have to be hungry then.”
There it was again, that odd flash of recognition running through him. Tom stopped, staring at the girl before him. She was achingly familiar, and not just her eyes, and the shape of her face, but the way she spoke too. The way she turned her head and moved her hands and wrinkled her nose.
“Hey,” Tom said, shifting his feet. “About ten miles down this road there’s a diner. They serve the best waffles in the state. Get your uncle to take you there as soon as the car is fixed, okay?”
“Waffles?”
“They’re really good,” Tom continued. “You can have them with strawberries, or caramel, or cinnamon, or chocolate. Any way you choose.”
She seemed to think about that. “I’m not supposed to have too much sugar. Mummy says it rots your teeth. I’m supposed to eat healthy things only.”
“Like spinach?”
“Or broccoli, or cabbage, or boiled eggs.” The girl wrinkled her nose again. “But I don’t like any of them.”
“I hate eggs as well,” Tom replied. “They’re horrible.”
The girl nodded. “Mummy says they’re an adventure, that each one might be different, but I don’t thinkadventureis supposed to taste like old socks or—”
“What did you say?” Tom’s heart suddenly pounded hard in his chest. He stared at the girl again, at the gold flecks in her eyes, and his chest grew tight.
But the girl abruptly seemed cowed by his burst of energy. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” she said primly, standing and walking away from him.
“You said an egg is an adventure, right?” he asked her, and he couldn’t keep the edge from his voice. “What’s your mom’s name? Where is she?”
