‘You okay?’ Sam asked her.
‘Yeah. Just glad to finally be here.’
‘No doubt,’ Sam said. ‘Thanks for driving. And for the tunes– I’ll have to follow you on Spotify.’
‘Ha. You’d probably hate most of my playlists, to be honest. I refer you to your earlier comment on my love of angry songs about the decimation of the working class.’
‘I only said you enjoyed that stuff– not that Ididn’tenjoy it,’ Sam pointed out.
Amy shook her head at him and opened the driver’s side door. ‘I can’t deal with you being pedantic right now. Mainly because I’ve been desperate for the loo since we went past York.’
Sam laughed. ‘You head in, I’ll bring the bags,’ he said. ‘Leave me the car key so I can lock up.’ He smiled broadly, showing the dimples that Amy could almost forget he had until they appeared, to dazzling effect. She rolled her eyes, refusing to be moved.
Unable to ignore the urge to pee any longer, she did as he’d suggested and went inside. The young lad on reception– probably nineteen or twenty, but somehow made to look younger by his uniform of smart trousers, shirt, waistcoat and tie– pointed Amy in the direction of the nearest bathroom. After using the toilet, she splashed cool water on the back of her neck. Grace’s old Micra wasn’t blessed with air conditioning, and the car had become uncomfortably warm and sticky in the late-May sunshine.
When she rounded the corner back into the B&B’s entrance hall, Sam was remonstrating with the boy behind the main desk, speaking in hushed tones that Amy could tell did not bode well for their stay.
She moved to stand beside him. ‘What’s up?’
Sam looked at her with a pained expression.
‘It can’t be that bad,’ Amy said bracingly. Then she felt her own face fall. ‘Oh God. Is there some problem with our rooms? Do we evenhaverooms? Have they doubled-booked on us?’
‘Er. Sort of. In a manner of speaking,’ Sam said.
‘What doesthatmean?’ Amy snapped. ‘Will you just tell me what’s going on, please?’
The boy behind the reception desk flinched, apparently having realised that dealing with Sam was infinitely preferable to explaining the situation to Amy.
‘They have double-booked us– but in the sense that they’ve bookedbothof us into one room,’ Sam told her, speaking so quietly that she initially thought she’d misheard him.
‘WHAT?’ she cried, as the words Sam had spoken tessellated into understanding. ‘How?Why, for pity’s sake?’
‘It seems Carolyn wasn’t one hundred per cent clear when she organised this that we weren’t …’ He halted, reddening slightly, then made himself continue: ‘She wasn’t clear with the person on the phone that we weren’t a couple.’
To Sam’s credit, he sounded less than thrilled at this turn of events, though Amy had no idea why he looked so flustered. It wasn’thisfault it had happened.
‘According to Matthew, here’– Sam gestured at the now terrified-looking receptionist– ‘Carolyn saidtwo guestsand gave our names, never thinking to explain we needed separate rooms.’
‘That’s about t’ size of it, yeah,’ Matthew put in, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably, his warm Yorkshire burr doing nothing to soften the blow of the frankly terrible news he’d just delivered.
‘This is not happening,’ Amy said firmly. ‘It’s like something out of a made-for-TV movie. It’s Hallmark Channel stuff. I refuse to accept it. I simply willnot.’
Sam side-eyed her. ‘You watch the Hallmark Channel?’
‘No, I bloody well don’t!’ Amy hissed through gritted teeth. ‘But I know itexists. And I’m serious: I will not partake in this … this …bullshit.’
Sam was smirking– almost grinning– at her now.
‘I see nothing funny about any of this,’ Amy fumed, feeling seriously tempted to kick him in the shins. ‘We need to find somewhere else to stay.’
‘Oh, you’ll not find anywhere in the village tonight wi’ rooms,’ Matthew said blithely, backing even further away from the reception desk when he saw the look on Amy’s face. ‘What I mean is, this scary story thing’s got the whole place booked up. All day there’s been folk arriving dressed up like vampires and ghosts and the like. The Vic– the pub next door, I mean– their rooms are full. I reckon it’ll be t’ same story all over.’
Amy sighed. ‘So what do you recommend, bearing in mind it’s taken us five hours to get here?’
To her horror, she realised she was perilously close to tears. Exhaustion had combined with a feeling of utter helplessness to create the sort of angry frustration that usually found its release through her eyeballs.
‘Amy, it’s OK,’ Sam said, gently resting a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll … I’ll sleep on the floor, or something. We’re just going to have to muddle through. It’s only one night.’
