Page 2 of Mirrors of the Past

‘Your point being?’ asked Sybill. She blinked at him and a chill ran across his shoulder blades.

‘My point is,’ he said uncomfortably, ‘is that I haven’t really decided where I want to settle yet.’

‘But you have no imminent plans to go to Glasgow?’

‘No.’

That was a small white lie. He had, just this morning, sent off an application to a new gallery in that very city, where he would be working closely with art deco items and artefacts relating to the Glasgow Boys group of artists. And while it wasn’t imminent, exactly—

‘Any imminent plans to go anywhere else?’ Sybill’s words made him jump.

‘No.’

‘Any imminent plans to leave Wheal Mount, or indeed Cornwall?’

‘None.’

He felt the heat rise in his cheeks and hoped Sybill’s razor-sharp mind was elsewhere today and she didn’t actually pick up on his blushes.

‘So, for the sake of argument, you’re here now. You will more than likely be here for a little while.’

Perhaps.

‘And this whole arrangement we’re talking about here is temporary.’ Sybill leaned back in her seat. She knew she was winning. Ryan could see the little triumphant expression on her face, even though she was doing her best to hide it.

‘I guess.’ He gave up. To be fair, the fact he was here, right here, right now, was true. He loved it here and it fitted his art history background to a T. But there was always that sneaky suspicion that he wasn’t really meant to be there — that one day Sybill would go, “Hmm, you did good handing out tickets, mate, but you’re not that great and Wheal Mount is not where you should be. Bye bye.”

Or that one day, he’d get that next opportunity and decide to up and go.

That was why he wanted the Glasgow gallery job. Most of his memories of that city were fantastic — except for one particularly irritating girl that he’d worked with — and the chance was too good to miss. If he was successful, he knew he would feel awful about leaving the little team at Wheal Mount in the lurch. It wasn’t so hard to replace a ticket seller, or a meet-and-greeter, or even someone who could sit in the galleries or the museum and talk about the place. Or someone who could make a mean cappuccino in the tearoom.

But it would be bad if he left something like the archives out of kilter. Because then that would mean Tammy was tidying up after him, as well as Bryony. And that made him feel a bit guilty.

But he was being rather stupid. There was no guarantee he’d even be invited to an interview in Glasgow and he didn’t want to give up a chance like this at Wheal Mount for, well, possibly nothing at the end of the day. He didn’t really know why he felt he was always competing with some invisible enemy or making something out of nothing. He shook his head. He would be making a huge mistake if he said no to Sybill.

‘Sorry, Sybill. I’m being stupid. It’s not like I think the universe has any plans for me at present or anything like that.’

He looked at her and her face softened. ‘You are being stupid. Can’t you just accept that we want you here and we’re going to do everything in our power to keep you here? We actually don’t want you to bugger off to Glasgow.’ Her eyes glinted. ‘Even if it’s something you might be considering.’

Ryan shivered. Sybill was, he knew, named after a witch — it was something even Sybill joked about — and the suspicion she was aware of his actions this morning niggled at him.

However, she grinned and he relaxed a little. But still — his specialist subject wasn’t archives and what if he messed up? ‘But I don’t want to let you down either — miss something that’s important in your archives, sort of thing.’

Sybill pulled a face. ‘Trust me, Ryan. If there’s anything important enough for you to find up there, you’ll find it. The universe and all that.’

He couldn’t argue with the logic — it was his logic as well, wasn’t it? ‘Okay then.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll do it. Thanks for the opportunity.’

‘Great!’ Sybill sat back. ‘That sounded awfully formal, by the way.’

Ryan felt his cheeks grow hot. ‘Yeah. Sorry about that. It’s just a responsible sort of job and I’d hate to spoil things after everyone’s hard work.’

Sybill laughed. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll let Tammy know and she can set you off. You can pick up from where Bryony left off. I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff that needs mining up there. We’ll be talking to Merryn’s replacement at Pencradoc soon about what sort of things they want us to look out for, but I think if we can just create order out of chaos for now, that would be most useful.’

And now Ryan was up here in the attics, amid all that chaos. He could certainly see why they needed someone to take over from Bryony. Sybill had told him she was setting up a meeting with Merryn’s replacement this week and that they wanted to toss some ideas around for another exhibition, but with the state of the archives he hoped it would be something easily accessible and already listed . . . which might well be the coward’s way out, but, hell, it would be easy.

Chapter Two

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