“See? This is what I’m talking about. Just look at that.”
My father has skewered a sausage with his fork and is holding it aloft, peering at it. The whole breakfast table is trying to ignore him.
“You can always tell a hotel by the sausages they serve at breakfast. A good venue has to pass the sausage test.”
Next to me, Sam snorts into her glass of orange juice. I kick her under the table. She nudges me and winks.
“Sausage test.”
“Zip it, you.” I turn my attention back to my bacon. I don’t particularly feel like eating it – breakfast isn’t really my thing – but on convention time, who knows when the next meal’s coming…or what variation on dried potato it will be? Sam keeps sniggering; it’s never too early for innuendo where Sam’s concerned, but the way I see it, innuendo – like breakfast – is best dealt with from the other side of at least three cups of tea. I give my rubbery bacon one more poke with my fork. It bounces.
Yeah, no thanks.
“You going to eat that? Swap you a hash brown if you like?” Bede doesn’t even take his eyes off my plate from across the table.
“Oi. My eyes are up here, dude…”
“I’m not interested in your eyes. I’m interested in your breakfast meats.”
It’s all too much for Sam, who turns a lovely shade of purple and dissolves into hysterics, resting her forehead against the edge of the table.
“Give us it.” Bede leans forward and shuffles my abandoned bacon onto his plate, while a couple of seats along Nadiya pulls a face. Being the most sensible of us, she’s got a massive plateful of fruit and cereal with yoghurt, and is stuffing croissants into her bag when she thinks nobody’s looking.
The 7.30 breakfast meeting is one of Dad’s convention rules; as unbreakable as…an unbreakable thing. The theory is that they’re meant to be some kind of team bonding exercise – you know, everyone breaking bread together and sharing a meal as a group. In practice, they’re where Dad runs through the list of everything that went wrong yesterday, everything that could go wrong today and grumbles at us for both of the above. Pre-emptively, in the case of today’s list. It’s how he shows he cares. Or something…
There are a lot of dog jokes around today’s table. Or our end of it, at least. The other end is all paperwork and technical specs and serious faces and what I’m fairly sure is a printout of a wiring diagram. Which my dad appears to be holding upside down.
“Get your own!” Nadiya smacks Bede’s hand as it creeps towards one of her croissants. “These are mine. Mine. All mine.” There’s the very faintest hint of mania in her voice – in all our voices, probably. I don’t think anyone except me went to bed before midnight, and when I got down to open up the ops room an hour ago, both Nadiya and Bede were already sitting on the floor of the corridor outside, waiting for me.
I shush them both, elbow Sam in the ribs (she’s stopped laughing, but I have a nasty feeling she’s actually trying to go back to sleep – Sam can sleep anywhere; last year, she disappeared during one of the evening parties and I eventually found her asleep under the sink counter of the VIP toilets) and pull the clipboard out from under my chair.
Everybody groans.
“Oh, piss off.”
“All hail, my Lady Clipboard,” Sam hisses and before I know it, she’s right back to the hysterics. Bede looks at her blankly.
“What’s this?”
“Nothing,” I snap – but not before Nadiya leans ever so slightly sideways and whispers “Tell you later…” to him.
“Not you as well?” I try to look wounded. “How do you know about that?”
“Oh, I hear everything. That, and Sam couldn’t keep a secret if her life depended on it.”
Sam takes enough exception to this to stop laughing. “Hey. Hey, hey, hey,” she says, resting her elbow on the table and wagging a finger at Nadiya. “That’s not fair and you know it. I mean, I never told anyone about you and Charlie at last year’s Easter con ball now, did—”
She’s cut off by Nadiya’s shriek, and it takes her a second to work out what she just did. “Oh. Oh shit. I just did that, didn’t I? Sorry.”
“Sam!” Nadiya throws a croissant at her. It bounces off Sam’s shoulder and straight back at Bede – who snatches it off the table. Nadiya holds out her hand. “Mine, thank you?”
Bede looks at Nadiya. He looks at the croissant. He looks at Nadiya again…
And then, before she can stop him, he licks the croissant from tip to tip – before holding it out to her. “Want it back?”
“You’re revolting. On every level – including a few that science hasn’t even discovered yet.”
Bede grins and takes a bite out of his hard-won pastry.
It’s going to be one of those days…
I’ve managed to get the only seat in the whole breakfast room with a clear line of sight right through the lobby to the registration desk, so I can see that there’s already a queue loitering in front of it by the time we finish eating. Lucky me. This also means I have a perfect view of the guy we notso-fondly refer to as “the Brother” when he saunters over and starts picking through the piles of bookmarks, chapter samples and postcards on the freebie table, like the swag-hunting vulture he is. I lean back in my chair, and hiss at my dad behind Sam’s head. Down at the far end of the table, he can barely hear me but I can see him doing that pulling-his-eyebrows-together thing that means he knows I need him.
“What…?” he mouths.
I shake my head, hold up a hand…and give him the signal we’ve developed over the course of several years. It’s clear and concise and can only mean one thing – and he recognizes it immediately.
The Brother has arrived to check out the competition: us.
I don’t need to be able to hear my dad to know what he says next.
He pushes his chair away from the table, smoothes his hair back and pulls his T-shirt straight; shuffling all his papers together into a pile, he looks at us all. “Everyone set? Any problems, I’m on the walkie.”
There’s a murmur from round the table as everybody starts picking up their stuff and Nadiya tries to shoulder her handbag as normal. It’s so full that she can’t actually put her arm down over it properly, so she sort of rests her hand somewhere behind her ear as though she’s scratching an itch at the back of her neck. This is apparently the funniest thing Bede has ever seen.
“Lexi?” Dad is pointedly waiting for me. “You’re with me. Let’s go say good morning.”
“Whassup?” Sam grabs my elbow before I can move.
“The Brother’s here,” I whisper, trying not to look in his general direction. Never make eye contact with the Brother. Eye contact is how he saps your very soul.
“Oh, shitbiscuits.” Sam immediately adopts a rabbit-inthe-headlights expression. “He isn’t, is he?”
“Right there, by the reg desk. Waiting.”
“Like shingles.”
“Huh?” I blink at her and she rolls her eyes.
“Or like one of those old plague pits – you know the ones? Any time there’s archaeologists going into burial pits, they always have to be bio-suited up in case there’s still Black Death germs or spores or whatever knocking around down there. Lurking.”
“I think you’ve finally reached peak zombie apocalypse. Lay off the undead for a while, maybe.” I pat her arm and trail off after Dad, taking a couple of deep, pre-emptive soothing breaths.
The Brother is still poking through the freebie table as we get within earshot. He’s talking to himself as he holds up a three-chapter sample booklet from one of the publishers by its corner at arm’s length, like it’s a desiccated frog, examining it with an expression to match.
“…sort of quality…” is all I catch before the Brother spots us and drops the sampler back on the table.
“Damien! What a lovely surprise – we weren’t expecting to see you at this one!” Dad has his business smile on and his hand held out in greeting.
The Brother – or Damien, as anyone he doesn’t piss off on a regular basis would call him, I guess, seeing as it’s his name – sniffs and wipes his nose on the back of his own hand. Dad’s smile doesn’t dim even a fraction. Say what you like about my dad, but he’s a professional.
“Max. Still running your little old conventions yourself then?”
There’s the slightest emphasis on the word “little”. Anyone else would miss it, but neither Dad nor I do. I make a mental note to temporarily lose the Brother’s membership badge when we register him later. The Brother himself, meanwhile, has put his hands on his hips and is fake-casually looking around, making sure we get a good look at the New York Comic Con logo on his souvenir T-shirt.
“For now.” Dad adjusts the paperwork under his arm. “I always say the next convention is the last one…you know how it goes.”
“I do, my brother. I do indeed.”
And there it is. Even by his standards, that was quick. Sooner or later, Damien calls everybody – everybody male, at least – “brother”. Usually sooner. Hence the nickname.
I tune them out while they run through the usual shop talk. The Brother – as usual – is name-dropping like a sailor throwing ballast off a sinking ship.
Clang! A-list Hollywood actor!
Clang! Major director!
Clang! Super-reclusive graphic novel writer!
Clang! Ridiculously famous author!
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The names hit the floor and pile up, one by one, in a giant steaming heap of show-offy-ness.
He’s been doing this for years, I think. The Brother goes to everyone’s conventions. Everyone’s. I’ve no idea how he affords it, but it’s what he does. And then he goes scurrying back to advise the conventions he’s involved in, based on what everybody else is doing.
Dad gives up on trying to hold onto the papers and hands them to me. I am demoted to “assistant”. The Brother beams at me.
“And – hey! It’s Laura!”
“Lexi.”
“You get prettier every time I see you.”
Because that’s not creepy at all.
“Thanks?”
I catch the sideways glance Dad gives me as he clears his throat and swerves the conversation away, presumably in an attempt to stop either of us from smacking the Brother in the face with a lever arch folder.
“Lexi’s running ops for me these days. I’d be lost without her.”
I know it’s for show. I know it’s the sort of thing you say to the sort of guy the Brother is. But even so…my heart feels like it doesn’t quite fit in my chest any more. Because even though it is true (and I know it is, because last year he managed to lose the entire guest list somewhere on his computer, and it took me four hours when I should have been writing an essay on Henry V to recover it), to actually hear it out loud, during a convention. When he’s usually too busy bossing me about to get even close to a compliment…
It means something.
But now the Brother’s getting to the real reason he’s loitering by the desk. All that name-dropping was just the warm-up…
“Did you hear about our little coup for June?”
“Mmmmm?” It’s pretty obvious that Dad isn’t really listening though; he’s fumbling in his pocket for something – and pulls out his phone, frowning at it.
“We just announced…”
Dad holds up a hand, then points to his phone, which is already halfway to his ear. “Sorry, Damien. Going to have to take this – lovely to see you. Lexi?” And he sets off at a brisk stride across the lobby. It’s only when he’s halfway across it that I realize I’m supposed to be following him…
“You know your phone screen lights up when you’re actually on a call, as opposed to just pretending to be on one?” I say when I catch up with him. He sighs and holds out his hands for his papers.
“If I never have to stand in another hotel lobby, listening to him tell me about yet another glittering career he has personally launched, or someone else he hand-picked all by himself right before they got huge…well, it’ll be too soon. That’s all I’m saying.” He ruffles the top few sheets of to-do list. “Sounds like sour grapes, doesn’t it?”
“Sounds like you care about what you do.”
He smiles. “This is why I pay you the big bucks, kid.”
“Yeah, about that… And don’t call me kid, old man.”
“Don’t push your luck, Lexi. Here.” He hands me the second sheet of today’s list. It’s single-spaced and double-sided…and he’s written extra points in horrible black spider writing all along the margins. Before I can even protest, he’s gone, “I’ll be on the walkie…” lingering on the air behind him.
From the safety of the other side of a pillar across the lobby, I watch the Brother take a quick look around him…and then, when he’s relatively sure nobody’s watching, he sweeps an arm across the table and sends flyers, badges, postcards and bookmarks scattering across the floor. What a charmer.
“Bit early in the day to be under there, isn’t it?” Sam’s shoes stop beside the table as I crawl out with the last of the bookmarks.
“Sabotage,” I tell her, dropping them on the top of their pile. It’s taken me ages to put the table back together; time in which I have planned increasingly elaborate and unpleasant “accidental” deaths for the Brother. Several of these deaths are even theoretically possible to arrange within the walls of this very hotel. The last couple, though, probably not. I’m not sure where I’d be able to find a large enough jar of gherkins or three bald eagles at this kind of notice.
“Did your dad check him in already?”
“Nope. We have that joy ahead of us later. Who’s on registration for the day tickets this morning?”
“That’s kind of what we’re all waiting for you to tell us.” Sam gestures to the others, loitering behind her. Whoops.
Today’s list is already pretty scruffy from being shoved into my pocket while I crawled about the floor. “Should be floating cover from Eric…” I look around and see only an absence of Eric. “But I guess he’s still throwing up from yesterday?”
Nadiya nods – and when Bede opens his mouth to ask her something she just shakes her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Bede closes his mouth again…and catches me looking at him. He shakes his own head so fast that his whole face just becomes a blur. “No. No, no, no. You can’t make me.”
“I can, actually,” I say.
“Please. Please, please, please. Not after yesterday.”
“What was so bad about yesterday?”
“You left me on reg for hours. Hours.”
“I did not leave you.”
Bede raises an eyebrow at me.
“All right, I left you. Fine.”
“And what do we say, Lexi?”
“We say ‘shut it or I’m putting you back on registration again’?” Before I’ve even finished speaking, I can hear Mum’s voice over the phone from last night. I groan. “Fine. How about I take the first shift on the desk? It’ll quieten down after that and we’ll close it at noon anyway. Will that make everyone happy?”
“Delirious.” Bede – satisfied that he’s getting revenge – heads off to do the early-morning checks on the panel rooms, Nadiya disappears in the direction of the ops office and Sam scampers back to her room to change into today’s costume, leaving me to open up registration.
Which is precisely what I’m doing when…
“We should stop meeting like this.”
“If only we could.” If it sounds heartfelt, it’s because I mean it to.
This morning, Aidan is accessorizing his smug face with a grey T-shirt and a pair of faded old black jeans. His outfit, however, is the only thing about him that has changed.
“Listen – I just wanted to apologize. For yesterday. I was a dick.”
…Or is it…?
I make a polite non-committal sound that also manages to show I emphatically agree, then turn my back on him and step behind the reg desk, heaving the archive box with all the remaining day passes and paperwork in it up onto the table.
“Let me help…” he says, reaching for the box. I knock his hand away accidentally-on-purpose.
“Thanks, but I don’t need your help.”
“I’m just trying to—”
“I said I don’t need your help!”
“You really don’t like me, do you?”
I lean on the box and take a good look at him. It’s hard to see the expression in his eyes behind his glasses, and I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. Fortunately, I don’t have to – as Sam’s dad arrives to help with the heavy lifting.
He looks Aidan up and down. “Everything okay there, Lexi?”
“Fine, thanks. Just telling this…visitor…where to go.” Sam’s dad nods and heads off to check the storage cupboard, and I give Aidan a smile that isn’t a smile, hoping he gets the message. He’s unreadable, but I can feel him reading me; those grey eyes measuring every part of my face. It feels like the moment stretches on for ever, hanging by a thread and spinning endlessly with just the two of us locked inside it… And then he makes a sound that could be a laugh or could be a cough or could just be the sound that asshats make in their natural environment – I don’t know.
“Thanks for the directions, Lexi.” His lips curl like he’s about to say something else; something balanced right on the very tip of his tongue…and then he shakes his head and smiles and he’s gone.
“What an arse,” says Sam, appearing from behind one of the lobby pillars. She’s changed out of the clothes she was wearing at breakfast and is now Clark Kent, even down to the glasses (and the Superman T-shirt showing underneath her shirt and tie).
“He really is,” I mutter – and she laughs.
“No, I mean…look at him go. In those jeans.” And she actually leans around the pillar to watch Aidan walk across the lobby to the lifts, passing her dad on his way back – thankfully still just out of earshot. “Oh, Lexi,” she says when he’s gone, “your face!” Still laughing, she takes the last tray of membership badges from her dad and starts arranging them on the table.
“Sam?”
“Mmm?”
“Shut up and help me come up with an excuse for the English assignment I haven’t done for tomorrow…?”