The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary (grave mercy .txt) 📕

slam of his shutters. He can’t get the hang of fixing them back, apparently. I snort, pulling the covers over my head. The mistral’s strong – he’ll smash a pane if he keeps letting everything slam in the wind like that.

He’s talking to himself in the kitchen. I can’t quite catch the words through the ceiling, but I can tell from the up-and-down of his voice that he’s reciting something.

I check my phone. It’s eight in the morning – too early for me to go up and introduce myself. The strange lost feeling that gripped me last night has gone, and I’m glad of the extra space in the double bed. Deb’s such an irritating person to share a bed with. The other night she started sleep-talking about Tory politicians.

I lie back and listen to our solo guest rattling about the house. I wonder what he looks like. I’ve not got much to go on – the waist down, basically, and the voice. I’m guessing dark curls and brown eyes; stubble, maybe; a loose-collared shirt. An heirloom on a chain around his neck.

He sings a few lines of something – a pop song I half remember. I grin up at the ceiling. He’s totally tuneless.

By the time I get out of bed it’s half nine and he’s on the terrace with his coffee. I heard the machine whirring away and his footfall on the walkway outside before I mustered the energy to roll out from under the covers. I overthink my outfit – shorts, skirt, dress? In the end, irritated with myself, I grab a tank top and yesterday’s shorts off the floor and yank them on, pulling my hair up into a bun and tying it there with one of my bracelets.

Mr Abbott’s nowhere to be seen when I get to the terrace. No coffee mug, so wherever he’s wandered off to, he’s taken it with him. I scan the dry, dusty lawns and flowerbeds that Victor the gardener sweats over every Thursday, but there’s nobody in sight in the villa grounds. Maybe I misheard? I head to the kitchen, tugging my hair out of the bun again.

It’s tidier today. There’s a note.

 

Hello, phantom caretaker. Ever so sorry about the mess last night, I got rather carried away. Off out to explore now, but perhaps you could look at the shutters in my bedroom while I’m out. I can’t fathom how you’re supposed to stop them slamming shut incessantly. The noise is driving me mad.

Dylan Abbott

 

The noise is driving him mad, is it? I roll my eyes and screw up the note, shoving it in my back pocket. There’s no trick to the bloody shutters. If he looked at them for ten seconds he’d figure out where they latch to the wall to stay open. All the same, I head up to his bedroom to check. I know which one he’s in. I’m pretty good at telling which doors are opening and closing, now. Bathrooms three and four are tricky, and I sometimes get the eighth and sixth bedrooms muddled up, but the rest I’ve nailed.

He’s chosen the best room in the house, the suite where Deb and I stargazed on the balcony the day before yesterday. It has a four-poster bed lined with heavy blue damask and enormous windows that look out over the vines. The bed’s unmade and his clothes are tangled at the door to the bathroom, as if he stepped out of them before heading for the shower. The room smells the same as the jacket did: orangey, musky, male.

I open a window. The shutters are fine, obviously, no surprise there. I pin them back for him and consider writing a reply to his note, but what am I meant to say? Look at the shutters, and do that, next time? I imagine myself doing it, signing it off the phantom caretaker, but no. Summer Addie isn’t phantom anything. Instead, on a whim, I breathe a cloud on the window and sign my name there in the fog. Adeline. No kiss.

He doesn’t come back for so long I risk a swim in the meantime – Cherry’s mum says we can if the guests aren’t around. I’m back in the flat and wringing out my hair in the sink when there’s a knock on the door.

I look down at myself. Eep. Wet bikini, that’s it. I rush through to the bedroom and scrabble around in the wardrobe, which is pointless, because all the good clothes are on the floor or in the wash. Another knock. Shit. I grab a crumpled ball of orange fabric – a swing dress, no obvious stains, it’ll do – and pull it on as I dash back to the door.

I open it, and there he is. The man upstairs. I’d imagined him all wrong. His eyes are the first thing I notice: they’re pale green, almost yellow, kind of sleepy-looking. His lashes are way longer than you’d usually see on a guy, and his hair is floppy and sun-kissed brown. The only thing I got right was the shirt: it’s pale cheesecloth, crumpled and unbuttoned way too far down.

No heirloom around the neck, but a gold signet ring on his little finger. Behind him I can see the trail of my wet footprints, leading from the pool to the front door of the flat.

‘Oh,’ he says, double taking with a flick of his hair. ‘Hullo.’

‘Hi.’ I swallow the Mr Abbott at the end of the sentence. It feels weird to call a guy my own age mister. My wet hair drips down my back, and I’m grateful for it cooling me down – I’m flustered. All that dashing around.

He gives a slow, small smile. ‘I had you down as a wrinkled old man, phantom caretaker.’

I laugh. ‘Why?’

He shrugs. The flustered feeling isn’t easing – I think it’s him, maybe, the green eyes, the unbuttoned shirt.

‘Caretaker. It just sounds . . . wrinkly.’

‘Well, you’re not what I expected either.’ I stand a little