Page 23 of Secrets and Seashells at Rainbow Bay
Although I already love our tower apartment, I do feel a little isolated up there with everyone else living in the main castle. But I guess isolation was the fate of many of the castle’s previous owners, and I’ll get used to it in time.
This morning, after Charlie had gone off with Arthur to look for a shield, I’d decided to see how Tom was getting on on his first morning with us. I hadn’t heard back from Benji, and although Tom seemed pleasant enough, I still didn’t really know that much about him.
I tried to make it seem like I wasn’t checking up on him by engaging him in casual conversation about Charlie, but I think Tom guessed my motives for coming to find him.
‘Kids have great imaginations at that age,’ Tom says, wiping some beads of sweat from his brow. ‘Even I had an imaginary friend when I was young.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yeah, of course. Didn’t you?’
I shake my head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
Tom surveys me for a moment, his steely blue eyes seeming to take in every part of me in one quick gaze. ‘Practical, are you?’ he suddenly asks.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, you excel in the logical aspects of life, not the creative ones. Your best subjects at school would probably have been maths, sciences, that sort of thing. You didn’t really understandartistictypes, as you’d call them – you probably still don’t. Am I getting close?’
‘Perhaps,’ I reply, wondering how he could possibly know this about me.
‘Did you go to university?’ Tom enquires. ‘Wait, of course you did – you’d be far too organised not to have missed that opportunity. What did you study? Maths, chemistry?’
‘Business and economics, actually.’
Tom holds up his hands in a there-you-go gesture.
‘What did you study, then?’ I ask defiantly. ‘No, letmeguess this one – it has to be history of art?’
Tom shakes his head. ‘Nope, you’re wrong. I didn’t need to go to uni. Got all the training I needed on the job.’
‘Of course you did,’ I say, wryly shaking my head. ‘Anyway, what does it matter what subjects I liked at school or what I studied at uni?’
‘It matters not a jot to me. I’m just saying that even if your sonwastalking to ghosts, you would be the last person he’d want to talk to about it because there’s no way you’d believe in them.’
He’s right, of course: I don’t believe in anything like that – I never have. But I don’t like the suggestion that Charlie can’t talk to me about anything if he wants to.
‘Doyoubelieve in the supernatural, then?’ I ask.
‘Not really. But I’ve worked in enough old buildings to know that there’re things that go on in them that can’t always be explained.’
‘Exactly. There’s always a rational explanation to everything, even if you don’t always know what it is,’ I reply, nodding to make my point. ‘And let me assure you that if my son needs to talk he knows he can come to me about anything.’
‘Sorry,’ Tom apologises. ‘The last thing I wanted to do was offend my new boss. Not making a great impression on my first day, am I?’
Actually, Tom is making a very different impression on me right now. With his foot perched up on the log he’s in the process of chopping, his arm resting on his axe, and sweat glistening off him from his forehead down into his open-necked shirt so I can just see it dampening down the beginnings of his chest hair, I feel anythingbutoffended by him.
I swallow hard. This is not how I want to feel aboutanyof my staff – especially not on my first day.
‘It’s fine,’ I tell him, quickly averting my eyes. ‘No harm done. Oh, here comes Joey,’ I say, relieved to see Joey travelling across one of the great lawns that surround the castle on a quad bike.
‘What oh, boss!’ he says as he pulls up next to us. ‘I didn’t expect to find you out here this morning.’
‘I came to see how Tom was doing on his first day,’ I reply hurriedly, my face flushing, much to my annoyance.
‘Course you did.’ Joey winks at me. ‘Tom mate, what ya doing chopping wood with that rusty old thing?’ He points at the axe in Tom’s hand.
‘It’s what Arthur gave me,’ Tom says, looking at the axe. ‘It could do with a good sharpen, I reckon.’
