up. Eight a.m. She’d lost an entire day.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m really sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. Bath’s all yours.”
She went back to the bedroom and gathered up her things. Though the letter had told her not to bring any guidebooks, it didn’t say she couldn’t look at them before she left. So she had, and she’d packed exactly the way they told her to pack. Her bag was full of “neutral basics” that didn’t require ironing, could be layered, and wouldn’t offend anyone, anywhere. Jeans. Cargo shorts. Practical shoes. One black skirt that she didn’t like. She picked out a pair of jeans and a shirt.
Once she had filled her arms with all the necessary items, Ginny suddenly felt self-conscious about being seen going into the bathroom. She poked her head out of the bedroom and, seeing that Richard had his back turned, dashed across the hall and quickly shut the door.
It was in the bathroom that Ginny fully realized that she was in a guy’s house. A man’s house. A kind of messy English man’s house. At home, the bathrooms were crammed full of country-crafty wicker wall ornaments, and seashells, and potpourri that smelled like the Hallmark store. This room was stark blue with blue carpet and dark blue towels. No decorations. Just a little shelf full of shaving cream (unknown brand in a vaguely futuristic-looking container), a razor, a few men’s Body Shop items (all tan or amber colored and serious looking—she could tell they all smelled like tree or something suitably manly).
All of her toiletries were carefully sealed up in a plastic bag, which she set on the carpet. (Wall-to-wall—plush but worn flat. Who carpeted a bathroom?) Her stuff was all pink—had she meant to buy so much pink? Pink soap, pink miniature shampoo bottle, little pink razor. Why? Why was she so pink?
She took a second to close the blind on the large bathroom window. Then she turned to the tub. She looked at the wall, then up at the ceiling.
There was no showerhead. That must be what Richard meant by “the bath” was all hers, which she had thought was just some Britishism. But it was all too real. There was a Y-shaped rubber tube. There were open suction cups on each tip of the Y part, and there was a handle on the end of the stem that looked a lot like a phone. After examining the tub and this device, Ginny determined that the Y tips were supposed to go over the two spigots, and water would come out of the phone, and some shower-like action would result.
She gave this a try.
Water shot up toward the ceiling. She quickly pointed the shower phone into the tub and jumped in. But it proved impossible to try to wash herself and juggle the shower phone, and she gave up and filled the tub. She hadn’t taken a bath since she was little and felt a little stupid sitting in the water. Also, the bath was amazingly loud—every movement produced a sloshing noise that echoed embarrassingly. She tried to make her movements as conservative as possible as she washed up, but the effort was lost as soon as she had to submerge herself to wash her hair. She was pretty sure that ocean liners could be lowered into the sea and make less noise than she did.
When the drama of the bath was over, she realized that she had another, totally unexpected problem. Her hair was soaked, and she had no way of drying it. She hadn’t brought a blow dryer since it wouldn’t work here anyway. There was no alternative, it seemed, but to quickly bind it up in braids.
When she emerged, she found Richard all suited up in what appeared to be the same suit and tie he had on the day before.
“Hope you were all right in there,” he said apologetically. “I don’t have a shower.”
He’d probably heard her sloshing around all the way in the kitchen.
Richard started opening cabinet doors and pointing out things that might be considered breakfast-worthy. He was clearly unprepared for her visit, as the best he could offer was a bit of leftover bread, a little jar of brown stuff called Marmite, an apple, and “whatever is in the refrigerator.”
“I’ve got some Ribena here, if you want that,” he added, taking a bottle of some kind of grape juice and setting it in front of Ginny as well. He excused himself for a moment. Ginny got a glass and poured herself some of the juice. It was warm and incredibly thick. She took a sip and gagged slightly as the intense, overly sweet syrup coated her throat.
“You’re…” Richard was in the kitchen doorway now, watching this with an embarrassed expression. “You’re supposed to mix that with water. I should have told you.”
“Oh,” Ginny said, swallowing hard.
“I’ve got to be off now,” he said. “I’m sorry…there’s been no time to talk at all. Why don’t you meet me at Harrods for lunch? Let’s meet at Mo’s Diner at noon. If you ever get locked out, I leave a spare key wedged in the crack in the step.”
He carefully walked her through the tube journey from the house to Harrods and made her repeat it back to him, then walked her through all the bus options, which was just a big jumble of numbers. Then he was gone, and Ginny was at the table alone, with her glass of syrup. She gazed at it sourly, still stung by the expression on Richard’s face when he’d seen her drinking it. She picked up the bottle and examined it to see if there was any warning, any indication that it was anything but normal juice, anything that would make her behavior less freakish.
To her relief, there was nothing on the bottle that could have helped her. It said that it was something called “blackcurrant squash.” It was “only 89p!” It was made in the United Kingdom. Which is where she was. She was in a kingdom far, far from home.
And who was this Richard, anyway, aside from a guy in a suit who worked in a big store? Looking around his kitchen, she decided he was definitely single. There were relatively few groceries—just things like this warm instant juice stuff. There were some clothes on the chairs nearest to the wall and a few scattered crumbs and coffee granules on the table.
Whoever he was, he’d let Aunt Peg stay long enough to decorate an entire room. It must have taken time to make the collage and sew the bedspread. She had to have been here for months.
She got up and retrieved the package. After brushing a spot clean, she laid the envelopes out on the table. She looked over each of the eleven unopened ones. Most had been decorated with some kind of picture as well as a number. The front of the next one had been painted in watercolors in the style of a Monopoly Community Chest card. Aunt Peg had created her own version of the little man in the top hat with the monocle, with a very fat and round plane going by the background. She’d even managed to sketch out letters that looked like the Monopoly typescript. They read: TO BE OPENED THE MORNING AFTER THE SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF ENVELOPE #2.
That required her to find out what Richard had sold the queen and getting to an ATM. She needed money anyway. All she had left was a handful of strangely shaped coins, which she hoped would be enough to get her back to Harrods.
Ginny snatched up the directions that Richard had written for her minutes before, dumped the offending juice down the sink, and headed for the door.
A red bus was coming down the street in Ginny’s direction. The sign on the front listed several famous-sounding destinations, including Knightsbridge, and the number matched one of the bus numbers Richard had given her. There was a small bus shelter a few feet away, and it looked like the bus planned on stopping there.
Two black poles with illuminated yellow globes on top of them marked the opening of the pedestrian crossing. Ginny ran to these, glanced to make sure the coast was clear, and started to run across the road.
Sudden honking. A big black cab whizzed past her. As Ginny jumped back, she saw something written on the road. LOOK LEFT.
“It’s like they know me,” she mumbled to herself.
She managed to get across the road and tried to ignore the fact that