Surprise Me(16)

‘The V & A shop?’ suggests Clarissa after a moment’s thought. ‘They have lovely things.’

I nod. ‘That’s what I thought.’

I hang up my jacket and go to put my receipt for coffee in the Box. This is a big wooden box which lives on a shelf, and mustn’t be confused with the Red Box, which sits next to it and is cardboard, but was once covered with red floral wrapping paper. (There’s still a snippet of it on the lid, and that’s how it got the name the Red Box.)

The Box is for storing receipts, while the Red Box is for storing faxes. And then, next to them is the Little Box, which is for storing Post-it notes and staples but not paper clips, because they live in the Dish. (A pottery dish on the next shelf up.) Pens, on the other hand, go in the Pot.

It sounds a bit complicated, I suppose, but it’s not, when you get used to it.

‘We’re nearly out of fax paper,’ says Clarissa, wrinkling up her nose. ‘I’ll have to pop out later.’

We get through a lot of fax paper in our office, because Mrs Kendrick sometimes works from home, and likes to correspond backwards and forwards with us by fax. Which sounds outdated. Well, it is outdated. But it’s just the way she likes to do things.

‘So, who were your prospects?’ I ask, as I sit down to type up my report.

‘Six lovely chaps from HSBC. Quite young, actually.’ Clarissa blinks at me. ‘Just out of university. But terribly sweet. They all said they’d make us legacies. I think they’ll give thousands!’

‘Amazing!’ I say, and draw up a new document. And I’ve just started typing when there’s the sound of unfamiliar feet on the staircase.

I know Mrs Kendrick’s tread. She’s coming up to the office. But there’s another person, too. Heavier. More rhythmic.

The door opens, just as I’m thinking, It’s a man.

And it’s a man.

He’s in his thirties, I’d say. Dark suit, bright blue shirt, big muscled chest, dark cropped hair. The type with hairy wrists and a bit too much aftershave. (I can smell it from here.) He probably shaves twice a day. He probably heaves weights at the gym. Looking at his sharp suit, he probably has a flash car to match. He is so not the kind of man we usually get in here, that I gape. He looks all wrong, standing on the faded green carpet with his shiny shoes, practically hitting the lintel with his head.

To be truthful, we rarely get any kind of man in here. If we do, they tend to be grey-haired husbands of the volunteers. They wear ancient velvet dinner jackets to the events. They ask questions about baroque music. They sip sherry. (We have sherry at all our events. Another of Mrs Kendrick’s little ways.)

They don’t come up to the top floor at all, and they certainly don’t look around, like this guy is doing, and say, ‘Is this supposed to be an office?’ in an incredulous way.

At once I prickle. It’s not ‘supposed’ to be an office, it is an office.

I look at Mrs Kendrick, who’s in a floral print dress with a high frilled collar, her grey hair as neatly waved as ever. I’m waiting for her to put him right, with one of her crisp little aper?us. (‘My dear Amy,’ she said once, when Amy brought a can of Coke in and cracked it open at her desk. ‘We are not an American high school.’)

But she doesn’t seem quite as incisive as usual. Her hand flutters to the purple cameo brooch she always wears and she glances up at the man.

‘Well,’ she says with a nervous laugh. ‘It serves us well enough. Let me introduce my staff to you. Girls, this is my nephew, Robert Kendrick. Robert, this is Clarissa, our administrator, and Sylvie, our development officer.’

We shake hands, but Robert is still looking around with a critical gaze.

‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘It’s a bit cluttered in here, isn’t it? You should have a clean desk policy.’

Instantly I prickle even more. Who does this guy think he is? Why should we have a clean desk policy? I open my mouth to make a forceful riposte – then close it again, chickening out. Maybe I’d better find out what’s going on, first. Clarissa is looking from me to Mrs Kendrick with an open-mouthed, vacant expression, and Mrs Kendrick abruptly seems to realize that we’re totally in the dark.

‘Robert has decided to take an interest in Willoughby House,’ she says with a forced smile. ‘He will inherit it one day, of course, along with his two older brothers.’

I feel an inner lurch. Is he the evil nephew, come to close down his aunt’s museum and turn it into two-bedroom condos?

‘What kind of interest?’ I venture.

‘A dispassionate interest,’ he says briskly. ‘The kind of interest my aunt seems incapable of.’

Oh my God, he is the evil nephew.

‘You can’t close us down!’ I blurt out, before I’ve considered whether this is wise. ‘You mustn’t. Willoughby House is a slice of history. A sanctuary for culture-loving Londoners.’

‘A sanctuary for gossiping freeloaders, more like,’ says Robert. His voice is deep and well educated. It might even be attractive if he didn’t sound so impatient. Now he surveys me with an unfriendly frown. ‘How many volunteers does this place need? Because you seem to have half the retired women of London downstairs.’

‘The volunteers keep the place alive,’ I point out.

‘The volunteers eat their body weight in biscuits,’ he retorts. ‘Fortnum’s biscuits, no less. Isn’t that a bit extravagant, for a charity? What’s your biscuit bill?’