لطفاً، بابا!

Chapter two

Please, Dad!

I sat next to a woman called Ellen on the bus. She was Canadian and she told me she’d been on Wild Country holidays all over the world.

She seemed very nice.

As I half listened to her, I looked at the other people in the group. It was a small group - only five people altogether.

There was a couple who were kissing or touching each other all the time, and I thought they must be just married and on holiday. A honeymoon couple.

They were called James and Sarah, but I knew I’d always think of them as the honeymoon couple.

There was also a white-haired man of about sixty and a very beautiful Scandinavian woman of about eighteen with long blonde hair. Astrid, she was called. She’d smiled when we were introduced, but now she was looking out of the window. I thought she looked sad.

The man with the white hair was called David, and he had a walking stick. Grant was talking to him about the mountains.

He probably wanted to know if David would be able to do all the walking on the holiday. Wild Country holidays are really for people in good health, because the walks can be difficult.

I knew Grant had to ask David about his leg, but I hoped he’d be kind about it. Before he started working for Wild Country, Grant had been a soldier for five years.

Sometimes he spoke to tourists as if they were soldiers too.

He’d spoken to me like that when we first met, but I wasn’t going to let him do it on this tour. Oh, no!

The couple were kissing again. Ellen saw me looking at them. ‘Makes you feel a bit sick, doesn’t it?’

she said softly, and I had to put my hand over my mouth to hide my smile. A tour leader should not laugh at the tourists in their group. I didn’t need the Wild Country book to tell me that.

‘What did you do to your finger?’ Ellen asked me, and I saw Grant look over at us with that smile of his.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What did you do to your finger, Tess?’

‘It’s a long story,’ I said, and turned my head away so I couldn’t see him.

But I still heard what he said: ‘I thought it might be.’ And then he laughed.

When we got to the hotel I phoned my father, while Grant went to the front desk with the group.

‘I’m just on my way to a meeting, Tess,’ my father said. ‘Can I call you back later?’

‘This will only take a minute, Dad,’ I said. ‘I just want to ask you to let me work with someone else. Please. I don’t like Grant. We just don’t get on well together.’

When he spoke, Dad sounded a bit impatient. ‘Oh, Tess,’ he said. ‘Grant’s a good man, and he’s very good at his job. You’ll learn a lot from him.’

‘Listen, Dad,’ I started to say, but it was no good.

‘Come on, Tess,’ he said. ‘You’ll be OK. After all, when you take over the company you’re going to have to get on with everyone, aren’t you? Now, I must go. My meeting’s about to start. Love you.’

And he was gone.

As I went to join Grant and the group, everyone looked at me. I felt as if they knew what I’d been talking to my father about.

‘OK, Tess?’ Grant asked me, and I smiled as nicely as I could.

‘Yes, thank you, Grant,’ I said.

‘Good,’ he said, and then turned to the group. ‘Right, you can go up to your rooms for a bit, and we’ll meet back down here at twelve o’clock.

I’ll tell you something about the tour, and then the rest of the day is free for you to do what you like. OK?’

After they’d all gone off to their rooms, Grant and I were left alone.

‘I can help you tell them about the tour, if you like,’ I offered.

Grant looked at me. ‘I didn’t think you’d been here before,’ he said.

‘I haven’t led a tour here,’ I said, ‘but I have been on holiday here. I know the area quite well.’

Grant smiled. ‘Well, I think I must know the area a little bit better than you, Tess. I’ve been leading tours here for over a year now. Anyway, I thought the idea was for you to learn from me.’

My face quickly went red. It was clear that Grant thought it was very funny that my father had sent me to learn from him. ‘I don’t need to learn how to speak to a group,’ I told him. ‘I don’t have any problems doing that.’

‘No?’ Grant said. ‘Well, of course, do add anything if you think it will be helpful, Tess.’

From the way he said it, I knew he didn’t think anything I said to the group would be helpful.

‘See you back here in an hour.’ Grant turned to leave, then looked back. ‘Oh, and Tess, if you do leave the hotel, please don’t get lost.’

He was laughing as he walked away. As for me, that smoke was starting to come out of the top of my head again, I knew it was! It was going to be a very long ten days.