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There is a very specific sensation, right in the pit of your stomach, that comes from realizing that because you sent that stupid confirmation email from your stupid phone on the stupid bus while you were thinking about the stupid history essay that was due yesterday, you put a hyphen in the wrong place…and now, instead of having a box of inflatable three-metre-high palm trees sitting on your doorstep, you have three boxes of inflatable metre-high palm trees. You have, essentially, palm trees that wouldn’t impress a toddler…never mind the seven hundred book, film and comic fans who will be pitching up just in time to look down – literally – on them.

And this very specific, palm-tree-related sensation?

It’s not good.

It’s not good at all.

There is only one person I want to talk to right now, so I dig my phone out of my bag on the hall floor and dial her number.

“Angelo!” She draws out the “o” of my surname the way she always does when she answers. “What’s up?”

“Help!”

“What did you do?”

This is Sam through and through. Straight to the point. “I did a thing.”

“You did a thing.”

I nod. Two hundred miles away in Leeds – and at the other end of the phone – my best friend can’t see it, but I’m nodding anyway.

“Lexi…” Her voice sounds way calmer than I feel. “What did you do?”

“The palm trees.”

“Yes?”

“I shrank them.”

“You shrank the palm trees.” Down the line, I can hear that Sam has gone very still – like someone who’s just realized they’ve wandered into a minefield. “Shrank them… how?”

“I have really bad grammar?” I say, hoping this somehow makes it less bad.

“These palm trees. These are the inflatable ones, right? The ones your dad had you order.”

“Yes.”

“The ones that are supposed to be lining the walkway?”

“Yes.”

“In three days.”

“Yes.”

“Shit.”

Another thing about Sam. She tends to say what she thinks.

In fairness though, that was the first thing that went through my mind too.

That, and: Dad’s going to kill me.

I kick the closest box. I hate the palm trees. I do. I hated them from the second Dad told me he wanted the first convention of the year to have a theme in the registration area. A tropical theme.

“Palm trees? It’s not very…fantasy-y, is it?” I’d said, poking my chopsticks into the box of noodles between us on the table. “Doesn’t exactly go with the guests we’ve got.”

Dad had waved at me vaguely. “That’s the point. Anyone can bung a couple of plastic rocks in reception and say it’s the moon or Mordor or…wherever.”

“As opposed to plastic palm trees, you mean?”

“Lexi.” He’d put his chopsticks down on his plate and frowned. “Look. Last season, people said we were good. I heard them. Good. It’s not enough! This year, I want people saying we’re spectacular. I want people to talk about Max Angelo conventions with a look, you know. That look. Awe and wonder. This year, next year…every year.”

“You stick a load of palm trees in reception, Dad, and you’re going to get them talking about you with a look. And not a good one.”

“We’ll see.”

“Send them back. Send them back and he’ll never know,” says Sam.

“I can’t! The courier’s already gone.”

Gone is too gentle a word for it. He dumped the boxes on the doorstep, shoved a manifest in my hand and was back in his van and zooming off in a cloud of dust before I could even open my mouth.

Sam whistles tunelessly, then makes a humming noise like she’s thinking. After a long, long, long pause, she says, “Well, then. You’re just going to have to own up, aren’t you?”

“Thanks for your help, Samira.”

“Good luck…”

I hang up on her before she can make any more helpful suggestions.

I eye the boxes.

They’re still there.

I try closing my eyes, turning round three times and looking again.

Still there.

She’s right.

I’m going to have to tell my dad. And it is not going to be pretty.

Hundreds of photos judge me on my way up the stairs to Dad’s home office at the top of the house; pictures going all the way back to when he first started running fan conventions. I mean, now Dad is “Max, the boss of Angelo Events” – the best events company around – but then it was just him and a few friends getting together in a pub to talk about books they loved. After a couple of these chats, more people started turning up, and within a few years those little get-togethers had turned into weekend-long conventions. The whole history of it plays out across our walls: photos of Dad surrounded by writers, artists, film stars…all of them beaming out at me as I plod up to his office.

It’s his life and he’s proud of it, and I guess I am too. His company runs all kinds of big events now – like that celebrity wedding last year, the massive one in Venice? That was Dad’s company. And the one the year before that – the one with the castle and the snakes that made all the papers? Dad’s company. But the weddings and the conferences, that’s not what he cares about, not really.

What my dad cares about, what he insists on planning and arranging and running personally (with a little – or a lot – of help from yours truly)? It’s still the fan conventions; the ones that run from Easter through to Halloween every year.

The first one of which is in three days.

And it looks like I’ve already managed to screw it up.

His office door is closed, but he’s obviously heard me coming because I don’t even get the chance to knock before it swings open.

“How was schoo…no, sorry – sixth-form college?” he says, stepping back so I can get inside. The floor is awash with paper. It actually looks like a paper tsunami just came through here. “Don’t touch anything,” he adds, hopscotching back to the desk. “There’s a system.”

“It was fine.” Which isn’t quite true, strictly speaking – but seeing as my last term report is somewhere under this lot, and he’s not even opened the letter about yesterday’s meeting with my form tutor (mostly because I hid it behind the bread bin downstairs), I don’t think I need to worry too much about him catching me out on this one.

“Great. Look, I need you to… Wait…” He ruffles his hands through his hair like he always does when he’s remembering something. “I know I had it a minute ago…” He starts scouring the piles of paperwork, looking for that one specific printout with yet another job for me to do…

This is my moment. While he’s distracted.

“Dad?”

“Mmm.”

“Dad.”

“Yes, yes, that’s definitely me.”

“About the palm trees…”

“Oh. Yes. Right.” He pauses; stoops and picks up one sheet, then shakes his head and puts it back down again – on the wrong pile, but I’m not going to stick my neck out.

“The courier’s just dropped them off, and—”

“Could you call Davey and ask him to come deal with them?”

“Davey?” Davey is Dad’s PA. His actual PA in his actual company office. The one who works for Dad because it’s his job and he gets paid, rather than just because he has the privilege of sharing a load of Angelo DNA like I do. “I thought…”

“No. You were right. Scrap the palm trees. Terrible idea. What was I thinking? Davey’ll take care of it.” He hops over another pile of paper to reach his desk, and turns his laptop to face me, pointing at a photo on the screen. It shows the main entrance to a large convention centre, in the rain. And lined up in a neat row leading up to the doors, dripping gently are…guess what? “Besides,” he says, “Comic-Con did it last month.”

Huh.

“Lexi?”

“Yep.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing.” I study my fingernails intently. “Why d’you ask?”

“It’s just…that sounded like a laugh.”

“No. No…”

I can’t hold it in much longer.

“You, umm, want a cup of tea?” I take a step towards the door. He’s already back peering at his piles of paperwork.

“Tea? Yes. Cup of tea would be…” He tails off, and I could wait around till next Tuesday but it won’t make any difference: he’s forgotten I’m here.

I gulp down the rest of the laugh, close the door behind me – and by the time I’m halfway down the stairs, somewhere in a room on the other side of the country, Sam’s phone is already ringing…

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Hotels built for conventions are not what you’d call glamorous, and this one is no exception. I mean, it’s fine and everything: it’s got a fancy automatic revolving door like they have in airports (the kind where someone always stands in front of the sensors and makes it grind to a halt so everyone trips over everybody else) and a couple of big concrete planters outside the entrance with a selection of flowers and tiny trees. Inside, it’s all polished tile floors and monogrammed carpets and basically the clone of every other convention hotel I’ve ever set foot in.

In short, it’s my second home.

Dad drives the car right up to the door, ignoring all the No Parking! signs.

“It’s only for five minutes. Ten at most,” he mutters when I point at the sign right outside my window. The boot and back seat of the car are loaded up with boxes of paperwork, registration cards, folders, name badges, lists, lists and more lists. Everything you need to run a convention. Well. I say “everything”. Most of it’s in the van that he drove over yesterday, and left parked around the back. As I said, hardly glamorous.

Noon on a convention Friday. We have exactly five hours before the first of the early arrivals turn up. No pressure.

The faint click-click-click-click from the driver’s seat tells me Dad’s already back on his emails. He can plan a massive convention almost single-handedly (almost) but has yet to work out how to turn off the stupid keypad noises on his phone.

Someone bangs on my window, making me jump. The clicking pauses as my dad peers round me, then sighs.

On the other side of the glass is a tall olive-skinned girl my age with bright red hair. Bright red, like scarlet-lipstick red. She’s grinning and waving madly at me, shaking her hair from side to side.

Sam.

“Go…” Dad says wearily. He knows that if I don’t get out, she’s going to get in. Or try to, anyway.

My hand rests on the door handle. “Do you want me to help unload the car?”

“Paul and Marie can help, I’m sure. Go. Get checked in while you’re at it, but be in the lobby in fifteen minutes. We’ve got work to do.”

I nod, and open my door.

“You!” Sam throws her arms around me like she’s on a mission to squeeze all the air out of my body. Sam’s hugs take some getting used to – and, ideally, enough warning to be able to brace yourself. I guess it has been a couple of months since we saw each other face-to-face; apparently Skype doesn’t count.

“You!” I croak back with the last of my available oxygen.

“Sorry…” She lets me go, and suddenly I can breathe again.

“What the hell did you do to your hair?”

“New wig. You like it?”

“It’s very…red?” It’s the best I can do. And it is. Very red.

“I’ve got a different one for every day. You’ll see.”

“I am veritably breathless with anticipation.”

“Oooh. What’s got into you?” Sam narrows her eyes at me and pulls back as we shuffle through the revolving door into the lobby.

I immediately feel guilty. I shake my head. “Sorry. Nothing.”

“Mmm. Nothing.” She snorts. “It’s either your dad or college, right? Did your tutor have a go at you again?”

“No. It’s not that.” I hesitate. Do I tell her? I don’t know. It’ll sound stupid, and sulky, and like I’m some silly kid having a tantrum…

Oh, of course I’m going to tell her. She’s Sam.

“Dad and Bea. They’ve set a date,” I say, hoping it doesn’t sound as bad out loud as it does in my head. “It’s really happening.”

“Uh-huh.” Sam makes an interested sort of noise, but doesn’t actually answer. She’s too busy looking at the floor, at the glass around us, at a bit of fluff on her top…anywhere, I realize, other than at me.

“Sam?”

“It’s not like it’s a massive surprise though, is it? Technically, they’ve been engaged for a bit, right?”

“Yeah, but…” If I close my eyes, I can still see the writing on the neat little save-the-date card Dad plonked in front of me at breakfast. His name alongside Bea’s, and there in black and white: a time, a date, a place.

How can I explain to Sam that – being my father’s daughter – it’s always been drilled into me that nothing happens until the date is locked? If you don’t have it on a schedule, it doesn’t exist. It’s one of our unbreakable convention rules: set the date first, then plan it. So when Dad originally told me a few months back that he and Bea had decided to get married, I braced myself – waiting for the when. But it never came, and as minutes turned into hours turned into days, it showed no sign of coming either. It’s not like I ran away from it – I dropped hints, I left sentences hanging; gave him every possible chance to provide that crucial piece of information. But he carried on as though nothing had happened. After a while, I assumed it was just one of those Things Dad’s Going To Do – like how he’s going to get the leaky landing window fixed, or call someone to sort out the light in the kitchen that hasn’t worked for five years…all stuff he says is going to happen and never does (because, obviously, no date locked). Nothing was different. Bea didn’t move in, and she didn’t even cut down the travelling she does for her own events business. Dad didn’t mention the “M” word again, so I figured I could just forget about it.

And then: save the date, because – surprise! – Max Angelo’s getting married again.

He actually thought it was funny, springing it on me out of nowhere, and a bit of me wondered whether that was Bea’s idea. (The cards definitely felt like her; Dad would never have chosen that font.)

Except – and this is where I know I sound ridiculous, and much as I hate it, where I know Sam’s right – it wasn’t out of nowhere and I can’t pretend it was. He’d told me – they’d told me – and I’d just kind of assumed the same rule applies to people as to conventions.

Obviously not.

The revolving door finally lets us out and Sam waves across the hotel lobby to her parents, unpacking a crate full of books onto a table: conventions don’t just run in my family. I pick at a hangnail on my left thumb.

“Well, anyway… Dad and Bea are actually, really, seriously and most definitively getting married.”

Sam cocks her head at me. “You okay?”

“Mmm. Yes. I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” It’s not quite a lie, but it’s not quite true either. “Still processing, maybe?”

“What does your mum say?”

“I haven’t had the chance to talk to her about it yet – he literally just dropped this on me.”

“But he told you months ago…?”

“He only told me they’d picked a date this morning. This morning!” I say stubbornly.

“Lexi…” She rolls her eyes theatrically, and I know what she’s thinking: she’s picturing me running up and down a hillside in the sunshine, picking flowers and wearing a dress called DENIAL. But she doesn’t punch me on the shoulder and tell me to get a grip, which is her usual support tactic, and I can see there’s something which might actually count as concern in her eyes – despite the rolling.

“I know, I know. You’re right. I’ve been pretending it wasn’t going to happen. It’s fine, I’m fine. Fine fine fine. I just need more time to get my head round it. Really,” I add, watching her watching me.

But I don’t have time – not right now, anyway. Because, date or no date, this convention’s happening first.

And what I do have now is plenty of work.

I give Sam a smile and poke her arm. “So, are you checked in already?”

“Of course. Checked in, unpacked and everything.” She says this like it’s a Herculean achievement. I suppose it is – Sam doesn’t exactly travel light. Last time, she had so much stuff that I ended up carrying half of it for her. It’s the costumes. Sam’s cosplaying is legendary; last year, she dressed up as Spider-Man, Black Widow, something inexplicable from an anime that seemed to involve a lot of neon, and Draco Malfoy – which involved slightly less neon. The costumes are how we became friends, back when I started helping Dad. Sam had managed to glue her hand to the one she was making, and came to the convention operations centre to ask for help getting unstuck. She was hoping to find her parents, but instead she found me. The rest is history…and a lot of messages and online chats I never want to fall into the wrong hands.

“What room are you in?” I ask as we walk towards the hotel reception desk.

“406.” She lounges back against the desk beside me. “Did you hear about Nadiya?”

“What did I miss?”

“She broke up with Ajay.”

“Seriously?”

On the other side of the lobby, a couple of traders I recognize are rolling three racks of comic book T-shirts through to a massive room full of stalls. They give me a wave and point at the racks. “Last lot!”

I wave back. They already look knackered and we’re not even open yet; they’ve probably been unloading stock from their van since the crack of dawn. For anyone selling merchandise at a convention, it’s very definitely a marathon, not a sprint. Sam watches them get caught in the fire door, then carries on as though nothing happened to break her flow.

“She messaged me this morning. It happened last night.”

“Is she still coming?”

“Alexandra Angelo! One of your friends is in serious emotional pain – and all you’re worried about is whether she’s still coming to work?” Sam wags her finger at me.

“You think Ajay is as much of a dick as I do. And anyway, we’re already one staff member down from ops, and the art team had a last-minute dropout.”

“Really? Who bailed?”

“Not now.”

“I say again, really? I smell scandal.”

I give her a mock-serious glare. “Samira, are you fishing for gossip? After the ‘serious emotional pain’ thing?”

“Shut up.” She rolls her eyes, trying not to laugh.

“You shut up.”

The hotel receptionist who has just appeared behind the desk blinks at me. I think I might have offended her.

“Sorry. Not you, obviously. Hi. Hello. Checking in? My name’s Lexi Angelo. You should have a reservation for me under the convention booking?”

At the word “convention”, the receptionist raises a perfectly-plucked eyebrow at me, then starts tapping on the keyboard of her computer.

Sam leans over the desk and switches on her brightest smile. “And if she could have the room that interconnects with 406, that would be magic.”

Just like every convention hotel has the same entrance (with or without inflatable palm trees) and the same lobby and – weirdly – the same carpet in the upstairs hallways, every con’s operational office is always the same. It’s the nerve centre, the room where everything happens, containing several laptops, a printer that won’t connect to any of them, the biggest Wi-Fi black spot in the entire hotel, a first-aid kit, a corkscrew and enough paper to make it a serious fire hazard. Which is why there’s always a fire extinguisher in there too – often being used as either a doorstop or a paperweight. Or occasionally both at once. Somewhere, there’ll be a clock. It’s almost always wrong – not by much, but just by enough to lull anyone keeping half an eye on it into a false sense of security. There will be a trail of discarded plastic cups, crisp packets and other detritus.

Above all, there will be people; none of them sticking around for long, but all of them passing through regularly and at high speed. And – at an Angelo convention – there will be me. This is where I live. Has been ever since I can remember; from just following my dad round, or stuffing the tote bags everyone gets when they sign in and pick up their membership badge (all those flyers and bookmarks and freebies don’t get in there by magic) right up to now – when I’m actually part of the crew. Running the crew, in fact. We’re what Sam cheerfully calls the “cannon fodder”: the ones who run around keeping the plates spinning and making sure the show goes the way it’s supposed to – and that everybody comes out in more or less the same state they went in. We’re the first in the firing line when there are problems, so we’re the fixers and the make-it-work-somehow-ers. My crew are my friends, my tribe, my band of brothers (and sisters, obviously) and I’d be lost without them. So would Dad. And so would any of the general membership who keep insisting on asking us where the toilets are instead of looking at an actual map.

I push the door open. Someone, almost certainly Sam, has already stuck a Post-it note on the laminated Convention Operations sign taped to the outside – it’s bright pink and reads Abandon hope all ye who enter here. My crew are sitting on folding chairs dotted around the room – all except Sam, who left me to lug my bags alone once I’d checked in and is now lying on the floor with her hands behind her head. Bede is on the chair closest to her, throwing Smarties at her face, which Sam’s trying to catch in her mouth. Right at the back of the room, Nadiya is furiously typing on her phone, occasionally stopping to scowl at it and shake her head, then smooth the folds of her hijab with a sigh. Still, at least she’s here.

“MORNING!” I shout cheerfully at the room.

A Smartie bounces off Sam’s nose. “It’s quarter past one, babe.”

“Eat your Smarties.”

Dad has obviously unpacked the car while I was taking my bag up to my room; several boxes’ worth of paperwork sit stacked on the table. Maps, programme scheduling, staff rotas, lists of guests and attending members, extracurricular events, contact numbers: everything we need to keep the show running. It has taken me weeks to pull this stuff together…and I know that within fifteen minutes everything will change and the whole lot will need updating, and I might as well have written it in peach crayon for all the good it’s going to do.

But that’s life. That’s conventions. Kind of the same thing to me, I guess.

I look at the to-do list Dad has stuck to the front of my clipboard, already propped on the table. Forty-two items. And at the bottom of the page he’s written Continues… alongside an annoying little arrow. Like I don’t know him well enough to always, always check the next sheet.

I consider the clipboard. I pause. “He’s already been in, hasn’t he?” I ask the room.

Nadiya swears at her phone.

“Missed him by five minutes,” says Bede, aiming another Smartie at Sam.

“So why are you all still here?”

“Wanted to make you feel special.” Bede shrugs, lobbing the empty sweet packet at the bin. It misses. I stare at him pointedly until he gives in and picks it up. “Nice to see you, Lexi,” he mutters.

“Yeah, yeah. Missed you too. Now shift your arse. We’ve got to set the registration desk up.” I swipe at him with my clipboard as he slouches past me out of the room. He dodges, and blows me a kiss before strolling out into the corridor and sticking his hands in his pockets. I can hear him whistling the theme from Game of Thrones as he goes.

Sam rolls over and pushes herself up off the floor, throwing me a salute and a “Sir! Yes, sir!” before running off after Bede, laughing. Nadiya keeps tapping on her phone, then finally looks up.

“Hey, Lexi. Heard your dad and Bea have set the date. Big news,” she says, coming over and giving me a hug.

“I only found out this morning! How do you know already?”

“You know convention staff. And this is your father we’re talking about.”

“Don’t remind me.” I stare at the clipboard. Hard.

Obviously realizing we could do with a change of subject, Nadiya clears her throat and whistles. “So where do you need me to go?”

“Didn’t my dad…?”

“Assign me already? Yeah, but that’ll only take me half an hour.”

“Uh, hold on.” I scan down the list of Impossible Tasks I’m Supposed to Accomplish Before 5.30. “Do you want to go over to the traders’ room and the art show and see how they’re doing with set-up? Make sure they’ve got everything they need, and all the stalls are ready?”

She nods. The art show and the traders’ room set-up are the two real headaches: they’re so big that they have their own teams and their own staff, but they always need backup if it’s available. With so many different stalls in the trading space selling everything from collector cards to toys via superhero costumes and board games, and a load of original artwork to display on the specially-constructed art show walls, there’s plenty of work to go round.

“Nadiya? Before you go…”

Talking to Nadiya isn’t quite the same as talking to Sam. How could it be? Sam’s Sam, and that makes her one of a kind (luckily for the rest of us – I’m not sure the world’s ready for two of her yet). With Nadiya it’s a little more awkward. Even though she only lives on the other side of London to me, I haven’t seen her since the end of the last convention six months ago. She’s never really seemed fussed about meeting up in the real world, and that’s okay with me. Besides, at home, the people I know from sixth-form college – the ones I occasionally hang out with when I don’t have coursework or Dad-work – they don’t really get conventions, and while I’m with them I guess I’m slightly less…conventiony. So being able to turn up here and be me – really me – with everyone I love, it’s a relief. College friends are fine, but these are my people. “How are you doing?”

She knows exactly what I mean. “Sam told you?”

“About Ajay? Yeah. Sorry.” I try a shrug. “Convention staff, you know?”

“He keeps messaging me. Saying he’s sorry, saying I’ve made a mistake, saying…a load of shit.” She shakes her head.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Uh-uh.” Another head shake. “He’s a dick. Better off without him.”

“Want me to block his number for you?”

“No. Yes. Maybe? Ask me tomorrow.” Her phone buzzes again and she rolls her eyes. “Scrap that. Ask me in an hour.”

“Any time. You just say the word and he’s gone.”

“Thanks. Sam offered to throw my phone in the fountain for me.”

“That should worry me. But I’d actually be more worried if she’d been anything other than incredibly dramatic.”

Nadiya tries to cover her laugh with a cough.

I smile back at her. “I mean it, though – you need anything, you tell me.”

She nods – and then mutters “Dick” again, slipping her phone back into her bag without even looking at the latest message.

“Where did Daddy Dearest put you first then?” I hold the door open, then lock it behind us.

“Signage,” she says, holding up a stack of laminated signs with directions, room names and arrows printed on them. I wince. Hotels hate convention signage. “Wish me luck?”

When she’s gone I look at my clipboard.

Item 1: unpack books for membership bags. Priority.

The next twenty-two items all have Priority written after them.

Don’t they always?

Thanks, Dad.

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The relative quiet of the early registration period is over in a flash, and Saturday morning comes round far too fast – like it always does. We’re well into the first full day, with breakfast already a distant and fading memory, when Bede raises an eyebrow at me from his spot behind the registration desk. “You have jam on your lanyard.”

“I know. I’m saving it for later.” I surreptitiously give the Access All Areas pass hanging around my neck a wipe, and he almost falls off his chair laughing.

Naturally, this is the moment my dad chooses to appear round the corner, having just walked the length of the registration queue. He narrows his eyes briefly at Bede, who takes the hint and gets on with flicking through the rack of membership badges for “Sands, J”, while beside him Nadiya hands over one of the canvas membership bags we were stuffing with freebies till gone midnight. I try really hard not to notice the smudge of what looks like pizza sauce on the back of the bag as it crosses the table.

Dad surveys the queue. He’s rocking back and forth on his heels, the way he always does when he’s nervous. “How’s everything going so far?”

“Seems okay. We opened registration at 9.30 this morning, and we’re at about a hundred an hour.”

I can see him doing the maths in his head, so I add: “Faster than last time, yes.”

“Do you…?”

“No. I don’t have the figures from last time. I was there. Do you trust me or not?”

“You know I do.” He squeezes my shoulder. This is barely a step up from the kiss-on-the-top-of-the-head. In front of a queue full of people who have literally nothing better to do than stare at me. Awesome. “I’m just wondering whether the queue might move a little faster with someone else helping?”

“You mean me.”

“Not necessarily. But what are you doing at the moment?”

“I’m standing here. Talking to you, Dad.”

“Right. Yes.”

“Would you like me to get behind the reg desk for a bit?”

“If you think that’s the best thing to do…”

I’ve already lost him. He’s craning his neck, peering down the queue towards the main entrance. And he’s spotted someone, I can tell.

“Lexi, could you ask…”

“Sam? She’s already on it,” I say, clambering over the pile of tote bags – it’s a lot smaller than it was last time I looked. Sam is, as usual, on guest liaison duty. Her job is to prowl the lobby keeping an eye out for any of our convention guests – anyone who’s due to be on a stage over the weekend. When she spots one, she sweeps them off to a separate registration area to give them their pass and schedule. Her wig today is bright green and matches her outfit, so it’s fair to say that seeing her striding across the lobby towards them, some of our guests may well assume she’s cosplaying as broccoli. (Who knows? She might be. I didn’t dare ask when she stuck her head round the connecting door between our rooms.)

This satisfies my father – in as much as he ever can be satisfied with the way a convention is going on the first morning. He nods and wanders off, smiling at people in the queue and stopping here and there to chat. I notice he gives the guys dressed as space marines – already getting excited about the Interstellar Terror Q&A and apparently rating Hollywood aliens on a sliding scale of scariness while they wait – a wide berth though.

“Lex? We’re running low on bags.” Nadiya pokes me in the side. “Where are the rest?”

“Down in the cargo bay. We only brought half of them from the storage locker this morning. I can radio through and get some brought up – how many do we need?”

She looks up and down the queue, then up at the ceiling as she rolls through the numbers in her head. “Another two hundred? But quickly, yeah?”

I grab my walkie-talkie from the desk – and promptly drop it straight into Bede’s lap. He yelps.

“Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry…” I lean forward to grab it – and then stop. “I think you’d better pass that to me, don’t you?”

He hands it back over his shoulder without even looking up from the names he’s ticking off on the membership list.

“Lexi?” A voice I don’t know is saying my name.

“Hmmm?” I look up from the walkie-talkie, trying to match the voice to a face. On the other side of the table, just to the left of the rapidly-diminishing bag mountain, is a woman with a friendly smile and neat blonde hair. She’s wearing a beige trench coat, a white T-shirt and skinny jeans with ballet pumps. On the floor beside her is a huge leather shoulder bag, and in her hand is a phone.

Publicist! hisses a tiny voice in the back of my head. First rule of conventions: always be nice to the publicists. However tired, stressed or pissed off you – the convention staff – might be, the publicist has got it worse.

(Actually, that’s a lie. The first rule of conventions is: always make sure the hotel knows you’re coming. Because sometimes they don’t. True story. A story I’ve heard many, many times from my father, usually late at night and in the immediate run-up to another convention…)

“Hi!” I arrange my face into my best I’m-busy-but-delighted-to-help expression. I know it’s the right one. I’ve practised it in the mirror.

“I’m Lucy, from Eagle’s Head?”

Eagle’s Head. Books. Something about books. That’s literally all I’ve got right now.

“How can I help?”

“I was wondering…we have a new author, and would it be possible…?”

“You need another pass?” I have a list somewhere. I know I do…

“Lexi! Bags!” Nadiya hisses at me. I glance over at the bag pile. We’re down to maybe fifty. If we run out of bags, the queue grinds to a halt and everyone starts getting grumpy. Plus I get my dad breathing down my neck again. Bags. We need bags. I need to get bags. I have never needed bags as badly as I do at this moment.

“Lucy. Umm. Lovely to meet you. Yes. Pass. I don’t have any extra passes here at the moment, but if you want to double back and head to guest registration on the other side of the main lobby, one of the team will get you sorted out. Just ask for Sam, and tell her I’ve sent you over. She’s basically dressed like giant asparagus. You can’t miss her.”

“Great. Thank you.” Lucy the publicist picks up her bag and heads back down the line.

Eagle’s Head. Why does that ring a bell?

“BAGS, LEXI!”

“Shit. Yes. Sorry.” I press a button on the walkie-talkie. “Mike? Can we get a couple of hundred swag bags up to registration, please? Yep. Now. Like, actually now? Thanks.”

The call comes over the walkie-talkie during the late-lunchtime lull. At first, I try to ignore it. It’s only half past one, and I’m already officially shattered…but one does not simply ignore the call of the walkie. It’s my dad – and while I don’t catch all of what he says, it doesn’t matter. I definitely get the word “pineapple”.

“Pineapple” is the code word.

“Pineapple” is never good.

Bede hands what feels like the thousandth bag over the desk and looks at me with horror. “Did he just say…?”

“Yes. Yes, he did. Pineapple. Pineapples everywhere.” I jab the talk button. “Pineapple. Understood. On my way to the ops room now.” I stuff the walkie into the back pocket of my jeans. “Can you tell Sam if you see her?” I ask.

Bede nods. “Where is she anyway? She’s meant to be taking over from me on reg.”

“I haven’t seen her since this morning.” I crawl out under the desk. It’s the quickest way. Not the most elegant, but who needs dignity?

“Can you call her or something? I’m starting to lose all the feeling in my legs. Plus I’m starving…” he shouts after me.

I half-walk, half-jog down the main corridor, dodging between groups coming out of one of the programming halls. Marie – one of Dad’s senior staff – is standing by the double doors, directing the queue waiting to go in for the next panel. She opens her mouth to say something…but closes it again when I mouth the word “pineapple” at her.

She shudders, and I hear her say, “Good luck.”

The ops room door is ajar.

I take a deep breath.

My father, the hotel manager and Sam are gloomily huddled around a petite, pixie-like woman, and a slightly frazzled-looking guy who is only a couple of years older than me – which would probably make him her assistant. I recognize her immediately. She’s one of our guests of honour – which would explain why Sam’s here, and not switching with Bede. The guest is an actress; I remember seeing her check in to the hotel last night. I remember, because she had one of those incredibly tiny dogs with…

Automatically, I check the room for a dog.

I see no dog.

There is no dog.

There is no dog, and the guest of honour is crying.

Oh no.

Pineapples everywhere.

The dog, it turns out, is called Bangle. Bangle has – not to put too fine a point on it – done a runner from his hotel room and is now at large somewhere in the hotel.

Probably.

The first thought that lands in my head as Dad explains the whole sorry saga is: the dog has its own hotel room?

The second is: Bangle? Really?

Not that I’m judging or anything.

But…Bangle?

Either way, Bangle is a very small dog in a very big hotel full of people who aren’t exactly looking out for a dog the size of the average pencil case. What if he gets out of the building? What if somebody treads on him?

Sam takes the hotel room and the upstairs corridors. The assistant takes the stairwells and lifts. Dad takes the lobby and the convention floor, giving me a stern look that says he’ll be co-opting more of my staff to help with that…which leaves me with the service areas. Looks like instead of ducking into the Feminist Harry Potter panel, I’ll be spending the afternoon crawling around the housekeeping storage areas, shaking a packet of dog chews. Excellent. I’d so much rather be doing this.

And anyway, who gives a dog its own room?

“Dad…” I grab his arm as we step back out into the corridor. His face looks ashy-grey in the artificial light. We’ve never had to deal with this kind of problem before. Guests getting sick, guests oversleeping, guests missing their trains or (one time) completely forgetting that they were supposed to be here. We’ve had all those, and over the course of his whole glorious career, Dad’s had plenty more. But a Small Dog On The Loose? That’s a new one.

“Just do your best, Lexi.”

“It’s a dog. A tiny, tiny dog. There is a lot of hotel here – it could be anywhere!” I hiss at him. He smiles back through the open door at the tearful actress – who is now dabbing her eyes with the corner of a handkerchief and glancing around to check who’s watching. I’m tempted to tell her there are no cameras in the ops room, but I imagine that would go down like a lead balloon, so I don’t.

“Exactly. It could be anywhere. So start looking.”

“It’s probably at the bottom of her handbag and she just can’t see it.” This sounded funnier in my head. Out loud, it isn’t funny at all.

“This isn’t a wallet, Lexi. It’s her pet.” He looks at me. I open my mouth to say something back, but he’s right. Tiny dog. Big hotel. Lots of people. Anything could happen to Bangle – most of it very not-good. Dad knows what I’m thinking though, and he shakes his head. “We can talk about the animal rule tomorrow morning. Right now, we look for the dog.”

“Bangle,” I say, wondering why we even bother having rules. There’s the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth, like he’s trying not to smirk. But he has his game-face on.

“Bangle,” he says firmly. “Now go.”

The service corridors of the hotel go on for ever. I thought the convention floor was big, but it’s nothing compared to the warren of passageways and storage areas down here. There’s a whole room just for storing sheets. It’s like I’m Alice and I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. You know, if the rabbit hole involved lots and lots of laundry. A slightly open door near the kitchens leads to a huge pantry full of sacks of flour…and two chefs dressed in checked black-and-white trousers and open white catering jackets, sitting on a pile of them, smoking. They’re almost as surprised to see me as I am to see them, judging by how fast they try to hide their cigarettes. I explain the dog problem before they recover enough to start shouting at me – I’m not technically supposed to be poking around down here. They look at each other. Then back at me.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen him, have you?” I ask. “He’s about this big…” I hold my hands up. He really is very small.

They variously frown, shrug and shake their heads. Right. Helpful.

I’m pondering the big steel doors into the hotel’s massive industrial kitchen – and thinking exactly how much I don’t want to go in there and tell them the convention that’s already making their lives quite hard enough, thank you, has managed to lose a dog – when my walkie-talkie chirps. Bangle has turned up, unharmed…in the wardrobe of his own bloody room, which the frazzled (and possibly useless) assistant had managed to shut him in without noticing. Sam opened the door, he bounced out, crisis over. Everything is fine.

Fine is a state of mind. I’m starving, knackered and standing in the middle of a gloomy hotel service corridor that doesn’t feel a billion miles away from something in a horror movie, flickering overhead fluorescent lights and all. I’m sweaty from running around looking for a missing pet that wasn’t actually missing, I’ve walked for what feels like miles and – what’s worse – I’ve absolutely no idea how everything’s going upstairs on the convention floor… And when I get back up there, I’m going to have to deal with a sulky team who’ve had to cover for me and Sam while we’ve been off on our magical mystery tour. Yes, they’re my friends…but friendship only goes so far.

As I trail back along the corridor towards the lift, I try to shrug off my black mood. I’m annoyed with Dad – for sending me down here, for letting a guest bring a dog when I could have told him something like this would happen…and also for suddenly presenting me with incontrovertible, un-ignorable proof that Bea is a serious thing, not just someone he likes going for a drink with after going to serious, business event-type conventions. (Who would have thought that conventions about conventions were even a thing – let alone romantic?)

Yep, that’s what I’m really annoyed about, isn’t it? The wedding thing.

It’s not that I don’t like Bea, exactly, it’s just that I’m not sure I’m ready for her to become a permanent fixture. I mean, I like the picture on the wall in my hotel room, but that doesn’t mean I want it in my actual room. It would feel alien. Wrong. But it’s not exactly something I can talk to Dad about, is it? Conventions? Yes (provided I can pin him down long enough). My feelings? No. No way.

Like when he first announced they were getting married – I didn’t even know how seriously to take him at the time. I guess I thought if he actually meant it, Bea would be there too, telling me with him. Plus, you know: date, schedule…all that.

“I really love her, you know.”

“I know.” (I didn’t. Not until then…)

“And I want to do things differently this time. I don’t want to make the same mistakes with Bea that I made with your mother, making her feel like I was neglecting her. I want to be better, be a better husband.”

Oh, like the conversation wasn’t already awkward enough.

But…a tiny little patch of fear uncurled, fernlike, somewhere in the middle of my spine.

“Does that mean you’re going to stop doing the conventions?”

I wasn’t really asking about the conventions. Of course I wasn’t. I was asking about…life. Our life, his life, what happened next. I didn’t actually believe he’d ever stop: I’m not sure he can. But maybe if he loved her better than Mum…better than me…if he wanted to be better…he’d consider it, at least in his casually dropped into conversation kind of way. It would be a warning bell. Or what if he said he wanted to bring Bea onto the team? Did that mean she was replacing me, somehow?

“No! Of course not. She may not care much for the fan conventions, but she’s in the business too. She knows how much this all means to me.”

It wasn’t the most reassuring answer, but it was good enough.

got

“Why can’t you do it?”

“I don’t look after the green room. I only do the mics and soundcheck since…” She tails off pointedly.

“Ah.” There was an incident last year involving an entire tray of full coffee cups, a table leg, and a very famous writer wearing a white shirt. “Fine.” I snatch the clipboard out of her hand.

“Love you too!” she yells after me.

I stick the middle finger of my right hand up at her behind my back as I walk off. Someone dressed as Judge Dredd makes a disapproving sound. “Sorry, Judge,” I mutter.

Green room it is.