by Della Galton
‘That’s not enough to get a gnat drunk, let alone a Somerset cider drinker who’s been knocking back Scrumpy since he was thirteen.’
‘The guy wasn’t exactly small either,’ Phil agreed. ‘It is very odd. Even if someone had spiked his drink, they’d have had to go overboard. A few vodkas probably wouldn’t have been enough. Besides, why would you want to nobble a Guinness World Records attempt? Not one like that anyway. One that’s just a bit of fun.’
‘To get at us, maybe,’ Clara said quietly. ‘Maybe it wasn’t aimed at Micky directly but at us. Maybe like Arnold and the Young Farmers, he was just collateral damage.’
‘What you’re saying is that we should be checking for an upload to YouTube any time now?’ Phil said, his eyes very serious.
Mr B slapped his hand against the stainless-steel dishwasher from where he’d retrieved the drinks measure. ‘Surely no one would go down that route again. Not after they had an injunction slapped on them last time.’
‘We don’t know that they did,’ Clara said, thinking she’d have to ask Kate how far the solicitor had got. ‘It got taken down really quickly, I seem to remember. YouTube may have decided it was defamatory themselves.’ She hesitated. ‘Unfortunately, there was video footage taken of the whole thing this morning too. A reporter from The Purbeck Gazette interviewed Micky prior to the challenge and then he filmed it. It was the same guy who turned up after Arnold’s doomed climb and asked if he could rent the lighthouse so he could propose to his girlfriend.’
‘Fissilingual bastard,’ Mr B said. ‘Was it the small guy who looks like a ferret?’
‘Yes it was. Why?’
‘I know him from somewhere.’
‘He’s a reporter – he must be out and about all the time. You’ve probably seen him around.’
‘No, it’s not that. I know him from somewhere else. Some other context, if you know what I mean. It’ll come back to me.’ He tapped his nose. ‘It always does.’
‘At least we can’t blame this one on The Manor House,’ Phil said. ‘We’re on pretty good terms with them now, aren’t we, Clara?’
He winked and she nodded, remembering Adam being in the chocolate-scented marquee this morning.
‘We definitely can’t blame them. But I don’t think we can rule out sabotage either.’ As they walked out of the hotel kitchen back towards the reception, she added, ‘The only other option is that Micky Tucker’s a secret alcoholic and he poured half a bottle of spirits down his own throat this morning without anyone noticing.’
‘Not very secret,’ Mr B said wryly. ‘Besides, alcoholics can usually hold their drink better than that. That’s kind of the point of being one, isn’t it?’
‘I’m going to have to tell Kate,’ Clara murmured as they stood in reception once more and she saw Keith nod in their direction. ‘In the meantime, can I ask you to please keep this to yourselves? The one good thing about it is that no one is going to link The Bluebell with a failed Curly Wurly-stretching record-breaking attempt.’
‘Of course they’re not,’ Phil said. ‘Why would they?’
‘Hmmm,’ said Mr B.
Clara could hear an ocean of doubt in their voices, which was not in the least bit reassuring.
21
Clara called Kate first thing Monday and they talked the incident through, and while Kate agreed it was worrying, she also didn’t see how it could possibly be their fault. Maybe it had all just been an unfortunate series of events and had nothing to do with their saboteur, which was how Clara had started to refer to their unknown enemy in her head.
Despite Kate’s reassurance, and the knowledge that she would be back to take charge in less than two weeks, Clara spent all day Monday on tenterhooks. She dreaded every phone call and every email. She scanned YouTube and Twitter and all their other pages on social media. She found nothing online about the disastrous Curly Wurly record-breaking attempt. There was very little online about Brancombe’s mini Oktoberfest at all.
By Tuesday morning, she was starting to relax again. But she still got into work earlier than usual. Keith was on reception. He and Zoe hadn’t yet done the handover. They changed over at nine in the week.
Clara was just walking up to the main doors of the hotel when she noticed a newspaper stuck half in and half out of the hotel’s letter box. This was unusual on more than one count. Firstly, Tim, the postman, usually brought the post right in, so someone else must have delivered this, and, secondly, they didn’t usually get The Purbeck Gazette, which was what it was, until Wednesday.
Curly Wurly Shame for Shirley.
The front page headlines hit Clara in the face and her heart began to pound. Swiftly, she scanned the rest of the story.
Heartbroken Shirley Tucker watched helplessly as son, Micky, failed in his attempt to break the Guinness World Record for Curly Wurly stretching at Oktoberfest.
The chocolate challenger started well but couldn’t finish due to illness.
Shirley Tucker sobs, ‘It’s such a shame. He had his heart set on that record. He’s been practising for months.’
A mysterious wave of sickness stopped play at the eleventh hour. Spectators at the challenge said, ‘He was so close. We thought he would do it.’
Micky says, ‘I’m too gutted to speak.’
Supporters from the Bluebell Cliff Hotel, where the Tuckers spent the previous night, said they were devastated.
Full story on Page 3.
Clara felt a cold knife of tension twist her stomach. The Bluebell was on the front page – associated with this disaster – and after everything she had done to make sure it didn’t happen. A shakiness started in her legs.
Still standing outside on the front doorstep, she turned warily to page 3.
Shirley says, ‘We chose that hotel because it’s the place where dreams come true, but our good-luck Bluebell Cliff breakfast didn’t work. Micky was fine when he started the Curly Wurly challenge, but halfway through he had to stop due to being overcome by sickness. We don’t yet know what caused the sickness. Food poisoning has not been ruled out.’
They hadn’t even mentioned the cider, Clara realised as she folded up the paper and stuffed it into her bag. They’d implied that Micky had contracted food poisoning at the Bluebell. Was it possible? Oh shit, her thoughts were so jumbled, she was no longer sure.
She called out a quick hello to Keith across the vanilla-air-freshener warmth of reception before rushing through into the manager’s office. Then she read the article again twice more, before putting the paper away in the top drawer. Not that there was much point hiding it. This paper had a circulation of 30,000 copies around the Purbecks. It was also online and occasionally a bigger paper picked up its stories and covered them. Especially if news was in short supply. Anyone and everyone could read it. And they were on the front page.
The brutal facts kept circling in her head. She needed to call Kate again. She needed to call another emergency staff meeting. Or perhaps she should call a mini one with key staff. What possible damage limitation could they do this time? It was too late. Why hadn’t she thought about this and pre-empted it?
‘You couldn’t possibly have known,’ Zoe said, when she came in later that morning. ‘Don’t we advertise with the Gazette?’
Clara shook her head, thinking fleetingly that Zoe had learned a lot since she’d started at the Bluebell. ‘We used to but not so much lately. I cut back on the advertising budget because we’ve been so busy. We’re fully booked right through until spring.’
‘It’s still pretty damning though, isn’t it? Could we sue them?’
‘It is damning, but they haven’t actually said that we’re responsible.’
‘They’ve managed to imply it though, haven’t they?’ said Mr B when he arrived and came into the office to join Clara. ‘Pediculous scumbags.’ He tossed the newspaper onto the desk. ‘Have you spoken to Kate?’
‘Yes. She’s phoning her solicitor and getting back to me. But it’s tricky. They haven’t sai
d anything that’s not true.’ Kate had sounded very serious though.
What they had done, Phil agreed with both Clara and Mr B when he arrived for the emergency staff meeting she’d called, was to leave a lot out.
‘Didn’t you say the guy was three sheets to the wind?’
‘Yes he was. Or he certainly seemed to be.’ Clara rested her elbows on the manager’s desk. She was starting to doubt her own memory of what had gone on two days earlier. ‘He gave every appearance of being drunk. But he was adamant he’d only had one pint of cider in the bar, aside from the whisky he’d consumed here. That’s why he and his mother ended up blaming it on food poisoning.’
‘Which they’ve managed to link with us,’ Phil said. ‘What I can’t understand is why they would want to do that.’
‘It sells papers, doesn’t it?’
‘The Purbeck Gazette isn’t usually as gratuitous as this though. They’re usually quite benign and gentle. The tone of this whole piece is snarly and pointed. Tabloid at its worst.’
‘Someone is targeting us,’ Mr B said. ‘Person or persons unknown are trying to bring us down. I know you don’t think it’s The Manor House, Clara, but there is someone behind all these attacks, isn’t there? Someone posted the lighthouse video on YouTube. Someone cancelled the Young Farmers’ event and someone sabotaged the Curly Wurly record.’
‘At least we know who’s responsible for this one,’ Phil said.
‘But we don’t though, do we,’ Clara said. ‘We only know that The Purbeck Gazette reported on it. We don’t know who got to Micky. Good grief, I’m beginning to sound as paranoid as you.’ She glanced at Mr B.
‘Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’ He raised his dark eyebrows. ‘We need to find out who’s behind this or none of us are going to have a job.’
As well as being a conspiracy theorist, Mr B was very good at stating the obvious, Clara thought, noticing that she had a missed call on her mobile from Adam. There was also one from Grandad. He could certainly pick his moments. Before she could decide whose call to return first, her mobile rang again and this time it was Kate.
‘I’ve had a word with Brian Curtis,’ she began without preamble. ‘He doesn’t think we would have a case against the paper. They haven’t directly linked us with being the cause of Micky’s failure. They have just said he was taken ill. They haven’t directly linked us with being responsible for any food poisoning either.’ She sounded like she was quoting her solicitor word for word. She also sounded desperately sad. ‘It’s very clever wording, but Brian says we can’t get them to retract something they haven’t said. We could ask them to put in a little statement that says the Bluebell Cliff has no responsibility for Micky Tucker’s illness, but if we did that it would just link us with it even more in people’s minds. And anyway…’ there was a deep sigh in her voice, ‘we can’t prove that we’re not responsible for his illness. This whole thing is really, really unfortunate, Clara, but I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it. Have we had any calls?’
‘What kind of calls?’ Clara said, although she knew what her boss was asking.
‘Negative feedback? Cancellations?’
‘No nothing like that.’
‘Well, fingers crossed we won’t. This will blow over. Today’s headlines are tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappers, that’s what my Aunt Carrie would have said.’
When she had put down the phone, Clara relayed all this to Phil and Mr B.
‘Wrapping fish and chips in newspapers went out in the eighties,’ the chef remarked, screwing up his nose in distaste and getting up from his chair. ‘Not a moment too soon either, if you want my opinion.’
When they had left her office, Clara phoned her grandfather back, who didn’t answer, and Adam, who did.
‘I heard what happened at Oktoberfest. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. That must have been disappointing.’
‘Yes, it was.’ She hesitated, wondering if he’d heard it on the grapevine or whether he’d seen the newspaper headlines.
‘I saw it in the Gazette just now,’ he confirmed. ‘One of our guests had a copy. I’m sorry, Clara – that must have been quite a blow.’
‘Yes,’ she said, her mind suddenly on overtime. ‘Adam, what time does the Gazette usually get delivered to you? We don’t normally even get it until Wednesday and yet it was here first thing when I got in.’
‘We don’t usually get it until Wednesday either,’ he confirmed, ‘but it’s obviously printed before that. I’m guessing it probably depends on which delivery round you’re on.’
‘Yes, thanks, I’m sure you’re right. And thanks for calling, Adam, I appreciate it.’
‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’
She hoped she hadn’t cut him off too quickly, but her mind was still racing. The Purbeck Gazette may not have an axe to grind, but whoever had delivered that newspaper clearly did. They had gone out of their way to make sure she would see a copy early. Surely they wouldn’t do that unless their motives were bad.
Finally, Clara had something positive to do. The Bluebell had a state-of-the-art security system. She could easily find out who had delivered that paper. All she had to do was to play back the front door’s CCTV.
At four p.m. she was still scanning through the recordings when Zoe knocked on the door. ‘Sorry to interrupt…’
‘You’re not. Come in.’
‘We just had a booking cancelled.’ Zoe came into the room slowly. Her English-rose complexion looked paler than usual.
‘Who was it?’
‘Do you remember the Serious Hill Runners – they were here for a week in August and they had another week booked in May?’
Clara had an image of a wiry, cheery little man with NHS-style glasses. ‘I do yes. I liked them. Did they give a reason?’
‘They heard about the Curly Wurly record going wrong. Someone sent them a link to the story apparently and they were worried.’ She looked close to tears. ‘I did tell them, Clara, that it was nothing to do with us. But the woman on the phone was adamant. She kept saying that they were doing a record too and they didn’t want to put the kibosh on it. What does kibosh even mean?’
‘It means bad luck,’ Clara said, feeling the heaviness in her heart transfer itself to her chest. ‘Oh my goodness. OK, leave it with me. I’ll phone them back and see if I can reassure them.’
Zoe nodded and withdrew.
Clara made a note to call the Serious Hill Runners and glanced back at the CCTV recordings that she was still going through on the screen. There had been nothing all night. The camera only went off when it was triggered by movement and then its infrared light kicked in so you could actually see what was going on even in the dark.
The mornings got darker all through October until the end of the month when the clocks went back. She’d noticed the progression even over the last few days. Then, at just before 7.15 a.m. on the recording, she saw the camera click on and a figure appeared just beyond the front door.
She had hoped a car might pull up outside. Then she could have got a registration, but they must have parked at the back and walked round. She zoomed in. The figure was wearing jeans and a padded coat. It was probably male, but it was hard to tell because he or she had the hood up.
Clara slowed the recording down as they came to the door, bent and pushed the paper through the letter box. It looked like a man, but she couldn’t see any detail because he had a scarf half covering his face.
Frustrated, she called Mr B in. Phil had gone home. He was back on shift this evening, but Mr B was still in the kitchen.
‘It’s that reporter,’ he announced. ‘One hundred per cent.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘You can tell by the way he walks. He’s strutting – look.’ He leaned over her shoulder and fast-forwarded the file. ‘Look at the way he struts away from the door.’
‘Isn’t that just the way the camera goes frame by fr
ame when it’s speeded up?’
‘I don’t think so. I’d stake my reputation on it being him, the fissilingual bastard.’
22
‘Your chef may incorrectly believe the whole world is out to get him, but he does have a sharp vocabulary. Something to be commended in this day and age.’
This was the verdict of Clara’s grandfather, who she had caught up with eventually on Wednesday evening. She had picked him up two hours ago and they had just eaten dinner together at Kate’s.
When he’d phoned, he’d asked her to collect him, along with his overnight bag, and take him to Thelma’s. Clara had ignored his request and decided to cook him dinner at the bungalow instead and see if she could have one last go at talking him out of asking Gran for a divorce.
Right now, they were both pointedly avoiding the subject in case it ended up in another argument. Their earlier discussion had been heated.
‘So what does fissilingual mean anyway?’ Clara asked him.
‘Fork-tongued,’ Grandad told her with a distinct note of smugness in his voice. He rubbed his bristly white chin with one hand and just missed putting his elbow in the gravy boat. ‘Like a snake. A very helpful thing for a journalist to be.’
‘You sound like you approve – it wasn’t very helpful for The Bluebell. We lost a booking yesterday over this.’
‘Did you?’ He looked alarmed. ‘You didn’t tell me that.’
She had told him that. They’d been discussing it on the way here in the car, but he’d clearly forgotten. To be honest, she wasn’t surprised; he didn’t know whether he was coming or going. She was beginning to feel like that too.
They stared at each other across Kate’s kitchen table.
‘If you hadn’t gone and kidnapped me, I’d have had my life sorted out by now.’ He pushed his dinner plate away and coughed. His breathing was laboured again, which probably meant the COPD was getting worse. He could barely walk along the hall without having to pause for breath.
