The Honeymoon Hotel

by Hester Browne

  I stopped in front of an unspecific watery photographic print, chosen as part of Ellie’s short-lived revamp of the hotel when she took over as Mrs Bentley Douglas II. She ended up making everywhere look like reception. I’d have junked all her horrible prints, but this one was covering a stain on the wallpaper, and Laurence refused to pay for mass redecoration until he’d had his annual Mayo Clinic all-clear.

  ‘A jazzy version of a song about being off your face and drinking sangria out of a brown paper bag in a park – in the elegant Art Deco ballroom of this hotel?’ I demanded, all in one breath. ‘No. That’s not what Polly wants to do her first dance to. Definitely not.’

  Joe stopped too. ‘But Dan likes that song. I bet it’s the one thing he’s actually chosen in this wedding. Why does it matter to you?’

  ‘Because it’s not … it’s not a happy song.’

  Joe tilted his head and gave me another of his Californian expressions: the own your feelings one. I felt my cheeks redden under his direct gaze. He seemed to be looking straight into my head, and I hated having to justify things I knew were right. ‘Go on, say it,’ he said easily. ‘Be honest, you don’t like it.’

  ‘I don’t tell them what kind of wedding to have,’ I said, through gritted teeth. ‘I just try to make sure nothing goes wrong. And that starts with guiding them towards the right choices in the early stages. Polly wants “Moon River” because she’s got a vision about being swept around the floor in a waltz.’

  As I said it, I knew this wasn’t about Polly and Dan and Lou Reed. It was about Stephanie and Richard and the cancelled wedding. But Joe could bring it up. I wasn’t going to.

  ‘Does Dan even know he’s got waltzing lessons coming up? Or are you booking those for him too?’

  I swallowed and tried to keep my voice level. ‘I know you think I’m a control freak, but my job is to keep an eye on the bigger picture, as well as the details. Sometimes couples are a bit too close to emotional issues like keeping the family happy and adding up their budget so that they miss things.’

  ‘Or maybe you’re too close to the details to see the people,’ said Joe. ‘Details are fine, but they’re only details at the end of the day. Maybe it’s good to step back from that and ask what it is that the couple actually want, and give it some room to breathe.’ He made an expansive gesture. ‘To evolve.’

  I closed my eyes. Who exactly did he think he was? Some kind of workplace examiner? ‘You seem a lot more into the whole concept of weddings than you were a few days ago.’

  Joe shrugged. ‘Jet lag wore off? I’m feeling a bit more human. Plus I had a chat with Mum on the phone this morning. She wants me to go down to stay with her at Wragley Hall, to help out Alec with some building work she’s got him doing. Something about a golf course? He’s got an explosives licence now.’

  ‘You’re kidding me?’ I said without thinking. ‘Someone gave Alec a licence to blow things up?’

  ‘I know. Like he normally asks first.’ Joe shared my recoil of horror. ‘So, as you can imagine, the prospect of being here and helping out with a few weddings suddenly took on a much less … potentially fatal attraction. To coin a phrase.’

  I couldn’t blame him for that. And it also reminded me that Caroline would be getting updates on my mentoring from Joe, and I didn’t want to look bad in her eyes.

  ‘And,’ he went on less cockily, ‘last night … bit awkward. I probably owe you some overtime for that. Not that I think I did the wrong thing,’ he added, ‘but, yeah …’

  ‘They cancelled the wedding,’ I said shortly.

  ‘I know. I heard.’

  We stared at each other, Joe’s earnest eyes raking my face, while I tried to guard my expression as best I could. I must have been tired, because I honestly didn’t know what I thought, I just felt weary. All that effort, all that planning, for nothing. And what about Stephanie and Richard? What sort of conversation were they having now?

  ‘Look,’ I said, trying to control the situation before Gemma or Helen saw me looking so rattled, ‘I’m not saying it’s up to us to decide the wedding for the bride, but it’s like Polly said, it’s reassuring for her to know that someone’s calm enough to say yes or no. Because in my experience, none of the wedding party ever really is.’

  ‘You’re the expert,’ said Joe, and offered me some of my own wedding petit fours.

  After a moment’s hesitation I took a couple. I never usually ate between meals.

  They were actually pretty good.

  *

  Helen and Gemma were sitting in my office when I got back, scoffing green and lilac macaroons left over from another of Grace Dewberry’s wedding cake tastings. Grace and her bridesmaids had already been in for two tastings. I was beginning to think Gemma might be confusing Grace deliberately, just to get yet another round of leftovers.

  ‘Before you ask, I’m not here,’ said Helen, waving a macaroon in my direction. ‘I’m with the cheese supplier.’

  ‘And before you ask, I’m meant to be here,’ said Gemma defensively. ‘Laurence has locked his door. A package came for him in the post. From Sweden. So I had to divert all his calls to your phone. I took some messages for you too, though.’

  ‘Thank you, Gemma.’ I started checking the pile of notes. There were a lot. Most of them were from Stephanie Miller’s parents, bridesmaids and family. I groaned inwardly. This was going to take quite some unpicking.

  ‘How were Polly and Dan?’ asked Helen. ‘Everything looking set for the big day?’

  ‘Yup! Well, I hope so. First time Dan’s bothered to come along, and he tried to change the first dance to “Perfect Day”.’

  Gemma pulled a face. ‘Ooh, gloomy. Why do men always pick “Perfect Day”?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea, but they do. Probably because it’s always used on Match of the Day montages.’

  ‘Wasn’t Joe helpful?’ asked Helen.

  ‘No, he suggested they get a lounge version arranged. Because Lou Reed and Frank Sinatra are natural bedfellows.’

  ‘That’s not a bad – oh dear,’ said Helen, seeing my face.

  I swivelled round and stared at my Bridelizer. There was now a distinct gap where Stephanie and Richard had been at the weekend, and I needed four more weddings booked in before the end of the year if I was going to beat the projection I’d given Laurence. Just four more. The Thornbury wedding would be a biggie, but every smaller one counted now I’d lost the Millers.

  It’s how you deal with setbacks that prove you’re manager material, I reminded myself, chewing my lip. This could be a blessing in disguise. It could.

  ‘Has Joe told you what he was doing out in California?’ asked Gemma dreamily. ‘He was telling me about the moonlight jeep trips he organized in Joshua Tree National Park. You drive out after sunset, under the stars, along an old gold miners’ trail, and—’

  I banged the desk with the flat of my hand and she jumped.

  ‘Sorry. But don’t start. I’m not in the mood for Poor Joe this morning. I had to listen to him telling Polly and Dan how rubbish our English coffee is again this morning.’ I opened up Polly’s file to type up the notes from our meeting. ‘Even Dan suggested he get with the tea programme now he’s back here.’

  ‘Aw.’ Gemma made a sad pouty face, as if Joe were some kind of tragic wartime orphan who’d fetched up on the doorstep. ‘You can’t blame him. It sounds like he had an amazing life out there. And now he’s back in rainy old London.’

  ‘He must miss California. Specially the weather,’ Helen agreed. ‘It’s freezing this morning. He did a lot of surfing, didn’t he?’

  ‘Ooh, you can tell, with those shoulders. And he’s so tanned.’

  I didn’t look up or join in. I was trying to make sense of Polly’s list of photography requirements. It sounded more like she was making a documentary about herself than getting married. She wanted the photographer to come to her next dress fitting.

  ‘Ask Rosie about his tan,’ said Helen. ‘She’s the one w
ho had the full inspection …’

  I started to tune Helen and Gemma out as I finished the notes and began to rattle through the emails that had piled up in my inbox while I’d been away from my desk.

  Daphne, October bride: Is it Bridezilla to ask everyone to wear black clothes so my wedding dress will stand out in the photos? No, it’s fine, as long as you want to look like you’ve crashed a funeral party.

  Polite A: Maybe give them a couple of colour choices, Daphne?

  Emilia, December bride: Can we let Mother’s dog stay in hotel overnight? Why not? It could go in with Laurence. He liked dogs.

  Polite A: Yes, we can arrange that, no problem!

  Catherine, September bride: Pls advise re etiquette of sacking maid of honour. I racked my brains. Was that the MoH who was in love with the groom, or the one who I suspected was in love with the bride? Maids of honour nearly always had an agenda of some kind.

  Polite A: Catherine, that’s quite a delicate problem; why don’t I call you later so we can discuss it properly?

  So much to do. So many things to worry about. And I needed to phone someone about the mortgage later – I focused on that. All this stress was going to lead to something good: me and Dominic, in our own place …

  ‘Rosie?’

  I looked up. Helen was staring at me. ‘Why did he come back?’ she repeated.

  ‘Why did who come back?’

  ‘Joe!’

  ‘I have no idea. I guess Laurence asked him to come back to help out with the hotel.’ I gave them both a look. ‘We are short-staffed, as you might have noticed.’

  ‘But why would he leave his business?’ Gemma persisted. ‘I looked on the internet and it wasn’t like there was a terrible accident with his company or anything. It was going really well. He had celebrity clients, and everything.’

  ‘It doesn’t always take a big accident to sink a business,’ I said, refreshing my emails to find out if Dominic had had a look at the flat particulars I’d sent him. ‘Sometimes it can be down to something as tiny as not paying tax.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s a tax evader,’ said Gemma decisively. ‘What if it was a broken heart?’

  ‘Ooh, yes.’ Helen helped herself to another macaroon. ‘I bet he either broke someone’s heart with his footloose Sagittarian ways, or some ice maiden of a woman broke his.’

  ‘How on earth do you know he’s a Sagittarian?’ I was trying very hard not to get sucked into this conversation, but Gemma and Helen’s speculation was infectious.

  ‘He told us. And I reckon someone broke his,’ agreed Gemma. ‘Definitely.’

  I frowned at the computer screen. Dominic hadn’t looked at the flats; instead I had a one-line email asking if I could think of something funny to say about a pop-up Cumberland sausage restaurant.

  I clicked the email shut crossly. ‘I agree,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  I spun round in my chair to face them. ‘I’m joining in, in an attempt to bring this conversation to a close. I bet Joe irritated his last girlfriend so much that it was leave the country or risk being hurled over a balcony.’

  ‘Ooh, touchy,’ said Helen. ‘Is this because he criticized your afternoon tea wedding?’

  I nearly said, ‘No, it’s because he is the anti-Cupid,’ but discretion stopped me. I wasn’t going to discuss why Stephanie and Richard had decided to call things off.

  ‘No, it’s because Joe’s just one of those irritating types who feel everything and know nothing. Anyway, I’m seeing Caroline for lunch in a few weeks,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask her why he came back if you’re so desperate to find out.’

  ‘Will you? I’ll put a cocktail on it being a girl.’

  ‘Her dumping or him dumping?’ asked Gemma, quick as a flash.

  Helen joggled her head from side to side, considering. ‘Um … her dumping,’ she decided. ‘I reckon she broke his heart and he couldn’t face staying. Joe’s the “this whole country is dead to me now” type.’ She put the back of her hand to her brow and looked distraught. ‘“I have to leave it all behind if she doesn’t love me.” Or,’ she added, ‘she found him in bed with someone else and her dad’s after him with a shotgun.’

  I stared at them. ‘We are talking about the same Joe? Joe with his horrible ratty plaits that he’s only just cut off? And the shorts? “I’m a Sagittarian kind of guy” Joe?’

  Gemma ignored me. ‘Him dumping. He’s too cute to have been dumped. It’s guilt, I reckon.’

  Helen looked at me. ‘Rosie? What’s your guess?’

  ‘I’m not betting because it’s obvious why he came back,’ I said haughtily. ‘Laurence and Caroline told him to. Or he got bored. I know guys like Joe. They do things passionately for about eighteen months, get bored, pack it in.’

  ‘Except he’s been working out there since he left college,’ Helen pointed out. ‘And his business was doing all right.’

  ‘Then he’s just come back … to take over here.’

  Urgh, that didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it made me feel even more resentful; presumably Caroline and Laurence were giving him some sort of compensation for giving up his business to work here?

  ‘Doesn’t explain why he was hungover and miserable when Rosie found him,’ Gemma persisted. ‘That says “drinking to forget” to me. Especially in the bridal suite.’

  ‘For God’s sake, it was jet lag. That’s enough, Cagney and Lacey,’ I said, reaching for my bag. ‘I’m off to get something to eat. If you discover any more fascinating details about Joe, please be sure to leave me a note on my desk so I can ignore it.’

  ‘You’re no fun,’ said Helen.

  ‘I know,’ I said, and left.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Caroline hadn’t been my boss, technically, since she’d left the Bonneville five years ago to set up her own country house hotel in Oxfordshire. It was called Wragley Hall and it was basically heaven, but with fluffier towels. Everything was lilac-grey and cream, and the whole house smelled of lavender and beeswax polish, with soft lambswool blankets over the brass bed ends and comfy velvet chairs beside the huge log fire in the library. Caroline had bought it for nearly nothing as a leaking, squirrel-infested wreck; she had rolled up her sleeves and, as she put it, ‘created the hotel I wished Laurence had taken me to on our honeymoon.’

  I sent a lot of my engaged couples to Wragley Hall to calm down when the wedding planning got too tense and we were in danger of losing the booking to a broken engagement. The deputy manager, who she’d poached from Laurence after the divorce settlement, had created a spa in the old dairy sheds that managed to be simultaneously luxurious and brisk; instead of whale noise, you could listen to birdsong and the blissful sound of absolutely no questions about anything wedding related.

  Though Wragley Hall was busy year-round, Caroline still came up to London every couple of weeks to see what was going on, and to hoover up any gossip that hadn’t reached Oxfordshire yet. She always made time to see me, and though I’d graduated from college nearly ten years ago, I still learned more about hotel management and hospitality from my lunches with Caroline than I had in three years at college. Lunch tended to swish past in a blur of outrageous stories and things I probably shouldn’t have let slip about Laurence’s latest ailments, so today I’d made a list.

  In the space of potted shrimps on toast and a salad, we’d covered how the Bonneville was preparing for Christmas (only seven months away); what had happened on the date Laurence had been on with Caroline’s hairdresser’s friend, Diana (nothing; she’d had to bring him back to the hotel when he’d had an allergic reaction to some pineapple, much to Caroline’s disappointment – ‘I need someone else to shoulder the burden of his basic running, Rosie’); and what extra staff I should be booking for the Christmas parties; and in return I told her about a new supplier of top quality bed linen Jean had sourced in Leeds.

  I hadn’t actually written down ‘ask about Joe,’ but it was on my mental list of things I wanted to talk to Caroli
ne about anyway. Not so much the personal stuff that Helen and Gemma were itching to know, but the part that affected me: what Joe was really doing back at the hotel and, if he was staying, which department I should try to move him into. If I was going to make my projected bonus total, I couldn’t have Joe putting me off my stride for too long. Even en route to lunch, I’d had an email from a potential bride we’d seen earlier in the week, politely letting me know she’d decided to go with the Ritz instead of us; I had a feeling Joe’s questions about how exactly she’d met her millionaire hedge-funder fiancé might have had something to do with it.

  But, on the other hand, Caroline was his mother. I didn’t want to offend her by asking outright how long her son was intending to get in my way.

  Luckily for me, Caroline brought up the topic herself without any prompting, shortly after she’d put away an ‘adequate’ strawberry cheesecake. She never pretended not to want dessert, which I liked. But then it was always nice to have a meal in which I could order whatever I wanted to eat, rather than what Dominic didn’t fancy but felt he should form an opinion about.

  ‘So, how’s Joe getting on?’ She replaced the fork neatly across the plate and looked at me over the top of her tortoiseshell glasses. ‘Be honest. I know I’m his mother, but I’m also his mother, if you know what I mean.’

  I sipped my mint tea and scrabbled around in my head for something positive to say first. Laurence had sent me on a management course: I knew the theory. Compliment-awkward truth-compliment.

  ‘Well, he’s really getting to know the hotel from the rooms up.’

  ‘Which means what?’ Caroline raised her eyebrows, and looked unsettlingly like Joe himself. ‘Laurence claims he doesn’t have space for him in the flat, so he’s got Joe staying in whichever room isn’t occupied that night?’

  ‘Did he tell you that?’ I felt a little nervous. What else had Joe told her?