by Emma Jackson
Lisa: I hope so too. We’re having an engagement party on New Year’s Eve. Say you’ll come back up for it? You can stay at our place.
Me: I’ll have to see if I can get the time off. My grandad had a fall today. It’s not serious, but my mum has to go up there and the hotel is fully booked.
Lisa: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Let me know when you can. Miss you, honey.
Me: Miss you too. Think of me while you’re soaking up the sunshine.
I slipped my phone back into my apron, feeling marginally better having offered proper congratulations for my friends’ engagement. It had only taken me half a day to get over myself and genuinely feel happy for them. Not bad for someone still extremely bruised from the end of a relationship. I was making progress.
I did another quick scan of the dining room. Over on table six, Geoff was peering around the room seeking service. Lola looked like she was half asleep and hadn’t noticed. I gave the guest a nod of acknowledgement and stepped over to Lola, nudging her shoulder gently.
‘Table six are after something.’
‘Oh right, sorry,’ she said hoarsely. Her face was noticeably pale even in the ambient glow of the room.
‘It’s fine. Are you all right?’
‘I think I’m coming down with something actually.’ She cleared her throat and winced. Now I felt guilty for not helping her out with her busier workload.
‘Why don’t you take off once we’ve got the desserts out? I can handle the clear-up.’
‘Oh, that’d be great – thanks, Beth.’ She rallied noticeably and went off to see to her table.
It was later than I expected when I finished clearing the tables at the end of service and went back into the kitchen with an armload of coffee cups and saucers. All the guests had dispersed and were either topping up their blood-alcohol levels in the bar, waddling into the lounge to digest or disappearing off to bed.
Henry was standing directly in my path and didn’t bother moving out of my way even though he must have seen me and the mountain of crockery coming.
‘Excuse me, Henry. Any chance you could move?’ I huffed, squinting in the clinical glare of the kitchen after the fuzzy candlelight of the dining room.
‘My pleasure.’ He threw on his big, black overcoat and moved swiftly towards the door.
‘Are you off then? G’night,’ I called after him as I dumped everything on the counter.
‘Goodnight,’ he called back but was looking at my mum who was loading the first of our two huge dishwashers.
‘Night, Henry,’ she said. ‘I hope Joseph feels better soon.’
‘Thanks, Rosie, ditto for your dad.’ He disappeared out the back door into the darkness.
‘What’s wrong with Joseph?’ Henry’s son was eight years old, a scrumptious little monkey with his dad’s cheeky sense of humour. Or his dad’s former sense of humour. He appeared to have had a bypass in the laughter department recently.
‘He’s had the flu,’ Mum told me over the rattle of plates and cutlery.
‘Looks like a lot of people didn’t get their jabs.’ I started to help her by loading the second dishwasher.
‘Did you get one?’ she said pointedly, sliding the top rack back. I smiled and rolled my eyes; she never let me get away with anything. ‘It does seem to be going around.’ She shut the dishwasher and grabbed a cleaning cloth and the disinfectant from the cupboard. ‘It was kind of you to suggest to Lola she go home but I could’ve really done with an extra pair of hands tonight.’ Her voice was low as she started spraying the counter and scrubbing like she wanted to make a hole in it.
When I was younger – and she was younger – Mum seemed to have boundless energy, and she was still a marvel in terms of how long and how hard she worked, but since I’d been home I’d noticed the weariness creeping in on her towards the end of the day, dragging the corners of her mouth down.
‘Are you still planning on leaving tonight? Why don’t you get a few hours’ sleep here first and then head off early in the morning?’ I took a couple of bowls over to the sink to rinse out the residue of ice cream, and when I turned back she was standing up straight, frowning at me.
‘I’m not changing my mind.’
‘That wasn’t what I suggested.’ I frowned back. ‘Just swapping which end of the journey you get your beauty sleep. Driving through the night after working an eighteen-hour day is not much safer than me attempting the journey after not being behind the wheel in years.’
‘No, it’ll be better to leave now. That way I know I’ll be at the hospital first thing and we can be driving back down here before—’ She cut herself off and then started squirting her spray again.
‘Before…?’ I narrowed my eyes at her and grabbed a capsule for the dishwasher. Something was starting to smell fishy and it wasn’t the ammonia in the cleaning products. I closed the dishwasher and started the cycle.
‘Oh, they’ve forecast snow for tomorrow.’ She waved the cloth, not meeting my eye, and moved over to the kitchen island. ‘They’ve been forecasting snow on and off all December. Even if we do get some it’ll probably just be slush that will melt by lunchtime.’
I’d completely forgotten about the snow even though Lydia had mentioned it earlier. No wonder Mum was worried. This was sounding worse and worse by the minute.
‘Mum…’
‘Look, Beth.’ She dumped the cleaning spray and gathered up the dirty tablecloths on the counter before turning to face me. ‘I’m worried about Grandad and you know how difficult I find it switching off from work. It would really help me out if you reassured me that the hotel will be fine in your capable hands.’
I swallowed but found myself unable to say anything. She sighed.
‘It’s just a day, two possibly, if we get unlucky with the weather. Is there a problem you’re not telling me about?’ She levelled a very serious look at me over the pile of cloths. I continued to say nothing, which really wasn’t like me, but what could I say?
I don’t want you to rely on me because I’m scared I’ll screw it all up and let you down, the way I always seemed to let Peter down. He hadn’t even felt he could tell me the truth about the trouble he was in because he assumed I would be no help.
‘We haven’t really talked about what you want to do now that you’re back,’ she continued. ‘I know you stopped tutoring over the last year but—’
‘Now’s not the time.’ I shook my head and held my arms out for the tablecloths. We hadn’t talked about it because, even though I knew the sensible thing was to give up on music as a means of earning a living, I wasn’t brave enough to commit to it out loud yet. Especially not to the woman who’d paid for every professional guitar and piano lesson I had growing up.
Mum raised an eyebrow at my deflection but let go of the bundle of crimson linen. As the heavy weight of them dropped into my arms, I drew them tightly towards my chest to stop them falling to the floor. I still only caught half of them, the rest trailing over the white tiles. I jerked them all together again and fought a rising bubble of emotion. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was exactly and by the time I straightened up, the tablecloths were successfully amassed but nearly suffocating me.
‘Beth?’
‘Don’t worry. There’s no problem,’ I mumbled through the material and beat a hasty retreat to the utility room.
I released the bundle with a huff on top of the washing machines and slipped off my shoes, letting my feet flex against the cool, tiled floor. Bliss.
Once I’d put the tablecloths in the wash, I delved in the basket of whites, still warm from the dryer and it only took me a moment to come across the angel’s dress, wrapped up in Nick’s T-shirt. The wash had successfully eradicated the rain water, dirt and any male scent clinging to the garments but they also both looked…smaller than when I put them in the wash. Great.
I slung Nick’s T-shirt over my shoulder (that was a problem I’d have to figure out later) and tested the little – and I mean really little – knit dress
between two hands. The tight weave gave way slightly. That was something, so I headed upstairs to see if I could squeeze it over her head.
After inhaling a bowl of cereal and jumping in the shower, I went into my bedroom. Rather than turn on the main light, I walked around the foot of my bed in the dark and flicked on the lava lamp on my bedside table. Soft shadows played across the stage set of my past as I climbed into bed with Angelica and the shrunken dress, measuring it up against her body.
‘Suck it in, Angelica,’ I told her, stretching the neck of the dress until I heard the stitches squeak. ‘We’ve all had to suffer for the sake of fashion at some point.’ She looked at me with eyes dark with concern. Or mud. It was one of those.
I wriggled her head in, millimetre by millimetre, untucking her hair so she looked more like one of those weird little cress egg heads kids make, than a doll. Finally, it gave, one last push – but now her arms were pinned to her sides. When I rested my head on my hand, I was surprised to find sweat building on my brow. It would have to do. I dumped her back on my desk, then burrowed under my covers and flicked the light off.
I was just slipping off to sleep when I felt Mum shaking my shoulder gently.
‘I’m leaving now. I’ll lock up behind me with the spare set of keys. My bunch is on your desk.’ There was a jangle as aforementioned keys were deposited. ‘You’ll have to go down at six to open up for Neeta. Beth? Are you listening?’ She was still whispering but she gave my shoulder another shake and I turned my face so I could see her shadowy form, silhouetted by the hallway light.
‘I’m listening.’
‘Good. So. Six a.m.’ She leaned over and brushed a quick kiss against my forehead. Her warmth and the scent of fabric detergent slid over me. I reached out and gave her a tight hug.
‘Be careful driving up there. Stop if you get tired and text me to let me know when you arrive,’ I murmured into her shoulder.
‘Yes, Mum,’ she joked and gave me a squeeze. ‘Call me if you need me.’ She gave me another kiss, this one firm, on my temple and then she left. My bedroom door shut and a second later the yellow line around the frame winked out.
I lay there, listening for the door to our flat to close behind her. After a few minutes I heard her distant footsteps crunching over the gravel of the drive, followed by the wheels of her car. That was it. She was gone, and I was left, the only member of staff in the building, wearing a pair of flannelette pyjamas and tucked up in bed beneath a Twilight poster.
This couldn’t possibly go wrong.
Chapter Four
Neeta, our head chef, was waiting on the third step down from the porch the next morning, the glowing tip of her roll-up drawing an orange arc in the air. She took one last drag and stubbed it out beneath the topiary bush, sculpted into a perfect cone. Mum would’ve killed her.
‘Mornin’, trouble.’ Her gravelly voice barely reached me, even though she was jogging up the steps. When Henry started working here, he was fresh out of catering college and I’d told him that she’d ruined her vocal cords during her years working as a top chef in London, screaming at her kitchen staff, Gordon-Ramsay-style. It hadn’t taken him long to realise how ridiculous that was; not because Neeta wasn’t talented enough but because she was so laid-back she could have limboed around the kitchen doing her job.
‘How’s tricks?’ she asked, and I grimaced in response, closing the door quickly behind her to keep the cold air out. She laughed. ‘That good eh? Where’s your mum? In the kitchen?’
‘Try Norfolk. Grandad’s had a fall.’
‘Oh blimey, when did that happen?’
‘Yesterday.’ I relayed the small number of facts I knew and how Mum had driven through the night, arriving there at about half two in the morning. Neeta made us both coffee and toast and we leaned either side of the kitchen island, enjoying a moment of blissful peace before the morning madness began. So far, so normal.
‘D’you reckon she’ll be back today then?’
‘Yeah, sure. She didn’t seem to think the snow that’s been forecast would be a problem.’ I tore the thick crust off my slice of toast and popped the soft bit, oozing with melty butter, in my mouth. It should have tasted amazing, instead it was like a lump of uncooked dough forcing its way down my throat, the same way I was forcing myself to be optimistic.
A rap at the back door interrupted our breakfast: the delivery of fresh milk, fruit and vegetables. Neeta threw the rest of her still-boiling hot coffee down her neck and stood up straight.
‘Right, treacle, I take it you’re covering the dining room since your mum’s not here?’
‘I guess so…’ I smoothed my hair back. I only had a rough idea of all the jobs my mum did in this place throughout one day. She was always busy, but not always busy with the same routine, depending on which staff were in. I needed to check the rotas. In hindsight, I couldn’t believe Mum hadn’t left me a list of instructions. Either she was severely distracted with worrying about Grandad (understandable) or she thought I knew exactly what I was doing (deluded).
Inside the admin office, behind the reception, hanging over Mum’s desk was a whiteboard split into a table showing the everyday jobs and staff responsible for them that week. I found that yes, indeed, I was to be one of the two waiting staff covering all the meals today and I also had to look after the reception. Still it wasn’t too bad…until I noticed the light blinking on the phone to indicate that there was a voicemail message. I punched in the code to listen to the messages.
‘Hello, Rosie? Sorry I haven’t been able to – cough, cough – speak to you directly – hachoo – but I won’t be able to m-m-makeachoo, it in today.’ At this point the caller just gave up trying to speak in sentences and simply croaked: ‘Flu.’ Then hung up.
I listened to the message two more times before my brain accepted what my ears were telling me. It was Lola and she was off sick. This shouldn’t really have come as a surprise, given how rough she looked last night, but my heart thumped quickly in my chest and it had nothing to do with the black coffee I’d drunk at breakfast.
The sound of muffled talking and groaning pipes roused me from my shell shock. I needed to set the tables and the buffet breakfast out in the dining room ready for the guests to start coming down at seven. And a lot of them would be down at seven on the dot, as though they thought they might miss the best pickings if they slept in until eight. Some people seriously didn’t know how to enjoy a holiday.
Since it was partially self-service, dealing with breakfast on my own wouldn’t be so difficult, and as soon as I was done, I could try and get hold of my mum.
I had just finished bringing in the carafes with the fresh milk, water and juice to the dining room and was arranging the pastries on a platter when Olive and Matilda, the elderly sisters, appeared in the doorway, arguing about who had owned the little red tricycle that Father Christmas brought one year.
I spent the next two hours bussing tables, making small talk with the guests, bringing out cooked breakfasts and steaming pots of tea and coffee, so I had no time to ring my mum and ask her what to do about staff being off sick. At nine, the last guest wandered off, leaving a trail of croissant crumbs behind him. But that wasn’t my problem because the cleaners would be down shortly to tidy up after breakfast, once they’d finished making up the rooms.
I darted through to the office again and dialled my mum’s mobile number, but it kept going to voicemail. She was probably at the hospital with Grandad, organising getting him discharged. I didn’t leave a message but by the time I’d hung up, the light was flashing on the main phone. I punched in the code again, somehow hearing ‘The Imperial March’ from Star Wars in the tones of the number keys.
Two more coughing, spluttering, I’m-too-sick-to-come-in calls. One from Mabel, who I’d thought was upstairs cleaning the guest rooms, and the other from Charlie, the bartender for that evening. This was getting ridiculous.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to find the hoover, let alone get
all the crumbs up from the dining room floor. Didn’t the guests know where their mouths were? As soon as I got the dining room tidy, I went upstairs to track down Elise, our other cleaner, in the hopes I could get her to work late and finish making up the rooms. I couldn’t find her anywhere, so I headed back downstairs to the office and realised that I’d missed the note to the side of the whiteboard rota telling me that she had to leave early that day to pick up her daughter from her mother-in-law’s. I had no choice but to finish the remaining rooms myself.
This time when I traipsed back upstairs again, I used the main staircase. There was a huge window on the turn up to the first floor that overlooked the grounds on the east side of the hotel, and you could see past the fountain and rockery, to the wide expanse of lawn that was used for tennis and badminton in the summer. With the trees set further back, all morning the sun had an uninterrupted path through the large panes of the window and the simple stained-glass floral design in the upper curved section. Beams of blue and green and yellow light played over the warm wooden stairs, catching at the glittery edges of the garlands wrapped around the banisters, and it was a much nicer journey to take when I was facing cleaning duty.
Cleaning was the worst. I’d always hated housekeeping duty. I could never get a bed to look neat and plump and inviting when I made it, and as for bathrooms…cleaners deserve medals in my opinion.
One hour later I was interrupted/rescued from the tedium of replacing toilet rolls by the hotel mobile phone. Someone was at the reception desk. It was barely midday and I was already running around like Wee Willie Winkie.
When I got downstairs, Julius Mundey was lying in wait.
Apparently, Julius didn’t live that far away, just outside of Hastings, so I had no idea why he stayed at the hotel so much. I guess that’s what you do when you have more money than sense and an inexplicable desire to make life difficult for other people. Julius was a vegan and also allergic to practically everything and he hated noise and he liked everything to measure up to his ridiculous standards. My mother, bizarrely, thought it was some kind of compliment that someone as fussy as him kept coming back to us.
