Claudine was crying. Sobbing, actually, would be more of an apt description.
‘Claudine?’ she said, floored for a moment. Claudine was not the sort of person to show much emotion, especially at work.
Bella instantly began to worry that this was a delayed reaction to her design. Perhaps she’d overdone it on the colour? The theme? Had she missed quirky and gone straight to tacky or overdone?
Nervously, she perched on the bed next to her boss and put an arm around her shaking shoulders. ‘Claudine,’ she said, feeling sick. ‘What’s wrong?’
Claudine raised her face from her hands. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks were wet. Her hair, usually so neatly scraped back, had escaped from its chignon and some strands stuck straight out around her face. It should have made her look awful, but somehow, she looked younger, vulnerable in a way that Bella had never seen before.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing is wrong.’
Bella looked at her, waiting for some sort of explanation.
‘Ah, I suppose I can tell you now, as we are friends as well as colleagues?’ Claudine looked at Bella for confirmation.
‘Of course.’
‘Well,’ Claudine sighed, as if she were expelling breath she’d held onto for some time. ‘OK. So, when I took you on, I wasn’t 100percent honest with you.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I told you that the hotel wanted to achieve Hotel Club accreditation to get to the next stage, to be a bigger player,n’est-ce pas?’
‘Yes. And… I mean, the Hotel Club people are coming… so…?’
Claudine nodded. ‘Oh, yes. It is very much something we want. But it is not so much to get the hotel to the next stage, but to save it.’
‘Oh?’
Claudine looked at her hands, turning them over as if they might hold some sort of answer. ‘When my husband left me, I had been away from work for a time,’ she said. ‘We had hoped for children but… well, never mind. That is a story for another time.’
‘OK?’
‘The hotel was one of his assets. He was quite successful in business. And I acquired it in the divorce. I think, although I didn’t know it at the time, he tricked me a little. Because it was not in as good a state as he said. There were problems with the building, things that needed to be corrected.’
Bella nodded, encouraging Claudine to continue.
‘I think he thought in any case that I would just sell it. But I had worked in hospitality some years before, and I had no other skills. So I decided to run it, to try to make it work.’
‘Right.’
‘This was five years ago. And it has been a difficult time. There are many things in this industry that I was not aware of. Difficulties, overheads. Staff. And of course we had to close for a time for some renovations. There was damp.’
‘So…?’
‘Since then, we have done OK. Better than OK, perhaps. Especially with a novice leading the way. But because of the costs of the renovations, because of the time we spent closed… the hotel has lost a lot of money, and we are not making enough to correct the balance.’ She looked at Bella, her eyes wide. ‘I can tell you this now that we are nearly there, but without this accreditation, the extra money and custom it will bring, I was afraid I would have to close.’
Bella felt sick. So much had been resting on her doing a good job. In some ways she was glad she hadn’t realised that before.All I’d thought about was myself, how I was going to manage,she thought. She’d assumed that Claudine was experienced, that if she had done a bad job her boss would have picked up on it. But it seemed, actually, that they were both a little in the dark – only Claudine, as the owner, had the right to be.
But it was OK, she reassured herself. They’d made it. She’d made it. The job she’d done for Claudine may have started off being a bit rudimentary, but she’d learned along the way and now they were ready to impress the executives. It would be OK.
Claudine wiped her eyes then decisively slapped her hands on her legs before standing up. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Enough of that. Time to be the big boss again.’ She gave Bella a little wink.
‘Your secret is safe with me.’
When she was gone, Bella plumped the pillows and straightened the bedding. She went to stand in the doorway as she had before to take in the whole of the room. Surely it would be enough. It had to be.
Quietly she closed the door and made her way to her office. She had two hours to kill before the photographer arrived and wanted more than ever to be sure she was ready for the presentation.
