Abby frowned. “But if they ask about my family?”
“Be vague. Deflect. I doubt they’ll ask. In my experience people are usually more focused on themselves.” She studied Abby’s troubled expression. Her daughter was straightforward and honest, with a strong belief in fairness and justice. She was also kind. “I can see you’re still uncomfortable with it.”
Abby stared at her wine glass for a moment. Alexandra could almost feel her brain working as she tried to align the task ahead with her values.
“No.” She looked up and smiled. “I understand why it needs to be this way. I want to do this. I won’t let you down.”
Alexandra felt pressure in her chest.
“Your experience will be invaluable to them.”
Abby nodded. “And if they see me as one of them, one of the team, they’re more likely to talk to me. If they know who I am then they won’t tell me anything. The conversation will shut off the moment I walk into a room, the same way it does at—” She broke off, but Alexandra didn’t need her to complete the sentence.
“The same way it does at the moment. They still exclude you?”
Abby’s smile didn’t slip. “It’s more that they’re careful. And I understand.”
Alexandra felt an unusual urge to comfort her. To reassure her and tell her everything was going to be all right.
But she didn’t do that. She’d made a point of not being overly protective, even when she badly wanted to. Handling life’s challenges created resilience. She wanted her daughter to be resilient. In her opinion being self-sufficient and having confidence in your ability to deal with whatever life threw at you was an important survival mechanism. And a parent should give a child survival skills. She’d been forced to develop her own and it had been a brutal journey. In the end it was easier to handle loneliness than to lean on people and be disappointed.
“If they were a bit more open-minded they’d discover they could learn a great deal from you,” she said. “You did well today.”
Abby looked startled by the praise. “It was an interesting project. And the next part will be even more interesting. Thank you for choosing to send me to Cornwall.”
“I’m sending you because you’re the best person for the job.”
In fact, she was the only person for the job. It was the perfect solution to a problem, but that was because the problem wasn’t entirely as it seemed.
Dusk fell over the pretty garden and Alexandra lit a couple of candles.
Abby finished her wine and put her glass down. “What was the hotel in Cornwall like when you first worked there?”
It was an innocent enough question. A simple question on the surface, but one that didn’t have a simple answer.
It wasn’t Abby’s fault that it was a question Alexandra would rather have not answered.
What was it like?
When she looked back now she saw only the darker elements but of course her relationship with the hotel was more complex than that.
It had been a lifesaver when she was desperate, a sanctuary when she’d needed to escape the misery and pressures ofhome as a child—and she had been little more than a child the first time she’d talked her way into a job there. It was the place where she’d fallen in love for the first time, and the place that had confirmed to her what she’d always suspected—that people were often disappointing and that love, while occasionally romantic and wonderful, was more often brutal and heartbreaking. It wasn’t something you wished for, it was something you survived.
Abby didn’t need to know any of that. Her own path through life had been much smoother. Alexandra had made sure of it.
She blew out the flame of the match she was still holding. “What was the hotel like? It was tired and run-down.” They’d had that in common, she thought. Both she and the hotel had been struggling to survive in a world where everything seemed to be against them.
It had been the scene of her greatest happiness, and also her greatest unhappiness.
Back then she’d had no interest in the hotel itself. Her desire for it to succeed had stemmed purely from a need to build a life for her daughter.
And she’d been angry. Furiously angry. That anger had fuelled her through the long days and nights she’d spent trying to rescue the place.
“But you knew you could turn it around. And you were soyoung. You didn’t have any experience of running a hotel.”
“Young, yes, but I’d been working there for years, and I was familiar with all the different areas of the hotel.” And it was surprising the skills you could find when you were desperate.
“Are you not interested in seeing it again yourself after all this time?” Abby toyed with her wine glass. “I don’t only mean the hotel, but also your old home. The place where you grew up.”
