I let the phone disappear back inside the blanket and squeezed my eyes shut, turning my face further into the leather cushion.
No, Mum, I wanted to call her up and scream,everything is not okay and your faith in me is completely misplaced. My mere presence at the hotel has prompted your chef to steal and now I’ve fired him and there’s only me and one cleaner to run the whole place. Help me!!!
Okay, I was feeling ginormously sorry for myself but that was forgivable given the circumstances, right?
Or was I just being a selfish, spoiled brat again, expecting my mum to come along and sort out the mess I’d got myself into. Peter, Henry…for all their obnoxiousness and lying, were they even wrong about me? Mum was looking after her dad who’d just got out of hospital and all I could think about was howIneeded her back because I didn’t want the hassle of extra responsibility for the hotel.
I’d always had a love/hate relationship with the place. Losing Dad so soon after moving in, and the extra burden that had placed on Mum to make it a success, had made it feel like it was an inescapable dependent, a little brother or sister that never grew up and took all the attention away from me. Always demanding, always taking, and I had never been able to find it in my heart to help her with it, the way she needed me to – the way Dad always had, even when the cancer spread and the treatment seemed to make it worse. He was always there to tell her she was doing a good job, making the right choice – or that she needed to relax and let someone else handle something – to take whatever he could off her plate.
Their relationship had been part of the reason I’d been so seduced by Peter when he first strode into my life, telling me it’d be his honour to support me to follow my dream and teach music – that money didn’t matter. I hadn’t realised what a rare thing it was that my parents had, until things began to unravel with Peter. My parents had been something else.
But she’d lost him and who was there for her to lean on like that? What support had she had? Lydia, her best friend, but she also had her own business to run. Auntie Cath, but she had her own family in London and then she did so much of the caring for Nanna when she got sick too. But Mum always kept going. And all she’d wanted from me before she went to see Grandad was my reassurance and I hadn’t even been able to give that to her because of all the voices in my head telling me I was a screw-up.
Butshenever told me that. Hers was the voice telling me I could do this, and I was ignoring it in favour of Peter and Henry’s and my own self-doubt?
No. I may not be sure of how I was going to sort out my life, but I could damn well figure out a way to sort this hotel out for a few days while she was away. I wouldn’t tell her about Henry. She didn’t need that extra worry.
And I was not going to give him, or Peter, or even the behemoth of need that was the hotel, the satisfaction of making me have a nervous breakdown. Okay, I was curled up in the foetal position on my living room floor, but it was just a time-out.
I lifted my head and took a deep breath. Time to run through another scenario. What was the worst that could happen if I tried to sort this mess out?
Imightfail to deliver the service the guests expected, and theymightleave, demanding refunds and making complaints. The hotel might get a bad review by the mysterious Hotel Hopper and lose business…but then again, it might not. Not if I tried. At the very least, I knew what the guests expected and roughly how to go about providing it. It might not be perfect; they might shout at me and call me incompetent but that wasn’t anything new and I’d had worse moments.
I hoisted myself up from the floor. Yes, I’d definitely had worse moments.
It was time to get serious about running this hotel. Freshly dressed and make-up reapplied, as I pounded down the stairs, I swore I could almost hear an Aretha Franklin soundtrack in the background.
There was a big notebook my mum normally carried around with her like a colostomy bag for her brain. It was full of all her plans and phone numbers and God knows what else. If I could find that, it might have some of the answers I needed. Preferably there was a section called ‘what to do in case of employee theft, blizzard and flu epidemic’.
Rooting through all the drawers and shelves in the office, I came up empty, so next I tried the front desk. Nothing there either. Or nothing useful anyway.
The grandfather clock that stood in the lobby, showed hands ticking dangerously close to the lunch hour. I grabbed the phone and dialled Neeta’s mobile number.
‘I can’t really chat, treacle,’ she said as soon as she heard me say hello, ‘I’m on my hands-free but the roads are awful – I’m skidding more than driving.’
She sounded unnaturally stressed and I really didn’t want to be responsible for her having an accident, so I decided to be blunt. ‘Can you answer me two questions?’
‘Yeah, if you’re quick. The traffic is going to start moving again in a minute.’
‘Can you come in today?’
‘No. I’m on the M25 and it’s going to take me until Christmas to get home at this rate. Is Henry off sick too?’
I didn’t want to waste precious minutes going into that with her, so I just ignored the question. ‘What do I do about lunch and this buffet-mince-pie thing this evening?’
Luckily, Neeta was too distracted to care. ‘Most of it’s ready. I prepped a lot of it last night and I left a list for Henry in the kitchen. It’s not hard, honey, you can do it. Okay, we’re moving again, I’ve got to go. I’ll be in tomorrow morning.’
Thank God for small mercies – she would be in tomorrow. I only had to cope with two meals. I could do that surely?
‘Okay. Take care, have a safe journey.’ I hung up and went into the kitchen.
It still felt cold in there, which was all wrong for a kitchen. The list was right there on the counter and I hadn’t realised how much tension was in my body until I read it, with the menu for the day, the food selections Neeta had already prepped, and the ones Henry had to do, which he’d been ticking off down one side.
I rummaged through the cupboards and fridge, noting where the platters were and then ran back out to type up a simplified menu for lunch. I could handle heating soup and making simple sandwiches, but I didn’t have a clue about what was in most of the salads, so the guests were just going to have to go without. Who would want a salad on a snowy day anyway?
With the abbreviated menu tacked up to the dining room door, I recalled that I’d been in the middle of cleaning when I’d had the forethought to go down to the kitchen. Part of me really wished I hadn’t bothered. I didn’t have time to help Elise out now; I had to get ready for lunch, but that gave me an idea.
Taking the back staircase, I hurried up to the second floor and searched for the cleaning cart and an open door. Elise was in number eight and – if I hadn’t remembered anyway – the scent of eucalyptus would’ve given it away: it was Nick’s room.
