‘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.
‘Didyouget 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.
