Otto:By a mile. Low bar.
Tilly leaned her elbows on her knees and waited as that thing happens when someone types something, thinks better of it and tries again. Very happy regarding where the relationship was and, more importantly, where it was going, she watched the little dots on her screen. Things with Otto had moved at lightning speed, and she’d now seen him and Stanley most days since the dinner at China Darling. Dare she say it, they’d swiftly become an item. She wasextremelyhappy with the situation.
Otto:Fancy going on a surprise date to London tomorrow? I mean, where we go out will be a surprise. A night away, come back Sunday. No pressure. I've been away half the week, and it might be nice to go somewhere. I was thinking a night in a hotel? I’ll meet you in London on the way back from here, and we can go from there.
Tilly read the message through three times. Who even was she? She was in a relationship with someone who was asking to take her away? Amazing. Did she want to run away for the weekend? Did she ever? She’d be there in a heartbeat.
Tilly:Hmm. Tempting.
Three dots appeared.
Otto:Just a thought.
Tilly:It's a yes from me. Sounds fabulous.
Otto:Right,good. Noted. I’ll get it sorted.
All Tilly knew about the fly-by-night date was that she needed to dress up. She’d had a call from Otto telling her what train to get on, where to meet him and what to bring. Whatdid dressing up even mean, though? It was quite the problem when your wardrobe was essentially one suitcase with a small and finite collection of clothes. Digging through her things that had now moved from her suitcase to the small built-in wardrobe in the bedroom, Tilly really needn't have worried too much because she had little to choose from. Lack of choice did, in a way, make things easier. Holding up all sorts of things, the only answer she kept coming up with was that nothing worked. Dressing up for something fancy was not an occasion for the charity shop cotton dress, nor was it a silky top and nice jeans moment as far as she was aware. Digging through and sighing, she vowed to up her wardrobe game as soon as Foghorn started making some money or she got herself a part-time job.
Coming to a dead end in her wardrobe, there was one thing she hadn't even yet taken out of her suitcase. It had actually come her way via a woman on a cruise out of Singapore. The passenger had arrived on board with a glut of suitcases and so many outfits that Tilly hadn't been able to get her head around how anyone could possibly travel with so many clothes. Tilly’s role as suite assistant had been to attend to the woman's every whim. Performing the job impeccably, Tilly and the guest had clicked from the word go, had ended up chatting away about this and that and put the world to rights from the balcony of the jaw-droppingly expensive private suite. Tilly, in her role, had earned her keep for sure, but it had come with the added benefit of a nice little friendship for two. She’d pressed dresses for dinner, helped with the woman's hair, cleaned the room to within an inch of its life, performed turn-down services of dreams and basically been the right-hand woman from morning to night.
One particular evening, many dresses had been tried on and even more discarded. Once the guest had been dressed, she’d pointed to the pile of discarded outfits and informed Tilly that she would never wear any of them and for Tilly to take her pick.Tilly's orders from above, however, strictly forbade handouts, and so she'd refused. One dress, though, she'd loved. The woman had made her try it on, and it had fit like a glove. An A-line midi-length wool crepe with a short puff elasticated sleeve, high neckline, fitted through the waist with a lined bodice. Around the neck and cuffs, a tiny row of glittering embellishments. It had set Tilly’s figure on fire, and both she and the guest had known it. So, quietly and on the guest’s insistence, it had made its way to Tilly’s room.
The dress had been with Tilly ever since, crushed in the inner pocket of her suitcase, never seeing the light of day. She'd never really been sure why she’d kept it as she'd traipsed around the world. For sure, she'd not had the occasion to wear a wool crepe dress that had cost more than some people's cars in the staff quarters of hotels.
Going to her suitcase, she unzipped the top, flopped the lid back, undid the inner section and there it was. The beautiful, very expensive dress that got just about everything right. Pulling it out, Tilly smiled as she remembered trying it on in the suite. Considering it had spent much of its life folded up in a bag, she couldn't believe it wasn't too creased. Flicking it out, she held it up and gasped. The weight of it alone was something else. A garment from another world where people had assistants to get them ready and attend to their every need.
Gathering the dress to her face and inhaling to detect mustiness, Tilly shook her head. Nothing a dose of Darling air on the deck couldn't solve. Whipping off her top and jeans, she stepped into the dress, wiggled back and forth to do the zip up, fastened the built-in belt and stood on top of a chair to see her reflection in the old mirror on the dressing table. Even with the limited view, it was evident in a nanosecond why Tilly had not parted with the dress. As the client had said, it was made for her. Five minutes later, the dress was on a hanger airing on the deck.
With the dress swaying gently outside, catching a breeze coming up off the water, Tilly turned her attention to the next conundrum. Shoes. Now there was a thing. A glorious wool crepe dress that cost more than a small car was all very well, but on her feet, Tilly had precisely five options, and two of them were trainers. One of them, a pair of plain black ballet flats, would have to do and would, she decided, be perfectly fine once she'd given them a clean. Funny, really, how a woman could circle the globe several times over, press dresses for the sort of people who had villas in three countries, and still come to a fancy date with nothing on her feet but a pair of ballet flats. Huffing out a little laugh to herself, Tilly nodded. She would have to up the wardrobe and the shoe game, indeed, if she were to be frolicking around in the big smoke with the likes of Otto Carrington. While she was at it, she’d possibly need to up just about everything about herself. Or, on second thoughts, maybe she’d just be herself. He’d have to like her just as she was.
Standing at the little window, watching the dress turn this way and that in the breeze as the embellishments at the cuffs caught the light, Tilly smiled. What a turn up for the books. If the Tilly of two years before could see her now. The Tilly in the staff quarters with the five o'clock alarm and the buggy down the service aisle would not believe her eyes. Here she was getting ready for a fancy-schmancy date night. Someone, a very nice someone, actually wanted to take her somewhere she had to dress up for. Not only that, but he was quite the catch. There was something else, however, that had happened in her little journey across the globe for one: she felt like she was a catch, too.
54
Tilly had been introduced to the wonders of a fast train not far from Darling Island that had whisked her up to London in the blink of an eye. Sitting and sipping on a coffee, she’d gazed out the window, very excited about the trip and looking absolutely forward to what would happen in the hotel. Once arrived in London, however, it was as she stepped off the train that she began to feel a tad out of sorts about the whole situation. She was on her way to meet a man in London when not that long before she’d told herself that the one thing she would stick to in Blighty was doing her own thing. Yet, here she was again tethered to someone, jumping through hoops for a man, letting herself go way too much. But oh, how nice the tethering was. Just so nice. Everything about it. Truth be told: she’d do it all again in a heartbeat.
Strolling in the direction of the ticket machines, Tilly peered overhead at the majesty of one of London’s finest old Victorian stations. Rising up like something out of a dream, she stood for a second just staring at the loveliness of it all. She had, for sure, stood under the soaring glass roofs of many of the great international airports of the world, but this was next level. A thing of beauty from a bygone age. Above her, a grand andimpossibly high Victorian roof arched away in long ribs of iron and glass, light filtered through in dappled patches, and the whole cathedral of the place echoed with the sound of people going a thousand places at once. A clatter of cases over the concourse, the boom of announcements, hiss of a coffee machine somewhere, pigeons wheeling up into the rafters and the smell of engines, bacon sandwiches, travel. After months of Darling fog, the slap of the tide against the decking and the gentle ding-ding of an old timber tram, the sheer roaring scale of London hit Tilly square in the chest and very nearly took her breath away.
Pausing beneath the great roof with her weekend bag over one shoulder, Tilly smiled, feeling so very small under the enormous Victorian roof. Here she was on her way to meet Otto, whom she’d fallen for hook, line and sinker. She’d crossed half the world to bury herself in a tumbledown shed to be defiantly, independently alone, but instead she was standing under a great glass roof off to meet a man, spend a night in a fancy hotel. After all the solemn promises she'd made herself on a plane somewhere over the Indian Ocean about never again, here she was jumping in with six feet.
Ambling along, Tilly mused about it all as she took in the departure boards clattering through letters and numbers, strolled past little shops tucked into corners, gazed at a flower stall full of colour, and watched people kissing hello and waving goodbye all as the old ironwork and glass soared above. New and old jumbled together, and London and the night away stretching out gloriously ahead of her. A little bit like the Tilly and Otto story, really, or at least, that’s what she hoped.
After meeting Otto and having a quick drink, the pair of them had hopped in a taxi to their destination. The hotel, when the taxi had finally turned off the bustle of the street, was not at all what Tilly had been expecting. Which was to say it was not enormous, nor glittering, and it was far from being announced by a great glass frontage and a row of flags. Instead, a tall, wide row of elegant white townhouses tucked down by a quiet square presented itself. Tilly, it seemed, had arrived in the land of black railings around squares of lawn, exclusive parking spots and manicured hedges. The hotel's glossy black door, discreet brass plaque and doorman in livery did not disappoint. Otto hopped out and took Tilly’s bag. When the doorman greeted Otto by name, Tilly swallowed as she began to feel like a fish out of water. Filing away the doorman’s acknowledgement of Otto with the watch, the school and the piles up north, she followed him into a hush of black-and-white marble, where a lovely old reception desk was surrounded by old mirrors and enormous arrangements of flowers. After checking in, Tilly had to fight to keep her chin from dropping to the floor as the hotel showed off its wares left, right and centre. She’d seen a five-star hotel or six, certainly, but this upped the ante a notch, and didn’t she know about it.
'Drink before we change later? There's a bar up top. I think you'll like it.'
Tilly swallowed and nodded and tried not to show her nerves. ‘Sounds perfect.’
Half an hour later, they were on their way to the roof. The lift was a tiny brass-and-mahogany affair that took them up in a slow, creaking, intimate sort of climb, and then a door was opened by yet another immaculate staff member. As Tilly stepped out onto the roof, she stopped quite still at the sight of London laid out at her feet. Not a roof terrace of the modern sort, all glass balustrades, chrome, thumping musicand cocktails the colour of antifreeze. This was from another world. Understated, old, beautiful, and so very confident in its surroundings and itself. A small walled garden in the sky with box hedges clipped into neat low squares, climbing roses trained up trellis along a parapet, little olive trees in lead planters and great froths of jasmine just about everywhere. Wrought-iron tables and rattan chairs with deep cushions. Hurricane lamps and candles in storm glasses flickering as the light went down. A long mahogany bar at one end, gleaming, where a barman worked a silver shaker, and not a thing on the whole rooftop that hadn't been there, in spirit at least, for the better part of a century.
Taking a seat, while Otto ordered, Tilly gripped her hands together as she stared at the view. The Thames wiggling its way along the familiar shapes of London. The dome of St Paul's, the bridges, towers, spires, rooftops. For sure, she’d gone up in the world.
Watching Otto chatting at the bar and wondering quite how she’d ended up on a rooftop looking over one of the most glorious cities in the world, Tilly gulped. How had her life turned on its head? One minute she’d been on her hands and knees in a hotel bathroom on the other side of the world scrubbing talcum powder out of the grout around an egg-shaped bath while two women on a balcony had talked about the man she'd thought was her partner in crime. She’d been the one dressed in a brown tabard who had folded other people's towels into towers. She’d hospital-cornered ten thousand bedsheets and been spoken to like furniture by women with too much money and not enough manners. She’d trod a hushed, silent walk in and out of rooms exactly like the ones in this exquisite, well-to-do, flower-filled hotel. Now here she was, not a worker but a guest. A voice snarled from the depths of Tilly’s self-esteem, just, you know, to spoil things a bit.
Out of your depth, Tilly. This is not your league. What on earth does a divorced hotel cleaner from nowhere, with a derelict shed and her last bit of money sunk into some bed sheets, think she's doing up here?
Trying to make herself see sense, Tilly pondered why imposter syndrome had reared its ugly head right there on the roof of the hotel. What didout of her leagueeven mean? She'd cleaned some of the finest rooms in the world, run a high-end afternoon tea single-handed, crossed the planet on her own, walked away from a controlling husband and a faithless musician with her chin up, and bought a business sight unseen off a Facebook advert with nothing to go on but her own gut and her dad's voice in her head. She'd cleaned up other people's beautiful lives for years. She was allowed, surely, to sit down and soak up nice things. Oh yes, she was, and she was there for it.
