Perhaps her daughter had unwittingly stumbled upon the truth of what she was feeling? She was distressed.
‘I’ll explain when you come home from school, darling,’ she’d hedged, praying the child would forget to ask. It wasn’t something a four-year-old should be remotely acquainted with, to Anna’s mind. Childhood should be joyful and carefree… even if her own had been a million miles away from such an idyll.
The Cathcarts had told Anna that they’d turned down the offer of a buyout from the big hotel chain. So when she’d entered the office the following morning to discover that her employers were considering a fresh offer—this one from an independent source who had been told about them by one of the delegation from the hotel chain—her insides had mimicked the nail-biting ascent and descent of a frantic rollercoaster ride for the second time. Once more the possibility of losing her job and home loomed worryingly large.
‘Your parents said that an interested investor wants to help them improve profitability and modernise. Can you explain exactly what this means?’ Anna had asked concernedly as she left the owners’ office to walk with Jason to his.
‘Don’t look so worried, Anna. It’s good news. Major investment is just what the Mirabelle needs. What we’re hoping is that this guy will be interested enough to invest a large chunk of his own money in the business to help turn it around. He’ll be the majority shareholder, but he won’t own it outright. I’ve been checking out his record and it’s quite impressive, to put it mildly. His interests are truly international, but his main concern is helping family-run businesses become more profitable. If we accept an offer from him to invest, it means that we stay running the hotel under his guidance and expertise. We’ll have the chance to really take things to another level…even in the recession.’
Jason opened the door for Anna to precede him as they took their coffee into his cramped, cluttered office. Pushing some papers aside on a desk that scarcely had a corner free of paper debris, he left his mug of coffee on a stained cork coaster. An air of bubbling excitement underlaid his usually level tone.
‘When he goes into a business with a view to helping it perform better,’ he continued, ‘he takes a good hard look at how it’s being run and then advises on the changes that will make it more efficient and profitable. He particularly specialises in helping to resolve any conflicts that might be preventing people from working successfully together.’
Anna’s brow creased. ‘There aren’t any conflicts amongst us, though, are there? Unless you mean Luigi’s tendency to lord it over the others in the kitchen… They do get a bit fed up with him from time to time, but aren’t all head chefs a bit like that? Egotistic and dramatic, I mean.’
‘Generally I think that we all get on great. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.’ As he paced the floor, it appeared as if Jason’s enthusiasm was hard to contain. ‘Unaired resentments can fester… we all know that. And this guy is a real people person. We thoroughly checked him out before inviting him over for a meeting. Apparently one of the first things he does is to interview everyone to discover how they feel about their job. He passionately believes that their attitude contributes to how well they work, and he has a unique reputation for getting staff and management to work more successfully together. The best thing of all is that the family get to stay doing what they love. We don’t have to just sell up and go. Who knows? If the hotel starts to make a real profit, we might eventually be able to buy it back completely. The staff will remain too of course. It means you won’t have to search for another job, Anna, isn’t that great? Having someone like this Dante Romano guy invest his money in the hotel and take a look at how we can improve things could be the best opportunity we’ve had in ages!’
‘And what’s the pay-off for this man? I mean…what’s in it for him besides making a profit? I doubt that he’s going to do all this out of the goodness of his heart.’
She couldn’t help it, but Anna wasn’t entirely convinced. It all sounded too good to be true. Perhaps her nature wasn’t as trusting as it could be, but then bruising experience had taught her to be alert to the glossily wrapped Christmas present that contained nothing but an empty shoebox.
The earnest dark-haired young man before her in the charcoal-grey suit that was showing signs of fraying at the edges of its cuffs abruptly stopped pacing.
‘Of course there’s a pay-off for him, Anna. He’s a businessman! But his interest in helping us sounds perfectly genuine. I know you’re only being protective of Mum and Dad but they’re experienced hoteliers, don’t forget. They won’t agree to anything that remotely smacks of a scam or a rip-off. Yes, this guy might become the main shareholder—but he won’t be running the business. we will. Plus, his policy is to take a longer-term view of situations, so he won’t be in a hurry to just look at what he can get out of the business and then head for the hills.’
‘You sound as though you believe this is the answer to all your family’s prayers, Jason.’
It did indeed seem the ideal solution in terms of enabling them all to stay put, but Anna would rather hunt for another job and flat elsewhere if it meant that Grant and Anita wouldn’t be out of pocket and the couple would have the means to start a good life again somewhere else. What if it really was in their best interests for them to sell the Mirabelle to a big commercial hotel giant?
‘Nothing’s been decided yet, Anna.’ Compounding her guilt at being sceptical, Jason sounded subdued. ‘But Romano is coming for lunch, and after he’s eaten we’ll have a proper meeting to thrash things out. Hopefully we’ll be able to report back on what’s been decided later on that afternoon. Would you mind going to talk to Luigi, to make sure he’s got everything he needs to impress our visitor with his menu?’
‘Of course.’
Carrying what remained of her half-drunk coffee to the door, Anna flashed him a smile to make up for her less than enthusiastic response earlier, but her stomach still churned at the prospect of the unknown changes that lay ahead for them all. She paused to glance back at the Cathcarts’ preoccupied son, guessing that he probably saw the chance of working with this Romano chap as something that would enhance his reputation and ability—assets that were sometimes overshadowed by his much more confident and experienced father.
‘I just want you to know that I’ll do everything I can to help you and your parents, Jason. I love this hotel too, and I know it’s been a very worrying time for all of you.’
‘Thanks, Anna…I’ve always known I can count on you.’
The memories crashed in on Dante the instant he walked through the glass-panelled entrance into the cosily old-fashioned lobby, with its chintz armchairs and worn brown chesterfields.
After that incredible night with Anna he’d left the hotel in the early hours of the morning to jump in a cab and catch a flight to New York. His mother’s death had plunged him into a tunnel of despair for a frighteningly long time. It had taken a good year or more for him to be able to function anywhere near normal again because, disturbingly, his work and everything he’d achieved had become utterly meaningless. Life had only started to improve when the warm memory of Anna’s tenderness and his mother’s unfailing belief that he was a much better man than the world suspected broke through the walls of his grief and his self-imposed isolation and helped him start to entertain the possibility of a very different, much more fulfilling future.
That was when Dante had decided to change his driven, selfish approach to something far more wholesome.
The Cathcarts were a delightful couple, with admirably solid values when it came to business and family. But Dante, although charmed by their unstinting hospitality and the superlative lunch, sensed that some of those solid values were a bit too entrenched in the past and needed to be brought up to date.
At lunch, his cool gaze assessed as much as it could as they talked, including the worn velvet hangings at the stately Georgian dining room windows, the tarnished silver cutlery and the slightly old-fashioned uniforms