As she walked out of the bus depot, she chewed her chocolate slowly to make it last and thought of the truth in Mrs Hanley’s words. Everybody could see that the hotel was in trouble. Except her family.
On her way up through Carrickwell to the Willow, Cleo passed The Holy Land, which looked a bit bare now Christmas had gone, and past the brightly painted façade of Little Tigers Nursery with its big tiger motif on the front door. It was half-six and parents were still rushing in to collect children, who emerged all wrapped up in warm clothes, running and skipping to their parents’ cars, talking madly about what they’d been painting and what games they’d played. Cleo had never given much thought to it before, but it occurred to her that it must be hard to leave your child in a nursery all day, only picking him or her up when you were both worn out.
Cleo and her brothers had never been sent to a crèche or nursery. The hotel had been their nursery. There had always been someone around to keep an eye on them, and from when she was little Cleo had loved helping clean bedrooms as long as she had her own yellow duster and her own squirty bottle. She wondered if she’d have children some day and would they play in the hotel while she worked, learning how to make a bed properly and watching the chef rustling up twenty-four cooked breakfasts as easily as making a cup of tea.
It had been a fun way to grow up. Her children would play in the hotel, she decided. She’d want them to enjoy their birthright the way she had. Of course, that was years and years off, and she’d need a man first. That wasn’t the sort of thing that could happen quickly. No way was she settling for any guy. She wanted the one. The right one. Perfect. Tall, naturally, so she wouldn’t have to look down on him. Small men loved her for some reason, but she could never bear to go out with anyone shorter than herself.
Laurent had been tall and olive-skinned, with the most amazing grey eyes. And his accent…when he said, ‘You are so sexy, Clee-oh,’ in that luscious Provençal drawl, Cleo had felt herself melt.
By the time she got home, Cleo’s hair was woolly from the damp of the evening. Hat – she had to buy a new hat to replace the one she’d lost on a night out with Trish. A vibrant young businesswoman needed decent hair. And she was a vibrant young businesswoman, the sort of one who could have her pick of handsome tall men with fabulous accents. Who’d manage to drag their eyes from her bosom to actual eye-level.
With this cheering thought in mind, she walked in the front door and did what Mrs O’Flaherty, her favourite course lecturer, used to tell the students to do: imagine they were guests arriving at the hotel and see what it felt like. Cleo stood and tried to see the hotel with a dispassionate eye.
The flowers that had only one day left in them yesterday still stood on the big hall table and it was obvious that nobody had got round to changing the water. Murky and green like water from a gloomy pond, it gave the hall the aroma of bad eggs. The cushions on the two big armchairs in front of the fireplace still bore the imprints of whoever had last sat in them, and a newspaper was rolled up and squashed in a corner of one. Worse still, the door to the conservatory hallway was swinging open, admitting both a stiff breeze from the garden and the smell of eau-de-cabbage from the kitchens.
Cleo didn’t have to exert her imagination to figure out what any self-respecting guest’s reaction would be if they’d travelled in the cold evening to the Willow, hoping for warmth and welcome, to be greeted by all this. The place was only missing Bela Lugosi with extra sharp incisors to complete the atmosphere. Before she’d gone to college, before she’d spent work experience summers in other hotels, Cleo had thought that their hotel was the finest around. Creaking water pipes, quaint hot-water bottles for guests’ bedrooms in winter and beautiful rugs with papery thin edges were part of an old hotel’s attractions. Its charm had also come from the love and warmth her parents had put into it, charm that meant more than any new furnishings or thick carpets. Harry Malin’s warmth was as much a part of the Willow’s success as the sense of faded elegance in a world of monotone, identikit hotel chains. But the balance between her father’s warmth and the state of the house had shifted.
Now she saw the Willow with new eyes. The hotel was tired, a dump. It badly needed a total revamp.
‘Hello!’ yelled Cleo into the empty hall.
Tamara, the hotel’s part-time receptionist, poked her head out from behind a tiny gap in the office door, the door that was supposed never to be shut. Small and very blonde, like her elder sister, Sondra, Cleo’s sister-in-law, Tamara had the air of one who always had something better to do than talk to you.
She wasn’t too keen on Cleo, mainly because Cleo was one of those people who never wanted to sit still. Tamara liked sitting still when there was nothing she felt inclined to do. Even better, she liked working on her nails. The acrylics had been too expensive, so she’d got rid of them and it was hard work getting her nails back into condition again. You really needed to rub nail conditioner in every hour religiously.
‘Yeah, hi,’ Tamara muttered, from where she sat, and went back to reading her magazine carefully so as not to dampen the pages with fingers slick with nail oil.
Cleo counted to ten. Then she went to twenty to be on the safe side. Screaming at staff was generally not encouraged in hotel management. But Tamara was not Cleo’s idea of a proper hotel receptionist, even if she was ‘almost family’, as Barney put it.
In the grand tradition of keeping the business in the family, Barney’s wife, Sondra, used to work as receptionist on a part-time basis, but now that she was pregnant, albeit only just, with the first grandchild of the Malin dynasty, she had given up work and her sister had been drafted in as her replacement.
Cleo had been all for hiring someone new but, no, family had to come first.
‘Cleo, come on, charity begins at home and all that. Tamara’s a bit low since she lost that job in the beauty salon,’ Barney had said. ‘And it’s not as if you need much experience for reception.’
That, Cleo decided, was what was wrong with her brothers. They didn’t understand the finer points of running a hotel. In Barney’s view, any idiot who could do long multiplication and say ‘Reception, how can I help you?’ could operate a successful hotel.
‘Barney, you do need experience for reception,’ Cleo said in exasperation.
‘Ah, Cleo, she’ll be great,’ wheedled Barney.
He had such an engaging smile, like Cleo’s but with an added hint of rogue thrown in for good measure. It was hard to resist.
‘Where is everyone, Tamara?’ asked Cleo brightly now so that Tamara would hear her through the half-closed office door.
‘Your mother’s in the kitchen and your father’s out.’
And there’s nobody on reception in case a guest comes in, Cleo thought. The hotel didn’t have a receptionist on all day; they couldn’t afford to. Tamara was employed for times of the day when Harry or Sheila were busy elsewhere.
Cleo was heading for the door that separated the reception from the kitchen when the office phone rang sharply.
After five interminable rings, Tamara picked it up.
‘Helloo, the Willow Hotel, how can I help yoou?’ she intoned in the special voice she used only for the phone or talking to rich guests.
Tamara would have to go, Cleo decided. Family or no family. Because if she didn’t go, Cleo would end up being arrested for hitting Tamara over the head with Tamara’s cosmetic-filled Burberry handbag. Also not generally encouraged in hotel management.
Cleo’s mother, Sheila, sat in the tiny alcove in the kitchen where an old church pew had been wedged in and covered with cushions so that people rushing around cooking and serving could take a rest and a cup of tea out of everyone’s way. The pew was of worn oak and the cushions looked like a multi-coloured bric-a-brac display with two scruffy rose velvets lined up with a scratchy oatmeal barrel cushion, a few threadbare tapestry cushions and a toile de Jouy confection that was faded