The Honeymoon Hotel (5 page)

I was hypnotized by it. It was a broad, tanned hand, with a thin cotton friendship bracelet around the wrist. The way it was groping across the coverlet was oddly sensual, and I knew I should say something, but I couldn’t think what.

The hand finally connected with the phone on the pillow, and the blond man lifted himself on one elbow. As he opened one bleary eye, he suddenly saw me standing there, staring at him with my hands on my hips.

An expression of sheer fear crossed his face, and collided with his hangover. He winced, croaked, ‘Shit!’ then winced again.

Something about his bleary eyes – blue and large, with purply-dark shadows underneath – seemed familiar. I didn’t know a lot of honeymoon-suite crashers, but at the same time, neither did I want to stare at him long enough to work out where I knew him from. Another wedding? A best man, maybe?

‘Whoa! Ummph, I can explain!’ he started in a slurred, cracked voice, and finally my brain kicked in.

I leaned on the door, already paging Tam in my pocket, not wanting any of this to filter through the keyhole.

‘You don’t have to explain to me,’ I assured him in a polite voice, scanning the room for damage. It was in a state, but nothing seemed to be broken. ‘Our security team will handle this. They’re on their way now, sir, so if you could please get dressed and … and …’

The yellow ducks were moving. They were very baggy boxer shorts. I stared at his shoulder instead. His tanned shoulder. I always noticed men’s shoulders. Anthony had had nice shoulders, from swimming; they were one of my favourite things about him. This man’s shoulders were even better, with soft golden hollows between …

I shifted my gaze to the pillow, appalled at myself.

‘So please remain here until they arrive,’ I finished, and let myself out before we could get into conversation. My face, I realized, was very hot.

Outside in the corridor, Gemma’s description of the croquembouche appeared to have run short.

‘… lots of cream,’ she finished lamely, in an attempt to conceal the fact that she’d been listening to the whole thing.

I turned from locking the door swiftly with my skeleton key to find Margot’s and Sadie Hunter’s eyes boring into me, as were Maricruz’s and Gemma’s.

‘Sorry about that,’ I said, leaning on the door and holding the doorknob behind my back in case the half-naked stranger decided to get out of bed and attempt an escape. ‘My mistake! We’ve got some workmen in the bridal suite today – they’ve started early. We’re installing new … um, new headboards.’

‘Really?’ Margot looked unconvinced. ‘Was there a problem with the old headboards?’

‘No! They’re for a celebrity client!’ I added, touched with inspiration. ‘A special request!’

Sadie’s eyes lit up. ‘Who is it?’

‘Ah, I wish I could tell you,’ I said, hurrying them away from the room as firmly as I could. Was that the door rattling? I thought I could hear movement inside. ‘Now, what I
really
want to show you is the honeymoon suite …’ I guided them down the thick cream carpet towards the third-floor lifts, before the mood could be shattered by a burly security man on his way to tackle an intruder.

Margot glanced back at the mysterious door. ‘I thought
that
was the honeymoon suite?’

The doorknob was definitely rattling now. ‘Hello?’ came a muffled voice. Then a less happy, ‘Oi!’

‘That’s the
bridal
suite.’ I jabbed at the button for the penthouse.
Hurry up, hurry up
. ‘This is the
honeymoon
suite. It’s very
special – my favourite room in the whole hotel. It’s like a cosy little nest in the sky!’ I could hear myself gabbling uncharacteristically and made an effort to calm my voice.
You’re in control
, I told myself.

This was so unlike me. Gatecrashers were easy to handle: I’d dispatched at least one a year since I started work. It was Laurence’s stupid budget challenge that had put me on edge like this, I decided. All I could think of were my new target calculations – and losing a key wedding booking like Sadie’s would be a really bad start.

‘Is that workman locked in?’ asked Margot Hunter.

My brain scrabbled for a credible explanation. ‘Not at all! He’s testing the, um, doorknobs. They’re very old, so we have to do routine maintenance on them.’ I smiled confidently at Sadie. ‘Don’t want our brides getting stuck, do we?’

She smiled back, and I gave Gemma a discreet shove.

‘Gemma,’ I said, ‘would you pop back and let that workman know the door is fine, and when Tam arrives, buzz me?’

‘Tam?’ She frowned. ‘What’s Tam—’

‘He’s giving them a hand with the bed.’ I fixed my smile, although my palms were now quite damp. How long before the stranger decided to start banging on the door? That would look awful in about seventeen different ways.

‘But he’s from the security—’

‘It’s a very expensive headboard,’ I said over the top of her. ‘And heavy. Tam’s very strong. Gemma? Buzz me when Tam gets here.’

Sadie and Margot were now staring openly at the noise
coming from the bridal suite, but at that moment the lift saved me from a very loud rattle, and with a silent thanks to the hotel guardian angel, I swept the Hunters into the lift and pressed the top-floor button so fast I nearly trapped Margot’s cardigan in the closing doors. My mind was already racing through how I’d explain this to Laurence, not to mention what I would say to Tam when I caught up with him.

Watertight security systems technology solutions, eh?
Right
. Maricruz would be more effective on the door than he was.

*

I managed to show the Hunters around the romantic honeymoon suite without any interruptions, but my mind wasn’t really on the lovely dusty pink colour scheme, or the glorious mother-of-pearl headboard that rose like a scallop shell over the king-size bed. Or the special rose champagne breakfast, or the picturesque double balcony overlooking Green Park, with jasmine climbing around the wrought-iron detailing.

I kept seeing the hungover guest’s long golden back, sprawled over the bedspread. And the tattoo. And the familiar eyes.

And even though Delphine had excelled her chilly self with the pâtisserie served with our morning coffee downstairs, I was a bit distracted by the text from Gemma that said:

Tam taken intruder downstairs!

Well, not that one so much as the one that appeared five minutes later:

Laurence says he wants to see you as soon as you’ve finished.

Then another, saying:

Laurence says hurry up.

I answered Margot Hunter’s questions about our catering options and our florist packages, then escorted them to the taxi rank, where I gave Sadie my card and our full details in the lovely pale blue folder embossed with the hotel’s signature star motif. I never pushed too hard – hard-sell wasn’t part of the wedding package, in my opinion – but I knew if I’d shown them the bridal suite it’d have been a done deal. Now it just looked as if we had something to hide. Margot was already eyeing every closed door with a suspicious glance, as if the doorknob might start rattling. And if this became the reason that Sadie decided to go with a different venue and I lost a key booking towards my target, I was going to march that intruder off the premises myself, preferably off the honeymoon suite balcony.

*

Gemma was hovering outside Laurence’s office, wearing the sort of semi-gleeful expression that indicated that she’d already got half of a great bit of gossip and was very keen to hang around for part two.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Have they called the police? Has reception confirmed who that intruder is?’

‘Better than that,’ said Gemma.

‘What do you mean, better than that?’

She didn’t answer. She just rounded her eyes and tapped her nose.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ I snapped. ‘It’s not a spoiler,’ and I knocked twice, before pushing open the heavy door and going in.

Laurence was perched on his desk, not in his Swivelling Chair O’Power behind it – already very unusual – so I didn’t immediately notice that someone was in the chair to the left.

‘Laurence, we need to talk to Tam about security in the hotel, I’ve just had the most
embarrassing
experience with…’ I began crossly, and then my brain caught up with my eyes as the man in the chair spun round at the sound of my voice.

‘Oh, fantastic,’ he said ambiguously. ‘You again.’

It took me a moment or two to connect the fully dressed man with the half-naked one on the bed. He’d pulled on a shirt and long khaki shorts, and had obviously been given enough time to drag himself into the shower, going by his wet hair and more fragrant aroma – that of our luxury-suites-only house shampoo, I noted. He still looked hungover, though. Very, very hungover.

Tam was not in the office and, I was disappointed to see, neither was Jean, the exacting head of housekeeping. Which meant that either Laurence was waiting for one or both of them to arrive, or he was going to deal with this himself. Either way, the intruder didn’t look nearly worried enough for my liking. Margot Hunter’s unimpressed face floated in front of my mind and I felt my face get hot for the second time that day, and for a very different reason than the first time.

‘I hope you’ve apologized to our chambermaid for giving her a terrible shock,’ I said, sarcastically. ‘And for vandalizing our bridal suite.’

‘I will,’ he said, ‘when you apologize for incarcerating me, against my will, in a room with borderline-antique air conditioning. And that’s being generous. Which is more than you can say for the minibar provision.’

My mouth dropped open. Amazed at his coolness, I glanced at Laurence, who was doing his anxious half-smile, half-frown of confrontation fear.

I couldn’t stop myself. ‘I hardly think I need to apologize for anything! Aren’t you going to explain what you were doing in there?’

‘For crying out loud, keep it down, would you?’ He clutched his head. ‘And FYI, if someone puts a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, don’t you generally take that to mean, like,
do not disturb
them? God help anyone getting married here if the bridal suite’s knock and enter.’

I was stunned. My blood pressure was now rising to dangerous levels. Somewhere in the back of my head, it occurred to me that this was what Dominic must feel like when someone served him ‘an impertinently bad burger’.

‘Did Gemma tell you this …
gentleman
interrupted an important client meeting?’ I asked Laurence, somewhat rhetorically. ‘Did she describe to you what sort of state the room was in? Worse than when … when
that band we don’t talk about
had it?’

‘Ah. Yes. Gemma did say you, er, handled the incident very professionally.’ Laurence smiled. He was smiling too much.

I felt as if I’d skipped the first chapter of whatever was going on here. I put my hands on my hips. ‘Laurence. This man
broke into
the bridal suite and trashed it. Am I missing something?’

‘Just a sense of proportion,’ groaned the blond man. ‘Can you get brain damage from taking too much Berocca for a hangover?’

‘Rosie, you remember Joseph?’ said Laurence, leaning over to pat the man’s shoulder.

‘For the love of God,’ the man moaned, ‘not so sodding loud.’

I had a reasonable memory for faces and names, but this wasn’t ringing any bells.

‘Joe,’ said Laurence. ‘My son!’

And then I did remember.

Joe Bentley Douglas – because that, I now realized all too well, was who my ‘intruder’ was – and I stared at each other over the desk like two people who’d met and rejected each other on a speed-dating night, only to be reintroduced in a formal job interview situation.

Typically, Laurence seemed oblivious to the tension turning the air around us into a thick soup of awkwardness. It was a
broth
of embarrassment.

‘Joe, I’m surprised you didn’t recognize Rosie,’ he said. ‘She’s our events manager now. She’s officially indispensable.’

I went to shake his hand, but Joe raised his in an uncomfortable
so hello!
fashion, and finally turned his head towards me so I could get a proper look at him.

The last time I’d seen Joe, he was eighteen, and I’d arranged for him to be kicked off my bed-making squad for slacking. He’d just left boarding school and was suffering from a particularly cruel allergy to all known acne treatments, combined with chronic acne. He’d been miserable too, probably as a result of the acne and the boarding school, but also because he spent most of his time listening to Leonard Cohen records. Plus he
had to live in Laurence and Caroline’s flat upstairs in the hotel with Alec, who hadn’t yet joined the army but dressed in camo gear and set fire to things all the time anyway.

I didn’t blame myself for failing to recognize Joe, because he looked completely different ten years on. The spots had gone, and unexpected cheekbones had emerged from the old chipmunkiness: he was handsome, in a scruffy surfer sort of way, with Laurence’s pale blue eyes, a wide mouth and a faint scuff of golden stubble over his jaw. He also wore a necklace with a shell on it.

Helen would
love
that, I thought. I didn’t. It looked stinky. Men with necklaces really weren’t my type. I preferred men in suits. That was one thing Anthony and Dominic did have in common: a commitment to tailoring.

I’d never really noticed before, but apart from the Bentley Douglas blue eyes and the wide mouth, Joe was the spitting image of Caroline, minus the energy and positive outlook. The miserable teenage attitude still seemed to be firmly in place, although maybe that was the result of mixing every single bottle in the minibar into a sort of hellish cocktail.

He gave me an appraising look. Some might have called it a scowl. ‘You haven’t changed,’ he said. ‘Still as bossy as ever.’

‘Me? Bossy?’ I felt my face go red for the third time that day, and hoped he wasn’t going to bring up the housekeeping sacking in front of his dad.

‘Yeah.’ Joe glared at me. ‘You probably don’t even remember, but Mum put me on your room service team. You re-did my hospital corners because you said they were amateurish.’

‘Did I?’ I pretended to smile nostalgically.

He nodded. ‘And when I suggested the hotel needed to get with the times and provide duvets, you went ballistic and gave me a lecture about traditional hotel standards.’

I opened and closed my mouth because I couldn’t actually deny that had happened. Satin counterpanes in the honeymoon suite, yes. Anything other than crisp white linens and blankets in the main rooms, no.

Fine, well, if we were going to be
honest
 …

‘I’m surprised you can remember,’ I said breezily. ‘Didn’t you only stay on the room service team for a week?’

I was being kind. Joe had lasted two and a half days on my team, and I’d found him asleep in the linen cupboard on the half day. On days one and two, he’d spent most of his time being cooed over by the two Spanish girls, and Caroline had decided he’d get into less trouble collecting glasses in the bar, so she’d moved him. The following Saturday he went off backpacking round Portugal and we all breathed a sigh of relief, apart from Maria and Lucia, who cried for two days.

‘Still no duvets, I see,’ Joe remarked.

‘Because we are a traditional hotel,’ I replied, equally pointedly.

‘Rosie is a fine upholder of tradition,’ said Laurence proudly. ‘She shares my vision of the Bonneville shining like a modern beacon of old-fashioned hospitality in a bland corporate world.’

Joe muttered something that might have been ‘beacon’ but probably wasn’t.

‘I thought you were in America,’ I said, trying to change the subject to something positive. ‘Is this a holiday?’

Joe scowled again, and Laurence stepped in. ‘Joe’s going to be staying here with his old Dad awhile,’ he explained. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I don’t have much choice,’ said Joe, but that didn’t stop a broad smile breaking over Laurence’s face.

I hadn’t seen Laurence this happy since he’d discovered he had a one-in-a-million allergy to pomegranates, and for that reason alone I gave Joe my best customer-facing smile and held out a hand. This time he shook it.

‘How nice to see you again,’ I said, squeezing his hand. Maybe I squeezed his hand a little tightly and spoke slightly too loud. Just so he knew I wouldn’t be forgetting how he’d left the towels in my beautiful bridal suite. All scrunched up and making stains on the satin throw.

Joe winced. ‘Yeah, thanks.’

‘Marvellous,’ said Laurence, jumping off the desk, so happy he forgot to flinch. ‘Now, Rosie, I called you in first because as my right-hand woman, I require your assistance. Joe needs to learn how this place works, so he’ll spend a few months shadowing each departmental head to get a proper sense of how we do things. And I thought where better to start than in events?’

‘Events?’ I repeated, at the same time as Joe groaned.

And what did he mean,
Joe needs to learn how this place works
? A nasty suspicion was forming in the back of my mind. That ‘right-hand woman’ compliment was masking something else.

‘Events is where it’s all happening.’ Laurence beamed. ‘I had
a look at the diary and you’ve got weddings booked in at least twice a month for as far as the eye can see.’

‘Of course I have,’ I said, meeting his eye. ‘I’m
right on target
.’

He didn’t rise to it, so I said, ‘When you say events … what exactly will Joe be doing?’

‘Yes, what will Joe be doing?’ Joe asked. ‘Because I’m not doing weddings. I’m telling you that right now.’

‘The events department isn’t just weddings!’ I turned to him. This was one of my bugbears. ‘We provide a broad range of entertainment planning for clients. Balls, parties, corporate events. It just
happens
that weddings are a growing element of the hotel’s profile. It’s not all cake knives and … and veils. There’s a lot of planning and budgeting and organization and client liaison. It’s hard work.’

‘And weren’t you saying you needed more help?’ said Laurence. ‘Joe can start immediately. What have you got on this afternoon?’

‘No. Absolutely not. He can’t come to events meetings dressed like that,’ I said, horrified. ‘Prospective brides don’t expect to talk about their twenty-thousand-pound receptions with someone wearing … board shorts.’

‘Well, this is me,’ Joe started indignantly, but Laurence cut across him.

‘Joe’s got plenty of time to pop down to the King’s Road and get himself something suitable,’ he said, and he sounded firmer than I’d ever heard him sound before.

‘Tomorrow,’ I said. I needed time to arrange my diary.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Joe, and got up and slouched out.

Laurence looked at me and smiled as if the conversation had been a sparkling success, and I was so thrown, all I could do was smile back.

*

As I left Laurence’s office, I spotted Gemma by the portrait of Mrs Maude Bentley Douglas, Laurence’s grandmother and a noted society stirrer. Gemma was clutching a pile of napkins in a way that suggested she’d just grabbed them at random, and when she saw me she began walking.

It didn’t fool me for a second. I’d been a practiced eavesdropper myself, back in the day. I still was.

‘Gemma,’ I said, grabbing her arm before she could scuttle past. ‘Could you track Helen down and tell her I need to have a state of the nation meeting with her after lunch service?’

‘What about?’

‘About Antonia Devereux’s wedding,’ I said, off the top of my head. ‘She’s emailed me ahead of the meeting about some very complicated food requests. She wants an oyster table. And a lobster tank. With ice luges.’

‘Really? But Antonia’s a vegetarian.’ Gemma looked surprised. ‘Don’t you remember?’

‘It’s a special ethical lobster tank,’ I improvised. ‘They free-range around in there … Anyway, just tell Helen, will you? Four thirty, if she can.’

‘Shouldn’t I be there? If it’s a wedding meeting?’ Gemma persisted. ‘Laurence did say, as part of my last review, that I
could start taking on more managerial roles in the wedding planning.’

Laurence probably
hadn’t
said that, given that Gemma tended to ‘improve’ everything, from people’s coffee orders upwards, but my brain wasn’t really engaged. I was too cross – with Laurence, with Joe, and now with myself. Visions of Joe and the havoc he’d wreaked in the bridal suite kept floating back to me, as well as the things I’d very nearly said to him in the office, when I hadn’t known who he was. And now I’d have Joe sitting in on every single meeting with a face like a wet weekend, potentially affecting the targets I’d convinced Laurence I could achieve.

I groaned aloud, saw Gemma looking at me oddly, and tried to regain my composure.

I wanted to help Laurence, I really did, but this wasn’t the month to have Joe hanging around scowling at clients and hating me for criticizing his hospital corners ten years ago. Plus, I had a bad feeling about that tour around the departments. A very bad feeling.

Helen would have a plan. Maybe I could persuade her to have Joe in the restaurant. Just until I’d reached my bookings target.

‘Rosie?’ Gemma prodded me. I was so tense I didn’t even tell her off for prodding me.

‘What? Fine. You can sit in on the meeting tomorrow. Just go and find Helen and tell her I need to see her this afternoon, asap. Please.’

Gemma made a
yessss!
face and wiggled off down the corridor.

Why not? I thought, heading into my own office. Gemma’s
enthusiasm and Joe’s distinct lack of it might cancel each other out.

*

‘State of the nation meeting’ was the code Helen and I used for our emergency vent sessions, which were usually required a couple of times a week in order to deal with the pressures created by working for Laurence and/or living with our equally-annoying-but-in-different-ways boyfriends.

We met on the external fire escape between the fourth and fifth floors of the hotel; it was directly above the kitchen, so it was warm in winter and smelled pleasantly of pâtisserie, and had a soothing view of Green Park. More than that, Laurence had no head for heights, so it was very unlikely we’d ever be overheard.

When I went up there at half past four, Helen was already sitting on the black iron steps, her long legs resting on the
Danger: No Leaning
sign, with a white kitchen mug in one hand and her smooth forehead clutched in the other. As she heard my feet clanging on the metal, she jerked to attention.

‘Listen, you don’t even need to tell me,’ she said, seeing my dark expression. ‘I felt like throwing a brick at Dominic’s head myself when I read that review.’

That brought me up short. ‘What review?’

I hadn’t had time to catch up with Dominic’s latest. He did a big ranty review for the weekend paper, and a shorter, more practical one on Wednesdays. Wednesdays were supposed to be the affordable places normal people could go. They tended to make him even crosser than the expensive places.

‘The pub in Balham where Betty had a meltdown about the chips?’

‘Betty had a meltdown?’ I frowned. ‘
He
had a meltdown about the chips. He made the kitchen bring him a potato just so he could establish that they knew what one was. He blamed me for that?’

‘He was very witty about it. He did a hilarious riff about “You say potato, I say reconstituted carbohydrate substitute”.’

‘What?’ I pretended to look outraged. Well, half-pretended. ‘That’s what
I
said! Dominic said he said that?’

Dominic had been taking liberties more and more of late. He’d also taken to ascribing his more acerbic observations to Betty, ‘So the restaurants will still serve me.’ I know. Not very gallant.

‘Sorry, I thought you knew,’ said Helen. ‘Look, I’ve got some cake from the kitchen. I take it you’re okay with cake?’

Thanks to the Hunter fiasco, then Joe, I hadn’t had time for lunch, and I reached hungrily for the plate she was offering. ‘Have you ever known me not be okay with cake?’

‘Oh. It’s just that in that review, Dominic said Betty was …’ Helen slowed awkwardly. ‘On a diet? You’re not on a diet.’

‘Of course I’m not on a diet! If anyone’s on a diet, it’s Dom!’

She gave me the side-eye look that had become our shorthand for ‘He’s really taking the piss, you know,’ and I did a mime of a furious girlfriend throttling an irritating plagiarist.

‘Eat the cake, you’ll feel better,’ she said, and as ever, she was right. My fork hit a thick stratum of Italian meringue buttercream,
and the world tilted back onto its axis. It’d be fine. We were buying a flat together in real life. He loved me in real life. Betty was just for the column. She wasn’t
me
.

‘Ooh. This is good,’ I said, gesturing through a mouthful of sponge cake. ‘Delphine’s back from the dark side?’

For the last five days we’d had some very angry profiteroles and dark, dark chocolate confections leaving the chilly depths of the pastry room.

‘It’s the moon.’ Helen sipped her coffee. ‘Affects pastry chefs, I’ve noticed. We need to schedule the weddings to avoid full ones. So, come on, what did you need to see me about so urgently, if not Dominic’s review?’

I carved off a bigger chunk of cake as the reality of the next few weeks hit me again. ‘Guess who the intruder in the honeymoon suite was? You won’t guess, I’ll tell you – Joe Bentley Douglas.’

But Helen didn’t look as surprised as I’d expected. ‘I know! I heard them discussing it in the kitchen. I thought he was in California? What happened with the fire-walking and surfing and all that?’