The Honeymoon Hotel (10 page)

‘You’re the expert,’ said Joe, and offered me some of my own wedding petit fours.

After a moment’s hesitation I took a couple. I never usually ate between meals.

They were actually pretty good.

*

Helen and Gemma were sitting in my office when I got back, scoffing green and lilac macaroons left over from another of
Grace Dewberry’s wedding cake tastings. Grace and her bridesmaids had already been in for two tastings. I was beginning to think Gemma might be confusing Grace deliberately, just to get yet another round of leftovers.

‘Before you ask, I’m not here,’ said Helen, waving a macaroon in my direction. ‘I’m with the cheese supplier.’

‘And before you ask, I’m
meant
to be here,’ said Gemma defensively. ‘Laurence has locked his door. A package came for him in the post. From Sweden. So I had to divert all his calls to your phone. I took some messages for you too, though.’

‘Thank you, Gemma.’ I started checking the pile of notes. There were a lot. Most of them were from Stephanie Miller’s parents, bridesmaids and family. I groaned inwardly. This was going to take quite some unpicking.

‘How were Polly and Dan?’ asked Helen. ‘Everything looking set for the big day?’

‘Yup! Well, I hope so. First time Dan’s bothered to come along, and he tried to change the first dance to “Perfect Day”.’

Gemma pulled a face. ‘Ooh, gloomy. Why do men always pick “Perfect Day”?’

‘I have absolutely no idea, but they do. Probably because it’s always used on
Match of the Day
montages.’

‘Wasn’t Joe helpful?’ asked Helen.

‘No, he suggested they get a lounge version arranged. Because Lou Reed and Frank Sinatra are natural bedfellows.’

‘That’s not a bad – oh dear,’ said Helen, seeing my face.

I swivelled round and stared at my Bridelizer. There was now a distinct gap where Stephanie and Richard had been at the
weekend, and I needed four more weddings booked in before the end of the year if I was going to beat the projection I’d given Laurence. Just four more. The Thornbury wedding would be a biggie, but every smaller one counted now I’d lost the Millers.

It’s how you deal with setbacks that prove you’re manager material
, I reminded myself, chewing my lip. This could be a blessing in disguise. It could.

‘Has Joe told you what he was doing out in California?’ asked Gemma dreamily. ‘He was telling me about the moonlight jeep trips he organized in Joshua Tree National Park. You drive out after sunset, under the stars, along an old gold miners’ trail, and—’

I banged the desk with the flat of my hand and she jumped.

‘Sorry. But don’t start. I’m not in the mood for Poor Joe this morning. I had to listen to him telling Polly and Dan how rubbish our English coffee is again this morning.’ I opened up Polly’s file to type up the notes from our meeting. ‘Even Dan suggested he get with the tea programme now he’s back here.’

‘Aw.’ Gemma made a sad pouty face, as if Joe were some kind of tragic wartime orphan who’d fetched up on the doorstep. ‘You can’t blame him. It sounds like he had an amazing life out there. And now he’s back in rainy old London.’

‘He must miss California. Specially the weather,’ Helen agreed. ‘It’s freezing this morning. He did a lot of surfing, didn’t he?’

‘Ooh, you can tell, with those shoulders. And he’s so tanned.’

I didn’t look up or join in. I was trying to make sense of Polly’s list of photography requirements. It sounded more like she
was making a documentary about herself than getting married. She wanted the photographer to come to her next dress fitting.

‘Ask Rosie about his tan,’ said Helen. ‘She’s the one who had the full inspection …’

I started to tune Helen and Gemma out as I finished the notes and began to rattle through the emails that had piled up in my inbox while I’d been away from my desk.

Daphne, October bride:
Is it Bridezilla to ask everyone to wear black clothes so my wedding dress will stand out in the photos?
No, it’s fine, as long as you want to look like you’ve crashed a funeral party.
Polite A: Maybe give them a couple of colour choices, Daphne?

Emilia, December bride:
Can we let Mother’s dog stay in hotel overnight?
Why not? It could go in with Laurence. He liked dogs.
Polite A: Yes, we can arrange that, no problem!

Catherine
,
September bride:
Pls advise re etiquette of sacking maid of honour
. I racked my brains. Was that the MoH who was in love with the groom, or the one who I suspected was in love with the bride? Maids of honour nearly always had an agenda of some kind.
Polite A: Catherine, that’s quite a delicate problem; why don’t I call you later so we can discuss it properly?

So much to do. So many things to worry about. And I needed to phone someone about the mortgage later – I focused on that. All this stress was going to lead to something good: me and Dominic, in our own place …

‘Rosie?’

I looked up. Helen was staring at me. ‘Why did he come back?’ she repeated.

‘Why did who come back?’

‘Joe!’

‘I have no idea. I guess Laurence asked him to come back to help out with the hotel.’ I gave them both a look. ‘We are short-staffed, as you might have noticed.’

‘But why would he leave his business?’ Gemma persisted. ‘I looked on the internet and it wasn’t like there was a terrible accident with his company or anything. It was going really well. He had celebrity clients, and everything.’

‘It doesn’t always take a big accident to sink a business,’ I said, refreshing my emails to find out if Dominic had had a look at the flat particulars I’d sent him. ‘Sometimes it can be down to something as tiny as not paying tax.’

‘I don’t think he’s a tax evader,’ said Gemma decisively. ‘What if it was a broken heart?’

‘Ooh, yes.’ Helen helped herself to another macaroon. ‘I bet he either broke someone’s heart with his footloose Sagittarian ways, or some ice maiden of a woman broke his.’

‘How on earth do you know he’s a Sagittarian?’ I was trying very hard not to get sucked into this conversation, but Gemma and Helen’s speculation was infectious.

‘He told us. And I reckon someone broke his,’ agreed Gemma. ‘Definitely.’

I frowned at the computer screen. Dominic hadn’t looked at the flats; instead I had a one-line email asking if I could think
of something funny to say about a pop-up Cumberland sausage restaurant.

I clicked the email shut crossly. ‘I agree,’ I said.

‘What?’

I spun round in my chair to face them. ‘I’m joining in, in an attempt to bring this conversation to a close. I bet Joe irritated his last girlfriend so much that it was leave the country or risk being hurled over a balcony.’

‘Ooh, touchy,’ said Helen. ‘Is this because he criticized your afternoon tea wedding?’

I nearly said, ‘No, it’s because he is the anti-Cupid,’ but discretion stopped me. I wasn’t going to discuss why Stephanie and Richard had decided to call things off.

‘No, it’s because Joe’s just one of those irritating types who
feel
everything and know nothing. Anyway, I’m seeing Caroline for lunch in a few weeks,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask her why he came back if you’re so desperate to find out.’

‘Will you? I’ll put a cocktail on it being a girl.’

‘Her dumping or him dumping?’ asked Gemma, quick as a flash.

Helen joggled her head from side to side, considering. ‘Um …
her
dumping,’ she decided. ‘I reckon she broke his heart and he couldn’t face staying. Joe’s the “this whole country is dead to me now” type.’ She put the back of her hand to her brow and looked distraught. ‘“I have to leave it all behind if she doesn’t love me.” Or,’ she added, ‘she found him in bed with someone else and her dad’s after him with a shotgun.’

I stared at them. ‘We
are
talking about the same Joe? Joe with his horrible ratty plaits that he’s only just cut off? And the shorts? “I’m a Sagittarian kind of guy” Joe?’

Gemma ignored me. ‘
Him
dumping. He’s too cute to have been dumped. It’s guilt, I reckon.’

Helen looked at me. ‘Rosie? What’s your guess?’

‘I’m not betting because it’s obvious why he came back,’ I said haughtily. ‘Laurence and Caroline told him to. Or he got bored. I know guys like Joe. They do things passionately for about eighteen months, get bored, pack it in.’

‘Except he’s been working out there since he left college,’ Helen pointed out. ‘And his business was doing all right.’

‘Then he’s just come back … to take over here.’

Urgh, that didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it made me feel even more resentful; presumably Caroline and Laurence were giving him some sort of compensation for giving up his business to work here?

‘Doesn’t explain why he was hungover and miserable when Rosie found him,’ Gemma persisted. ‘That says “drinking to forget” to me. Especially in the bridal suite.’

‘For God’s sake, it was jet lag. That’s enough, Cagney and Lacey,’ I said, reaching for my bag. ‘I’m off to get something to eat. If you discover any more fascinating details about Joe, please be sure to leave me a note on my desk so I can ignore it.’

‘You’re no fun,’ said Helen.

‘I know,’ I said, and left.

Caroline hadn’t been my boss, technically, since she’d left the Bonneville five years ago to set up her own country house hotel in Oxfordshire. It was called Wragley Hall and it was basically heaven, but with fluffier towels. Everything was lilac-grey and cream, and the whole house smelled of lavender and beeswax polish, with soft lambswool blankets over the brass bed ends and comfy velvet chairs beside the huge log fire in the library. Caroline had bought it for nearly nothing as a leaking, squirrel-infested wreck; she had rolled up her sleeves and, as she put it, ‘created the hotel I wished Laurence had taken me to on our honeymoon.’

I sent a lot of my engaged couples to Wragley Hall to calm down when the wedding planning got too tense and we were in danger of losing the booking to a broken engagement. The deputy manager, who she’d poached from Laurence after the divorce settlement, had created a spa in the old dairy sheds that managed to be simultaneously luxurious and brisk; instead of whale noise, you could listen to birdsong and the blissful sound of absolutely no questions about anything wedding related.

Though Wragley Hall was busy year-round, Caroline still came up to London every couple of weeks to see what was going on, and to hoover up any gossip that hadn’t reached Oxfordshire yet. She always made time to see me, and though I’d graduated from college nearly ten years ago, I still learned more about hotel management and hospitality from my lunches with Caroline than I had in three years at college. Lunch tended to swish past in a blur of outrageous stories and things I probably shouldn’t have let slip about Laurence’s latest ailments, so today I’d made a list.

In the space of potted shrimps on toast and a salad, we’d covered how the Bonneville was preparing for Christmas (only seven months away); what had happened on the date Laurence had been on with Caroline’s hairdresser’s friend, Diana (nothing; she’d had to bring him back to the hotel when he’d had an allergic reaction to some pineapple, much to Caroline’s disappointment – ‘I need someone else to shoulder the burden of his basic running, Rosie’); and what extra staff I should be booking for the Christmas parties; and in return I told her about a new supplier of top quality bed linen Jean had sourced in Leeds.

I hadn’t actually written down ‘ask about Joe,’ but it was on my mental list of things I wanted to talk to Caroline about anyway. Not so much the personal stuff that Helen and Gemma were itching to know, but the part that affected me: what Joe was really doing back at the hotel and, if he was staying, which department I should try to move him into. If I was going to make my projected bonus total, I couldn’t have Joe putting me off my stride for too long. Even en route to lunch, I’d had
an email from a potential bride we’d seen earlier in the week, politely letting me know she’d decided to go with the Ritz instead of us; I had a feeling Joe’s questions about how exactly she’d met her millionaire hedge-funder fiancé might have had something to do with it.

But, on the other hand, Caroline was his mother. I didn’t want to offend her by asking outright how long her son was intending to get in my way.

Luckily for me, Caroline brought up the topic herself without any prompting, shortly after she’d put away an ‘adequate’ strawberry cheesecake. She never pretended not to want dessert, which I liked. But then it was always nice to have a meal in which I could order whatever I wanted to eat, rather than what Dominic didn’t fancy but felt he should form an opinion about.

‘So, how’s Joe getting on?’ She replaced the fork neatly across the plate and looked at me over the top of her tortoiseshell glasses. ‘Be honest. I know I’m his mother, but I’m also his
mother
, if you know what I mean.’

I sipped my mint tea and scrabbled around in my head for something positive to say first. Laurence had sent me on a management course: I knew the theory. Compliment-awkward truth-compliment.

‘Well, he’s really getting to know the hotel from the rooms up.’

‘Which means what?’ Caroline raised her eyebrows, and looked unsettlingly like Joe himself. ‘Laurence claims he doesn’t have space for him in the flat, so he’s got Joe staying in whichever room isn’t occupied that night?’

‘Did he tell you that?’ I felt a little nervous. What else had Joe told her?

‘No,’ she sighed. ‘He doesn’t tell me anything. It was just a lucky guess. Laurence is so territorial about that flat. I’m surprised he let that receptionist live in there.’

She meant Ellie.

‘I think it’s more that Laurence is keen for him to appraise the hotel,’ I pointed out, before we could get on to Ellie’s shortcomings. ‘It’s ages since anyone in management slept in any of the rooms, and Joe’s already told us which ones, um, need updating.’ For someone who claimed to love sleeping rough beneath the Californian stars, Joe was a delicate flower of the princess/pea variety when it came to our ‘British’ mattresses, ‘loud’ air conditioning, and ‘insufficient’ towels.

‘I suppose it means he’s always at work by nine. But what about the work experience? He’s with you in events, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ I paused. This was the awkward truth part.

‘And?’

‘Um, he’s been working with me for almost four weeks now, so I suppose he’ll be moving on to the next division soon.’

‘That doesn’t answer the question I asked, but still …’ Caroline motioned for some mint tea for herself. ‘I thought he’d be shadowing you for a bit longer. Isn’t he enjoying it?’

I squirmed. This was tricky. I should have known where Joe got his directness from.

‘I don’t know if events is where his heart lies,’ I said.

Caroline looked surprised. ‘But he was managing his own events company out in California.’

‘Well, fire-walking and wilderness sleeping aren’t exactly the same as society weddings.’ I tried to put it into diplomatic words that would somehow get Joe out of my hair, but not make me look unhelpful. ‘I’ve been trying to build towards that classic Bonneville image we always had in mind when you set out the mission statement for the future, and … I’m not sure it’s really Joe’s style.’

Caroline tipped her head on one side, in that
go on, hang yourself
way, and it occurred to me that this might actually be a useful line. She wouldn’t want all her – and my – hard work of bringing the Bonneville back into the pages of London’s best glossy lifestyle mags undone by Joe running riot with his ideas about slapping name badges on guests or letting dogs bring the rings in on a little cart.

‘I think he finds traditional English weddings boring,’ I went on. ‘He’d rather there was more dancing and quirky themes and … wackiness.’

‘Wackiness?’

‘Last week I had a meeting with a very traditional couple who wanted the full romantic hotel wedding. The most outrageous thing the bride wanted was for everyone to dress in black-and-white so her red Manolos would stand out. No problem, fine. But Joe tried to talk them into having the groom’s side all in black, the bride’s side all in white.’

Caroline laughed as if I were having her on, then realized I wasn’t.

‘Can you imagine the photos?’ I added, remembering my
desperate attempts to shut him up. ‘It’d look like a really bad Pet Shop Boys concept video from the eighties. The problem was the groom loved it. He said it was perfect because he was a part-time jazz pianist. Joe’s reaction was, “Brilliant! We can arrange everyone into a human keyboard for the going-away photos, and the groom can play them.”’

‘And the bride?’

‘Thought Joe was taking the mickey out of her wedding. I had to give her a lot of cake to take home.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Caroline. ‘Maybe this isn’t going to work out as I’d hoped.’

As she’d hoped?
I fought back a sense of triumph mingled with dread. I knew there was something else behind Joe’s appearance at the Bonneville. And if Caroline was behind it, then it was much more organized than I’d suspected.

‘Caroline,’ I said. ‘What’s going on, please?’

‘Oh …’ She flapped her hands. ‘I might as well come clean. Joe called me about a week before he landed in London, completely out of the blue, to inform me that he was leaving the Land of the Free and coming home to the Land of the Free Bed and Board. So rather than have him turn up at Wragley Hall, because to be quite frank with you, Rosie, having
one
of my children at home, blowing up parts of my hotel garden, at any one time, is quite enough for me, I thought, no, Laurence can handle this, for a change.’

‘Right,’ I said. That wasn’t what Joe had told me about Caroline’s offer to have him in Oxfordshire, but still.

She leaned forwards in her chair, resting her elbow on the
arm and pinching her chin with glee. ‘And then I thought, actually, this could be a
blessing in disguise
. As you know, Laurence and I would never force Joe or Alec to take on the Bonneville, just because they are family …’

‘Oh no,’ I lied. Of course not. It was only Laurence’s sole aim in life.

‘… but what a great opportunity, I thought, for Joe to get some decent experience with someone who
knows what they’re doing
.’

‘Laurence?’

‘No! You!’ Caroline leaned back and smiled conspiratorially. ‘I thought it might give that dreadful ex-husband of mine a wake-up call. Stop him taking you for granted, if he had to see exactly how hard you work, through Joe’s eyes. I told Laurence to move Joe round the departments so he knows what’s what, but since you do more or less everything, I thought he might as well start with you.’

I sat back in my chair. Caroline’s faith in my abilities was flattering – but at the same time, was she lining him up to get the manager’s job too? That was
my
job he was going to walk into, just because he happened to be the son of the owners. Joe’s impatient face floated in front of my mind’s eye, the way he’d actually yawned when I gave him the grand tour of the special movie-star rooms, and I nearly yelped with the unfairness of it.

‘So,’ I said, as evenly as I could, ‘you want me to teach Joe how to run the hotel so he can take over Paul’s job as manager?’

Caroline nearly choked on her mint tea, and coughed in an
inelegant way that was very unlike her. ‘No! God, no. I mean, Laurence might want that, but no, I want Joe to come and work for me. At Wragley Hall.’

She’d lost me there. If Joe found weddings at the Bonneville boring, then he was going to go into a coma of boredom at Wragley Hall, where guests often arrived by private helicopter, the wedding music was usually performed by harpists, and every single female guest wore nude LK Bennett Sledge court shoes like the Middleton ladies. Quite often because the guests in question were the Middleton ladies.

‘That’s lovely,’ I started, ‘but to be honest, Caroline, unless you’re planning on introducing some kind of zip-wire ceremony—’

‘Weddings? God, no!’ she hooted. ‘No, no. I don’t want Joe involved in that side of things. I’ve got a top-secret new project on the go.’ She leaned forward again, her eyes all glittery with project fever. ‘I’ve finally done a deal with the farm behind the hotel and bought that big tract of woods they wouldn’t sell for years. We’re going to expand into one of those park-type places people take their families to so they can leave the kids while they have massages …’

‘You’re starting your own Center Parcs?’

‘Yes! Well, just for very well-behaved children. And I want Joe to run that. I think he’d be rather good at it.’ Caroline looked pleased with herself. ‘But first, I want him to get some idea of what proper customer service entails, and I don’t have time to train him up while I’m down a deputy manager and a chef myself, and with Alec rattling round the place as well. When
I say rattling, I mean literally. The place isn’t big enough to contain him and his … energy.’

‘Still no job?’

‘Sadly not. It seems the French Foreign Legion isn’t recruiting at the moment. Anyway, minor detail. I’ll find something for Alec to do. He can blow up the bunkers for the golf course.’

She wasn’t joking.

‘So when is all this happening?’ I asked, doing mental calculations. It wasn’t going to take that long to bring Joe up to speed, not if I put my mind to it. If I could get him shipped out to Oxfordshire soon, he wouldn’t get near the potential Flora Thornbury wedding next June. He wouldn’t even be around to follow through on his stupid jazzy ‘Perfect Day’ for Dan and Polly in November.

‘June next year,’ said Caroline.

My mental soundtrack of happy strings screeched to a halt. ‘June?’

‘Well, I haven’t quite got the paperwork sorted out yet,’ she admitted. ‘And it’s not a two-minute job, learning the hotel trade, now, is it?’

The prospect of Joe sabotaging my Bridelizer well into the middle of next year floated before me. Caroline had no idea how much was riding on me making those figures. My promotion, my new flat, my entire relationship with Dominic, possibly even my sanity …

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Caroline said smoothly. ‘You’re thinking, “What’s in it for me?”’

‘No, I’m not, I’m happy to—’

‘Rosie, this is me you’re talking to. If you weren’t asking what was in it for you, I’d wonder where I’d gone wrong. No, if you can get Joe’s mind focused on British hospitality and get him a bit more enthused about the old family business – mine, I might add, not his father’s – then I will put in a good word for you, shall we say, about the general manager job.’

‘At the Bonneville?’

‘At the Bonneville.’

I met Caroline’s gaze. She looked straight back at me. She and Joe had the same straight nose and the same fine gold hair. Although Caroline’s didn’t have ratty little plaits in it. It made me wonder how deeply Caroline’s business acumen was buried in Joe.

‘Put in a good word,’ I repeated.

‘I can’t make any promises,’ she said, poker-faced. ‘But you know that I know a
lot
of good words.’

‘And does Laurence know about this? About the Center Parcs idea?’

For the first time she looked a bit shifty. ‘Not yet. And please don’t tell him. He’ll only have one of his health-and-safety fits. You know what he’s like.’