‘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?’
‘Dunno. Wasn’t mentioned. But there’s more – Laurence wants him to learn about the hotel business.’
Helen clearly hadn’t had that gossip memo yet – or she hadn’t given Gemma the chance to pass on the news. She lowered her coffee mug in surprise. ‘What?’
‘Two months shadowing each head of department. I’m first. Do you want to trade?’
‘Jesus, no, not until I’ve checked the books and – oh.’ Helen’s eyes widened, then she pointed at me. ‘You don’t think …’ She put her hand over her mouth.
I made an And? gesture.
‘You don’t think … Laurence is training him up to give him the manager’s job?’
Once she said it, it confirmed the suspicions that had been multiplying in the back of my mind, and a heavy sensation settled in the pit of my stomach. ‘I hope not. What does Joe know about running the hotel?’
‘That’s what he’s here to learn?’ suggested Helen, wincing apologetically.
‘If that’s the case,’ I said, ‘he’s not exactly looking thrilled about it.’
‘That’s probably why Laurence has made him start in your department. You know everything there is to know about the hotel. And events is fun.’
‘No, it’s not,’ I countered, out of habit. ‘It might look like fun but I take it very seriously.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Come on, who doesn’t like weddings?’
‘Dominic?’ I suggested. ‘Seamus?’
Seamus was Helen’s boyfriend. Like Dominic, he was in food – but on the other side of the service hatch, as head chef at the Marden Arms, a gastropub with pretensions in Fulham. No chips. Not even chips in terracotta plant pots. Not even molecular deconstructed thrice-fried chips.
‘I’m not going to rise to that,’ she said. ‘We’re talking about Joe. When’s he starting?’
‘Now. He’s started. Laurence sent him off to get some clothes befitting wedding –’ I corrected myself – ‘events planning meetings. He’s the kind of overgrown student who still wears shorts. I mean, how is that supposed to fit in with the Bonneville’s timeless elegance?’
‘Shorts, eh?’ said Helen, but she didn’t look very disapproving. ‘I bet he’s got a great tan if he’s been on the beach for the last, how long? Ten years? But then you’d know all about his tan, wouldn’t you? What with you seeing him in the nip this morning.’
‘He wasn’t in the nip.’ You can’t keep a secret in a hotel. Especially when it involves partial nudity. ‘Can we stop going on about that?’
‘No,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s already legendary in the kitchens. Is it true that you punched him? And that he was completely naked in the Jacuzzi when you and the bride’s mother walked in?’
‘No! No! He was on the bed and he had his boxers on and …’ I put my head in my hands. How did they know all this? ‘Is everyone in the kitchens having a good laugh about me throwing the owner’s son out of his own hotel room?’ I mumbled through my fingers, cringing at the thought.
‘No, of course not! They’re …’ Helen stifled a snigger without much success. ‘They’re talking about how it would be you who found the naked gatecrasher.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked, affronted. ‘It would be me?’
‘Nothing, never mind. Look, I don’t know what you’re getting your knickers in a twist about,’ she said. ‘Running a hotel’s a thankless task, you know that. Joe’s clearly just doing this under sufferance. Give him a fortnight and he’ll be back on the plane to LA. Get him to assemble wedding favours or something. Listen, forget about all that. I need your advice about something much more important.’
I gave Helen my most ‘professional ethics’ look. ‘If it’s about Kevin and his new menu, I keep telling you – I can’t make Dominic review restaurants. And it would look really dodgy for him to give Kevin five stars, even if the meal is amazing…’
‘I wish.’ She gripped her mug to her chest and suddenly looked droopy. ‘No, it’s about Seamus. I don’t know what to do.’
‘About what?’ I asked warily. There was a lot Helen didn’t know what to do about Seamus. Where did you start? ‘About moving in together?’
‘No. That’s on the back burner again, after we, er, had a disagreement about, look, it doesn’t matter what.’
‘Tell me.’
Helen groaned. ‘His glasses.’
‘His glasses? Seamus wears glasses?’
‘No, he doesn’t. That’s the point. We had a humungous fight about it over the weekend.’
‘Okay,’ I said slowly.
The things that Seamus could pick a Big Fight over were astonishing. He had a real talent for being offended. Over the years I’d known Seamus be plunged into filthy moods by, in no particular order, vegetarians, Hass avocados, pigeon (the version you find on menus, not the ‘Feed the birds, tuppence a bag’ kind) and diners who ordered soup off his menu. Or indeed anyone who tried to order anything off his menu who he didn’t think would appreciate it.
Personally I thought most of Seamus’s problems could be cured by Helen dumping him, but she was my best friend, so I did what I could. ‘So, what brought this on?’
Helen looked uncomfortable, as if she knew what she was about to say was crazy, but, to be honest, by now nothing she could tell me about Seamus would be a surprise. ‘Oh, he had another near miss with my depilatory cream at the weekend – thought it was toothpaste, you know, the usual … and I told him he should get an eye test, befor
e he chopped his finger off or worse …’ She shrugged self-consciously, then ploughed on; ‘… and he said that he couldn’t possibly go to the opticians in case they did something to interfere with his palate. His senses are very finely balanced, apparently. Doesn’t need to see what he’s chopping, he feels it around him. And he doesn’t want people to mistake him for Heston Blumenthal. But then he kicked over two glasses of wine on my carpet, so we ended up having an argument about that and he stormed out again,’ she finished quickly.
We looked at each other, each thinking exactly the same thing (‘Helen, you are dating a rageful toddler’), then she came out with the thing one of us said every time we had this conversation, and we’d had it lots.
‘It’s good that he has passion, though. It’s what makes him the brilliant chef he is.’
It was what made him the least suitable boyfriend in the world for someone as nice as Helen, I thought, but since Dominic was also prone to irrational tantrums and equally vain about his appearance, I just said, ‘Well, yes. Obviously.’
This time, Helen carried on staring at me, a helpless look in her eyes, as if this time she hoped I’d say something different.
‘What?’ I asked. ‘I had the same thing with Dom the other weekend. He walked out of a café because the waiter said the poached eggs were organic free-range, so he asked for one from the kitchen to check and it was only free-range.’ It had been quite a scene. Someone had even tweeted a photo of him yelling about it. ‘But it’s important to keep your standards high, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Well … oh dear.’ Helen bit her lower lip, and for the millionth time I wondered if Seamus had the faintest idea how much he’d lucked out by dating her.
Some things you need to know about Seamus Lynch: