“Does anyone have anything I can take to table five?” Ollie says, bursting in through the doors to the restaurant.
As the only remaining permanent member of Arjun’s team, Ollie should really be the one stirring this dal, but I took pity on him and let him fill the waiter job instead. Arjun already looked like he was about to start breathing fire, and Ollie—bless him—would definitely drive him over the edge.
“Bread? Olives? Something poisonous?” Ollie goes on. “The bloke says it’s not his fault you mugs let the ceiling fall in, and he doesn’t see why it should be holding up his lunch, and I did say we don’t usually serve lunch until twelve but he said this is supposed to be a boutique luxury hotel and he should be able to have lunch whenever he—God, Lucas, what are you wearing? You look like a right twat! Oh,” Ollie says, turning scarlet. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t realise a guest was . . .”
“Just leaving,” Louis says with another easy smile. “Izzy—rain check on that swim?”
“Sure, looking forward to it!” I say, smiling back and checking the clock. “Time to stir, Arjun?”
“You’re not already stirring?” he says with absolute horror, as Ollie disappears into the restaurant with a bread basket and Louis slips out of the other door.
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
After the chaos of yesterday, today is eerily quiet.
You can really feel all those empty rooms. We put everyone in a bay window for breakfast, looking out over the lawns and the woodland beyond, but it’s still too subdued for my liking. Mr. Townsend stays hunched over his copy of The Times; Louis and Mrs. Muller don’t make it to breakfast; the Jacobses are grey with exhaustion, their baby asleep at last in the pram beside their table. It’s the Hedgerses who bring all the energy, but there’s only so much that even three kids under ten can do to brighten up the atmosphere. As I return to the lobby, I vow to figure something out for tomorrow. Background music, maybe? Or will that come across as too corporate?
“Oh, Mrs. Hedgers!” I call as she wheels in with a pile of shopping bags on her lap. “Let me help you with those.”
She waves me away, gaze landing on my latest innovation: the debris nativity on the staircase landing.
“That’s . . . quite something,” she says.
I feel myself going pink. “I just figured, even if the ceiling has fallen in, until the builders get here, we can still make the most of the space, right?” I say.
“Yes. Yes, I can see that,” Mrs. Hedgers says.
I’ve built a nativity into the rubble of the fallen ceiling. Baby Jesus is lying in a cradle between two chunks of ceiling plaster, and I’ve spread artificial snow around the scene, even dusting the shoulders of the wise men (three old statues of previous Bartholomew family members from the gardens). My personal favourite element is the sheep, which I created out of an old white footstool and a lot of cotton wool balls. I know it’s a bit tacky and over-the-top, but I think it’s cheerful—and the hotel desperately needs some cheer right now.
“You’re a very creative young woman,” Mrs. Hedgers says, turning her steady gaze my way.
For someone with such energetic children, Mrs. Hedgers is surprisingly calm. She wears her dark brown hair in a chignon, smooth and neat, and there’s never a speck of mud on the wheels of her chair when she heads out of the door. On her checkin notes, she listed her profession as “life and career-change coach,” which is probably why she seems to be so impressively together. I guess you can’t tell other people how to live their lives if yours is a bit of a state.
“Oh, thank you!”
“Is it hard work, staying switched on all the time?” she asks, tilting her head.
“Sorry?”
Mrs. Hedgers smiles slightly. “Creative people tend to need their downtime.” She looks at the nativity. “You like to add a little sparkle to everyone else’s day, am I right?”
“That’s actually why I love working in hospitality,” I say, twisting my fingers together. Mrs. Hedgers is making me nervous. She has a headteacherly sort of energy, as if at any moment she’ll tell me I’m not allowed to wear clip-in highlights at school. “I’m a total people-person.”
“And how do you switch off?”
“Umm. Hanging out with friends?”
“Hmm,” says Mrs. Hedgers.
“I do yoga, too, sometimes,” I find myself saying. I think I last did yoga in the first lockdown, when everyone got excited about working out in our living rooms, as if the lockdown rules were the reason we weren’t all bounding out into the woods for fifteen-mile runs every morning.
Mrs. Hedgers waits. I can come up with no other downtime activities except “watching television,” which sounds like something Ruby Hedgers would put forward in answer to this question, so I just get gradually pinker and wait in silence.
“Well,” Mrs. Hedgers says, hands on her chair’s wheels again. “Perhaps something to think about. It’s so important for us to nourish ourselves so that we can continue to nourish those around us.”
“Right! Totally. Oh, sorry!” I say, hopping out of her way. “Actually, while I have you, I’ve been meaning to ask—we still need a card for any costs that your insurer won’t be covering for your stay. Would you . . .”
“They’ll cover it all,” Mrs. Hedgers says, and there’s steel in her smile. “Just send the bill their way.”
“Oh, OK,” I say, as she pushes open the door to her suite and manoeuvres herself through.
As the door closes behind her, I stare at it for a while. Nothing about that conversation should have made me feel especially uncomfortable, but I’m all discombobulated. Maybe it’s because she didn’t really like my nativity scene. Is that why? Something has got under my skin, and now I feel as though I’ve made a mistake, but I can’t figure out where.
I whip out my phone and message Jem. She’s in the States, but I do some quick maths and decide that even though I can never remember whether it’s five hours ahead or five hours behind, as long as it’s five something I’m not waking her in the middle of the night.
Is this lame? I say, attaching a photo of the nativity.
Umm, no?!! she replies instantly. It is in fact the best thing I have ever seen!
I smile down at my phone as she peppers me with stars and Christmas tree emojis. There is nobody in the world with a heart as pure as Jem Young.
Why the self-doubt? she asks. Are you OK, little pigeon?
Oh sorry, I’m totally fine! Just “having a silly moment,” as your mum would say. Maybe time for a sugar fix . . .
It’s always time for a sugar fix. And please do not quote my mother at me at this hour!!
But Mrs. Young has so many excellent one-liners! What about that time she told me I was an abject failure, dragging her daughter to the dogs?
Or the time she told me I was “a disappointment, fundamentally speaking”?
I press my hand to my heart. We joke about these moments now, but I know how badly they wounded Jem. Even if these days she has fundamentally speaking literally tattooed on her arse.
You have never disappointed me, not even when you chose Team Jacob over Team Edward, I type, with a string of hearts.
She writes back, Love you. Rehearsals now—got to go. Missing you so much. x
I tap out a heartfelt Miss you more before sliding my phone back into my pocket. Winter is my Jem time—her being gone has left me feeling a little unsteady. We only do Christmas together every other year—I’m on rotation between Jem and Grigg and Sameera—but even if I’m not actually with her on Christmas Day, we always spend September onwards sending each other fantastically bad new Christmas songs and meeting up for mulled wine after work.