Always and Forever (14 page)

Mel managed to keep a stiff upper lip for the rest of the night and it was only when they were safely on their way home that she let her guard down.

‘It looked so bad,’ she groaned as they drove out of the hotel’s underground car park. ‘And for damage limitation, I said I was training for the mini marathon, which means I’l actual y have to do it.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’ Adrian was bemused by al of this.

So what if Mel had looked tired? She hadn’t been hired to look like a supermodel al the time; she was a normal person. ‘No,’ she snapped, angry at the world and, since the world wasn’t there, Adrian would have to do.

‘You can’t have to run a mini marathon just because you looked tired at a party?’ he went on.

‘Yes I do because I said it in front of the boss and the boss’s boss, so I have to, and it’s al my bloody fault for looking a wreck. I can see why people have eyeliner tattooed on. At least you always look as if you’ve tried.’

Adrian laughed. ‘Come on, love, it’s not that important, real y. You’re great at your job, they know that. The rest is rubbish. Who cares about how you look?’

‘It shouldn’t matter but it does,’ hissed Mel furiously. ‘How I look does count because I’m a woman and I’ve got kids and I’m on borrowed time. You don’t understand that.

You’re a man and nobody’s watching you like a hawk for signs that your family are coming before your job, and that goes for your appearance too. Everything matters! You’re not suspected of being the one who takes a sickie when Carrie has a temperature of a hundred and three. If you make the school Christmas play, everyone thinks you’re in line for Dad of the Year. If I make it, I’m clearly shirking at work and if I don’t make it, I’m clearly shirking as a mother.

So yes, how I look does matter.’ ‘I’ve stayed home with the girls when they’re sick,’ Adrian pointed out.

‘But with men it’s seen as a one-off,’ Mel said in exasperation. ‘It never stops with women. It’s like a bloody marathon. And not the mini marathon, either.’

‘It can’t be sexism in Lorimar, Mel, because Hilary’s a woman too,’ Adrian said doubtful y.

‘Not so you’d notice,’ Mel sighed. ‘She’s married to the job and you’d never think she has kids. In other words, the perfect female executive. Have your tubes tied or have someone else bring up your kids so you never see them and we’l give you a job at the very top.’

‘But you love it,’ Adrian insisted. ‘You’re a powerhouse, Mel. Everyone thinks you’re great for al you do. I think you’re great. The way you manage work and the kids, juggling it al …’ ‘I hate when they cal it “juggling”,’ Mel said quietly. ‘Juggling can’t be that hard but this … this is like …’

she searched blindly for the right words, ‘this is juggling with hand grenades.’ ‘Is it that bad?’

Mel closed her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s a bloody nightmare, like a hamster wheel in a horror movie, and I can’t get off.’

Cleo was cleaning her favourite bedroom in the Wil ow, the Pirate Queen Suite. Named after the enigmatic Grace O’Mal ey, the beautiful, fiery pirate who sailed the seas around Ireland in the seventeenth century, the suite had a mahogany four-poster bed draped in once-opulent Prussian-blue velvets, an open fire with a tendency to smoke and a claw-footed bath that sat in state in the centre of the wooden floor in the adjoining bathroom. Brides adored the Pirate Queen Suite, perhaps imagining themselves, as Cleo did, succumbing to their bridegroom in the four-poster like a seventeenth-century heroine romping with a handsome pirate captain amid crisp, white linens. Cleo had often thought that if she got married - and it was a big if, because, let’s face it, she wasn’t settling for any man, and would prefer to live her life alone rather than compromise - then she’d spend her wedding night in Grace O’Mal ey’s room. The only negative point about the room was that it was tough to chambermaid. The intricate carvings of the four-poster were fiddly to dust, and while Cleo could clean every room in the Wil ow in her sleep, the Pirate Queen Suite took the longest. It had to be perfect.

Cleo was keen on perfection.

Since Cleo could walk, she’d toddled round after her mum, helping out until they could now whiz round each vacant room, dusting, polishing, tidying, vacuuming and changing sheets at high speed.

It was hard work, though, and since the advent of Trevor, supercleaner extraordinaire, who’d come to work in the hotel when Cleo was in col ege, Sheila wasn’t supposed to do it any more. Except that Trevor, and his crack team of cleaners - his two sisters and a first cousin - had suddenly al been struck down with a mysterious flu that kept them confined to bed. On race week in nearby Fairyhouse too, Cleo noticed. And it was the second time in a month this had happened.

Trevor needed a few sharp words in his ear, but nobody appeared keen to do it. ‘He’s good real y,’ her mother had said that Friday morning when the phone cal came to say Trevor was stil weak but he was final y beating the flu.

Cleo, Sheila, and Doug, the breakfast shift chef, had been having an early morning cup of tea.

‘I’d give him weak,’ growled Cleo. ‘Has he produced a sick note for al the times he’s been off, or have any of the rest of them, for that matter?’

‘No,’ protested Sheila, ‘but we don’t real y operate the sick note system here, love. I know you’ve been learning about al that, but running the Wil ow is not like running a big hotel.

You’ve got to be careful of people’s feelings, Cleo. If your father or I imply that Trevor isn’t real y il , he might leave us.’

‘And by taking two weeks off this month for a mythical flu, he’s being careful of your feelings, is he, Mum?’ Cleo was fired up with anger against Trevor, who was an admittedly nice man but so fond of the horses he deserved a steeplechase named in his honour. ‘So what if he leaves?

We’re doing it ourselves anyway.’ ‘He’s cheap,’ her mother argued, getting to her feet.

‘He’s not cheap if we have to clean al the bedrooms ourselves and pay him sick money, without the proof of a sick note. If he’s in bed sick and not heading off to the race course, then I’m Naomi Campbel !’

‘You’re getting way tough, lassie,’ said Doug approvingly when Sheila had left the table. ‘So they did teach you something in that course, after al .’

‘Not so’s anyone round here thinks,’ Cleo sighed.

The local paper lay on the table and she pul ed it towards her for something to take her mind off Trevor while she finished her tea. It was the usual local news: developers were looking for planning permission for a huge housing estate on the Kilkenny side of Carrickwel , and the girls at the Mercy Convent had raised 2000 for the local hospice by having a Valentine’s Day production of As You Like It in the school hal . The bit that caught her eye was a large advert for Cloud’s Hil Spa. An American woman had been renovating the old Delaney mansion for the past year, Cleo knew, turning it into a state-of-the-art health farm-cum-spa.

The Carrickwel spy network hadn’t been able to throw up anything about the mysterious woman, although they’d done their best. And now it appeared that the spa was open.

‘Cloud’s Hil Spa: Life Refreshment.’

It sounded a bit corny, but the photo looked good.

Expensive, elegant, and yet more competition for the Wil ow. Cleo had been planning to check it out, and now that it was open the time was right.

When breakfast was over, Cleo and Sheila headed off to do the bedrooms, Cleo stil irritated with the missing Trevor.

If she was running the Wil ow, she’d put an end to that sort of carry-on. She’d bet her bottom dol ar that the woman who ran Cloud’s Hil didn’t have to scrub out her own sauna and launder the fluffy bathrobes. Cleo didn’t let her mother clean the baths any more: al that bending down wasn’t good for Sheila’s arthritis, so when they worked together Cleo insisted on doing the bathrooms. This morning, in the Pirate Queen Suite, Cleo could feel a film of sweat beading her forehead as she worked. Anger made her faster than usual. Scrub, scrub, scrub. She dug into the big old bath with her cloth as if intent on removing every last germ by force. Ten minutes later, she went back into the bedroom to find her mother sitting on the four-poster bed, looking exhausted. ‘Mum.’ Cleo sank to her knees in front of Sheila.

‘What’s wrong? Are you OK?’

‘Fine, fine.’ Sheila waved Cleo’s worry away. ‘Just needed to catch my breath. Your father was having one of his snoring nights last night. No matter how much I nudged him, he wouldn’t shut up, so I didn’t get a wink.’

‘Go downstairs now and have a rest,’ Cleo ordered, relieved it was nothing more. Her father’s snoring could waken the dead. ‘I don’t need a rest,’ Sheila insisted.

‘Who’l do the other rooms with you?’

‘I don’t need any help,’ Cleo said firmly. ‘Go on, rest. Shoo.’

‘You’re the best feather in my wing, Cleo,’ Sheila Malin said fondly.

‘Mum, don’t be daft,’ said Cleo, embarrassed but touched at the same time. ‘You’re an old softy.’

‘I thought you were al set to turn into Ms Whiplash downstairs over Trevor phoning in sick,’ her mother teased.

‘To outsiders, I’m Ms Whiplash,’ grinned Cleo. ‘You lot al know I’m a pushover. I’ve been trained to sound managerial in col ege because that’s how you get results from staff.

And if you and Dad let me have a few words with Trevor, Mum, wel … his work would improve,’ she added earnestly. ‘We’ve got to think of the Wil ow, and of you. Why employ a dog and bark yourself? Trevor has to knuckle down to work or he’s fired. Don’t you agree?’ Her mother forced a smile. ‘I agree, love,’ she said. ‘You’re right, I am exhausted. I’l just lie down on my bed for a while.’ When her mother was gone, Cleo cleaned with renewed vigour.

Working out exactly what she’d say to the recalcitrant Trevor when she set eyes on him kept her going.

‘You won’t believe it, I was just going to text you. We must be psychic!’ said Trish in delight when Cleo phoned her that afternoon.

‘Psycho, perhaps,’ Cleo agreed. ‘I’m not so sure about psychic’

‘Wel , I am,’ Trish argued. ‘I am ful of wonderful vibes and mystic energy today, and I was going to text to ask you to come up to the city tomorrow because we’re having a party in the house. With a DJ and everything.’ Trish thought this was the last word in cool. The fact that the DJ was a friend of a friend of a friend was a minor point. He was bound to have more party CDs than her housemates had. Nobody would let her play her Beyonce or Christina Aguilera stuff; she, in turn, refused to listen to any rap, and the only common ground was Barry’s moody muso CD col ection.

No matter how much you loved REM, Trish pointed out, you couldn’t dance to them. ‘I can’t, sorry.’ Cleo would have loved a party on Saturday night but a busload of people from Finland were arriving that evening, and they were having dinner in the restaurant on both Friday and Saturday nights. It would be al hands on deck. ‘We’re booked up for the weekend and Mum’s a bit wrecked. I can’t go.’

‘At least the place is ful .’

‘Yeah.’ Cleo sounded dubious.

‘Don’t be old Moany Minnie,’ Trish said in exasperation.

‘You’ve been giving out stink about how the hotel is only ever half ful and now when you’re stuffed to the rafters, you’re stil moaning.’

‘Thanks for that helpful advice, O person of wonderful vibes and mystic energy,’ Cleo retorted sarcastical y. ‘Sorry.’

‘Accepted. What I meant was that being ful this weekend isn’t as good as it sounds.’

‘Why?’

‘This booking is a year old and it wil be the first time we’l have been ful in roughly …’ Cleo did the calculations in her head, ‘eight months.’

‘Point taken. A party would cheer you up,’ Trish decided, irrepressible as ever. ‘You might meet Mr Would-Do-For-A-While at it. While you’re waiting for Mr Utterly Perfect, that is.’ ‘Nah, Mr Utterly Perfect doesn’t exist, but thanks al the same,’ Cleo said. ‘The reason I was phoning was to ask you to come here tomorrow so we could check out the spa that’s opened up at the old Delaney place. There was a piece in the paper about it and I’m dying to actual y visit it because I could get some great ideas for the health centre we could develop here, but I don’t want to ask anyone from home or else they’l say I’ve got more pie-in-the-sky ideas.’

‘I can’t come back to Carrickwel now,’ Trish said apologetical y, ‘not with the party. What about Eileen?’

Eileen was the third part of their schoolyard gang and worked in the local hospital as a nurse.

‘Think this is one of her weekend shifts. I’l just have to go on my own.’

‘And have treatments and stuff?’

‘A ful body massage by this holistic massage expert brought over from Australia, and he looks total y beautiful.

Scuba diver, surfer, six-pack stomach, or is it an eight-pack

… ?’ Trish fel for it. ‘You cow … don’t go this weekend, please. Wait until I can come.’

‘Gotcha!!’

‘Bitch.’

‘Gobshite. How would I know what the staff are like, you idiot?’

‘Wel , if there turns out to be a gorgeous Aussie hunk there, phone me and I’l be down pronto,’ Trish said. ‘Knowing my luck, the talent at the party wil belong to the OK-if-you’re-real y-desperate category.’

‘I thought they were the only sort of guys you ever asked to your parties,’ Cleo said innocently.

‘You wait and see,’ Trish promised. ‘When I find a genuine Aussie scuba-diving surfer type with a ripped bod, then you’l be sorry.’

‘I won’t. I’l be asking for his brother’s phone number,’ Cleo said. ‘Be hopeful: that’s my motto.’

With limited funds at her disposal, Cleo had thought she might book something not too expensive, like a manicure, at Cloud’s Hil Spa. But then she had hit on the better idea of just popping in that afternoon to pick up a brochure and look round. She borrowed her mother’s creaky old Austin, a car that had been in the family for fifteen years and stil smel ed vaguely of the sheepdogs the previous owner had bred. Spluttering along the countryside, the Austin final y creaked to a halt outside Cloud’s Hil Spa. Cleo felt instantly dismayed. The photo in the local paper hadn’t done it justice.

Without a ton of money, the Wil ow would never be able to compete with this. The house was elegant, beautiful y restored and reeked of restrained luxury. The lovely gardens, studded with spring bulbs, were perfect. Even the big stone urns at the massive front door were just right, spil ing over with stephanotis, the stone weathered enough to be old, but not so weathered as to look as if it might crack at the first sign of frost.