The Honeymoon Hotel by Hester Browne
I grabbed the doorknob and opened the door, steeling my face to wake Sancha up without her screaming. Not before I could get a pillow over her face, anyway.
I slid my way around the door so the Hunters couldn’t crane their necks and see what was going on, but then froze on the other side.
I wasn’t prepared for the sight before me on the bed.
Sprawled facedown over the satin coverlet was the long, half-naked body of a man in boxer shorts, his blond hair tangled and his arms splayed as if trying to hug the whole mattress. He was so still that if he hadn’t been snoring very gently, I’d have considered drawing a white chalk line around him and calling the police.
I leaned against the closed door, still holding the handle behind my back, and wrinkled my nose as I tried to take in all the details as fast as possible while blocking anyone behind me from seeing what was inside. Going by the smell of stale alcohol, whoever he was, he’d made a night of it. Empty miniature bottles from the minibar were scattered across the floor, underneath discarded items of clothing and all four towels from the bathroom, trailing in tangled heaps. His blue shirt was hanging over the dressing table’s huge circular mirror, and a pair of dark jeans was bunched by the television, as if he’d just dropped trou then and there.
My eyes stopped on his bare back, rising and falling with each rasping snore. It was tanned the rich gold of a sandy beach somewhere hot, with a small compass on the right shoulder blade and a dark blue star right at the bottom of his spine, just above the baggy boxer shorts, which were the regulation public-schoolboy XXXXL size, despite the lightly muscled legs beneath. His back was finely muscled too, and …
I pulled myself up with a jolt. Enough of the boxer-short ogling. I had about ten seconds to work out what was going on and how I could handle it so the Hunters didn’t get a very wrong impression about the hotel. And then I needed to find out which of the chambermaids had left the bridal suite unlocked.
Guest wandered in from another room after midnight sleepwalk/drunken search for the bathroom? I had no idea how he could have got in, but it was possible – chambermaids found guests in the most unlikely places. At least this one still had his pants on.
Random dinner guest wandered up after coffee in the restaurant and passed out? Also happened. Often after large corporate parties. Note: check bathroom for ‘dining companion’.
Random bloke wandered in from street? Not unknown to happen, but much rarer, thanks to the eagle eyes of Frank the doorman. And they didn’t have boxer shorts with … little yellow ducks on them.
I averted my eyes, which had slid back to the intruder’s long tanned legs, and thought fast. Most likely to be a dinner guest. In which case Tam from security could stick him under one arm and sweep him out via the other set of doors so the Hunters wouldn’t even see, and in the meantime, I’d just have to show them a different suite.
Just as I was about to quietly close the door on the man and text Tam to come and deal with the situation, the intruder groaned, muttered to himself, and reached out his left arm in search of something. The hand patted the bed, up and down, up and down, as if every movement was painful.
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 th
‘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.
CHAPTER FIVE
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.
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.