I frowned at his bent head. Well. The kitchenhadbeen warm when I first walked in. It was decidedly chilly now.
Henry had always called me Princess. Back when he first joined the staff, it had been a teasing sort of endearment but since I’d moved home again, there was an edge to it. I didn’t know what I’d done to provoke the change, other than the thought that I’d gone down in his estimation by returning home with my tail between my legs. He wasn’t alone if that was the case.
Twenty-six years old, single, and living with my mother with no fiscally robust career plan. Quite a different story to the twenty-two-year-old musical protégé intent on sharing her deep love for music by becoming a tutor, who ran off to London after a whirlwind romance to live with her new boyfriend. I’d taken for granted the people enabling my aspirations and Peter’s initial enthusiasm for supporting me had only cocooned me further. It was no wonder Henry called me Princess. I’d been royally spoiled.
‘Okay, Henry, don’t get your panties in a pickle,’ I said lightly. ‘I’ll get out of your hair. Y’know, what you have left of it.’ I threw the joke out in the hope I could resurrect our friendly banter.
‘Very funny.’ He blew out an impatient breath. ‘Go on then, some of us have work to do. And don’t forget to take whatever that is, making a mess in my kitchen.’ He waved the knife in the direction of the angel.
I scooped up my stuff and went through to the utility room. There were two industrial-sized washer-dryers; one was busy churning the pale green tablecloths from lunchtime but the other was empty. I stripped the angel of her puddle-soaked dress and threw it into the empty drum, along with a pile of sheets from the dirty linen sacks on the cleaner’s trolley and the T-shirt that man had given me. I supposed when it was clean, I should really post it back to him.
Outside of the utility room was the service lift and the narrow ‘servants’ staircase, hidden at the rear of the hotel. When I was a kid and I brought school friends over for the first time they usually reacted with “wows” and gaping mouths about how grand the hotel was. And it was grand. Twelve guest suites and beautiful gardens, all surrounding a house that looked like something out of a Jane Austen novel.
The reality of living here, however, was this: fifty-two steps up a narrow stairwell with no natural light, to get to the flat my mother and I lived in at the very top of the building. I was not Elizabeth Bennet in this scenario – I was one of the unnamed servants. At least now, in comparison to my teen years, I got paid for the work I did here. When I thought of it that way, perhaps I wasn’t such a princess after all.
I unlocked the door at the top of the stairs with the usual starbursts of exertion playing at the edges of my vision and went inside. Our flat was even warmer than the kitchen. The heating was kept pumping twenty-four/seven in winter and since we were in what used to be the attic, massive water tanks and boilers flanked the living space.
My parents bought the hotel when I was eleven and it took me over a year to manage to sleep properly with all the pipes groaning around me; I kept imagining it was the ghosts of former occupants trying to get us to leave. A child psychologist might’ve said the nightmares were more to do with my dad rapidly succumbing to cancer shortly after we moved in but either way crawling into bed with my mum was the only way I could get off to sleep for a long time.
Mum had done her best to make the flat feel as different to the rest of the hotel as possible. Whereas downstairs everything was decorated in a muted and classic way, keeping to neutral tones, varnished wood and delicate floral-patterned soft furnishings, the flat was bright and modern. There was one large squashy teal sofa, the bright colour picked out in the designer print wallpaper on one wall.
But facing the TV was a cracked, saggy leather armchair, which didn’t really go with either decor scheme. Mum had always grumbled about how ugly that chair was when Dad was alive, but she was never going to get rid of it now. I kissed my fingers and touched them to the headrest as I went past.
Somehow, even after being back for nearly two months, everything still looked smaller than how I remembered it. The jumble of paraphernalia from my youth – posters, stickers, photos, stuffed toys and knick-knacks – betrayed how hard I’d been trying to assert my individuality back then and yet I couldn’t really remember who that person was. She’d been very sure of herself, that much I knew.
There was a notably empty space on the wall beneath the hook opposite my bed where my guitar should have been. In my hurry to leave when Peter and I broke up, I’d left my guitar at the flat. I’d just grabbed my clothes and bolted for the train. Its absence gnawed at me every time I noticed it. My dad had given that guitar to me when I was barely big enough to hold it, and he’d taught me how to play on it; hours of laughter and talking and listening to him. He’d been so patient. Too patient really – I could see that from my tutoring perspective now. I learnt much quicker when I started getting lessons at school too, since they were stricter about practising regularly. He just wanted me to enjoy the music with him.
I’d used it to the point where the lacquer on its fretwork had worn away in places, and even if I’d already given up tutoring, I needed my guitar.
What if Peter had sold it? He was desperate for money. After that awful dinner, all the lies had come out. His business had been failing for over a year and he’d borrowed and borrowed trying to hide it from everyone. From me.
No. No matter how big the hole he’d dug for himself, he would never sell my guitar when he knew how much it meant to me. At least, I didn’t think he would. Clearly, I hadn’t known him as well as I thought I did.
I set the angel on my desk, while I got changed out of my soggy jeans and V-neck jumper into a pencil skirt, tights and a light blue pinstripe blouse. Next came hair. The combination of damp and heat was making my natural afro strain to escape my double-twisted ponytail. I was sitting on the bed braiding it, when my mother pushed open my bedroom door without knocking – some things never changed.
‘Sorry. I was on my way down to reception, I swear. I just needed to make myself presentable.’ I snapped the hairband into place at the end of my plait. ‘It was wetter out there than I thought.’ I gestured to my smart attire as though it was a ballgown.
She gave me a small nod of acknowledgement. I hadn’t been expecting her to be too impressed: this was a woman who decorated Christmas trees in four-inch heels, but maybe at least a smile? She was frowning at me like I’d found one of my inappropriate T-shirts from when I was a teenager and put that on…except she wasn’t really looking at me, her mind was definitely off somewhere else.
‘Mum, is everything okay?’
She sighed and straightened her already very straight, white blouse.
‘I’ve just spoken to your Auntie Cath. It’s Grandad. He’s had a fall—’
‘Oh no—’
‘They think he’s okay,’ she added quickly, holding one hand out to withhold my worry. ‘He’s at the hospital and they want to keep him in overnight, but he most likely can be discharged in the morning as long as one of us can go up and get him.’
‘What happened?’ I pressed my hand to my stomach.
‘He slipped on some black ice apparently. He was lucky. He’s just bruised, no broken bones or anything.’
I nodded slowly and moved out into the hall to give her a hug. For a moment, we hung on to each other, the sick feeling in my stomach subsiding and my mum’s shoulders gradually relaxing down from around her ears. ‘That’s something.’ I rubbed her back.
She gave a rueful smile and stepped back. ‘Put your shoes on, and we’ll talk as we walk down.’
I glanced down at my stocking-clad toes and then hurried back to my wardrobe to grab my black court shoes. ‘So, is Auntie Cath going to get him? He was going to be staying there for Christmas anyway, right?’
