Always and Forever

Adrian laughed. ‘Come on, love, it’s not that important, really. 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 doubtfully.

‘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’ll 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 all you do. I think you’re great. The way you manage work and the kids, juggling it all…’

‘I hate when they call 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.’

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_262a5f5b-9963-5db4-9165-8a9505d26339)

Cleo was cleaning her favourite bedroom in the Willow, the Pirate Queen Suite. Named after the enigmatic Grace O’Malley, 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’Malley’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 Willow 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 college, 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 all been struck down with a mysterious flu that kept them confined to bed. On raceweek 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 really,’ her mother had said that Friday morning when the phone call came to say Trevor was still weak but he was finally 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 all the times he’s been off, or have any of the rest of them, for that matter?’

‘No,’ protested Sheila, ‘but we don’t really operate the sick note system here, love. I know you’ve been learning about all that, but running the Willow 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 really ill, 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 all 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 Campbell!’

‘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 all.’

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

The local paper lay on the table and she pulled 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 Carrickwell, 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 hall. The bit that caught her eye was a large advert for Cloud’s Hill 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 Carrickwell 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 Hill Spa: Life Refreshment.’

It sounded a bit corny, but the photo looked good. Expensive, elegant, and yet more competition for the Willow. 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 still irritated with the missing Trevor. If she was running the Willow, she’d put an end to that sort of carry-on. She’d bet her bottom dollar that the woman who ran Cloud’s Hill 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: all 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’ll 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 all 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 all know I’m a pushover. I’ve been trained to sound managerial in college because that’s how you get results from staff. And if you and Dad let me have a few words with Trevor, Mum, well…his work would improve,’ she added earnestly. ‘We’ve got to think of the Willow, 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’ll 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.’

‘Well, I am,’ Trish argued. ‘I am full 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 Beyoncé or Christina Aguilera stuff; she, in turn, refused to listen to any rap, and the only common ground was Barry’s moody muso CD collection. 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 all 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 full.’

‘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 full and now when you’re stuffed to the rafters, you’re still moaning.’