“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.