“Tiffany Moore,” Izzy announces, flicking back to check the guest’s original booking. “And here’s her landline number.”
“Izzy, this is a waste of your time.”
“OK, well, as you say: my time, so . . .” She motions at me to be quiet as the phone rings.
For one childish second, I am inclined to reach over and hang up the phone. I have no reason for this other than the satisfaction of knowing that she will find it deeply irritating. I don’t understand how she does this to me, but something about Izzy Jenkins makes me want to behave very badly.
I don’t even move—don’t even twitch—but Izzy reaches a hand out and clamps it over mine on the desk. There is another twinge in my stomach, a sensation like cool seawater hitting sun-baked skin.
“Don’t even think about it, Mr. da Silva,” she whispers, and then slides her hand from mine. “Oh, hello! Is Tiffany there, please?” she says into the phone, all sugar and sweetness again. As though I can’t still feel the imprint of her nails tingling on the back of my hand.
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
I leave her to this ridiculous task and manage at least two hours of jobs before the next crisis hits. You can tell we are at one-sixth of our usual capacity. Generally, at Forest Manor, the crises come at least every fifteen minutes.
I am in Bluebell, the room where Mrs. Muller is currently staying. Behind me, Dinah—our head of housekeeping—enters the room carrying a Hoover in one hand and a large bag of cleaning products in the other.
“There is nothing that will get that off. Nothing,” Dinah says immediately, dropping the Hoover with a thump. “White spirit, maybe, but how will you avoid taking off the paint underneath?”
The wall is splattered in oil paint—red, green, and blue. The apparatus of Mrs. Muller’s latest form of artistic expression is still lying on a token dustsheet beneath her easel. It looks like a cross between a catapult and a leaf-blower.
“I apologise—when the muses strike, they strike, you see. I’ll be needing another room, of course,” Mrs. Muller says. “I can’t very well work in all this mess.”
Dinah begins vacuuming behind us. Leave Dinah anywhere for any amount of time and she’ll start aggressively vacuum-cleaning something. This helpfully masks the sound of me growling under my breath.
“Mrs. Muller,” I say, “you know we only have five rooms at present.”
She stares up at me from the armchair in the corner. I notice a splodge of blue paint on its fabric and am once again grateful for the sound of Dinah’s Hoover. Mrs. Muller is a regular at the hotel—she is an important guest. She is also a demanding one, but I understand that. I suspect I would be a demanding guest, too.
“I will see what I can do, Mrs. Muller. Leave it with me.”
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
“Well?” I ask Izzy when I return to the lobby.
“Well what?” she says, distracted as she sorts through a box of paperback books. “Could we take some of this to a car boot sale, maybe? Use your car? My boot is teeny.”
I stare at her in horror. “You want me to put all of this rubbish in my car?”
“It’s not rubbish! These paperbacks will make a pound each. Every little helps.”
“We need tens of thousands of pounds of investment, so one pound does not particularly help.”
She dims a little and says something about the quantity of items still to be sold. I watch her counting out books on the floor behind the desk and feel an unexpected twinge of guilt for making her shoulders sag that way. Our endless back-and-forth is built into the rhythm of my day here: I had expected a sharp retort. Perhaps she will take revenge later—she likes to do that sometimes. I will probably find something sticky “accidentally” spilled on my keyboard again this afternoon.
“So was it Tiffany Moore’s wedding ring?” I find myself asking.
Izzy looks up at me, surprised and then smug. “Look who’s already getting on board with the Ring Thing!”
Of course this mad plan now has a rhyming name.
“I’m not on board. I was just making conversation.”
“Gosh, I wasn’t aware you knew how to do that. Well, it wasn’t hers,” Izzy says, returning to the paperbacks. “She said her wedding ring is still firmly on her finger. I’ve tried a couple more people, but I’m hitting the rest of the list after this box. Unless you want to help, and give someone a call now?”
“I’m not getting involved in your childish plan,” I say as I return to my lost-property spreadsheet.