Izzy does appear to have just saved my life, though, so I try to be polite.
“I am very grateful,” I say. “And I apologise that I did not throw myself over you first. I had assumed you would be able to look after yourself.”
This doesn’t go down well. She glowers at me. Izzy has a whole range of glowers and glares. She has big green eyes and very long eyelashes, and always draws little black flicks on the edges of her eyelids. When I think about Izzy, which is as rarely as possible, I see those eyes narrowed at me. Catlike and bright.
“I can look after myself,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “I know. That’s why I didn’t save you.”
“Hello?” someone calls from upstairs.
“Shit,” Izzy mutters, craning her neck to look up at the hole in the ceiling. “Mrs. Muller?”
For all her faults, Izzy has an exceptional memory for our guests. If you’ve stayed with us once, Izzy will know your son’s name, your breakfast order, and your star sign. Though even I remember Mrs. Muller: she stays here often, always upsetting the cleaning team by getting splodges of paint everywhere while she works on her art. She’s in her seventies, half-German, half-Jamaican, with an accent that I find frustratingly challenging, and a tendency to tip the hotel staff as though we’re in America, which I don’t mind at all.
“Call the fire brigade,” Izzy hisses at me before returning her attention to Mrs. Muller. “Mrs. Muller, please be very careful! There’s been a—slight—umm—”
“Accident,” I suggest.
“Issue,” Izzy says. “There’s been a slight issue with the floor! But we’re getting it sorted right away.”
We both try to peer through the hole. We need to do something before any of the other fifty guests currently staying at Forest Manor happen to step out of their bedrooms and risk falling down a storey or two.
“Mrs. Muller, please step back!” I say, then head down the steps to the lobby—it is just as dangerous for us as it is for her. “You should move, too,” I tell Izzy over my shoulder.
She ignores me. Well, I tried. I eye the damage to the staircase and get my phone out to dial 190, then remember it’s not that in the UK, it’s . . .
“Nine nine nine,” Izzy says.
“I know that,” I snap. I’m already calling.
A shower of plaster comes cascading down from the hole, dousing Izzy in dust. She splutters, her long brown and pink hair now covered in white powder.
“Whoa,” says an excited voice from behind me. I turn to see Ruby Hedgers, the six-year-old, in the doorway of Sweet Pea. “Is it snowing?”
“No,” I tell her, “it is just structural damage. Hello, yes, fire brigade, please . . .”
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
The hotel is swarming with firefighters. Izzy is being unprofessionally flirtatious with one of the particularly handsome ones. I am in a very bad mood.
It has been a stressful morning. Understandably, the guests are a little disturbed by all this. Several of them did not take well to being posted out of windows and down ladders. One of the firefighters told us that the damage to the ceiling and staircase has “no quick fix” and said “this is going to be a big job,” and in case that wasn’t clear enough, he rubbed his forefinger and thumb together, a gesture that means the same in Brazil as it does here: money, money, money.
This is the root of all our problems at Forest Manor Hotel and Spa. As I understand it, the hotel was thriving before the pandemic, but business suffered badly during the Covid lockdowns, which coincided with the entire roof needing replacing. Now we are limping along, unable to give the hotel the renovation it needs. When I started here two years ago, Forest Manor was already looking tired; it has lost even more of its luxuriousness, and that, in turn, means prices have had to drop, even in our award-winning restaurant.
But the heart of this place remains the same. I truly believe there is no hotel in England quite as special as this one. I knew it the moment I first stepped into the lobby and saw the guests reading newspapers on the sofas in their hotel slippers, looking out at the children playing on the lawns. It was the picture of comfort. We treasure our guests here—the moment I hand them their key, they become part of our family.
“Lucas, right?” says a voice behind me, a hand clapping down on my shoulder.
I steel myself, placing my precious third coffee of the day on the lobby table. Of course, we don’t always like every member of our family.