‘I’ve been speaking with Davina about you.’ Henry Halliday turned from his state of the art coffee machine and put what looked like a perfect latte on the counter in front of me. ‘Decaf latte, no sugar, correct?’
Blimey! A man who paid attention and remembered how somebody he’d only met properly once liked her coffee. Still, I supposed attention to detail was important in his line of work.
When he’d called as I was heading back to the office with the day’s keys, he’d asked me to come round to the cottage that evening for a chat. As if there was any chance I was going to say no to him. I was almost at the fork in the road, where I could turn right for Wintertown to carry on to the office and take the keys back, or left, to go straight to Netley Parva. Without a second’s hesitation I’d turned left. His tone had given nothing away and I didn’t know whether I should expect to find a policeman waiting for me or not. It appeared not, unless he was lurking in the front room.
‘Yes,’ I gulped. ‘Thank you.’ I wanted to ask him if I should be worried, but didn’t want to sound flippant, so I went to take a sip of my coffee and scalded my lip instead.
‘Shall we?’ He ushered me through to the front room, too much of a gentleman, of course, to comment on my sloppy drinking habits. ‘Please sit down.’
‘Should I be worried?’ I heard myself ask as I perched on the oh, so comfortable sofa where I’d cuddled Talisker the day my husband deserted me, mentally cursing myself the moment the words left my disobedient mouth.
‘Not at all. Davina speaks, as she did when she first sent you to take care of Talisker for me, very highly of you. She says you’re an excellent people person as well as being very good with animals. And that you have more common sense than anyone else she’s ever employed.’
‘Oh?’ That was praise indeed, coming from Davina. I wondered where this was going.
‘Tell me, Beth, do you know what a secret shopper is?’
‘A secret shopper?’ I hadn’t expected that. ‘Well … it’s someone who goes into shops and pretends to be a customer while they secretly spy on the staff and make sure they’re being polite enough to the customers and … er … not helping themselves from the till? That sort of thing?’ I trailed off.
‘Loosely that sort of thing.’ He emphasised the loosely and I felt as if I were being laughed at, but not in an unkind way. Henry Halliday coughed gently. ‘You know I run a vacation club?’
‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘Davina always gives us an outline of anything that might be relevant to our clients’ packages – especially with regular customers like yourself. I always thought it must be lovely to have your own upmarket timeshare, except with lots of places to choose from instead of just the one.’ The inane words finally stopped tumbling out of my mouth. I noticed him wince ever so slightly when I said timeshare, but the words queuing up inside my head just wouldn’t stop until they were out.
‘There’s a little bit more to it than that, Beth,’ he said politely, as I cringed for equating his posh holiday company to some dodgy timeshare. I really was my own worst enemy – I’d squatted in this man’s house and now I was insulting his business. All I needed to do was kick his cat and the brown stuff really would be all over the fan.
To hide my embarrassment I took a gulp of my coffee while, as if my thoughts had summoned him, the cat flap in the back door gave a little rattle and a flump. Then the sound of biscuits being crunched came from the utility room.
‘Anyway,’ Henry Halliday carried on. ‘Regarding your current and rather unusual predicament, I have a proposition for you – a job which I think would be perfect for you and for which I believe, given your skill set, imagination and resourcefulness, you would be perfect.’
I nearly dropped my drink. I’d gone from half expecting to be carted off to the cop shop to being offered a perfect position. Of course, his idea of what would be perfect for me might be very different from mine. But I didn’t think it very likely that he had a secret chain of lap dancing clubs where the dancers needed imagination, resourcefulness and a way with animals, and was planning to put me to work in one of them as a penance for taking advantage of his home in his absence. Trying not to gush and sound too girly and unprofessional for whatever he had in mind I gushed, ‘I’m all ears.’
‘Tell me, Beth.’ He crossed his legs and picked what seemed to be an invisible cat hair off his trouser leg – and they were very nice trousers. ‘What do you look for when you stay in a hotel? What would be the three most important things to you that could either make or break your holiday experience?’
‘Er …’ I suspected generous measures in the bar wasn’t the reply he was looking for. ‘Fluffy, white towels and having them changed every day? Or,’ I added quickly, as the thought popped into my head, ‘the option not to, if I want to be eco-friendly.’
‘I see. What else?’
‘Friendly staff?’ I ventured. ‘Especially at the reception desk – it’s horrible having snooty receptionists looking down their noses at you because you’re not booked into a suite or your luggage isn’t fancy enough.’
‘Hm. Anything else?’
‘Flexible check out times without being charged a fortune for it. After all, if your flight home isn’t until the evening and you want to enjoy your last day by the pool or on the beach, you’re going to want a shower before you head to the airport, aren’t you? But some hotels charge a whole extra night for it.’ I ground to a halt, hoping I hadn’t just criticised something that he might indeed do in his own company.
‘Interesting choice,’ he nodded gently. ‘Why the towels?’
‘Well …’ Oh God, I thought, why had I said about the towels? Think, Beth, think. ‘Well, when you’re on holiday you want to feel a bit pampered, and fluffy white towels feel luxurious. And,’ I carried on, warming to my theme, ‘if the towels are spotlessly clean and fresh it gives the impression that the cleaning staff are doing a good job. But if you’re the sort of person who feels guilty about having fresh towels every day, you should have that option too.’
‘Very good,’ Henry Halliday nodded again and I found myself ridiculously pleased that he liked my answer. ‘Now I take it you’ve had experience of snooty receptionists?’
‘On our honeymoon,’ I gave an involuntary grimace. ‘We got married in Greece because Alex has a bigger family than me, and we went round some of the islands for a couple of weeks. Mostly it was fab. We stayed in a windmill on Mykonos, a cave on Santorini, and some of the places upgraded us because we were on our honeymoon – they were really lovely. But by the time we got to the fancy hotel we were staying in on Crete, for the last couple of nights, we’d run out of clean clothes and we must have looked a bit travel worn. The receptionist looked down her nose at us as if we weren’t good enough to stay there. It put a bit of a downer on the last days.’
‘I’m sure it did.’ Henry Halliday sounded indignant on our behalf. ‘And if I caught any member of my staff making a guest feel like that, they’d be out the door like that,’ he clicked his fingers.
‘That was the place that wanted to charge us a whole extra night for keeping our room on until the early evening.’ I remembered with embarrassment the loud argument, accompanied by Mediterranean gesticulating, Alex had had with the receptionist about that, thankfully in Greek, so I’d only understood the odd word. Although some of the hand gestures had been all too clear in their meaning.
‘Hm, that’s a tricky one. It’s often left up to the discretion of whoever’s on duty, if, of course, the next guest booked into the room isn’t checking in straight away.’ Henry smiled as Talisker padded into the room and leaped up onto his lap, turning a couple of circles before kneading at his master’s thighs, flopping down into a comfortable position, and turning his head towards me, slowly closing and opening his eyes. There’d be more than one cat hair on those trousers now. ‘To my mind, if the room is available for those extra hours, it should be complimentary.’
‘That’s what we said,’ I agreed.
‘So, if you were the hotel equivalent of a secret shopper, it sounds like you’d have no problem reporting on the checking in and checking out processes and keeping an eye on the cleanliness of the rooms. What about F & B, that’s food and beverages? Restaurant service and room service.’
‘Right.’
So instead of being in the trouble I’d expected to be in, I was being interviewed for a job as a secret hotel guest. This was surreal. I was suddenly going from being a guiltily secret, uninvited guest, hoping to not be found out, to a top secret, mystery guest who … well, for very different reasons was also hoping not to be found out. It sounded like a dream job, and it had fallen into my lap!
I wondered if he had any hotels in Dubai. That high balcony I’d thought about shoving Alex off could be within my grasp.