Always and Forever. Cathy Kelly

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       CHAPTER FIVE

      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, СКАЧАТЬ