Love Me Or Leave Me. Claudia Carroll

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СКАЧАТЬ pitched to unveil a divorce hotel in London, so he began to look a little further afield. And thought, why not open one in a thriving, cosmopolitan city like Dublin? Which, thank you Ryanair, is easy to access, no matter what corner of Europe you happen to be in. A country famous for its hospitality and charm. And more importantly, as Rob told me at my initial interview, with a calculating glint in his eye, where he could negotiate a lease on a building for approximately a third of what he’d probably end up paying in central London.

      I read that you can always remember exactly where and when you were whenever a life-changing phone call comes. But in my case I happened to be in Asda, buying loo rolls and a tin of Whiskas for a stray tabby cat that comes in to visit me whenever the mood takes her.

      My mobile rang suddenly. Ferndale Hotels. I remember getting instant heart palpitation, shortness of breath, the works.

      ‘Miss Townsend? Chloe Townsend?’ came a crisp, efficient voice down the phone.

      ‘Emm … speaking,’ I stammered nervously as an irritating automated machine wailed ‘Unidentified item in the baggage area.’

      ‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘Rob McFayden would like to offer you a contract as General Manager and we very much look forward to welcoming you to the Ferndale Hotel team.’

      I think they must have heard my whoops of joy all the way to the back of the deli counter. Finally, finally, finally my life was turning around. And given what I’d been through, could there ever have been a job more tailor-made to suit me? Rob McFayden, I knew, was taking a huge chance on giving me the GM’s job and over my dead body was I about to let anyone down. To make a hotel like this work anywhere on the planet would be a dream come true, but to make it work in Dublin, on my home turf meant so much more.

      But, as was painstakingly outlined to me during my initial orientation training, there were many hard and fast rules to be observed. Rule one, though, was particularly hard for me to get my head round, seeing as how it was in flagrant contradiction of every other hotel on the face of the planet, where as long as a guest a) had cash enough to pay their bill and b) didn’t look like they were physically going to trash the room and nick all the light fittings, then, as far as management were concerned, everyone was welcome.

      But not at a divorce hotel, it seemed. Here, it was like the Alice in Wonderland of standard practice, where received wisdom was turned upside down. Strict protocol here was that only a couple who were on ‘cordial terms’ could be allowed to come and stay in the first place. And how could you possibly hope to do that, if you’d two exes still at the stage of wanting to hurl furniture across the room at each other?

      Another hard and fast rule was that all couples had to be interviewed, either separately or together, just so that, as General Manager, I could be certain that this was the right place, at the right time for them. After all, no divorce hotel was to be confused with a marriage guidance counsellor’s office. This procedure was all about neat and final closure, not accusations and recriminations and rows and bitterness and who got the lawnmower/flat screen telly/leather sofa from IKEA.

      Rule three was discretion. Utter and total discretion from all staff, at all times, about what went on within the four walls. And of all people, I understood all too well the acute need for fat gobs to be swiftly silenced, when you were going through something so private and acutely painful. Are you kidding me? I could probably teach a course in it by now.

      On the plus side though, here was what newly separated couples got for their buck at your standard divorce hotel. No matter where you happened to live in the world and no matter what jurisdiction bound you legally, there’s one ‘truth universally acknowledged’ that you can absolutely put your house on.

      For anyone who finds themselves in the position of looking for a divorce, you’ve basically got two options. Either you go to court, have a lengthy, protracted – and doubtless expensive – case, where every single detail of your personal family life would be aired in a public courtroom. With absolutely no dirty linen left unexamined.

      Humiliating, mortifying, prohibitively expensive and the end of it all, what would the net result most likely be? By and large, you’d get one third of the couple’s joint assets, he’d have a third and the lawyers ultimately would make off with the final third.

      And now suddenly here’s a viable alternative. Given that this is undoubtedly a process both parties will want to get over and done with as quickly as possible, why not check into discreetly luxurious surroundings and get the whole thing sorted out in a single weekend? And with cocktails on the side? After all, there’s nothing to be gained from dragging out the whole process. This way, instead of lawyers carrying off a vast chunk of the couple’s joint assets, everything would be split fifty-fifty, fairly and equitably down the middle.

      Best of all, no matter what stage a couple happened to be at in their separation, they could still check into a divorce hotel and at least get the final settlement set in stone. Then all the couple need do would be to bide their time and live their separate lives apart, until such time as they could appear before a judge, hand over their agreement, a gavel was walloped and they were formally granted a decree nisi. Easy as that.

      A divorce hotel strove to make something complicated, simple.

      Best of all, the premises that Ferndale Hotels had leased for their hotel in Dublin might as well have been purpose built for the job. Elegant and utterly discreet, it was one of those four-storey Georgian redbricks on Hope Street, just off leafy Fitzwilliam Square, surrounded by accountants’ and lawyers’ offices. The hotel’s name wasn’t even written on a canopy over the door, instead there was just a neat brass plaque saying, ‘Ferndale Hotels, Hope Street.’ Subtle and inconspicuous, its message clear. No one need ever know you’re a guest, not unless you want them to.

      ‘The Hope Street Hotel,’ as it quickly came to be known.

      *

      So I’m officially based back in Dublin now and oh thank you God, it feels so good to be home! Even if I’ve been so run off my feet that I’ve barely had the chance to spend any quality time with my best mate Gemma or any of the old gang. Somehow just being here, doing a job that’s challenging and yet that I really feel can and will take off, is firing me up and propelling me through each busy day until we formally open for business.

      Plus of course, being this overloaded with work means I’ve absolutely zero time to think about the one and only blight on the horizon. The all-too-real possibility that I might just be standing in the vegetable aisle in Marks & Spencer’s with greasy hair and no make-up, turn a corner and then walk slap bang into the whole reason why I hightailed it over to London for as long as I did.

      Frank. Or as Gemma refers to him, He Whose Name Shall Forever Remain Unspoken. Now, my spies tell me, promoted to Assistant General Manager at my old stomping ground, the Merrion Hotel, barely a stone’s throw from Hope Street. I imagine bumping into him with such punishing frequency it would scare you. But I stop myself from going any further. After all, this business venture is about helping others through their broken relationships. And not dwelling on my own troubles. At least not now. Not yet.

      But he’ll be watching my progress here, I know he will, as will half the industry. So this is it then; my one and only chance not to be the girl who bolted from a perfectly good job because of what I went through. This is my shot at proving not just to Frank, but to all our old colleagues and not least to myself, that I can make this work. That I can make a success of this; that I can make it fly.

      ‘I think it’s amazing what you’re trying to achieve here,’ Gemma says to me over a hasty lunch break I manage to snatch. ‘But I just have one question for you.’

СКАЧАТЬ