Hotel 21, page 2
The first time I ever took anything was for spiteful reasons, which I’m not proud of—although I was at the time. Alison Rogers was her name. We were ten years old and in primary school together.
She wasn’t someone I liked to be around, as I found her irritating. She had a squeaky voice and overpronounced every word as though trying to speak like an adult. She wore her wispy brown hair pinned back with hair clips either side of a center parting and she had a habit of spraying large dollops of saliva when she talked. The only game she ever wanted to play was beauty salon, where she was the owner and everyone else had to get their hair and nails done by her. I’d rather sit in the toilet on my own for the whole break than play with Alison Rogers.
On this hot summer’s day, our teacher, Miss Radcliffe, a softly spoken woman in her sixties, had opened every window in the classroom but still the air hung heavy and dry. Alison Rogers seemed oblivious to the heat that day and had been boasting all morning about her one-pound coin zipped up in the pocket of her light blue cotton skirt with a pleat in the front. She was going straight to the sweet shop after school to spend it on toffee bonbons.
She was annoying enough already that having to listen to her showing off made her unbearable and, by lunchtime, everyone was sick to the stomach of the constant unzipping of her pocket to parade her golden nugget of jealousy for all to see.
The other children did their best to act like they didn’t care, but I could see the envy behind their squinting eyes. As the day went on, we all began to ignore her, fed up with her nonstop bragging. And it was then that Alison Rogers made a classic schoolgirl error. She held the coin between her finger and thumb and shoved it out in front of her for all to admire as it glowed and twinkled in the hot sticky sunlight.
“So, I’ve got a pound coin to buy toffee bonbons and maybe some cola bottles,” she announced. “Has anyone else got a pound coin to spend on sweets after school?” She looked at everyone, her eyebrows raised way too high in a questioning look. Everyone shook their head.
“Oh, it’s just me then,” she said, and zipped the coin back up in her pocket, humming to herself.
At that moment, something snapped inside me. Alison Rogers had progressed in a split second from boasting to gloating and I needed to wipe the smug look off her face.
We had painting in the afternoon and I made sure I sat next to her. Alison loved to boss people around in her squeaky voice and I normally ignored her orders until she moved on to someone else, but just for today I was prepared to put up with it. As we painted away, side by side, I asked questions about what she was painting, which looked like nothing more than a mucky swirl of brown sludge. But she was proud of it, declaring it to be a magical wood where a unicorn lived. She leaned back, wiped her paint-covered hands on her plastic apron and blew a runaway strand of hair out of her eyes.
“Painting is so much fun,” she squawked. “But there’s no money in it. That’s what my dad says.” She seemed rather proud of this comment and it struck me at that moment that Alison Rogers was in general a little too proud of everything she did.
“How did you get that brown smudge?” I said, pointing at her painting. As she talked about how she flicked her wrist when applying the paint, my right hand carefully unzipped her skirt pocket.
I gently slid two fingers inside her pocket, clamped them gently around the pound coin and lifted it out smoothly and undetected. I carefully closed the zip and then knocked a paintbrush from the table. As I bent to pick it up, I slipped the pound coin into the side of my shoe—no one would think to look there.
Then I waited. And waited. And as we were all busy putting away our painting equipment, my efforts were finally rewarded.
It started as a slow moan and quickly escalated into an almighty high-pitched shriek.
“My pound coin is gone,” she wailed. Her cheeks were puffed out, red as sunburn and her eyes were watering, partly with tears, partly with the pressure from puffing out her cheeks. She pulled the lining of her pocket out so it looked like an ear attached to her hip—stiff and unmoving. “See?” she exclaimed. “It’s not there.”
Miss Radcliffe talked to her in a soothing tone. Maybe it had fallen out of her pocket. She instructed the class to look for it. A proper search, she called it, as she was sure it was in the classroom somewhere.
While Alison continued to sob uncontrollably, the rest of the children, including myself, looked all over the classroom for her missing pound coin. This annoyed me because I was hoping to minimize the amount of moving around I had to do with the coin pressing against the side of my foot. But as we searched under desks and inside crayon boxes, I hid a smile.
Alison Rogers would not be going to the shop after school to buy toffee bonbons anymore and now, finally, maybe Alison Rogers would shut up and stop showing off.
I looked around at the other children, expecting them to also be hiding satisfied smiles, but instead they were all very serious, pulling out books on the shelves and scratching their heads with worry over poor Alison and her lost one-pound coin.
It never turned up, of course. Alison yelled louder, accusing us all of stealing her money. Miss Radcliffe put her straight. It was far more likely that she had lost it while taking it in and out of her pocket all day long. Yes, serves you right, even Miss Radcliffe agreed. I eyed the other children again and definitely detected the smallest of smiles this time.
On the way home from school, I stopped in a derelict shop doorway, reached down to my shoe and retrieved the pound coin. I held it in the palm of my hand—all this trouble just for you, I thought.
I carried on toward home, the coin clenched in my fist, down a narrow, unmade road of small cottages with tiny front-gardens set back from the road. One of the ramshackle cottages was owned by an old man who always waved to me from his front window in the mornings on my way to school. I always waved back and it made me feel grown up. His garden was jam-packed with funny-looking gnomes and was by far the most interesting garden ever to a ten-year-old.
That day, one of the gnomes situated by the front wall of the garden particularly caught my eye. He had a big jolly smile and held a fishing net over a birdbath. His joyful expression reminded me of how I had felt when I heard Alison Rogers wailing for her pound coin.
I looked up and down the street and checked the front window for the old man. Satisfied nobody was around, I leaned over the wall and dropped the coin into the jolly gnome’s fishing net.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
My body was suddenly flooded with a feeling of lightness that made me want to skip and run, although I wasn’t in a hurry. The later I arrived home, the better.
I use the word “home” lightly.
Chapter 3
There’s always a hum around the service entrance to a hotel, no matter how big or small the establishment might be. In the larger ones it’s simply a lot noisier, but it’s always there, the eternally grumbling intestines deep within the bowels of the hotel churning away to sustain its existence.
The walk from the service entrance door in bigger hotels is often longer and more hostile and uninviting than in smaller hotels, and is normally through a concrete-clad tunnel with the throb of the generators seeping through the walls and pipes overhead. The Magnolia is no different.
My footsteps slap on the concrete floor, as a heavy, white fire door looms up ahead. I push through letting it bang shut after me and carry on along the corridor, which is a little wider and friendlier now, leaving the hum behind as I head toward the sounds of civilization.
The gentle drone of talking voices, sizzling pans and clashing pots fills my head as I approach the kitchen. I welcome the noises and the hustle and bustle of the internal workings of the hotel.
I peer in through the window in the door as I pass by. A collection of tall white hats bob around the immaculate kitchen as the chefs swivel and dip to open fridges and drawers, never stopping for a moment.
One of the chefs is rolling pastry and glances up at me, intense for a moment. He has a goatee beard and a swirling tattoo on his forearm. He gives me a quick wink and goes back to his work.
I carry on along the corridor. I wonder if I could have been a chef. I once read somewhere that a person can be anything they want to be if they have the will. There should be a warning attached to that statement in big capital letters: WITHIN REASON. It’s misleading otherwise. Still, sometimes I wonder if I could have been a lot of things.
When I was a small girl I wanted to be a doctor. I’d been to the hospital a number of times by the time I was eight and everyone always shook the doctor’s hand and said, “Thank you, Doctor” or “Thhhank you, Doctor,” like they wanted the doctor to know they really meant it. And when I asked why everyone was thanking the doctor, I was told that doctors save lives and I remember thinking that they actually saved them, like the way some children saved pennies in a piggy bank. I had an old jam jar once with a few coppers in it. It never amounted to much.
I remember the way through the hotel to the cleaners’ staff room from the information day. There were only three people there, including me. On the way out of the small conference room, one of the other women, tired-looking with sparkly painted fingernails, plodded along beside me. She didn’t think the hours suited her anymore. Her friend ran a dry cleaners and she said she might work there instead.
But I knew her real reason for not wanting to work at the Magnolia had nothing to do with the hours. During the presentation I saw her eyes droop when a slide popped up on screen with the words: Even when the hotel’s not busy, the cleaning staff are. The Magnolia paid by the hour, not by the room, which I prefer. Even if one of your rooms has a DO NOT DISTURB sign displayed, there are plenty of other things to be cleaning. This woman decided it sounded like too much hard work so good riddance to her. No hotel cleaning team tolerates a slacker.
They also gave us a hotel manual to bring home, which I read cover to cover and was pleased to see that although the Magnolia likes to think they do things differently, they really don’t.
I push through the door at the end of the second corridor into a wider corridor where silence immediately descends. Now I am in the hotel. Dark green velvet covers the walls and soft recessed lighting glimmers from the ceiling. Under my feet, a thick pink patterned carpet cushions the soles of my shoes putting a natural spring in my step. I take a sharp breath. The flutters in my tummy rise up, sending a wave of tingling warmth all over my body. It’s been nearly two weeks and the longing is becoming unbearable. If everything goes to plan, I might only have to wait a few more days.
The next door has a bar across it and an emergency exit sign. I push the lever down and shove it open, walking through into an airy stairwell, also carpeted with overhead recessed lighting. I check my phone to see the time. I’m twenty minutes early for my first shift, as planned.
I look up the stairwell to the floors above where the luxury bedrooms are located, where rich guests swish up and down the newly vacuumed corridors, their every need attended to. Soon I will be going in and out of their bedrooms with my skeleton key. A shiver of anticipation shoots up my spine.
I turn my head and peer down the stairwell into the floors below where the cleaners’ staff room is located. This is where the carpet stops and well-worn linoleum continues. I tidy myself up, smoothing my skirt and pushing stray strands of hair behind my ears. For every first day I have my hair cut into a neat bob. It’s become a tradition.
First impressions are crucial. You don’t get a second chance. I have to make sure everyone I work with in every hotel likes and respects me, and quickly. I don’t have time to repair a bad first impression or to work on slow-burner friendships with colleagues. They have to like me and trust me instantly in case there’s a complaint made against me sooner rather than later. Like in hotel 5, a five-star in Birmingham, when I was still finding my feet and finessing my technique. A guest had several worn-looking books shoved into a bag squished down the side of a cabinet, as though forgotten or ready for the charity shop. I took the book balanced on top, not even looking at the title, and placed it carefully under the clean white fluffy towels on my trolley. It was too big to go in my apron, but I planned to wrap it in my shirt later when I changed and sneak it out that way. I assumed the guest wouldn’t notice a book missing or even remember if they packed it or not. I don’t read books.
It transpired quickly that the guest was a university professor who was researching something to do with the inequality in corporate finance—at least that’s what the title of the book was when I checked it the next day.
The guest complained to the manager that the cleaner had taken her very special book. Thankfully, enough of my coworkers—and my supervisor—were on my side and quickly circled the wagons to ensure the manager gave me the benefit of the doubt. But one or two of the cleaners weren’t so sure, throwing me curious glances. They hadn’t warmed to me and accepted me as quickly as the others, and I hadn’t noticed. I realized I needed to be more on the ball.
“Noelle would never steal. She’s a good, hardworking girl,” harped the women.
“It’s too easy to blame the cleaner.”
And then . . . exactly the words I always hope for: “Who’d take something like that anyway?”
With my heaving shoulders and red eyes, which I’d rubbed hard beforehand to give the impression of prolonged weeping, and flanked by the cleaners with their arms crossed, the management agreed that the guest had made a mistake and I was cleared of all blame for the professor’s missing book.
I’d only been working there for two weeks and I left two weeks after that. My excuse this time: I’m moving to Oxford to help my aunt with my cousin who has Down syndrome.
Everyone was very sweet about my “family situation” and it was one of the biggest donations I’ve ever received. Even the chefs chipped in. I was actually quite overwhelmed and realized that it wasn’t so much the effort I had put in to making them like me, but the fact they were simply a kind bunch of people.
I gave the donation money to a charity for Down syndrome minus twenty quid, which is in and around what I normally get as a leaving present. I was genuinely a bit sad I got caught out so early, but it was a lesson learned.
Make sure everyone likes and trusts me from day one, whatever it takes.
And no more books.
I reach the bottom of the stairs and step onto the raw concrete floor. It’s immediately colder and a chill seeps into my bones as the damp smell of the basement parking garage shoots up my nose.
To the left, a heavy white door with a window in it leads to a brightly lit staff canteen with plastic tables and chairs scattered around. I glance through the window and see a couple of straggler cleaners finishing coffee and picking at plates of food. The end of the night shift. Not every hotel feeds their cleaners, but the five-stars do. To the right is another heavy white door leading into a tight corridor with rough brick walls on either side. I walk through to the end and enter a dingy room with gray lockers stacked on top of each other. A fluorescent strip light runs across the ceiling letting out a low humming noise, which I find strangely comforting.
This isn’t too bad for a cleaners’ staff room. It is, in fact, clean and there’s a notice board. I have a quick look—pictures of babies and thank-you notes from guests. I like that. It means the cleaners here take pride in their work, so they’ll be easier to disarm. When morale is low and people are unhappy about their working conditions and management, it can be harder to earn their trust and friendship quickly.
For now, I am alone in the staff room. I sit on the bench with my legs crossed and wait. I am fifteen minutes early. I hope someone will arrive soon to witness my promptness so my efforts don’t go unnoticed.
I need to decide which Noelle I’m going to be. Will I be scatterbrain Noelle, or sweet, smiley Noelle, or low self-esteem Noelle or one of my others? Suddenly I’m exhausted by the thought of pretending to be someone else again. Being on my guard all the time and going to great lengths to make people like me takes effort.
A huge sigh escapes my lips and I slump a little on the bench. Maybe I’ll be injured Noelle, which has been very useful in the past in emergency situations when things weren’t going the way I planned. Cleaners always feel sympathy for an injured colleague, especially when they soldier on regardless of their pain. It’s important no one needs to pick up their slack. But it does require a careful balance of hobbling and wincing and rubbing of the lower back. You don’t want to overdo it and look like you’re making a meal of it, which will annoy people, and you don’t want to underdo it either or they’ll forget you even had an injury in the first place. I could mix it up, I suppose. Start with injured Noelle who is also sweet Noelle.
My gut tightens. Why am I questioning this? I normally slip into whichever Noelle suits the mood. And I enjoy this part of a new job where I’m getting the other cleaners on my side as the anticipation builds to taking my first item. I let out a long steady breath to collect myself. I’m pleased to be in the Magnolia with its two hundred and fifty luxurious bedrooms just waiting to be cleaned. So why aren’t I more excited? I tell myself I’m exhausted, especially after the last hotel I worked in.
Hotel 20 was a disaster from the moment I tied one of their flimsy aprons around my waist. And it was my own fault. It all started when I spotted what I thought was a genius shortcut to gaining the supervisor’s trust quickly so I could start taking things sooner.
Fernsby Manor is a three-star hotel in the Worcester countryside where I stayed for four weeks, although it felt like four months.
I had interviewed with the manager and the supervisor a week before I started and had generally felt good about working there. Bernadette, the supervisor, was a tough-looking woman in her forties, with broad shoulders and short brown hair with bangs. She pinned the bangs off her face with a little hair grip that she fiddled with a lot as it kept unclipping. She had a wide, open face and smiled a lot during the interview showing a set of small teeth. I thought the smiling was a good sign, but I should have been more careful.
