Hotel 21, page 7
Phil’s not a bully, I decide. She’s nothing like my mother or Clarissa. She’s just smart.
A hard tap on my shoulder makes me jump. Mali’s face is only inches away from mine and she is frowning again.
“What’s the matter with you?” she whispers. “Are you a flake? Staring into space wondering when your prince will come?” She giggles, again like a clown, which is unsettling but I’m getting used to it.
“I was thinking there are so many rooms to get through, it would be better if I went solo.”
“That’s not going to happen unless I say so,” says Mali, narrowing her eyes. “The last girl who buddied up with me was fired at the end of the day. Julia will do what I say, so focus or you’ll be out of a job.”
She won’t get me fired, but I better play along to keep her sweet.
“Sorry, Mali, sorry.”
“Okay, okay,” she says, throwing her arms around in exasperation. “I like you, but you have problems.”
I do have problems, I think. One big one at the moment, called Phil.
Mali opens the next bedroom door with her skeleton key, just an inch, and calls inside. “Hello? Room cleaning?” She waits a moment and then pushes the door open. She grabs her sprays, cloths and vacuum cleaner again and I follow her inside.
There’s a cot in this room and a packet of nappies and baby wipes on the side. It smells sweet, like rooms with babies staying in them always do. Other than that it’s relatively neat.
“Ah, nice people, nice people,” says Mali. “You can help me make the bed and do everything with me this time so you learn.” I nod, feigning enthusiasm, as we pull the covers and pillows off the bed and readjust the sheet.
“Have you worked here long?” I say, putting on my best casual voice.
“Six years,” says Mali. “But I am moving up. I’m doing a night course in hotel management.”
“That’s amazing,” I say. And I really believe it is. I’ve never thought about doing any kind of course. If I did, what would it be in? I have a quick think. Nope, nothing springs to mind.
“Have you always worked in the same team with the same people?”
“No, no, no. Me, Gaby and Marguerite worked together for four years but Rose and Phil started later. Phil has only been here for one year. But we are a unit, like in the army. We cover each other’s asses. That’s why everyone wants to be on floor seven. Gaby doesn’t like Fatima, that’s why she didn’t get moved. She’s too loose with her lips,” Mali makes her hand move like a mouth talking.
“You must have been sad when Marguerite left then,” I say.
“Her husband got a promotion. She didn’t need to work anymore. And she has four kids so she wasn’t part of the tequila crew.” Mali moves her hips in a circle as she says “tequila crew,” and then giggles again.
I wonder if they’ll expect me to be part of the tequila crew, whatever that involves. But I’m not worried. I’m an expert at dodging work night’s out.
“I thought since Phil had the key to the supply cupboard that she’d been here the longest,” I say, still aiming for casual. Mali waves her hand in the air, dismissive as I help her pull the duvet up over the bed and pull it tight at the edges.
“Phil has been to college and she has office experience, so Julia gives her responsibility. But Phil doesn’t want to be in management, she only wants to clean.”
“What did she do before?” I ask. Mali eyes me with her hands on her hips.
“You talk too much and you ask too many questions. Are you undercover police?” She throws her head back and laughs.
I laugh too but decide to stop asking questions. She shakes a pillow, smooths it out, and then stands it perfectly plumped and upright at the top of the bed. I follow her lead, doing exactly as she did. My pillow, thankfully, is just as perky as hers.
“You want to know about Phil?” she says, lowering her voice.
“It’s my first day. I’m getting to know you all.”
In answer, Mali singsongs my words back to me, “I’m getting to know you all. I’m getting to know you all.” She then says, “Now stop talking and get cleaning,” clapping her hands. I rush out of the room. “And don’t touch my trolley,” she yells after me.
I take a deep breath at my trolley, gathering my thoughts. I need to be careful. Mali is sharp and thinks most things that aren’t funny are funny. And Phil is smart and definitely on to me, like she senses I’m hiding something. I need a way in, a point of connection. Rose or Gaby might be better sources of information on Phil. I’m not prepared to leave and start another job somewhere else. It’s more waiting and extra hassle I don’t need.
But a voice in my head is screaming abort, abort. Like in hotel 13, when I heard about the “going home checkout.” All the cleaners were searched routinely at the end of every shift—bags, lockers, jackets, and pockets.
From finding out about the “going home checkout” to receiving the devastating news about my poor mother passing away, took all of ten minutes. My supervisor was very sympathetic, but before she could offer to hold my job open for me, I quickly said I’d be moving home to Scotland to take care of my elderly father. If you’d looked closely you would have seen the smoke coming from the bottom of my shoes as I bolted up the road never to be seen again.
So why haven’t I received a phone call yet about my mother dying? Why aren’t I running for the hills?
I glance up the corridor to where Phil is riffling through her trolley looking for something. She doesn’t see me this time. As she searches, her dark sleek hair moves from side to side, like a gleaming sheet of velvet. She finally finds what she’s looking for—garbage bags. She stops and runs her hand through her hair, parting it for a moment before it falls back perfectly into place. She turns her head a little and looks straight at me. I feel a jolt to my stomach, but this time I stare back at her. I don’t seem to care anymore what she thinks of me. She flicks her head, tossing her hair from her face, then turns and walks into the room she is cleaning. What is it about her? Why am I so intrigued? Is it me that’s more interested in her?
“What the flying fuck are you doing now?” Mali says in a tight whisper, glaring at me from the bedroom door, toilet brush in her hand. “You are a liability, you know that? Standing around doing nothing.”
“Sorry, I’ve got a bit of a stomach cramp,” I say, pulling a pained face.
“Aaah, you got your period?” she says.
I nod, relieved this seems to be an acceptable excuse, but Mali frowns even harder.
“You think you’re the only woman in the world that bleeds? We all have to work. Now get a move on or I will tell Julia you are the worst cleaner I have ever seen.”
I’m beginning to think it would be better if Mali did that and I have no choice but to leave.
Chapter 5
I put the key in the front door of my flat and turn it, but it doesn’t move. The landlady warned me this might happen when I moved in last week. She’s a short, stocky woman who wears too much perfume of the floral kind. When I first met her, and she shook my hand, the fumes almost overwhelmed me. I coughed and spluttered for a good thirty seconds making the excuse I had asthma. Maybe she has no sense of smell and had been badly advised by someone on how much to apply.
She demonstrated how to wiggle the key around and pull it toward me to get the door to open. I try this. It still doesn’t work.
I lean my head against the plastic-coated front door. It’s cool on my forehead and for a moment it soothes my racing mind. I glance down at the carpet by my feet, thin and threadbare, probably over thirty years old. The whole building, I’m sure once a glamorous family home, is now run-down and stuffed full of students. An air freshener hangs from the old light fixture in the hall—an attempt to cover the overpowering waft of damp. Maybe that’s why the landlady soaks herself in sweet perfume. It’s a cover-up. But this flat is all I’m prepared to pay for rent in London and I’m happy with it. I only need somewhere to sleep and wash.
Work is my life and I’m not ashamed to admit that, to myself anyway. The flat I had in Liverpool when I worked in hotel 17 had been a bit swish for my standards with polished floorboards and a dishwasher. This place was advertised as a flat with an en suite because it has its own shower, which consists of a stall with a shower nozzle you have to hold up over your head with one hand, leaving the other hand free to wash yourself.
On the plus side, all bills are included and there is a washing machine situated in the basement. My day for washing is Thursday. I like that I have my own day. It makes me feel organized and gives me a sense of stability.
Footsteps on the stairs make me stand up straight. I glance sideways as a guy in his twenties, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie with a picture of a green alien and the words HUMANS AREN’T REAL printed on it, swings past me down the stairs, long unwashed hair sticking out from under his hood. He doesn’t look up or acknowledge me. I’m invisible to him and that suits me fine.
I wiggle and yank the key in the door again. This time it clicks and turns. I push the door open and enter. The flat has a six-meterhigh ceiling with a large window, dreary brown curtains and a view over a parking lot, which is an acceptable outlook in my opinion.
The flat was also referred to in the ad as self-contained because of its separate washing and cooking facilities, but it’s really just a bedsit. The matchbox kitchen and shower stall are in a purpose-built unit made of flimsy timber panels divided into two sections. This is on the left as you enter. The toilet is squished into a cubby by the front door, probably once a broom closet. At the far end of the purpose-built unit is a ladder that you climb to access the area above the kitchen and shower where there is a mattress. This is my bedroom, or rather my mattress space. The landlady called it the mezzanine. I like it. It feels hidden away.
The rest of the room contains two dirty old armchairs with holes in them and a small rickety aluminum table with a dark circle on the top where someone put out a cigarette. Attached to the wall is an old electric heater. I’m not that concerned about heat. I normally come home and go straight to bed anyway.
A single clothes rail is positioned in front of a rickety chest of drawers by the window where my white shirts, black skirts and trousers hang, ready for work. I hardly ever go out or socialize so no other clothes are important to me. I have a couple of emergency tops I can pull on over a skirt if I do need to go on a work night out, which is hardly ever these days.
In the corner of the living area is my trunk, the only large item I ever travel with. Inside it, hidden away, is my collection of success stories.
In the eight years I have worked as a hotel cleaner, I have never been caught taking things and I am very proud of that. I slide the condom out of my pocket and smile at it. It was a new experience for me today. I would never normally take anything under those kinds of circumstances, especially on a first day. For some reason I was reckless.
I step into the kitchen area—only big enough for one person. There is a two-ring cooktop beside a tiny sink that you can just about fit two hands into. Beneath the sink is a little fridge with an icebox big enough for a single ice cube tray. A thin narrow cupboard is attached to the wall over the cooktop and there is one small drawer that doesn’t shut properly below it. I open the cupboard and take out one of two mugs. This one has SpongeBob on it. The other is covered in faded brown and white spots. Inside the SpongeBob mug is a small silver key. I take it and go to my trunk, the most expensive thing I have ever owned or invested in. Its hard wood has taken some knocks over the years but it’s never let me down.
When I went to work in Jersey, I put it in storage rather than ship it over with me and that was a mistake. I felt lost without it. I could only afford a bed in a hostel, and any items I took from the hotel I had to store in a shoebox in my backpack under my bed. I didn’t like the setup at all and felt the shoebox was amateur.
The padlock hangs from the opening clasp at the front of the trunk. I kneel on the floor beside it, carefully unlock it, and slip it out of the metal loop. I take a deep breath, lift the lid and push it back so it leans against the wall behind. I rest my hands in my lap, still holding the condom, and run my eyes over the glorious treasure laid out before me.
To the untrained eye it probably looks like a mass of junk and jumble. But to me every piece is unique with its own story. Every item is a triumph. That’s the one thing about my kind of taking that doesn’t fit the kleptomania profile. I take pride in all I have achieved. Most kleptomaniacs, according to the little I’ve read online, only enjoy the taking of the item and rarely enjoy the object itself afterward. And still others make a fundamental mistake in that they focus on taking expensive items from shops.
I read about a woman who only took cashmere woolens from Harrods until she was caught. When they searched her house they found tens of thousands of pounds worth of unworn, still-wrapped cashmere scarves and sweaters shoved under her bed and on top of her wardrobe, covered in dust. I didn’t understand it. Why all that risk if you didn’t even respect the items? These people need reeducating in the art of taking. You take because you love the sense of achievement it gives you, not because you want to possess something expensive. I felt sorry for that Harrods woman. She had the right idea but the wrong method.
As I trail my hand over the mound of trinkets and objects, the tension leaves my body and my breathing becomes methodical and rhythmic. Little pots, tubes of creams and gels, pens, dozens of tweezers, nail clippers, socks, a key ring, a baby’s bib, a lip balm with a faded casing, and a large gold button that I took from a woman’s blazer in hotel 6. Belts, large and small. Hats, a glove, a pair of slippers, silk ties, rolled up neatly. I pick up a glasses case, open and close it and put it back. There are a couple of bras and a pair of bikini bottoms.
Slotted down the side in a pouch is my dog-eared black notebook and pen. I pull it out and it falls open on the crinkled pages where I keep a list of every hotel I have worked in including the name, star rating, location, the dates I worked there, and an itemized list of all the things I managed to take while I was there. Some of the hotel lists go over several pages, like hotel 7, a three-star in Nottingham where I lasted eight months, my longest time working in a hotel ever. I got into a rhythm there, taking up to ten items a week, but then I started to get bored with how easy it was. I was restless, and in my last room of the day I spotted a net bag full of hair-extension clips. There were about eight different types, including a ponytail, and right at the bottom were bang extensions, the smallest of them all. I knew it was high risk, but I was hoping the guest wouldn’t notice it was gone at least until after she’d left the hotel. But a complaint came in that evening and I was hauled into the supervisor’s office the following morning. Apparently the bang extensions were her favorite. I got away with it of course but two weeks later I moved on. I told them my mother had been rushed into hospital for emergency heart surgery and I had to go home to look after my disabled father. It was my most elaborate excuse yet and it caused me problems. People wanted to know what heart surgery she was having and which hospital it was. I learned to keep the excuses short and sweet after that, and to stick to fake dead relatives rather than sick ones. Still, hotel 7 is my most successful hotel to date.
I trace my finger down the first page, feeling the bumpiness of the text where my heavy hand has left an imprint like braille. I flip through the pages until I get to hotel 21. Five stars. London. Feb 2019. No end date yet. I write condom x 1 underneath Items, and then add First Day in brackets.
I keep turning, looking at all the empty pages I have yet to fill with hotel names, stars, dates and all the items I have yet to take. Again I am filled with a sense of weariness. It’s only because of hotel 20, I tell myself. I turn back to the page for Fernsby Manor. Should I rip the page out and erase it from my memory? I go through the list of items I took while I was there, including the last one, the cream pump, and there’s no way I could destroy evidence of my hard work. I need to forget about my experience in hotel 20 and focus on the items I took there instead.
I slot my black notebook back in the pouch. The mound of items is getting closer to the rim of the trunk now. Once it’s full I’ll have to think about emptying it out, which I can’t bear the idea of doing, or getting a new trunk, which would come with a whole load of other problems, like transporting two trunks instead of one.
Whenever I move I have my trunk collected and put in storage until I have a new flat it can be delivered to. Could I really justify the cost of two trunks? I’d also have to make sure there was enough space in every flat for both of them. And what happened when the second was full?
I put this concern to the back of my mind too for now and place the condom in the center of the pile. It’s not that it’s a condom. It’s that it belonged to a hotel guest and now it belongs to me.
There’s no light in the shower stall, but the light from the naked bulb in the kitchen seeps through the crack in the ceiling so I can just about see what I’m doing as I squeeze into the small space, my feet just fitting onto the shower pan.
I twist the shower handle on at the wall and the whirring noise of the pump fills my ears. It’s not so much a hum as it is a screech, like it’s going to explode any minute. I have begun playing a game that I only have one minute to wash and get out before the whole building goes up in flames.
Holding the shower nozzle up over my head, I attempt to lather every part of my body with a block of Imperial Leather soap. As the warmish water trickles over my body, my mind wanders to thoughts of Phil and a shiver darts up my spine, a shiver more similar to the physical sensation I have when I think about taking something rather than being cold. I go to wash quickly between my legs, like I always do, eager to get the job done as fast as possible and get out of the shower, when the soap lingers there for a little longer. It feels nice and I’m not sure why. Thinking about Phil makes me want to keep my hand down there, moving, massaging gently.
