Jenny let out a groan as loud as the frantic mewing outside their bedroom door. She and George had reached a compromise the night before when he’d reluctantly agreed to her shutting the door with Jasper on the other side. Jenny had hoped he might settle downstairs after she placed his bed and cat litter in the hallway, but no. From three-thirty onwards, the cries that sounded as though he was being hung, drawn and quartered, filtered through to the bedroom as loudly as when he was still in it.

     ‘George!’ Jenny hissed at her seemingly comatose lover. Sleeping through that racket defied belief. ‘If you don’t shut that bloody cat up, I swear I’ll throw him out the window!’

     That did it. Within ten seconds George had shaken himself awake, leapt from the bed, and grabbed the screeching Jasper before taking him downstairs. Jenny didn’t doubt he would stay down there until it was time for him to get ready to go to work, but at least she could get a couple more hours sleep before she got up at six. What had started as an irritation had turned into a war, and she certainly wasn’t going to back down now…

   

When Laura woke up just after seven, she decided to relax for a while because Jenny had kindly offered to look after the reception desk so she could have the day off; her first since they took over the hotel six weeks ago. It had been an exhausting weekend. With a full dining room on both Saturday and Sunday evening, they had muddled through the best they could with Karen parked on the mattress so she could keep her leg elevated while she barked instructions. The decision to shut the restaurant on Monday and Tuesday turned out to be a life-saver. Igor had offered to be on hand to supply room service, and Gerry, the barman who covered Dominic’s two nights off, would not only man the bar, but keep an eye on the reception desk until all of the guests had retired for the night.  

      Deciding that a cup of tea was needed, Laura made her way through to the kitchen in her flat. It was a strange feeling being on her own again after sharing an apartment with her son for three years. He had been her buffer; someone to talk to after the loss of her husband turned her into a recluse. Laura was glad he had a life of his own now. He and Michelle, Karen’s daughter, had been going out for five months, and they seemed to be getting closer by the day. Laura didn’t doubt their relationship would blossom further. On the face of it, they seemed to be made for each other, and she and Karen couldn’t resist speculating about the possibility of wedding bells.

     ‘Well, at least they’d save a fortune if they have it here,’ Karen decided when she and Laura discussed it over coffee the week before. ‘I can’t think of a better wedding present than us pulling out all the stops and giving them a day to remember.’

     Laura hoped she was right. Seeing Paul settled down with a girl as lovely as Michelle was every mother’s dream. Yes, she missed seeing him every day, but it was time for him to move on, as it was for her. The trouble was, apart from working fifteen hours a day, six days a week in the hotel, Laura wasn’t sure if her life would be anything but that for the foreseeable future. Her endless chats with Jack on Skype had been another buffer since Colin died, but that indulgence was no longer an option. With no Jack or Paul to talk to, her life was a man-free zone for the first time in her life, and she didn't like it. In fact, the thought nearly reduced her to tears as she sat clutching her cup of tea at the kitchen table. She decided to cheer herself up by pulling out the piece of paper she didn’t even know existed until the day she cleared out Colin’s bedside cabinet the night before she moved to the Bedford. She would have sorted it out before, but the thought of Colin's personal things still being on the opposite side of the bed had given her comfort. Laura found the bit of paper folded around a picture of them on holiday, the year before he died.

      I will always love you, he’d written, followed with his initial and a kiss. It was as though he’d known in advance he would die first, and he wanted to leave something behind to assure her that her love for him had always been reciprocated. She’d cried for hours after she found it, but it now gave Laura strength whenever she felt the loneliness and heartbreak of losing her best friend and lover…

   
 
Igor sucked in his stomach as he climbed out of the swimming pool. He might only weigh a hundred and fifty pounds, but his recent lack of physical exercise, on top of testing all the delicious dishes Karen experimented with before the restaurant opened, had resulted in a small pot where his flat stomach had been before. Hopefully the swimming, plus his recent strenuous activities in the kitchen, would make it disappear.

     After he grabbed his towel and wrapped it around his waist, Igor set off for the men’s’ changing rooms. There might be a staff toilet and wash basin at the back of the kitchen in the Bedford, but he needed a shower. The communal swimming baths, which were a good half hour’s walk away from the hotel, was the only way he could have one. Until he got paid at the end of the month, he couldn’t even consider the idea of looking for a place of his own. By offering to hang around the kitchen in case any of the guests wanted room service in the evening, he had at least given himself a legitimate reason to be in the hotel before he settled down for the night in the dry store. Laura usually went up to her flat as soon as all of the guests were booked in, so Igor had no problem concealing his nightly charade of pretending to ‘go home.’

     After he’d showered, Igor set off for the library, his second sanctuary when he wasn’t working a shift at the hotel. Paying for his membership to the pool, and finding places to hang out during the day, had drained what little money he had left, so going to a café wasn’t an option. He could go and visit his Uncle Fabek, but the thought of bumping into Mazeija, his seriously obese step-cousin, made Igor tremble more than the image of Karen screaming at him across the kitchen. The sex-mad, man-eater had made his first two weeks in the UK unbearable by sneaking into his room every night and pinning him to his bed with the agility of a Sumo wrestler. Sadly, the fact that he couldn’t perform to order hadn’t put Mazeija off. She still snuggled up to him before she fell asleep, then snored through the night while Igor hung onto the edge of his bed.

     Yes, getting the job at the Bedford had been a Godsend, and allowed him to escape from the nightly assaults by claiming that free accommodation was included in his contract. Hiding in the hotel dry store wasn’t ideal, but it was a lot better than what he’d left behind…


   

Karen let out a sigh as she looked around the kitchen. She was seriously bored. The excitement of the last six weeks leading up to the opening of the restaurant had left her without a minute to herself. Now it was open, and everyone had raved about the food, it was almost as though she had nothing to look forward to. God knows what she was going to do with the two days off Laura had insisted on. Although her ankle seemed to be fine now, she was loath to put her weight on it too much, so she couldn’t even go for a walk. The house was spotless, the laundry all done, and a lasagne she’d made the week before was defrosting for their evening meal. Mark and the kids wouldn’t be back from work for another four hours, and she was at a loss as to what she could do in the time in-between.

     For the first time since she’d gone on a diet and lost forty pounds, Karen opened the cupboard in the corner of the kitchen with the sole intention of retrieving the half bottle of brandy she’d vowed not to touch until all the weight had gone. Although she’d only taken it for the pain on Friday night, the three double brandies Igor had brought her from the bar, not only reminded her how nice it tasted, but the lovely, numbing sensation that followed. Surely a small dash in her coffee wouldn’t hurt?

     After deliberating the question for a couple of seconds, she reached up and took the bottle off the shelf…