Igor, a Polish Sous chef, had been sleeping secretly in the dry store of the Bedford hotel until his boss, Laura, overheard him talking to his pet mouse, Nazdia, one night. Assuming he was only using the dry store for occasional, clandestine meetings with his girlfriend, she converted the long abandoned storeroom on the second floor back into a bedroom. She hoped it wasn’t haunted, as past rumors suggested, but at least Igor would be able to meet his girlfriend there instead.
   
Igor’s second Polish evening turned out to be as successful as the first, except this time he had an added bonus. One of the guests, the daughter of a Polish guy who had booked a table of ten for his birthday, happened to be the father of a very pretty girl called Catarina, someone Igor had noticed several times on his daily visit to the gym at the local swimming baths. When her father insisted on giving his compliments to the chef after their meal, Igor didn’t hesitate to accept when Catarina asked if he would like to join them for a drink in the bar after he finished in the kitchen.

     What Igor wasn’t aware of, however, was the fact his step-cousin, Mazeija, the sex-starved nymphomaniac who had caused him to move out of his uncle’s house in the first place, had seen the advert in the Herald for the Polish evening. Conceitedly convinced his lack of contact was purely as a result of the pressure of his job, she decided to pay him a visit. When she arrived towards the end of the evening, she presented herself at the reception desk where Laura was sorting out everyone’s bills.

     ‘I come see Igor,’ she announced.

     Laura, who’d been rushed off her feet all night, looked back at her with a raised eyebrow. The woman must have weighed at least three hundred pounds, and was wearing one of the most tasteless outfits she’d ever seen in her life. Her turquoise dress only reached half way down her corpulent thighs, and clung to Mazeija’s ample frame like a sausage skin about to explode. The six inch platform heels, which under normal circumstances might have made her legs look longer, had the opposite effect because the gold chains around her rippling ankles looked as though they were about to cut off the blood supply to her feet at any moment. Could this be Nazdia? Laura hoped not. The thought of Igor having a romantic attachment to this woman completely destroyed the notion that had inspired her to find him a bedroom in the first place.

     ‘Eh, I’m afraid he’s still busy in the Kitchen, Laura told her. ‘Would you like me to tell him you’re here?’

     ‘I prefer surprise…’ Mazeija told her with a wink that convinced Laura her worst fears were correct.

     ‘Are you Nazdia?’ she tentatively asked.

     ‘No, I Mazeija… Me and Igor very close,’ she added, which led Laura to believe she must have remembered Igor’s lover’s name incorrectly.

     Laura still wasn’t sure what to do, but her need to remove the embarrassing Mazeija from the reception area was her main priority. To say she looked like an overweight prostitute was an understatement.

     ‘’I wait in Igor’s room?’  Mazeija suggested.

     Laura was past caring. All she knew was she had to do something, and quickly. Everyone who was walking through to the bar from the dining room, started to snigger when they caught sight of her. Laura checked her watch, and in a desperate attempt to get rid of her, handed Mazeija the spare key to Igor’s room. Who was she to cast aspersions? If Igor was into big, brash, Polish women, it was none of her business….
    
 
Samantha couldn’t wait for Igor to return to his room. Since his arrival two weeks ago, she’d had a lovely time watching him, and an even lovelier time when she saw him strip off every evening before he went for a shower. There was no doubt about it, he was a fine figure of a man, and reminded her of Andrew, her lover before she died. Her temptation to do a flickering light show was almost too much to bear at times, but she resolutely decided to abstain from making her ghostly presence felt. Under no circumstances did she want him to leave. The mouse had been a bit of an intrusion, but when she heard Igor call it Nazdia, Samantha was delighted. If the only thing he loved in the mortal world was a mouse, then she was happy to share her space with it.

     The arrival of a woman who resembled a female Shrek was a different matter, however. The minute she entered the room, Samantha felt her hackles rise. To add insult to injury, the corpulent beast of a woman stripped off her dress within minutes of her arrival, and draped herself across the bed with nothing on but a tiny G-string, which became completely lost in the folds of fat that now took up most of the bed. No way was Samantha standing for that.

     Her first resort was to turn the bedside lights off and on to the beat of ‘He’s my man,’ which had Mazeija looking from one light to the other with her jaw dropped open. But it wasn’t enough to scare her off because she assumed it was an electrical fault. Whilst letting out a stream of Polish profanities, she dragged herself off the bed and pulled the sockets out of the wall after she turned the main light back on. Samantha was fuming. The light show was usually enough to do the trick. She then turned her attention to the TV, which, like all the other electrical items in the room, was still plugged in.

     That got Mazeija’s attention, especially when Samantha flicked between the channels in rapid succession, the volume turned up as loud as possible. As Mazeija stared at the TV, a look of horror etched on her face, Samantha turned on the kettle, the microwave and the toaster, all in rapid succession. Two seconds later, Mazeija jumped from the bed, grabbed her discarded dress, and shot out the door. She then ran down the passageway screaming, her pendulous breasts almost wrapped around her neck.

     Unaware of what was going on upstairs in his bedroom, Igor had changed into a fresh chef’s jacket, and joined Catarina and her family in the bar for a drink. He was delighted to see that the only chair available in the tightly squeezed group of ten was next to Catarina. Within seconds of his sitting down, they were deep in conversation, the need to speak English abandoned.

     The ridiculous sight of Mazeija flying through the reception area as she attempted to pull her dress back over her head, made everyone in the bar crane their necks to see what all the comotion was about. Not Igor. As he stared into Catarina’s beautiful blue eyes, he was totally oblivious to everything that was going on around him….