The Wake-Up Call
Beth O'Leary
For my readers.
I treasure every one of you.
December 2021
Dear Lucas,
I have a confession to make, and I’m kind of nervous about it, which is why you’re getting it in your Christmas card. (Merry Christmas, by the way.)
Whenever we cross paths at the hotel, something strange happens. I get hot. Jittery. Say weird things like “good morrow!,” and forget what it is I’m chatting to a guest about, and look at you instead of looking at whichever of Barty’s menu additions Arjun wants to disagree with today.
I’m not usually the sort of person to get infatuated. I’m more of the slow-burn, warm-and-cosy type. And I DON’T lose my head over a guy—I never have. But when I look at you, I get all . . . flustered.
And when you look at me, I wonder if you might feel the same thing. I’ve been waiting for you to say something, really. But my friend Jem pointed out that maybe you just think I’m not available, or maybe you’re not big on sharing how you feel, or maybe I just need to woman up and make the first move.
So here I am. Putting my cosy warm heart on the line to say: I like you. A lot.
If you feel the same way, meet me under the mistletoe at 8 p.m. I’ll be the one in the pink dress. And also the one who is Izzy the receptionist. I don’t know why I said the pink dress thing.
I’m going to stop writing now, because . . . I’ve run out of space. And dignity. See you at 8?
Izzy xxx
* * *
? ? ? ? ?
Dear Izzy,
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Regards,
Lucas
November 2022
Izzy
If Lucas is doing something, I have to be doing it, too, but better.
This has generally been very good for my career over the last year, but it does mean that right now I am grappling with a fir-tree branch which measures at least twice my height and four times my width.
“Do you need help?” Lucas asks.
“Absolutely not. Do you?”
I swing my branch into position and narrowly avoid smashing one of the many vases around the lobby. I’m always dodging those things. Like much of the furniture at Forest Manor Hotel and Spa, the vases come from the Bartholomew family, who own the estate. Morris Bartholomew (Barty) and his wife, Uma Singh-Bartholomew (Mrs. SB), have turned the grand house into a hotel, and they’ve repurposed as many of the old family furnishings as possible. I am all for an upcycle—it’s kind of my thing—but there’s something urn-like about some of these vases. I can’t shake the thought that one of them might contain an old Bartholomew.
“Is that whimsical?” Lucas asks me, pausing to examine my fir branch.
I’m tying it to the bottom of my side of the staircase. The Forest Manor staircase is famous—it’s one of those gorgeous sweeping ones that splits in two midway and just begs you to walk down it slowly in a wedding dress, or maybe arrange your children up it for an adorable Von Trapp–ish family photograph.
“Is that?” I ask, pointing to the potted tree Lucas has hauled in from the garden and placed at the bottom of his side of the staircase.
“Yes,” he says with absolute confidence. “It is an olive tree. Olives are very whimsical.”
We are dressing the lobby for tomorrow’s wedding—the bride’s theme is “winter whimsy.” Lucas and I have decided that asymmetry is whimsical, so we are each doing one side of the staircase. The trouble is, if Lucas goes big, I have to go bigger, so now quite a lot of the garden is in the lobby.
“They’re also Mediterranean.”
Lucas looks at me flatly, like, Your point is?
“We’re in the New Forest. It’s November.”
Lucas frowns. I give up.
“What about my silver fairy lights, then?” I ask, gesturing to the small, sparkling lights woven through the greenery that now runs up my bannister. “Do you think we need some on your side, too?”
“No. They’re tacky.”
I narrow my eyes. Lucas finds everything about me tacky. He hates my clip-in highlights, my baby-pink trainers, my fondness for supernatural teen dramas. He doesn’t get that life is too short for rules about what’s cool and what’s not cool; life’s for living. In full HD. And baby-pink trainers.
“They’re cute and twinkly!”
“They’re so bright. Like little daggers. No.”
He unfolds his arms and places his hands on his hips instead. Lucas likes to take up as much space as possible. This is presumably why he is always at the gym, so that he can claim yet another inch of my airspace with his ever-broadening shoulders and his bulging biceps.
I take a deep, calming breath. Once this wedding is over, Lucas and I can go back to alternating shifts wherever possible. These days, things don’t go well if we’re at the front desk together for too long. Mrs. SB says it “doesn’t seem to create quite the right atmosphere.” Arjun, the head chef, says, “When Izzy and Lucas are on shift at the same time, the hotel is about as welcoming as my grandmother’s house,” and I’ve met Arjun’s grandmother, so I can say with confidence that this was a very rude remark.
But Lucas and I are the most experienced front-of-house staff at the hotel, and we’re the ones who manage weddings, which means that for the next two days, I have to endure nonstop Lucasness.
“Come up to the landing,” Lucas barks. “See what I am seeing.”
He’s always so commanding. When I first met Lucas, I thought his Brazilian accent was so sexy—I forgave his rudeness, called it a translation issue, decided he meant well but things didn’t quite come out right. But over time, I have learned that Lucas has an excellent grasp of English—he is just an arse.
I traipse up to the central landing, where the staircase splits in two, and take it all in. Our lobby is huge, with a gigantic wooden front desk along the left-hand side, old-fashioned keys dangling on the wall behind it. There’s a worn circular rug over the original brown and cream tiles, and a soft-seating area by the tall windows looking out at the lawn. It’s gorgeous. And in the last eight years, it’s become a home to me—maybe even more so than the little pastel-coloured flat I rent in Fordingbridge.
“This is a classy hotel,” Lucas says. “The fairy lights look cheap.”
They were cheap. What does he expect? Our budget is—as always—non-existent.
“This is a family hotel,” I say, just as the Hedgers family walk into the lobby, right on cue. Three kids, all hand in hand, the littlest one toddling along in a snowsuit with his pudgy fingers tucked inside his sister’s.
“Wow!” says the oldest, stopping in his tracks to stare at my sparkling bannister. The youngest almost takes a tumble; his sister yanks him upright. “That looks so cool!”
I shine my smuggest smile in Lucas’s direction. He continues to glower. The children look slightly disconcerted, and then intrigued.
I have noticed this phenomenon before. Lucas should be terrible with children—he’s huge and scowly and doesn’t know how to talk to them. But they always seem to find him fascinating. The other day I heard him greet Middle Hedgers (real name: Ruby Hedgers, age six; favourite hobbies include martial arts, ponies, and climbing things that aren’t safe) by saying, “Good morning, how did you sleep? I hope well?” It is exactly what he says to adult guests, delivered in the exact same tone. But Ruby loved it. “Oh, I slept all night,” she told him with great importance. “When it was seven on my clock, I got up and stood by Mummy and Daddy’s bed until they woke up, too, and Daddy didn’t think I was there, so he screamed, and it was so funny.” To which Lucas nodded, quite serious, and said, “That sounds like a horrible way to be woken,” and Ruby descended into fits of giggles.
Bizarre.
“The children like the fairy lights,” I tell Lucas, spreading my hands.