The Big Dreams Beach Hotel. Michele Gorman

Rory explains.

      ‘Said the SS guard at the camp gate. Call it what you like. How long are you staying?’

      ‘Don’t be harsh on the bloke, Chef,’ I say. ‘He’s just doing his job.’

      Rory smiles his thanks, though I’m not sure why I’m sticking up for him when he’s just told me I’ll have to apply for my own job. Maybe it’s because he seems like an alright person. Maybe because he’s the only buffer between us and our new owners.

      ‘Rosie tells me you’re making goat. It smells … good.’

      Miracle’s laugh rings out across the dining room, and that’s saying something because the room is vast. In its heyday our hotel would regularly seat a hundred and fifty people for buffet lunches or fancy dinners. There are old black-and-white photos hung all around the hotel that I love to look at. ‘My, isn’t he a charming liar? No, it don’t smell good, petal, but it will. It will.’ Miracle’s chins nod for a few seconds after she stops. ‘My babies always brag about their mama’s goat curry,’ she says, wiping her hands on the bright-yellow apron that’s covering her batik-print dress. ‘They can’t get enough of it. All three begged for de recipe before they moved from home but they say I still make it better.’ She laughs again. ‘I say I do.’

      ‘You can’t beat a family recipe,’ Rory says. ‘And I know how your children feel. My dad was the cook in our house, and I’ve never been able to make his recipes as well either. There’s something about the way a parent makes it.’

      ‘It’s de love they put in,’ Miracle says. ‘Come along, boy, I’ll show you.’

      ‘I don’t want strangers in my kitchen,’ Chef barks.

      ‘Calm yourself, Chef,’ she says. ‘It’s not your kitchen today. As long as it’s my curry in there, it’s my kitchen.’ Ignoring Chef’s thunderous look, she hoists herself from the table. Then she leads Rory to the industrial kitchen, leaving Lill and I to smooth over Chef’s ruffled feathers.

       Chapter 4

      It’s not my job to make Rory’s life easier, but it feels like kicking a puppy when I snub him. I mean, look at him, with those thick specs and messed-up hair that’s not adjusting well to the sea air, and his fancy suit that stands out a mile here. Besides, his landlady at the B&B chucks him out every day after breakfast, so he’s always at the hotel asking a million questions.

      Usually it’s just me working in front, so it’s nice to have someone else in the office for a change. The hotel doesn’t run a skeleton staff so much as a mummified one.

      Rory is going through the employee files. They’re all neatly handwritten by successive generations of the Colonel’s family.

      He glances at my folder. ‘There’s no CV in here. No application?’

      ‘The Colonel didn’t need my CV,’ I say. ‘He knows me.’ Then I realise that might not fit our new owner’s official hiring protocol.

      Rory lets it go, though. ‘I feel like I’m in the National Archives,’ he says, thumbing through the file folders. ‘You should really have a section for current staff.’

      ‘You mean me and Chef and the evening receptionist.’ Who I never spend more than two minutes with as we change over our shift. ‘We don’t really need a section for that, do we?’

      ‘What’s Chef’s surname?’

      ‘Erm.’ I might have known it once, but for the life of me I can’t think what it is.

      ‘How can you not know the man’s name?’ he asks.

      ‘He’s just Chef,’ I say. ‘Always has been.’

      ‘It’s Downton Abbey around here.’

      ‘It’s always worked for us,’ I say, a little huffily.

      ‘Obviously it hasn’t, or you wouldn’t have been sold.’ He sees my face. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s true. The company is going to want everything streamlined here, so it’s more in line with their other hotels. Everything has to go online, the ordering and so forth. Not that these notebooks aren’t … quaint.’

      He’s talking about the ruled notebooks going back to when the hotel first opened. They should come in handy if we ever need to know what a loaf of bread cost in 1929.

      ‘What’s “d” mean?’ he asks, drawing his finger down one of the faded pages. ‘“S” is shilling.’

      ‘No idea. That was before my time.’

      ‘Was it? How old are you?’ he asks, the smile playing across his face.

      ‘Way to win friends and influence people. Twenty-eight, you cheeky sod! Not nearly old enough to remember shillings. Why, how old are you?’

      ‘Thirty-two. Also not old enough, although my parents can speak in old money. They like to talk about when they used to buy their brushes one at a time for five bob.’ He sees my frown. ‘They’re artists. Formerly starving, if you believe them.’

      ‘Then you can’t trace your transition management pedigree back to a great-great-great-great-uncle Isambard or anything?’

      ‘Nothing so noble, no.’ He tells me that he’s a lot more like his normal old grandparents than his hippy parents, who met at art school and squatted a broken-down house in Notting Hill. That sounds glamorous to me, but then my dad worked his whole career for Plaxton, the coach-maker, and Mum taught French at Scarborough College. I’ve already told you about our perfectly conventional pebble-dashed house.

      Rory’s grandparents found their children embarrassing instead of glamorous, though. They glossed over the squatting and told their friends they’d made a smart property decision back in the seventies, and now most of their neighbours are bankers or Russians who are never at home.

      ‘Then you’re minted for being in the right place at the right time.’ Just what I’d expect of a jammy southerner.

      ‘My parents would be,’ he says. ‘On paper anyway, but there was never a lot of money. I had scholarships at school. And uni.’

      ‘Where’d you go?’

      ‘Surrey. My grandparents still live outside Guildford, where my mum grew up. What about your family? I’m guessing, from your accent, that you’re local, but what about your mum and dad?’

      He probably thinks I’ve never left Scarborough, which is fine with me. To tell him the truth might mean having to go into why I left New York. He can read my full CV when I reapply for my job. In the meantime, I just answer his question, explaining how Mum and Dad traded the sea for the mountains and have me living in the old house as a sort of caretaker. Which I am. Sort of.

      I could have gone anywhere when I left New York, but I was in no frame of mind to start over. I only wanted what was familiar.

      When I rang Dad to tell him I was catching the next plane home, he didn’t ask many questions. And that must have been hard for a nosey parker like him. Mum probably had a restraining hand on his arm the whole time we were on the phone.

      I didn’t let myself think too much about being in my mid-twenties and going to live back home for the first time since I was a teen. When I got to my parents’, I threw myself into bed. Back in my room, which had hardly changed, I slept. I’d once wanted so badly to turn my back on it. Now it became my safe haven.

      By the time Mum threatened to throw me into the bath herself if I didn’t get up, I was starting to feel better. Enough cups of tea and parental sympathy are bound to perk a person up. When I came downstairs, still hot from my bath, I noticed the flat-pack boxes leaning against the wall in the kitchen. ‘What are all these for?’

      ‘Sit