Free Summer Evenings at the Seafront Hotel: Exclusive Short Story by Vanessa Greene

Chapter One
Friday 21 st June
The South Cliff Hotel, Scarborough
    ‘McKenzie,’ said the man briskly. ‘A double room with a sea view. I called last week.’
    Cally searched through the bookings on her computer screen and found the name. Oh yes, she remembered him now. On the phone he’d sounded charming, but now, standing in reception in a polo shirt that tugged over his paunch and an impatient expression, she wondered why she’d thought that.
    ‘Room twenty-nine,’ Cally said with a smile, unhooking the wooden keyring from the wall behind her. As she placed it in his hand, she noticed his wedding ring glinting in the sunlight. ‘It’s on the second floor. We’re having a couple of the rooms on the floor below refurbished; you shouldn’t hear anything but if the noise does bother you just let me know.’
    ‘OK.’ He glanced back into the lobby, distracted.
    ‘Joe will see you up.’ Her colleague Joe, dressed in a smart white shirt that set off his tanned skin, stood up a little straighter. ‘He can take your …’ She looked down at the floor. No bags.
    ‘Sure, in a minute,’ the man said. ‘I’m waiting for someone.’
    The front doors swung open, revealing for a moment the dramatic sea view that attracted guests from all over the world. To tourists, this was The South Cliff Hotel, three stars, a recommendation passed from traveller to traveller. But to locals like Cally and Joe, it was simply ‘the seafront hotel,’ three tall Georgian houses on the Esplanade that were something of a local institution, a white building with distinctive blue awning that they’d walked past dozens of times over the years.
    A redheaded woman in a white linen dress strode in, her hair tousled from the breeze. Spotting the man, a wide smile spread across her face and she greeted him with a hug. ‘Hello, darling.’
    Joe led them both upstairs and glanced back briefly at Cally, a glint in his green eyes. He mouthed, ‘no ring,’ and tilted his head discreetly at the woman’s hand. A smile formed at Cally’s lips. It was a game the two of them played, guessing which of the ‘Mr and Mrs Smiths’ weren’t man and wife, but illicit dalliances.
    Cally had been working at the South Cliff since spring, when she’d decided to leave her college course early. Reception at the local hotel wasn’t quite where she’d pictured herself at twenty-one, but she reasoned there were worse places to be. If things weren’t too busy, she’d get out for a walk at lunchtime, taking in some sunshine in the cliffside park, or going down to the Seafront Tea Rooms for a cup of Letty’s tea and a scone fresh from the oven.
    It had been a nice surprise to find that Joe, who’d gone to the same sixth form as her, was working at the hotel too. Back then, Cally had usually had her head buried in a Biology book, or been round at her friend Kat’s house, and Joe had been one of the popular guys, never without a girlfriend and out every weekend at parties. But now Cally had put her textbooks away for good, and without his friends around, Joe seemed to have more time to chat. Liliana, one of the chambermaids, would join them at breaktimes, telling them tales of her life back in Italy, and sharing gossip about the rooms she’d been cleaning. Joe and Liliana’s company made the days pass more quickly, and it all took her mind off what had happened with Ryan.
    A Spanish tour group were due to arrive in a week, so with the lobby empty again, Cally checked the bookings to make sure she had everything in order. Stuart Dickinson, her boss, had left her a list of things to arrange. While he had a tendency to micro-manage, at the moment he was tied up the overseeing the refurbishment of the first floor rooms so was delegating more responsibility than usual. Cally looked down the list he’d given her and tried to make sense of it:
    Kitchen
    Cleaners
    Maps
    Liliana walked through the lobby in her maid’s uniform, her dark wavy hair up in a neat