Free Always and Forever by Cathy Kelly Page B

not frank. ‘Sit down, Sondra, love. Chef’s got lovely sea bass and I can get her to rustle up some chips for you.’
    Out of the corner of her eye, Cleo could see Jacqui smile as she came back from her break. She loved being cal ed Chef. ‘Great.’ Sondra sighed as she sat down in the comfiest corner of the pew and flicked through Cleo’s magazines while Barney scavenged in the main part of the hotel kitchen for a snack. Jacqui knocked his hand away as it slid towards the chil drawer where the smoked salmon was ready. ‘Don’t touch.’ Barney got a fistful of almond cookies that had been made to accompany Sheila’s homemade vanil a ice cream instead and squashed in beside his wife. She’d come to the trompe-l’ceil page. The house real y did have a look of the Wil ow about it - the same big windows, high ceilings and similar coving. ‘That’s nice,’ said Barney, munching.

    ‘Isn’t it?’ Sheila said. ‘Cleo wonders if we could do something similar here.’
    Sondra raised careful y painted eyes to Cleo. ‘But impossible I to copy,’ she said. ‘It’d cost a fortune.’
    ‘You think?’ Cleo said, wondering why Sondra complained about how she’d hated exams at school, since she was so scarily I sharp about everything post-school.
    ‘Lord, Cleo, don’t they teach you anything in col ege? Paint effects cost a fortune. You weren’t thinking of doing it yourself, were you?’
    The first stirrings of anger roared through Cleo’s veins. ‘I was, actual y,’ she said. ‘The whole place needs work and this is one option that wouldn’t cost too much. We weren’t ful over Christmas and it’s about time we al faced facts and did something about it. We don’t want to lose the place, do we?’ She could sense rather than see her mother stiffen at these

    words.
    ‘Cleo, the Wil ow wil be going strong when we’re al dead and buried,’ came her father’s voice.
    Harry Malin stood in the kitchen unwrapping a scarf from his neck. ‘The pump’s fine. Bil has it working like a dream.
    How’s my favourite daughter-in-law, then?’ He smiled down at Sondra.

    Cleo’s inner fire roared a bit more. He was doing what they al did: deliberately avoiding any mention of the hotel’s shortcomings. Like ostriches with their heads in the sand.
    Cleo steeled herself. ‘I wish I could agree with you about the hotel, Dad,’ she said, ‘but I can’t. I love this place but we’re on the slippery slope. We need to do something.’
    ‘I think your father knows what he’s doing,’ Sondra shot in.
    ‘He’s been running this hotel for thirty years.’ Cleo’s plans to be diplomatic took a dive. ‘So a hotel management degree is a waste of time and money, is it, Sondra, and I know nothing about hotels?’
    ‘You said it, not me,’ smirked Sondra.
    ‘Please don’t argue,’ said Sheila.
    ‘Al I’m saying is that the hotel is in trouble and nobody’s even talking about it,’ Cleo argued hotly. ‘We might have managed in the past because people love the Wil ow but it’s getting older; the whole hotel needs refurbishing. If you could see the money they spend in some of the hotels I’ve worked in … Customers expect that now …’
    ‘The Wil ow doesn’t stand up to the other places you’ve been then?’ her father said evenly.
    ‘No, Dad, that’s not what I mean at al .’ Cleo’s eyes pleaded with him not to take offence. ‘They were different sorts of hotels. We run a smal , intimate house hotel where people feel welcomed into our world and that’s what I love.
    That’s what you created, Dad.’ Her eyes were stil pleading.
    ‘But we need to improve the place somehow. Carrickwel ’s changing al the time and we’ve got to change with it, be ready for the future or else …’ ‘Or else what?’ asked Harry.
    Cleo couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say they’d close down. ‘Or else we’l see the profits dive,’ she added lamely. ‘Cleo, we’ve got twenty covers for dinner tonight,’