Always and Forever - Cathy Kelly

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Cleo. She opened one of her magazines. ‘You see, this is my plan. If we did up the hotel ourselves, it wouldn’t cost so much.’ She found the page that had captivated her in the newsagent’s: a home not unlike the Willow in décor, but with lots of fabulous paint effects on the walls and an incredible trompe-l’œil arched door in a wall leading into a tropical garden. With something like that in their dining room, the hotel would look wonderful.

      Trish sighed. ‘Cleo, those houses look like that because they have a fleet of paint experts each with a Masters in fine art working round the clock to transform a dingy hallway into a Garden of Eden with just seventeen tins of paint. If normal people like us do it, it would look like those paintings done by chimpanzees.’

      ‘It can’t be that hard,’ Cleo muttered.

      Trish narrowed her eyes. ‘Yeah, right, Leonardo. Get real. Your family think you’re a kid who knows nothing. That’s what being the youngest is all about. You should face facts and get out of there and get on with your life. Like I have,’ she added defiantly.

      Trish had moved to Dublin at the age of eighteen when she went to college. And she claimed that the secret to getting on with your family was not actually having to live with them. She’d lived away ever since. Cleo used to envy Trish for her independence in those days, but now she wasn’t so sure. She’d been wildly keen to go to Bristol and experience a bit of the world, and yet, when she did, she found that she missed home.

      ‘It was different for you, Trish,’ Cleo pointed out. ‘You needed to get out.’ Trish’s family were known for their volcanic arguments and door slamming. ‘But I don’t want to leave,’ Cleo said sadly. ‘I know if only I can make them see we’re in trouble, that they’ll do something, won’t they?’

      ‘OK, you have the family conference and tell them they’re doing it all wrong and let’s see what happens,’ Trish said. ‘And don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

      

      As she walked to the bus, Cleo mulled it all over in her mind. She knew that staying in Carrickwell to revitalise her family business was unlikely to work for all the reasons Trish had mentioned: her father wouldn’t listen to her, and her brothers probably hoped it would fail anyway. Neither Jason nor Barney had shown the slightest inclination to work as hoteliers. Jason worked in the travel business while Barney was a sales manager in a local car dealership. If the hotel and its land were sold, they could make a lot of money.

      Cleo loved her brothers but the age difference between them meant she’d been excluded from their games as a child, and even now there was always a squabble between them when they met.

      The bus was waiting, and Cleo got on board. As the bus doors shuddered to a close, she took her scarf off and wriggled lower into her seat to enjoy the ride.

      ‘Cleo Malin, as I live and breathe. How are you?’

      Mrs Irene Hanley, a friend of her mother’s, deposited two huge bags of shopping onto the seat beside Cleo. ‘Can I sit with you? I hate the journey home – drive you mad, wouldn’t it, with boredom?’ Without waiting for an answer, Mrs Hanley had removed her coat, rearranged her shopping on the floor so it fell onto Cleo’s feet, and launched herself into the seat. Built along the same lines as the robust women of Tonga, Mrs Hanley took up all her own seat and a fair percentage of Cleo’s too. Cleo was pushed nearer the window but all chance of staring happily out of it, in a world of her own, was now gone. Mrs Hanley was set for chat. First, she produced a box of chocolates from her shopping.

      Cleo could feel hunger rising in her like a tidal wave as Mrs Hanley opened the box and dithered happily over her selection before choosing a succulent white chocolate and passing the whole box to Cleo.

      ‘Have a chocolate – ah, go on,’ she added, as Cleo shook her head. ‘One won’t hurt.’

      Cursing herself for being so weak, Cleo took one. Chocolate caramel with a nut in the middle. She could feel the chocolate sensors in her body going on full alert. We’re back in business, boys!

      ‘Maybe I’ll have another one,’ she said.

      Mrs Hanley’s family, all girls and all with the same statuesque physiques, were apparently either married or nearly married to wildly eligible men.

      ‘Now Loretta, her fellow, Lord, he’s fabulous, calls me his second mummy, well, he’s taking her to Lanzarote for Valentine’s Day. Loretta, I said, Loretta, hold on to that man, I said.’

      ‘Loretta, she was twenty-two last year?’ asked Cleo suddenly, remembering Loretta from the vast Hanley clan. Loretta had worked briefly in the Willow as a chambermaid one summer and now ran the Carrickwell office of one of the bus tour companies.

      ‘My baby.’ Mrs Hanley got all misty and only a dark chocolate nougat could make her feel better.

      Cleo sighed and took a cappuccino cream. Since the shortlived thing with Laurent, there was no sign of a man in her life – except Nat, who didn’t count – never mind one with either the wit or the overdraft to take her to Lanzarote. How did Loretta do it?

      Perhaps being less bolshie was the trick. Cleo knew she was tough with men, but you couldn’t change that, could you? A firm hand was what was needed, whether it was throwing drunks out of the hotel at closing time or telling men that one date did not entitle them to stare glassily at her cleavage.

      ‘Nearly there already. Lord, doesn’t the time fly when you’ve got company?’ Mrs Hanley said as the bus shuddered into the depot at the bottom of Mill Street. ‘As I said, I’m counting on Loretta coming back from Lanzarote with an engagement ring, although keep that to yourself, but if she does, we’ll have a bit of a bash. Nothing too fancy. They’ll be saving for the wedding, I dare say. Loretta loves the Metro-pole in Dublin. Very classy. Or the Merlin Castle and Spa over in Kildare. Pity we’ve nothing like that here. There are builders working all hours of the day and night on the health farm in the old Delaney place. It’s nearly finished, I believe, but it won’t have a hotel with it, so Loretta will have to go out of town if she wants her posh wedding.’

      The words were only out of Mrs Hanley’s mouth when she realised what she’d said and clasped a beringed hand to her lips. ‘Sorry, Cleo. Me and my big mouth. I didn’t think. Don’t tell your mother, please. You know I’m mad about her, it’s just that young people, like Loretta, you know, they want different things at weddings these days and they like to make a weekend out of it. Say with the wedding on a Friday, then all sorts of treatments in the health centre on the Saturday, and a party that night. And you’d need a big ballroom too and at least fifty rooms to cater for all the people flying in from abroad. A small place with a few rooms wouldn’t do…’ She clamped a hand over her mouth again. ‘I’m digging an even bigger hole for myself, Cleo, love. I didn’t mean to offend you or your family.’

      ‘Don’t be silly, Mrs Hanley,’ said Cleo briskly. She could hardly blame the woman for pointing out the truth as Cleo saw it herself. ‘Anyway, you’ll be hearing interesting things about the Willow soon. We have great plans for the future, you know,’ she added. ‘The work will be starting soon, in fact.’

      ‘Be positive about your hotel,’ had been part of the advice in college. ‘Don’t be afraid to tell people the positive points and any future improvements, as long as you can back it up.’

      And they’d be able to do that soon, Cleo reasoned. If her family listened to her.

      ‘I’m so glad,’ Mrs Hanley said. ‘I’ve been worried because the place has been a bit run down and your poor mother is worn out with it all. Myself and the girls from the book club talk about it all the time.’

      ‘You do?’

      Relief that Cleo hadn’t taken offence made Mrs Hanley loquacious. ‘She looks worn out, you know. Worn out. It can’t be easy, although she keeps a brave face on her. But we have been worried, Cleo. I’m so fond of your mother, and your father too. I thought they might retire, to be honest, and head off for the sun. The heat’s great for arthritis and your mother is a

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