Chapter 23
The decorating of the guest bedrooms continued apace but Ben had to admit to himself after a few days that the hard work was immensely rewarding. Because at the end of each day, he could finally see progress and it felt as if things were looking up for the hotel at last.
Lily was busy painting, ably aided by Hannah, Faye, Frankie and Dotty.
The ceilings were now all completed and room by room, the walls of the bedrooms were beginning to come to life with colour.
The part-painted, part-exposed wood of the walls gave a warmth to each room and Ben liked that each bedroom had its own individual decorating scheme, colour wise.
Whilst the bedrooms began to be transformed, Ben and Walter cut down a number of oak logs to create the four-poster beds. They carefully measured the lengths before Walter used his electric saw to cut them to size. Then they worked together to construct them around the modern beds.
Ben was enjoying getting his hands dirty again, as it had been so long since he had been in the workshop with his grandad.
It took a while to get the fixing right so that the oak framed the bed perfectly but as they both stepped back to look at the first one that they had completed, Ben had to concede that the effect was very stylish.
‘It looks good,’ he said, turning to look at his grandad.
Walter was looking equally pleased. ‘Knowing your grandmother, she’ll want one as well!’
It was tiring work though, as each night they continued into the evening until Faye called a halt to the proceedings with the call for dinner which nobody was allowed to refuse.
However, one evening Ben found himself alone with Lily as the only two people left working on one of the guest bedrooms. Hannah was at work and his mum and Frankie had arranged to see a friend in Aldwych for dinner.
Walter and Dotty had already been sent home early to rest up for another busy day tomorrow.
Ben’s stomach rumbled in protest but they worked on, content to hum along to the music that was playing from Dotty’s old radio.
‘I think this green is my favourite,’ said Ben, taking a step back to look at the wall he had just finished putting a second coat on.
‘Mine too,’ replied Lily, standing at the top of a short stepladder where she had just finished painting the very top of the wall above the window.
She looked over at him and smiled. Ben found himself mesmerised by her pretty face, despite being dressed in a pair of paint-splattered dungarees with a scarf around her hair.
A love song played on the radio and he was temporarily distracted by the words professing the lure of a beautiful pair of smiling eyes. Her green eyes were certainly the deepest shade of emerald that he had ever seen.
She broke their gaze to glance over at the bed. ‘You’ll be able to add the four-poster in here tomorrow,’ she said.
However, she was still looking at the bed as she stepped down the ladder and Ben suddenly realised what was going to happen.
‘Wait!’ he called out, stepping towards her.
But it was too late. Lily wasn’t watching where she was going and the foot she was about to place onto the floor went into a large pot of paint instead. Ben watched as she began to fall over in slow motion as she went off-balance.
Rushing over to stop Lily from hurting herself, he tripped on the large roller tray still full of paint and they both landed in a crumpled mess, almost on top of each other.
Both the pot of paint that Lily had stepped into and the large roller tray had both flipped over and they were both now coated in paint.
They lay on the floor in shock for a moment before both bursting into laughter at the same time.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, feeling a little bruised from his fall but nothing more.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, looking down at the paint that they were now both splattered in. ‘Oh, my goodness! What a mess!’
She burst into peals of laughter once more as she slowly sat up.
Ben joined in as he too straightened up. ‘We’ve got more on us than on the walls,’ he said, also laughing.
‘Shall we call it a night?’ asked Lily, glancing down at herself once more. ‘I think this is the universe’s way of saying that we might be getting a bit tired.’
‘Absolutely,’ he replied, standing up and reaching out to help pull her up as well. There was an awkward silence as they stood so near to each other. ‘Are you sure your foot’s OK?’ he asked.
She looked down as she slowly rotated her left foot. ‘A little sore but it’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Oh! What a waste of good paint. I’m so sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Ben. And he found that it really didn’t.
‘Gosh, I’m starving,’ she told him. ‘Your mum said that there were various options for our dinner in the fridge and freezer. Shall we get cleaned up and see what there is to eat?’
But for once, his mum’s cooking didn’t tempt Ben. And he found he had a much better idea. ‘Let’s go out,’ he told her.
Lily looked at him in surprise. ‘Out? Like this?’ She glanced down at her splattered clothes once more and laughed.
‘Well, maybe we’ll get changed first,’ he told her. ‘Come on. There’s a great Italian place nearby. My treat to say thank you for all your hard work.’
‘I’m not finished yet,’ she reminded him.
‘Thank goodness,’ he said to her. ‘Because as you know, I’m useless at interior design.’
She laughed. ‘OK, well, if you’re paying for dinner then it’s a date,’ she replied with a soft smile. There was a short silence as her smile dropped and she blushed. ‘I mean, well, you know what I mean,’ she stammered.
‘I do,’ he told her. ‘I’ll see you downstairs in half an hour.’
As she wrapped a piece of plastic around her foot to stop spreading the paint across the remainder of the bedroom floor and hobbled out of the room to clean up, Ben smiled to himself at her gaffe.
So, it wasn’t a date, he reminded himself. Of course it wasn’t. But still, the thought of having Lily all to himself made him rush through his shower and choose his clothes afterwards with more care than he had done for a long while.