Chapter 8 #2
She blinks rapidly and wipes at her mouth. ‘I might also be allergic.’
‘Allergic to something you ate?’
‘No. To Turkey,’ she says, holding a hand to her forehead. ‘I’m never like this in Spain.’
Tiffany lets out a monumental huff. ‘You always have to go one better, don’t you?’ She twists around in her seat to face Astrid. ‘What was it last week? Early onset Creutzfeldt-Jakob’s disease? And the time before that it was bird flu.’
‘It was bloody bird flu!’ Astrid says. ‘Ask Shaun. I was really ill, wasn’t I?’
Shaun has woken suddenly and coughs into his fist, looking extremely caught between a rock and a hard place. ‘Or it may have been food poisoning. You know what this place is like,’ he says.
Very diplomatic.
‘Alcohol poisoning more like,’ says Erika, sitting down as the bus hurtles away from the hotel.
‘Now listen to me, Bodrum South. You need to get your shit together. No more boozing like darts players at a semi-final just because it’s two pence a pint.
We’ve got head office coming in to talk to us for God’s sake. What are they going to think?’
The short journey to the Sunrise Five Diamond Beach Hello conference centre takes place in silence with Erika exuding frosty stares to everyone in turn.
She is not happy with this ragamuffin bunch.
And when we arrive, I see why. Standing at the entrance is a neat row of impeccably dressed LoveIt Holiday reps ready to welcome Erika like a member of the royal family visiting the Commonwealth.
She walks the line greeting each one as she inspects them from head to toe, and when she gets to the end she sweeps her arm over towards us.
‘Bodrum North team’ – she pauses to give a disappointed shake of her head – ‘meet Bodrum South. You can all get acquainted during the break but for now we must hurry—’
‘Excuse me, Erika?’ I say hurriedly. ‘I’m not Bodrum South.
I’m going to work at head office, remember?
’ I puff out my chest. There’s no way I want to be lumbered in with this shower of misfits.
‘I’m the new account manager. I’m not with these.
’ I thumb discreetly towards Garry Gee and his shambles of a team.
Erika gives me a hard stare. ‘Yes, about that…’ I wait for her to finish her sentence, but she doesn’t.
She swivels on her heel and leads us into the building.
Once in, the Bodrum South reps crowd around a buffet table as though they’ve not eaten for weeks.
I just have time to grab a cup of coffee before Erika crooks her finger and beckons me to the other side of the hall where there is a table laden with piles of forms, adding machines, tons of small rectangular receipt books with their familiar white sheets on the top for original customer copy and the blue carbon sheet underneath to print the details onto the yellow copy below for head office records.
I admire the neat towers of various colourful flyers for trips and excursions.
Unfortunately, Erika has a head teacher air to her which instinctively makes me feel as though I’m in trouble.
‘Maddie Summers. We’ve received a record number of complaints about you.’
I gulp.
‘From the airport driver?’
‘Fortunately, no. He can’t speak or write English, so all of his complaints were in Turkish and weren’t included.
No…’ She exhales heavily. ‘The bulk of the complaints are from the holidaymakers who took umbrage to the hole-in-the-ground toilets at the roadside café you stopped at, and some are from those who claimed they got food poisoning from eating there, but the most objectionable ones are from the passengers you left stranded at the airport and, of course, the Bodrum South reps themselves.’ She rolls her eyes towards the ceiling.
‘We’ve even had a death threat which is unusual but then…
you did lose the gentleman’s luggage and leave him at the wrong hotel. ’
Oh no. I’m going to be sacked, and I haven’t even bloody started yet.
I can’t go home. I simply can’t. The humiliation of facing my mother.
Her greatest joy in life is being proven right.
Not to mention the pub full of locals who hate me.
Dillon and bloody Denise rubbing my nose in it, scoffing at what a failure I am.
No. I can’t. They cannot sack me. Just as I’m about to protest, Erika laughs.
‘Luckily for you, princess, I want to like you. I have high hopes for you. But don’t tell the others.
They’re a lost cause. That ship sailed long ago,’ she murmurs behind her hand before reaching down to pick up a pile of papers.
‘And even more fortunately for you is the fact that these complaints were submitted before your official start date and therefore’ – she rips them up in front of me and throws them in the bin – ‘they can’t be processed.
’ She winks at me in a theatrical fashion.
‘And the death threat?’ I ask hopefully.
‘You know you’ve made it when people want to kill you.’ She shakes her head, laughing. ‘Except for Garry. There isn’t a day goes by without me wanting to kill him.’
He very subtly flicks his eyes to me before training them on Erika, a disgruntled look on his face. While Garry Gee gives her daggers, I politely look away.
‘He’d gladly stab me in the back, that one,’ she says quietly. ‘Wants the top job. You’ll have to be firm with him, or he’ll take advantage. Especially as he seems to have taken such a dislike to you. Watch your back.’
Why would he have taken a dislike to me? I’ve literally not spoken to him yet. Luckily for me, I have much bigger fish to fry than a megalomaniac supervisor with a God complex and a limp ponytail. ‘Will the police be involved?’
Erika gives me a confused look.
‘The death threat?’
She looks to the wastepaper basket. ‘No. It’s been dealt with.’
I stare at it too. ‘By dealt with do you mean you’ve just ripped it up and thrown it—’
‘Here he is! About time,’ Erika booms, heading away from me. ‘We missed you at the welcome party last night. Come and meet the team.’
I swivel around, immediately startled at the sight of the man striding towards her.
It causes my coffee cup to slip through my fingers.
As it crashes to the floor, splashing scalding liquid up my legs, everyone looks over to me, tutting.
Erika rolls her eyes at me, loops her skinny arm through that of the tall, extremely good-looking if slightly bleary-eyed man at her side and introduces him.
‘Everyone. This is Jackson,’ she yells. ‘He’s flown in from LoveIt Holidays’ parent company in Sydney. He’ll be taking over management of head office here in Turkey.’