Chapter 24
NOW
To: Isabella Baker
From: Claudine Dupont
Re: Bio approval
Dear Isabella,
As promised, please see below the bio for the text that will be used on materials relating to the presentation, including a biography and your credentials. Please could you provide a recent head shot to accompany?
Let me know if there are any errors.
Cordialement,
Claudine
Isabella opened the attachment marked with her name and read through the text:
Isabella Baker joined H?tel Benjamin earlier this year after a prestigious career in the hospitality industry, during which she managed a hotel complex in England, overseeing the running of several sites.
Since joining H?tel Benjamin she has been working with CEO Claudine Dupont on improving the overall offering to guests, streamlining processes and ensuring that H?tel Benjamin offers that something extra required of hotels in the Hotel Club family.
So there they were, in black and white. Her lies. She could barely remember her application – had she really said all that? Somehow seeing it written made it all seem too real. But she could hardly back out now.
‘It looks good,’ she replied finally, which was true. The design of the leaflet was on point, with gold embellishments and pictures from the hotel brochure edged in black. It looked chic and contemporary and on-brand.
But whatever she might tell herself about staying on the side of truth, she had now crossed a line.
She had accepted a write-up about herself that contained something completely false.
And it was going to be distributed as part of the package when they presented to Hotel Club in a few weeks’ time.
After which it would be out in the world, together with her picture, and it would no longer be containable.
She was supposed to be going through some designs for new room-service menus, but the various options sent through by the graphic designer seemed to all blur into one. Her concentration was shot.
Her heart seemed to be racing and sweat was forming on her brow. She knew she needed to calm down to stop this escalating. She had to distract herself. She forced herself to look at the designs and for a moment it felt as if she were winning.
But as her concentration broke, the sweat came again, this time more intensely. She needed air, she needed to breathe.
Pushing back her chair, she walked quickly out of the office down the thankfully empty corridor and to the lift.
She pressed the button for the ground floor and, as soon as the doors opened after the lift’s descent, she sped through the glass front door before anyone could question her. And she was out. She was free.
It was times like this when she wondered whether she’d be better off being a smoker.
Nobody questioned you going to stand outside a building for a while if you were addicted to nicotine.
As it was, she’d noticed Mélodie’s head snap up and watch her as she stepped out.
She’d have to come up with some reason for her hasty exit, grab a coffee to bring back as an alibi.
Trying to regulate her breathing, she drew out her phone and called Juliette.
‘Oui, hello?’
‘Juliette,’ she managed. Her voice came out in almost a gasp.
‘Bella, is that you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it? What’s happened? Are you ill?’
‘No. I’m OK. I’m just— Oh Juliette, I’ve got myself into a situation.’
‘Tell me everything.’
She felt weak as she opened her mouth. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘But you have to promise not to hate me.’
‘I don’t understand,’ her friend admitted a few minutes later, once she’d relayed her lies and how they’d come about. ‘Why didn’t you correct them at your interview? They would still have been impressed, I am sure. Perhaps when you said you managed a chambre d’h?tes they misread it or something?’
Bella had been walking during her confession, her pace fast, matching her breathing.
Now, spent, she made her way to a pavement café and slipped into a chair at an empty table.
‘It’s not quite that, Juliette. I mean, I was trying to— well, make myself sound better than I was.
I suppose… I may have caused the confusion with my— with how I described things. ’
‘So you lied?’
‘Well, yes. No. Sort of. I made it… I left things open to misinterpretation.’
There was a silence. ‘But why would you do that?’
‘Juliette. You know. I couldn’t get a job. Nobody wanted me.’ Bella felt her eyes fill. ‘I was running out of time, out of money. And I just thought, what would Juliette do?’
‘Me? You think I am a liar?’
‘No. No. But you project confidence. You’re so sure of yourself. And I suppose I took it too far. But I mean, half the applications I’d written just got ignored anyway. I wasn’t to know… and then when they got in touch… I needed a job.’
There was another silence. She could hear Juliette’s fingernails tapping against a hard surface, something she did when thinking.
‘OK,’ Juliette said. ‘Well, what is done is done. But you need to come clean, Bella. With work, but also with Henri. It is not fair on him that he thinks he is dating someone who is not what they seem.’
‘I can’t.’
‘But you must,’ Juliette said softly. ‘People are kind. They will understand.’
‘But they won’t want me any more,’ she found herself saying.
A waiter came over, raised an inquisitive eyebrow, so she pointed to coffee on the menu.
He nodded and disappeared. People streamed past, all wrapped up in their own worlds; chatting, checking phones, wandering with cameras.
Around her at the other tables, people sat in pairs and trios.
She was the only person who was completely alone.
‘They might be angry, yes, but…’
‘It’s not that. Juliette, there’s a reason I lied in the first place. I’ve wasted eight years running a B & B and it’s all for nothing. I have no experience in anything else, no credentials. I just— I ruined my life. Lying was my only hope.’
‘You—’
‘And what about Henri? He won’t want some old, unemployed divorcee. He’s with me because he doesn’t know who I am. Not really.’
‘Bella!’ Juliette sounded shocked. ‘How can you talk about yourself like this?’
‘It’s true.’
‘Non. It is an interpretation. One that even an enemy might not come up with. You are beautiful. You are young. You have a history, sure. But who doesn’t?
I cannot say whether Henri will want you or not, or that work will be OK or not.
But you, you will be OK. You will find work, and you will find people who love you for you. ’
Bella shook her head. The waiter appeared and set her coffee on the table.
She gave him a small, watery smile before breaking eye contact.
‘No, Juliette. I’ll be alone. Henri will leave me, I’m sure.
Claudine will fire me. Odette won’t want to know me either after she finds out I’ve lied.
I’ll probably be thrown out of the house share for lying too.
I’ll have nothing. And I’ll be alone. I just— it’s too much. ’
‘You will have me.’
Bella paused, wiped her eyes, picked up a small, white-wrapped packet of sugar and began to tear off the corner. ‘Thank you. But I can’t— You’re wonderful but it’s not enough. I need people here, now. I need this job.’
‘OK. OK. So breathe.’ Juliette’s voice sounded concerned. ‘It’s OK. Just concentrate on that for a moment.’
‘OK,’ Bella said a moment later. ‘I’m OK.’
‘So. Let me ask you. Can you do this job?’
‘Yes. I really can. I think.’
‘And you say that there is this big presentation, a meeting?’
‘Yes – for potential Hotel Club status.’
‘So perhaps it is not fair to leave before this anyway,’ Juliette said gently. ‘If you feel you cannot say, perhaps just do your best work, and then tell them once they secure the status. If you have been instrumental, perhaps they will see beyond the… the misunderstanding.’
‘You think?’
‘It is possible. But Bella, you must still tell Henri.’
‘OK,’ she breathed. ‘I’ll try.’ But as soon as she hung up, any resolve she had dissipated. Henri was one of the few bright things in her life right now. Being held by him, kissed by him. Having someone at home waiting for her when she got in. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to give that up.
She sipped her coffee, feeling the warm liquid flood her mouth. Everything in her life was balanced on a lie, but she wasn’t ready to let it tumble just yet.