Chapter 22
Present
Blythe would only try and talk her out of it.
That was what Rae told herself while she waited for the auctioneer to arrive.
Anyway, nothing was settled yet and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried to call her sister.
She couldn’t count the number of times she’d dialled Blythe’s mobile, only to hear the call ring out on the other end.
And she’d checked with Siggy. There was no problem with Blythe’s phone. It worked perfectly well when she wanted to call Siggy to ask her if she could pick up some groceries on the way home from the village the previous day.
She tried to calm her nerves. It wasn’t set in stone.
She wasn’t putting the place up for sale, just looking at options to save the hotel.
Cathal Regan arrived one minute ahead of schedule.
They’d been in school together, well, she’d been a year or two ahead of him, but everyone knew Cathal.
He’d always been the kid on lunch break buying and selling and trying to make a quick pound before the headmaster was any the wiser.
He’d moved from working in the local chippie when he left school to helping at old man Timmy Stenson’s auctioneers.
Luckily for Cathal, Timmy had a remarkably pretty daughter who apparently found Cathal irresistible and so, Cathal had taken over the auctioneering business and probably quadrupled the profits since he put his name over the door.
‘Hello Rae, well, you were the last woman I ever thought would ring up looking for my services…’ He smiled as he said it and then stopped, looking up and down the street before he came through the front door.
‘You and me both,’ she said and she meant it, because selling had never been something she’d thought about before now. Pappy would be turning over in his grave, and as for Marcus, but that wasn’t something that was likely to sway her anyway.
‘Of course, no one could blame you.’
‘Excuse me?’ She looked at him, not quite understanding.
‘You know, with,’ his eyes drifted to his feet in the way that most people’s did when they spoke about her bereavement, ‘well, losing Marcus, he was such a good businessman and you were both so devoted. And then, a woman on her own, I can imagine, what with all that’s happening in the village, it’s only natural to be a bit nervous.
A place like this? It’s only a matter of time before those gurriers set their sights on breaking into somewhere bigger and grander than the old people’s cottages… ’ he said gently.
‘Oh, no, it’s not that at all,’ she said quickly, because whatever about the break-ins, she was not missing Marcus, in fact, without him here, it felt as if finally, for the first time in years, she had peace, she could breathe.
‘It’s time to shake things up. The hotel is too big to manage on my own and… ’
‘Of course, of course,’ he said and then his face changed to that familiar expression she’d seen so often since Marcus died.
It was pity mixed with something else, that uncomfortable feeling that they didn’t know what to say for the best. ‘So, tell me, you mentioned you wanted some advice on one part of the hotel.’
‘That’s right,’ Rae said and she quickly closed out the front door of the hotel.
It wasn’t a busy time of day. They rarely had a customer at this hour if she was honest, but the last thing she wanted was word getting out around the island that she was thinking of selling, at least not until she told Blythe what her plans were at any rate.
‘You see from the outside,’ she waved a hand towards the front of the hotel and explained about how years earlier three buildings had been made into one.
It was obvious from outside, they’d held onto the original facade, with doorways painted each year and original stonework and railings, too.
‘But I’ve been thinking of downsizing, making the place more boutique and I’d like to free up some funds to do that, so what I wondered was, if it would be possible to sell off what was number three – this area over here and the floors above it. ’
‘I see.’ He smiled, took a step back and surveyed the lobby area. ‘So, you’d be doing this work yourself, before it goes up for sale?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, I suppose that’s why I asked you here.
I wondered if I needed to sell the ground floor – could I just sell the upper floors, there’s access around here, it would be easy enough to make to…
’ There was a small anteroom with an emergency exit into the car park at the rear of the hotel.
This anteroom was large enough to fit in a lift next to the original staircase that had been retained to comply with fire regulations.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Can we walk the four floors, just to get a better sense of what we’re dealing with?’
‘Sure, come on.’ And so, she led the way. All the while, Cathal listened and took notes and occasionally, he pulled out a measuring tape. She noticed he recorded things like the slate fireplace in what had been a first-floor drawing room and the various cast iron fireplaces in the other rooms.
‘The chimneys are all still…’ He nodded towards the ceiling.
‘They’d need to be cleaned out, checked properly, I mean, it’s years since anyone lit a fire up here, but yes, I suppose, in theory they are all working fireplaces, with a bit of sorting out.
’ They’d re-roofed the whole building a decade earlier, that was the reason for the crippling loan on the place.
Even so, Marcus had insisted on keeping the chimneys and the original slates.
They walked right up and into the attic rooms, although Rae hardly ever came up here now.
‘You’d be surprised, people go mad for attic flats.’ Cathal smiled.
‘Hmm.’ Rae was dubious. She couldn’t imagine living in a place where she had to bend down every time she walked through a doorway.
‘Ah, yes, but you must be what? Six feet?’ He smiled at her.
He by comparison was hardly five-five. ‘No, there’s a place for everyone and something like this – quirky, a one-off, I could really sell this for you.
’ He said it as if he feared she might ask some other auctioneer from the mainland to come and look the place over.
Little did he realise; it had taken all her courage to ask him to pop in.
They walked back down to the lobby again, this time he asked if she would show him the car park at the rear, although it was easy enough to walk into it from the street.
Most of the locals parked here all the time.
Probably they didn’t realise it was owned by the hotel, but it was a huge area – mostly marked out into spaces and bordered by a tall stone wall.
‘Obviously, the original buildings had each a third of this area, but we can make a right of way to give access to the main street,’ she said because she’d been thinking about this.
‘Nobody expects a yard this size in the middle of a town. I say you give them the six or eight parking spaces closest to the property, get a wall built and allow them right of way to use the exit onto the existing car park and from there onto the main street.’
‘Seriously, but that’s tiny?’
‘That’s the secret to making this work. You give away the least you can for the biggest amount of cash.
Then, if you want to come back and get a second bite of the cherry, there’s always the option to do that.
Do you realise how the holiday homers go crazy to think they’re getting their own designated parking space – they LOVE that.
’ He shook his head as if it never failed to surprise him, because the one thing there was loads of in Muffeen Mòr was wide open spaces.
‘I haven’t made up my mind yet, though.’ She turned to him now because it felt, the way he spoke, as if the whole place had already been carved and quartered.
‘Of course. Even if you do, Rae, there’s a lot to think about before you put up a for-sale sign.’
‘I know, the lobby?’
‘Mainly. And with these old properties, it’s good to check that the deeds are in order, you know, wills and all that…’ He smiled. What he meant of course, was that the property was in her name.
‘It’s all in order,’ she said softly. Because if the whole village had ever been keen to know about anything it was how on earth Blythe had not ended up inheriting the hotel and Rae had.
‘Okay, well, you sort out that paperwork, so we have it all clear if you want to go ahead with it and I’ll go back to the office and see if I can’t have a think about the best way to figure out the ground floor.’
‘Really?’ She felt a wave of relief bubble up inside her. ‘Honestly, I’ve walked through the place a thousand times, trying to figure out what to do for the best with it and I really couldn’t decide.’
‘Whoa, I’m not going to be reconfiguring the hotel for you, but I’ll give you an idea of the numbers – a rough guide to the costs and profits differences between dividing the place up and selling as a four-storey Georgian house or holding onto the ground floor and just letting the top floors go out to sale. ’
‘What’s your gut feeling?’
‘My gut feeling…’ He stopped, bit his lip for a moment. ‘The full house, original Georgian centre of town, would have gone for up on two million in its original state a few years ago – but…’
‘It’s been changed so much over the years?’
‘Not so much that. I think anyone with the sort of money who’d want to buy it as a property in one, won’t worry about putting it back to the way it was.
There’s no doubt selling it as three-storey over ground floor is not going to make you half of that.
No, the thing really is nothing like this has come up on the market in years and you know, everything has exploded in terms of property – honestly, the sky is the limit at this point.
A Georgian house, on an island? I can imagine the holiday home set would love this, now they’re being roasted off the continent thanks to global warming. ’
‘Upwards of two million.’ Rae repeated and she felt rather stupid for being shocked at the value of the place.
She didn’t need two million euros; she hadn’t the first idea what she would do with that sort of money.
If anything, it seemed preposterous, scary even.
All she really wanted was to pay her bills and live a quiet life.
‘Anyway, that’s all pie in the sky, right?
Only if you decide to go ahead with it?’ Cathal smiled at her, but she felt he was a spider to her fly.
Whatever about losing Marcus or not being able to run the place alone, you’d have to be stupid not to realise that the hotel wasn’t making a bean these days.
She walked Cathal to the front door, hoped no one would spot him leaving the hotel.
Strangely, when he left, she felt excited at the prospect of maybe selling the place.
She wasn’t sure, but the idea of the old attics at the top of the house being used again.
Fires lighting in the grates and voices filling up the rooms, somehow brought a sense of hopefulness to her.
It was too long since there was the sound of a happy family in these rooms, far, far too long.