Chapter 4
The Cairn Dhu Hotel and restaurant knew nothing of the lean times the ski centre was suffering.
Even though the rain had washed the morning frosts from the hotel’s lush mossy lawns and the sky had turned a winter-dusk-dark at only half one in the afternoon, the imposing old grey stone hotel with its gothic turrets and grand, if a little stuffy-looking, red tartan lobby was bustling and jolly, profiting from the very first rush of festive season trade.
The first service of ‘Office Christmas Party’ lunches had just cleared out and a second lot were already taking their seats for roast turkey and all the trimmings.
Gravy and highland plum pudding smells swirled every time the doors rotated and new revellers arrived in their best colognes and gaudy Christmas jumpers over workwear.
A harpist accompanied the diners’ toasts, and tinkling cutlery sounds harmonised with Christmas songs. Everyone seemed to be caught up in the first flush of December fervour. Everyone except for Florrie Norheim and the poor lad working the check-in desk.
‘What do you mean you’ve no reservation for me?’ she said, trying her best to hold it together in the blatantly unbothered face of the young man whose confidence was buoyed up by the absolute certainty of his computer screen, which he spun round to show her.
‘See? No Norheim. No… what did you say… something something business consultancy.’
Her father’s PA, Empressa, had sorted rooms out at the same time as she’d pinged over the plane ticket. Hadn’t she? Florrie scrolled her phone looking for the reservation number.
‘This is the only hotel in town, right?’ she said, still scrolling. ‘I was told you had a reservation for the whole week for me. Ah, there we are!’ In triumph she showed him her screen. ‘Confirmation.’
The boy’s lips twitched with the impulse to smile and Florrie saw him barely trying to hide it. ‘That says click here to confirm your booking. You never finished the booking process.’
‘What?’ She stared accusingly at her screen. ‘No!’
He was right. Empressa had seen to her side of things, and Florrie had been expected to finalise the booking herself.
She’d been so determined to appear efficient in front of her father that day in his office, she hadn’t paid enough attention.
‘Well.’ She forced a hard swallow. ‘Can I just have another room, please? It doesn’t have to be the superior suite.
’ She looked at the badge on the boy’s green plaid waistcoat and tried to hold on to her dignity by smiling. ‘Thank you, Anthony.’
Even as she said it, and as a crowd gathered behind her wanting to check in for lunches and drinks parties and Christmas team-building away days, she could sense the awful inevitability of the answer before he formed the words.
‘We’re full.’
‘Fully full?’
Now Anthony really did let himself smile. ‘Nae room at the inn.’
This is what happens when she didn’t work alone, she thought with a groan.
Mistakes creep in. She was used to relying on only herself.
She always made her own travel arrangements, sorted everything out like Swiss clockwork.
Now she was out here as part of the company, representing her father, no less, and she’d bailed on the very first jump.
She lifted her chin, straightened up, trying not to resent all the miles and hours since she’d left Aspen, the string of departure lounges and delays, and that last walk across rainy tarmac and the long, long wait at the aerodrome for her taxi while her luggage got wet.
‘And you’re about to tell me there’s nowhere else to stay in the entire town, aren’t you?’ she said, fixing her face in a stoic, representing-the-family-on-overseas-business sort of way.
‘Dinnae ken.’ The boy shrugged, evidently determined to act his wage.
The couple behind her lost their patience and muscled in to declare they had reservations for two at two o’clock.
‘Jeez! Is this the famous highland hospitality I was promised?’ she muttered, remembering the twee posters she’d seen at the airport, all crystal glass whisky, kilts and knees, and roaring hearth fires.
No one heard her. She’d been forgotten about in the scrum for check-in.
She looked to the doors and the rain-streaked unfamiliar town beyond, mentally waving goodbye to the promise of a hot bath somewhere up in the hotel’s turret towers and a plate of whatever it was that smelled so delicious and hearty wafting through the doors from the noisy restaurant.
All this only sharpened her resolve as she made her way outside, already searching her phone for the nearest holiday rental. She’d find a ski lodge apartment or cosy cottage nearby, get her father’s business sewn up, and get the hell out of this place.