Chapter 2
The next day was a particularly tropical, typical Fijian day.
In other words, it was hot, sticky, suffocating.
The humidity all-encompassing. The weather and what it was doing weren’t really of interest to Tilly, though, because the staff at The Peninsula Palms Hotel always had to suck it up and do what they had to do.
In Tilly’s case, this meant a long, fairly boring day of servicing rooms. She wasn’t really that bothered.
There were worse jobs in the world. Weren’t there?
The night before, Tilly had ended up popping around to see Lennixx as he'd played his last few numbers. He'd kissed her and told her he would be heading straight to the cruise ship to get his head down before his early start. Truthfully, Tilly hadn’t minded in the slightest. She’d gone back to her room, gagging for the air conditioning and a good night's sleep.
Now, she was pushing a room attendant's cart towards a hotel room door.
Waiting for a second, she checked the hotel guest app on her phone.
This wasn't the land of room service knocking on the door loudly and barging in.
The Peninsula Palms had a training manual for everything, including how to approach a room to service it, the intricacies of how to ring a doorbell and how to fold a towel.
Everything about the place strived to be the best it could be in every little guest-facing corner.
At least, that was the notion of it in theory. Sometimes, the reality, not so much.
Overall, though, the hotel walked the talk.
Understated, classy, quiet, and all of the above extended to the staff who ran the place.
Tilly squinted at her phone and nodded. The training had instructed her that the computer-driven doorbell, which linked to the app on her phone, would tell her if the occupants were inside.
A little emoticon told her that they were.
Pressing the bell, she slotted her phone back into her pocket, smoothed her tabard and waited.
Half a minute later, a tall, revoltingly tanned, most likely Australian woman with long, dry, overly processed scraped-back blonde hair, wine glass in hand, plus irritated look on her face opened the door. Friendly, she was not.
Tilly tutted to herself as she registered the woman's attitude before she had even opened her mouth.
Mostly, however, Tilly didn't really care about attitudes, unhealthy tans, or irritated looks on overly filtered faces.
Like, she really didn't care because she was purely there to do a job with sparkly five-star hotel bells on.
Always and forever, she stuck to the brief, performed her job on rotation, did her thing.
She knew how to hospital-corner a bedsheet to within an inch of its life, she could fold a stack of towels into a perfect tower in seconds and perform a turn-down service with her eyes shut, which is why her mostly Fijian acquaintances adored her.
Our Tils knew how to graft and executed it like no other.
The look on the Australian woman's face really meant nothing to Tilly in the slightest. Whatever, my friend, whatever.
In four years of cleaning up after holidaymakers, she'd seen it all.
Smiling and pretending that English was not her first language, a trick not learnt in the hotel training portal but from her colleagues, Tilly followed procedure.
As few words as possible, a smile in place, head turned slightly to the side, retreating a little, compliant.
Putting her accent into gear, Tilly blinked.
'Housekeeping.' Pronouncing the word with an inflexion at the end, turning it into a question, she smiled.
'Housekeeping?' the woman repeated with a frown as if Tilly had just suggested flying to the moon.
'Okay. What? You mean you want to do it now?
Can you come back later, or will that mean that we don't get a proper clean?
As I said when I checked in, the beds must be changed daily.
I don't pay these sorts of prices to sleep in dirty sheets.
Get me? Also, when you come back, leave double the number of towels, and we want two chocolates each for the nighttime thing.
' The woman held her hand up in a stop sign.
'Before you say anything, I don't care about the environment. Anyway, it’s not really convenient for you to come in right now. We’re just about to have a morning drink. '
Internally, Tilly rolled her eyes and wanted to deck the woman.
In her head, quickly assessing her schedule and that of her teammates for the day, she quickly worked out what time she would be able to return.
Adding a lilt to her voice, she turned her head and lifted her shoulders a little bit. 'Will I come back mid-afternoon?'
The woman swore. 'Really? For God's sake!
Mid-afternoon! We'll be trying to relax.
No, we don't want it done this afternoon.
We might have a nap after our 3 o'clock cocktails.
' The woman tutted, rolled her eyes and opened the door fully.
'Come in then if you have to do it now. So inconvenient. We'll be on the balcony.'
Tilly walked in and felt a blast of ice-cold air-conditioning from above despite all four terrace doors being fully open to the tropical heat.
Pushing in a mop, she slipped her AirPods in as the woman poured two drinks from the minibar and stepped out onto the terrace.
Tilly chuckled to herself as she pushed the pods further into her ears.
The insertion of AirPods was another trick passed on to her on one of her first shifts servicing a stateroom on a fancy cruise.
It was a small, ingenious titbit, really, but it fended off questions.
Tilly was sure it may have curbed some of the stranger requests she often got, but there you go.
They'd paid the money, she did the deed. Who was she to judge?
Not in the mood for music, she got on with the job in hand and made her way to the bathroom off bedroom one.
Sliding back the door, her eyes went wide as she took in the damage around the gigantic egg-shaped bath and double walk-in shower.
She'd seen some messy rooms in her time, but this was next level.
The place looked as if a small but very effective bomb had gone off.
She shouldn't have been surprised; there had already been a warning on the housekeeping WhatsApp group earlier in the week.
5272 a handful, sorry. Tilly could see why.
Toiletries were scattered across every inch of the marble bench, a layer of talcum powder covered the floor, and an unravelled toilet roll lurked by the door.
Soaking wet towels were draped absolutely everywhere, an old cup of tea sat by the sink and what looked like coffee had pooled around the plughole.
Piles of used tissues lay in a heap on the side, bikinis and dirty underwear were strewn on the floor, and toothpaste splatters went up and down the mirror. Pleasant or polite it was not.
Whipping her phone out of her tabard pocket, Tilly tapped onto the housekeeping WhatsApp group.
Just arrived in 5272, and the bathroom alone will take me ages. It's a mess in here. Is anyone okay to cover my next room? Otherwise, this is going to put everyone's day back.
A reply pinged back almost straight away.
Yes, of course, it took me a long time on the turndown last night too.
Tilly didn't really know where to start.
No stranger to a messy room in her time following Lennixx around the world, this one was next level.
Following the training routine, she put on a pair of latex gloves, removed the tissues from the vanity top, moved the dirty underwear and collected the towels.
Spraying the bath with cleaner after removing the cups from the side, she methodically went through her routine.
Just as she was mopping her way out of the bathroom, voices floated through from the balcony.
'What about that musician, then? Can you even fathom it?'
'I know. That was a bit of a turn up, wasn't it? Can you believe he actually came to our room? He knows how to perform, and I'm not talking about playing the piano.'
'Tell me about it. He must be fifteen, no twenty years younger than us, don't you think?' the other woman cackled.
'Haven't had one like that for a while! He made me feel young again. If only…'
'I know, right? Lennixx, eh? Said he was straight off to a cruise to the outer islands. We should have gone with him for more fun and games.'
Tilly felt her heart sink to her boots. There was only one musician in the resort as far as she knew, and not many people going by the name of Lennixx. It didn't take a degree in communication to work out who had been the third guest in the room. Well, that was the end of that then.