Chapter 2 continued

…Lizzie felt slightly sick. Mr. Blackheath was a rotund man, with glasses, and faint lisp that sat quietly but persistently behind his front teeth. The thought of him even knowing about the existence of magazines with pictures like that in them was distasteful… more than distasteful. It was all wrong. She frowned to herself, unable to tear her gaze away.

“Don’t you worry about that. Just remember not to dust out the insides of his cupboards. There’s worse in there. Think yourself lucky that he’s got a bit of shame and doesn’t ask us to oil his handcuffs for him.” Lizzie jolted. “Seriously!” Veronica puckered her mouth. “You get all sorts in here.”

Veronica disapproved of the guests. She sucked her teeth at the soap scum marks in the bathrooms. She tutted and sighed over the dust under the bed, the biscuit crumbs in the bed, the rumpled sheets, the spills on the carpet, the million and one ways in which each guest seemed to conspire to make her job miserable. Yet, for all her sighing and outward disapproval, she continued to regard them with a kind of dispassionate affection. She tolerated the people in the hotel because of her fervent believe that they were not at heart any worse than Jo Public out on the street. And so she could not bring herself to feel truly venomous towards the men who furtively sidled into the lap dancing club downstairs. She could not really hate the mothers who slapped their children, unaware that their wails echoed into the staff room. She didn’t really despise the older men who came into the hotel for one evening with their pert young secretaries, then phoned their wives from the payphone in reception. As far as Veronica was concerned, this was just what the world was like. The unpleasant bits rose to the surface when people were on holiday, or away from home. They let their guard down, they felt themselves raised from rock bottom to above the staff, and kicked down accordingly, to make sure everyone knew that they were not last in the pecking order. They weren’t particularly bad people, nor good people, they were just people. A shame that they didn’t notice that same fact about the staff, she added to herself, giving a sniff of disapproval.

“Lizzie!” she said sharply. “We’ve been quite long enough in here. Go and get me the tea-towels and table cloths from laundry, before we go and get ready for the dinner shift. Seven tea-towels, twenty table cloths. Chop-chop!”

Lizzie gladly scuttled out of the room, hoping she could leave mental images of blindfolds, gags and whips behind her.

Carl’s voice accosted her from across reception, “So what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“What, me?” Lizzie laughed foolishly.

“Course you! Come over here, darlin’, let me get a good look at you.”

She scuttled over to the reception desk, which Carl was lolling over with a lascivious look in his eye.

“Ver-ry nice…” he said, looking Lizzie up and down in a way that made her stomach feel… odd. Nice? she thought to herself. Fluttery? Butterflies? No. Just… odd.

“So, like I say, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“I need the money, don’t I?”

“Come off it. Look at you. Fresh out of school. What do you need money for? No flat, no car, no little one on the way… or is there?” Carl winked at her lewdly.

“No!” Lizzie answered a little too hastily.

“None of that, then? Not having any of it? You must be beating them off with a stick. Too prim for them? Not letting them have any of it? Nice little Catholic girl?”

Lizzie remained in uncomfortable silence, twisting her tabard between her hands, cheeks hot.

“Look.” Carl’s voice was suddenly softer. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t tease you. You’re only a little girl.”

“I’m fucking not just a little girl.” Lizzie was furious, and even more furious to find herself feeling frustrated and tearful. “ I’m – I’m sixteen. Seventeen in February.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.” In a slow, careful movement, Carl lent across the desk, and his fingers met hers. Lizzie held her breath. She watched his fingers, stained from nicotine, running gently over the back of her hand and down the length of her forefinger, then back up to the wrist, then – so gently she should have barely been able to feel it, sweep down until the whole of his hand was holding hers “All grown up. I didn’t realise.”

“Yeah. Well.” Lizzie swiped surreptitiously at her nose, but carefully did so with the hand that Carl was not holding. He continued to stroke it gently, while she watched, fascinated. He had a gold ring with a black stone on his little finger, and a small scar near the bottom of his palm. They were both watching their hands now, wondering what was going to happen. Lizzie wondered briefly how she was going to pull away and get back to work, and then suddenly in the bang of a door and a mass of scarlet hair and quivering bosom, Veronica burst into reception.

“Lizzie! Where’ve you got to with those table-cloths?”

Carl’s hand shot away from Lizzie’s at lightning speed. But not fast enough for Veronica, who dropped an arch glance at the desk, then bustled on. “Get a move on, girl! We haven’t got all day!”

Lizzie picked herself up and felt suddenly stupid. And she felt cross for feeling stupid, and suddenly an intense annoyance with herself for being so embarrassed, to Carl for ever touching her in the first place, and to Veronica for interrupting them, came over her in a rage.

“Take your stupid table-cloths!” She thrust the armfuls of stiff fabric into the arms of an astonished Veronica. “I’m off to the loo.”

And she marched down the corridor and ran upstairs.

continued…