Love Me Or Leave Me

by Claudia Carroll

  I don’t say anything, just sit there, ramrod tense; bolt upright in my good work suit from Reiss, too-tight shoes and borrowed handbag, stomach clenched tight, frozen.

  I probably blink. And all that’s running through my mind on a loop is the one thought. I thought I was doing okay. I actually thought I was handling this. And then one probing question about my past, and I’m suddenly pole-axed.

  For the love of God, Rob McFayden, please don’t ask me any more … don’t delve into it … just LEAVE it …

  No such bleeding luck though. He’s like a dog with a bone trying to ferret it out of me now.

  ‘So,’ he persists, ‘maybe you’d like to elaborate a bit? I guess what I want to know is, what exactly happened to you three years ago to make you leave?’

  But my mouth’s completely dried up. I lean forward and take a sip of water from the glass in front of me, aware that he’s watching me intently, waiting.

  Bum-clenchingly awkward silence now and all I can think is, answer him, you eejit, you want this job, this is your dream job! So just look him in the eye and tell him the truth.

  Can’t though. Just not possible. I think back to the searing pain, so sharp that even thinking back to it now, from a safe distance of years, I can still recall every detail on an almost cellular level.

  Then I remember those first few dismal weeks in London, staying with an old college pal who I must have driven demented with the depressive state of me. I remember what a bloody struggle it was to get any kind of gig in the hotel industry at all back then, but how I just knew that hard work and lots of it would somehow pull me through. The only antidote that would have any kind of an effect on me.

  And so yes, I accepted a lower grade job on a reduced salary and you know what, Rob McFayden? I was more than delighted to. Frankly, I’d have done anything that came my way; scrubbed pots and pans, scoured toilet floors if they’d asked me to. I worked and slaved behind my desk, doing every spare hour of overtime that came my way. I became the best, most devoted Reservations Manager in the Northern hemisphere. Christmas, New Year’s Eve, bank holiday weekends; you name it. I basically volunteered for all the time slots that no one else wanted. I’ve had virtually next to no life here in London, it’s just been a never-ending rota of either working, sleeping or catching up on laundry I allowed to pile up, on account of I was working. Wow, what a whopping big surprise.

  And then miraculously, out of the blue and just when I was at my lowest ebb, I was headhunted for this job. My ideal job. The chance to manage my very own hotel, a tiny boutique one that appealed to a small, niche market. A very particular niche market as it happens, one that just happened to suit me down to the ground. And it seemed like everything I wanted all at once. A better job, a salary more in line with what I was used to, the chance to return home, back to Ireland and best of all, the chance to really prove myself. Because if I could make a hotel like this one work, then boy, I’d be ready for anything.

  I’d lived with humiliation and pain for long enough now. I missed my family and pals. Enough with the punishment, time to move on. No more of this self-imposed exile, I’d had enough. And yes, I’m sure what happened to me was the talk of the town for a while, but it’s in the past now, so why should I let that stop me pursuing what pretty much is a dream job on a decent salary? I may have been deadened on the inside, but one thing was certain: I was as ready to go back as I ever would be.

  I eyeball Rob McFayden, take a deep breath and go for it.

  ‘I had to leave my old job,’ I tell him, ‘for personal reasons that trust me, you don’t need to know about. Besides, a single phone call to the Merrion Hotel will doubtless fill you in on everything you want to know. But if anyone is qualified to run a hotel where broken-hearted people come to put their lives back together and move on, then believe me, I’m your girl.’

  Chapter Three

  A divorce hotel. Where you check in married and check out single. And yes, you did read that right. ‘A safe sanctuary to go to when you suddenly found your whole life was in shreds and you were no longer able to see the wood for the trees,’ just like the blurb said.

  But it was envisaged to be an awful lot more; this was to be somewhere supportive, non-judgmental, healing even. A place where people who’d long ago ceased to love each other could meet in a calm, stress-free environment with trained professionals on hand to help and offer guidance.

  For starters, there’d be a full team of industry professionals on hand to ease the soon-to-be-ex-couple through the process and to make it as fast and efficient as could be. Family lawyers, financial advisors, counsellors, you name it. There’d even be an estate agent on site, just in case jointly held property needed to be valued and subsequently sold. Absolutely everything had been thought of and nothing had been left to chance. This would be a place where two unhappy souls could quickly tie up loose ends and where something that had long been a source of acute pain to both, could gently be eased out of its misery. Kind of like Dignitas, except for the married.

  At least, that was the general idea.

  Of course I thought I was hearing things when I first stumbled across the whole concept. ‘Stone mad lunatics,’ I’d muttered to myself way back then, when I’d read about the opening of the world’s first divorce hotel over in Amsterdam.

  For starters, who in their sane mind would ever want to stay there? Let alone work in the kind of place where not a single guest even wanted to be in the first place? Just wait till you see, this daft idea will end up the laughing stock of the whole industry, I’d thought way back then, doubtless cackling like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz.

  But that was then and this is now, and pretty soon I discovered the bittersweet taste of having to eat my own words. Because how wrong was I?

  The divorce hotel concept is only about two years old now, virtually still a tiny baby in nappies, in hotelier terms. And yet in that relatively short window of time, it has not only met every single one of its financial targets, but managed to astonish the industry as a whole by actually exceeding them. No mean feat, in the middle of the biggest global economic meltdown since the Wall Street crash had everyone out queuing up outside soup kitchens, circa 1929.

  The original divorce hotel which had opened on the outskirts of Amsterdam, was virtually minuscule by industry standards, with a bare twenty-five rooms. And yet occupancy had never once dipped below full since it first began trading. No other word for that in this day and age except un-be-fecking-lievable. So there was nothing for me to do, bar shake my head in astonished admiration, same as everyone else, while wishing like hell I could somehow inveigle myself onto the bandwagon.

  So of course, it was only a matter of time before the up and coming Rob McFayden, with his finger ever on the pulse, got in on the act. A rival hotel group had already pitched to unveil a divorce hotel in London, so he began to look a little further afield. And thought, why not open one in a thriving, cosmopolitan city like Dublin? Which, thank you Ryanair, is easy to access, no matter what corner of Europe you happen to be in. A country famous for its hospitality and charm. And more importantly, as Rob told me at my initial interview, with a calculating glint in his eye, where he could negotiate a lease on a building for approximately a third of what he’d probably end up paying in central London.

  I read that you can always remember exactly where and when you were whenever a life-changing phone call comes. But in my case I happened to be in Asda, buying loo rolls and a tin of Whiskas for a stray tabby cat that comes in to visit me whenever the mood takes her.

  My mobile rang suddenly. Ferndale Hotels. I remember getting instant heart palpitation, shortness of breath, the works.

  ‘Miss Townsend? Chloe Townsend?’ came a crisp, efficient voice down the phone.

  ‘Emm … speaking,’ I stammered nervously as an irritating automated machine wailed ‘Unidentified item in the baggage area.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘Rob McFayden would like to offer you a contract
as General Manager and we very much look forward to welcoming you to the Ferndale Hotel team.’

  I think they must have heard my whoops of joy all the way to the back of the deli counter. Finally, finally, finally my life was turning around. And given what I’d been through, could there ever have been a job more tailor-made to suit me? Rob McFayden, I knew, was taking a huge chance on giving me the GM’s job and over my dead body was I about to let anyone down. To make a hotel like this work anywhere on the planet would be a dream come true, but to make it work in Dublin, on my home turf meant so much more.

  But, as was painstakingly outlined to me during my initial orientation training, there were many hard and fast rules to be observed. Rule one, though, was particularly hard for me to get my head round, seeing as how it was in flagrant contradiction of every other hotel on the face of the planet, where as long as a guest a) had cash enough to pay their bill and b) didn’t look like they were physically going to trash the room and nick all the light fittings, then, as far as management were concerned, everyone was welcome.

  But not at a divorce hotel, it seemed. Here, it was like the Alice in Wonderland of standard practice, where received wisdom was turned upside down. Strict protocol here was that only a couple who were on ‘cordial terms’ could be allowed to come and stay in the first place. And how could you possibly hope to do that, if you’d two exes still at the stage of wanting to hurl furniture across the room at each other?

  Another hard and fast rule was that all couples had to be interviewed, either separately or together, just so that, as General Manager, I could be certain that this was the right place, at the right time for them. After all, no divorce hotel was to be confused with a marriage guidance counsellor’s office. This procedure was all about neat and final closure, not accusations and recriminations and rows and bitterness and who got the lawnmower/flat screen telly/leather sofa from IKEA.

  Rule three was discretion. Utter and total discretion from all staff, at all times, about what went on within the four walls. And of all people, I understood all too well the acute need for fat gobs to be swiftly silenced, when you were going through something so private and acutely painful. Are you kidding me? I could probably teach a course in it by now.

  On the plus side though, here was what newly separated couples got for their buck at your standard divorce hotel. No matter where you happened to live in the world and no matter what jurisdiction bound you legally, there’s one ‘truth universally acknowledged’ that you can absolutely put your house on.

  For anyone who finds themselves in the position of looking for a divorce, you’ve basically got two options. Either you go to court, have a lengthy, protracted – and doubtless expensive – case, where every single detail of your personal family life would be aired in a public courtroom. With absolutely no dirty linen left unexamined.

  Humiliating, mortifying, prohibitively expensive and the end of it all, what would the net result most likely be? By and large, you’d get one third of the couple’s joint assets, he’d have a third and the lawyers ultimately would make off with the final third.

  And now suddenly here’s a viable alternative. Given that this is undoubtedly a process both parties will want to get over and done with as quickly as possible, why not check into discreetly luxurious surroundings and get the whole thing sorted out in a single weekend? And with cocktails on the side? After all, there’s nothing to be gained from dragging out the whole process. This way, instead of lawyers carrying off a vast chunk of the couple’s joint assets, everything would be split fifty-fifty, fairly and equitably down the middle.

  Best of all, no matter what stage a couple happened to be at in their separation, they could still check into a divorce hotel and at least get the final settlement set in stone. Then all the couple need do would be to bide their time and live their separate lives apart, until such time as they could appear before a judge, hand over their agreement, a gavel was walloped and they were formally granted a decree nisi. Easy as that.

  A divorce hotel strove to make something complicated, simple.

  Best of all, the premises that Ferndale Hotels had leased for their hotel in Dublin might as well have been purpose built for the job. Elegant and utterly discreet, it was one of those four-storey Georgian redbricks on Hope Street, just off leafy Fitzwilliam Square, surrounded by accountants’ and lawyers’ offices. The hotel’s name wasn’t even written on a canopy over the door, instead there was just a neat brass plaque saying, ‘Ferndale Hotels, Hope Street.’ Subtle and inconspicuous, its message clear. No one need ever know you’re a guest, not unless you want them to.

  ‘The Hope Street Hotel,’ as it quickly came to be known.

  *

  So I’m officially based back in Dublin now and oh thank you God, it feels so good to be home! Even if I’ve been so run off my feet that I’ve barely had the chance to spend any quality time with my best mate Gemma or any of the old gang. Somehow just being here, doing a job that’s challenging and yet that I really feel can and will take off, is firing me up and propelling me through each busy day until we formally open for business.

  Plus of course, being this overloaded with work means I’ve absolutely zero time to think about the one and only blight on the horizon. The all-too-real possibility that I might just be standing in the vegetable aisle in Marks & Spencer’s with greasy hair and no make-up, turn a corner and then walk slap bang into the whole reason why I hightailed it over to London for as long as I did.

  Frank. Or as Gemma refers to him, He Whose Name Shall Forever Remain Unspoken. Now, my spies tell me, promoted to Assistant General Manager at my old stomping ground, the Merrion Hotel, barely a stone’s throw from Hope Street. I imagine bumping into him with such punishing frequency it would scare you. But I stop myself from going any further. After all, this business venture is about helping others through their broken relationships. And not dwelling on my own troubles. At least not now. Not yet.

  But he’ll be watching my progress here, I know he will, as will half the industry. So this is it then; my one and only chance not to be the girl who bolted from a perfectly good job because of what I went through. This is my shot at proving not just to Frank, but to all our old colleagues and not least to myself, that I can make this work. That I can make a success of this; that I can make it fly.

  ‘I think it’s amazing what you’re trying to achieve here,’ Gemma says to me over a hasty lunch break I manage to snatch. ‘But I just have one question for you.’

  ‘Fire away,’ I say, between mouthfuls of takeout sushi.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, the Hope Street Hotel sounds like a great concept and everything,’ she says, shaking her head in puzzlement. ‘But mother of God, given that all of your guests will be going through marriage break-ups …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Well, sweetheart … exactly what kind of dramas are you going to end up having to deal with?’

  Chapter Four

  Dawn.

  Still in total shock, but at that numb stage where you can somehow function purely on automatic pilot, Dawn took one final moment to have a last, quick look around the tiny little shoebox of an apartment she and Kirk had been sharing, ever since they’d first been married. A poky flat above an Indian takeaway in town that permanently stank of garlic and onions, no matter how many cans of air freshener she went through.

  The tiny part of her brain somehow getting her through the hell she was stuck in, reminded her that of late, the place been starting to drive her insane anyway. The constant stench of grease from the takeaway mixed with prawns well past their use-by date. And how noisy it got from about midnight onwards, when drunk revellers would nip in for a cheap vindaloo, then start calling each other wankers at the top of their voices on the street outside.

  For as long as she and Kirk had lived here, they’d always planned to move on, just as soon as they could properly afford to, but of late, all the chats they used to have about their ideal pad had fizzled out. Almost as though
each of them silently recognized it was pointless, because this day would inevitably come.

  Just not like this, Dawn thought suddenly, shaking from head to foot, as the enormity of what she was about to do really hit home. Not this way. They’d been happy here. In many ways, they were still happy. Kirk was her best friend, her right hand, her go-to person. This would devastate him, but then he’d devastated her first, and like a child that knew no other way of expressing hurt, all she could do was try and inflict the same degree of pain right back instead.

  So are you really prepared to do this? she asked herself for about the thousandth time that miserable day. Just run away from the problem and not at least try to work through it?

  Yes was the answer. Because what he’d done had completely broken them forever. How could she possibly stay in this now? Just what kind of a doormat would that make her?

  Suddenly overcome by a crashing wave of exhaustion, Dawn slumped down onto their tiny sofa bed and tried her best to sit still for a moment, at least until her head stopped spinning.

  For a split second, her eye momentarily fell on a wedding photo on top of the bookshelf and she found herself dithering for a minute, wondering what she should do with it. Leave it where it was to remind Kirk that he had actually made a solemn vow that day? After all, he was the one who was forever saying that, ‘a vow was a promissory note against your soul.’ That that’s how much getting married had meant to him way back then. Okay, so most of the time he was stoned off his head when he did come out with it, but still, the sentiment was there. Or would she just angrily fling it into the bin, so he could gauge for himself exactly how she felt about what had just happened?

  She took a last second to really look at the photo. Her dream wedding. Or ‘that hippy-dippy, tree-hugging fiasco’ as her mother liked to refer to it. Hard to believe that it had been taken just a few short years ago. Has it really been that long, she wondered, her heart suddenly twisting in her ribcage as she thought back to that young, hopeful girl, so in love with this guy that she’d have happily walked through flames for him.