Sarah Painter - The Secrets Of Ghosts

At The Grange Katie checked the staff rota and walked through the kitchen. ‘Here comes trouble,’ Jo said over her shoulder. She was frying what looked like ten different things at once, so Katie didn’t pause to chat. Jo was tiny, four foot something, and the head chef. She also had the loudest shouting voice Katie had ever heard, as if to compensate for her stature. She’d terrified Katie when she’d first started at the hotel, but now she knew that Jo played that role. As long as you weren’t completely inept. Katie cringed as she walked past a new kitchen assistant who appeared to be ladling coulis around an individual cheesecake with all the finesse of a Labrador. Sure enough, she heard Jo yelling before the door had swung shut.

Katie picked up a spare apron and tied it around her waist, slipped a pen and pad into the front pocket and headed into the restaurant. ‘What are you doing here?’ Frank, puffed up with his new position as Head Waiter, greeted her with his customary lack of charm. Katie was not in the mood so she just raised an eyebrow and said nothing.

‘You’re supposed to be in the function room. Wedding. Go. Go.’ Frank made little shooing gestures with his hands, as if Katie were a naughty puppy.

When I get my power, I’m never waitressing again, Katie promised herself. She plastered on her professional smile and pushed open the door to the private dining room. A thin man dressed in waiting-staff black zoomed up. ‘Are you Katie? Thank Christ. You’ve done silver service before, right? Brilliant.’ He practically dragged her to the side of the room where buffet tables were laid out. Platters of cold meat and bowls of salad gave way to gigantic metal trays of chicken wings and pork escalopes crusted with a topping that Katie feared would slide off the moment she tried to haul them onto a plate. She tried to manoeuvre herself to the cold end, thinking that if she threw some salad down a punter at least she wouldn’t give them third-degree burns.

The people who had been seated at round tables around the room decided, as one, that it was chow time and a queue formed. It was a polite queue; no pushing or shoving, just lots of chatter punctuated by braying laughter. Katie picked up the oversized serving tongs and prepared to fling food at the guests.

The waiter next to her smiled hello. ‘I hope the MOPs are hungry — they might not notice the food is lukewarm.’

Katie smiled back. MOP stood for member of public and had been one of the first bits of insider lingo she’d learned at The Grange. It was something she loved about the job, the feeling of belonging to a team, of knowing a secret language. Perhaps more so because of being an only child. Katie had always longed for a sibling — ideally a twin sister — who she could share secrets with.

‘Excuse me?’ A youngish guy was holding out a half-full plate of food. ‘Would you mind giving me some of that—’ he frowned momentarily at the tray of chicken parcels ‘—stuff?’

Katie glanced at the far end of the buffet where the first guests were just beginning to be served. ‘You’re supposed to queue that way.’ She waved her tongs.

He grinned at her and she thought: good looking and he knows it. ‘I’m a rule-breaker. A maverick. And what’s a MOP?’

‘You’ll be a hungry maverick if you don’t join that queue.’

‘Oh, go on, I know you’re not nearly that mean.’ He put a hand to his stomach and Katie tried not to notice how nice his torso looked, how well he was wearing his shirt and buttoned-up waistcoat.

‘You have no idea,’ Katie said, narrowing her eyes.

‘Fine, I shall simply have to fill up on carbs. But I’m blaming you when I feel all bloated and lethargic later.’ He grabbed a bread roll from the basket and stuffed it into his pocket, then piled two more onto the side of his plate.

By now one of the legitimately queuing people had reached Katie so she turned resolutely away from the cheeky good-looking guy and said: ‘Would you like a chicken and Parma ham parcel, madam?’ The woman at the front of the queue opened her mouth to answer but didn’t get a chance.

‘That sounds heavenly. You know, I’ve changed my mind and I will.’ Cheeky guy had his plate out again and was smiling at Katie, his dark eyes shining with barely suppressed humour. Katie wanted nothing more than to slap the plate out of his hands but Frank was hovering nearby, eyeballing her with an intensity that suggested guests ought to be walking away with chicken parcels, not engaging in a Mexican stand-off with the staff.

Katie knew when she was beaten. She successfully manoeuvred the chicken parcel onto the plate and gave him a fake smile. ‘Enjoy!’ Then she turned back to the woman who was waiting.

While Katie concentrated on her silver-service tongs, she couldn’t help watching the chicken thief. He looked quite boyish, but with a scruffy bit of stubble that contrasted rather pleasantly with his smart clothes. She wondered, for the thousandth time, why suit-wearing had gone out of fashion for men. Cary Grant, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, all bona fide hotties in their day, and all unlikely to look quite so delicious in hipster jeans and an over-sized knitted beanie.

There was something a bit off, though. Katie almost dropped a chicken parcel down a customer’s dress as she contemplated him. He had taken his plate of food and eaten standing up. He chatted to people, looked as if he was always on his way to a table, but never actually landed anywhere. It was almost as if he didn’t have a seat to go to.

The chicken thief had a slim build and light brown hair that was kind of curly and wild as if he’d just rolled out of a particularly enjoyable bed. He smiled easily whenever anybody looked his way, but in between he was watching the crowd with an unnerving purpose. After studying him for a while, Katie realised that he looked like a predator in a herd of gazelle. Something was telling her that he was up to no good, although God knew what she could do about it, when she was distracted by an over-excited pageboy having the sugar rush of his life. When she next looked for him, he’d disappeared. It was none of her concern, anyway. Wasn’t her wedding. Wasn’t her problem.

Later on, after the dining tables had been moved and the disco cranked up, Katie was pushing the last bits of buffet food around on the serving plates, trying to make them look a little less sad and leftover, when Frank hustled up and barked orders: ‘It’s winding down here. Go and help with room service.’

She fetched the tray from the kitchen and checked the room number. Mr Cole in The Yellow Room had ordered a late-night snack of cheese and biscuits and a glass of port. Katie had been upstairs in The Grange many times before but, in her depressed state of mind, the grand staircase seemed oppressive. There was too much oak panelling everywhere and the brass stair rods just made her wince in sympathy with whoever had to polish the damn things. She had a sudden, horrifying vision of that person being her. What if she never worked out what she wanted to do? What if she ended up working at The Grange for ever and ever?

The Yellow Room was on the top floor. Katie walked down one grand hallway to a narrower staircase and up two flights to a plainer corridor. The walls were papered in cream with a thick embossed damask pattern but the ceiling was lower and the decorative mouldings less fancy. The old servants’ quarters, most likely. The corridor was very clean and very quiet. The fire door whispered shut on the stairwell and, at once, the light seemed to dim.

Katie didn’t know why she suddenly felt so uneasy. She told herself she was tired and a bit miserable, but it didn’t help. She felt a blast of cold air on her back and turned to see who had opened the door. It was shut.