Claudia Carroll - Love Me Or Leave Me

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.’

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.