The Snow Baby Read online

  It occurred to Kate that, in many ways, a good hotel was very similar to a good hospital. Cleanliness and service were both incredibly important and the housekeeping staff who were doing that evening’s shift were as diligent as nurses as they wiped down all the surfaces in the room.

  Eventually, the room was prepared to Mrs Shepherd’s satisfaction and she shooed away everyone but Jack – Mandy insisted he was there, of course – and Kate, who was to be pressed into service as Mrs Shepherd’s assistant. Kate patiently awaited her instructions, with the hotel’s considerable first aid kit at her side.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Shepherd to Mandy as Kate and Jack helped the pregnant girl onto the couch. ‘You’re a good deal further along than I expected. This baby is definitely coming tonight.’

  Mandy grimaced through another contraction. Jack held one of her hands and Kate held the other. Mandy squeezed Kate’s hand so hard, Kate thought she might not get away without a broken finger.

  ‘You can do it,’ Mrs Shepherd encouraged her. ‘You’re in a safe place now, Mandy. You can start pushing.’

  Mandy roared, screamed and squeezed Kate and Jack’s hands ever harder.

  Mrs Shepherd continued to issue calm instructions. The shouting didn’t bother her. She’d seen and heard it all before.

  The baby – a girl, weighing just six pounds – was born just before midnight. Kate brought the news across the courtyard from the spa to the guests who were assembled once more in the hotel restaurant. They gave a cheer that could be heard halfway around the Cotswolds. Kate felt her legs wobble with emotion as she accepted congratulations for her part in the baby’s safe arrival. The sheer number of instructions Mrs Shepherd had given her during the birth itself had kept her firmly focussed but now she could not hold back the feelings that were swelling inside her. She’d helped deliver a baby. The little voice inside her was singing with joy.

  Chapter Sixteen

  But not everyone received the news of the new arrival with jubilation. Once Kate had finished answering the guests’ questions about the birth, Dave called her into the management office along with Clare.

  ‘This doesn’t change anything,’ he said. ‘This Florence Nightingale act. You’ve been in breach of any number of rules this evening, culminating with taking money out of petty cash without giving a reason. I’m still within my rights to ask you to leave. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m asking you to go and I’m making Clare official assistant manager.’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Kate. ‘You can’t just sack me without following the proper process. Just telling me to leave is not the proper process. I’ll take this to the highest level.’

  ‘Well, now’s your chance,’ said Clare. ‘I’ve just been checking the emails. It seems we are going to have a guest in the Shergar Suite tonight after all. It’s Mr Richard Overton.’

  Kate understood the significance of the guest’s name at once. Richard Overton was the owner of the hotel chain that managed The Stables. Kate had met him just once, when he came to visit The Stables one Gold Cup week. He had been polite but aloof. He wasn’t a man who accepted excuses from his employees. Everything had to be perfect for his visit.

  And Kate had established a maternity ward in the hotel’s luxury spa.

  ‘He’s going to be here in twenty minutes,’ said Clare. ‘He was supposed to be flying to Geneva this evening but the snow coming from the east meant his plane couldn’t leave so he’s coming here instead.’

  ‘You need to get out of here before he arrives,’ said Dave to Kate. ‘And I wouldn’t bother him with your human rights act if I were you. I happen to know he takes a very dim view of theft. And as for dragging the police into hotel business.’ Dave shook his head. ‘A very dim view indeed.’

  ‘I’ll go and get my things now,’ said Kate, suddenly not wanting to stay at The Stables a moment longer anyway. She could see no way she could change the situation. Taking the money from the petty cash box was her undoing.

  Clare and Dave were ready and waiting in the car park when Mr Overton arrived in an enormous black limousine. Dave opened the door and Clare practically curtseyed. Kate watched it all from the window of her room in the staff quarters as she packed her belongings into her battered old suitcase.

  The idea that she had done the right thing, the only thing she could do under the circumstances, was of little comfort to her at that moment. For Dave had known when he gave Kate her marching orders that unlike anyone else at the hotel, with perhaps the exception of Gabriel, Kate really had nowhere in the length and breadth of the nation where she would find herself welcome at this time of night. There was no-one she could call. No-one who would tell her not to worry and make up the spare bedroom while she drove cross-country in the snow. Because the snow was really coming down now.

  Kate wasn’t sure what she could do but beg Dave for permission to stay in her room for just one more night, just as Mandy and Jack and begged Kate not to turn them out of the barn. She wasn’t going to do that.

  Instead, Kate watched the pantomime unfolding in the car park. Dave was getting Mr Overton’s luggage out of the back of the limo. Clare was holding an umbrella over the man’s head to protect him from the snow, as though he were the queen, and guiding him towards the hotel entrance. Dave followed behind with the bags, straining at the weight of them. Kate wondered why he hadn’t got one of the bellboys to do the job. Then it struck her, perhaps the bellboys were refusing to help out. Perhaps it wasn’t just the kitchen staff and Gabriel who supported her decision to help two strangers on a cold, Christmas night.

  The thought momentarily warmed Kate’s heart. She put the last of her clothes into the case. She laid her old teddy bear on top and closed the lid. Five minutes later, she was downstairs in the hotel lobby, ready to hand in her keys.

  She heard Clare distracting Mr Overton from the fact that the Shergar Suite wasn’t ready. Perhaps housekeeping was on strike too.

  ‘We thought you might like a tour of the hotel first. See how we’ve decorated it for the season. Perhaps you could try one of our bespoke Christmas cocktails in the bar.’

  ‘I’m very tired,’ said Mr Overton. ‘I just want to get to my room.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dave. ‘Well, you see…’

  Kate put her keys down on the front desk.

  ‘My room’s empty,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he could go in there.’

  Mr Overton had never met Kate so it was inevitable that he took her for a disgruntled guest, who’d had such a bad time she was leaving in the middle of the night.

  ‘Is there some kind of problem?’ Mr Overton asked, full of concern. ‘My name is Richard Overton and I’m the owner of the Overton Hotel chain. Madam, I won’t let you go until you tell me why it is that you would rather leave our hotel in the middle of the night than complete your Christmas stay.’

  ‘She’s not a guest,’ said Clare, stepping between Kate and the VIP.

  ‘No,’ said Dave. ‘We didn’t want to have to bother you with this, Mr Overton, but Kate has left us with no choice. Perhaps we should go into the office.’

  ‘What can’t be said here?’ asked Kate, feeling suddenly daring. After all, she had nothing to lose and the longer she could stay here in the warm lobby of the hotel, the less time she would have to spend sleeping in her car.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Overton. ‘What can’t be said here? What’s going on?’

  ‘I really think we should move this to the office,’ said Clare.

  While they had been standing there, many of the guests seemed to have drifted back into the lobby. They pretended that they were coming to look at the notice board on which the following two days’ programme was outlined but really they wanted to know what was going on now. It had been a very exciting evening.

  ‘Kate was our assistant manager, until tonight,’ Dave began.

  ‘I’m the assistant manager now,’ said Clare.

  ‘Acting assistant manager,’ Dave cut in quickly.

  ‘But you sa
id…’

  Dave gave Clare a ‘shut up’ look.

  ‘Start from the beginning,’ said Mr Overton.

  ‘I’m afraid that Kate let some down and outs onto the premises and they started a fire in the barn that threatened the health and safety of our guests,’ said Dave.

  ‘It’s a case for instant dismissal,’ said Clare. ‘Endangering the hotel guests and hotel property.’

  ‘Not only that, she was caught in the act of taking money from petty cash.’

  ‘To give to the people in the barn so they could find somewhere else for the night. I was going to give it back. I would have simply taken money from my own purse but…’

  ‘You took money from petty cash to give to trespassers who lit a fire on the premises?’ Mr Overton asked.

  Put like that, it sounded very bad.

  ‘Because they had nowhere else to go and even though I know it breaks every rule imaginable, I don’t see what else I could have done. The ‘down and outs’ in question were very young and very vulnerable. The girl was having a baby.’

  ‘She had it in the spa,’ piped up Penelope King, breaking the illusion that the guests weren’t listening to every single word. ‘In one of the treatment rooms. It’s a little girl.’

  ‘You’re telling me that a homeless woman has just had a baby in the spa?’ Mr Overton repeated.

  ‘A sacking offence,’ said Dave.

  ‘This is a luxury hotel, Miss Farley,’ Overton said, turning to Kate. ‘It is not a homeless hostel. Neither is it a maternity hospital.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Dave. ‘There are very real implications for our insurance. Right, Mr Overton?’

  ‘I know,’ said Kate. ‘It wasn’t the correct thing to do. But what would you have done?’ She appealed directly to Mr Overton. ‘Would you have preferred for her to give birth in a stable?’

  Mr Overton was momentarily lost for words.

  The guests all murmured their agreement with Kate. Any decent person would have followed her lead. Anyone who had a heart. Mr Overton still said nothing and Kate really didn’t expect anything he did say to be positive. He didn’t look like the kind of man who was terribly fond of a sob story.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Kate. ‘I suppose I had better get going. I understand that I’ve committed a sacking offence. But if you don’t agree with me, Mr Overton, that what I did was the proper human thing to do then perhaps I don’t want to work for your hotel chain anyway.’

  ‘Wait! Kate!’ called Mr Shepherd. ‘Don’t you dare go anywhere!’

  Kate shook her head and murmured, ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘No,’ said Penelope. ‘You stay here, Kate Farley.’

  ‘Mr Overton, we have to tell you, that one of the reasons we come here year after year is because we enjoy seeing Kate,’ said Penelope’s sister Eugenie.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Mr Shepherd. ‘Kate is as important a part of the hotel as any of the fancy furniture. She is the heart of this place. If she is on the reception desk, then we know that our stay will be wonderful. It wouldn’t be Christmas without her.’

  ‘Her kindness is what we all value most,’ said Josephine King. ‘And it’s her kindness that has got her into this trouble. A less kind person would have turfed Jack and Mandy out into the night. I think it’s to Kate’s credit that she broke the rules for this young couple.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Mr Shepherd. ‘Even in the Navy, you have to know when the rules should be broken. Kate made the right call.’

  Mr Overton listened to all the guests carefully. And there were many who spoke up for Kate that night. She fought hard to keep herself from crying at their kindness.

  ‘Well,’ Mr Overton said to Kate. ‘It seems as though you have quite a few fans.’

  ‘She does,’ Penelope King agreed.

  Mr Shepherd nodded vigorously. ‘We won’t be coming back here if Kate has to leave tonight.’

  ‘And we’ll be going too,’ said Gabriel. Remi and the kitchen staff stood beside him, as did the housekeeping team and the gang from the bar. They’d all come to see what was happening. ‘It’s Christmas, Mr Overton. Have a heart.’

  ‘Yes!’ the guests insisted. ‘It’s Christmas.’

  Mr Overton nodded a curt sort of nod.

  ‘Then of course she must stay,’ he said. ‘Because,’ he added to Kate, ‘sometimes we make mistakes for all the right reasons. Now, I must meet this baby.’

  ‘She’s with her parents in the spa,’ said Mr Shepherd. ‘And my wife, who delivered her.’

  ‘In the spa? They should be in the Shergar Suite!’ said Mr Overton. ‘Someone from housekeeping, would you please sort it out?’

  ‘But where are you going to stay?’ Clare asked.

  ‘I am sure you can find me a space in the staff quarters,’ said Mr Overton. ‘I don’t need a four-poster bed. Especially since I intend to stay up late and get to know these lovely people.’ He gestured to the guests.

  Kate thought she saw smoke coming out of Clare’s ears at that.

  ‘And, please,’ Mr Overton said to Kate. ‘If you would be kind enough to make sure that our guests have everything they need. Mr Baron, if you could come with me…’

  Mr Overton took Dave into his office and closed the door for privacy. No one needed to ask what that meant. Just as no-one asked Dave what had happened when he stormed out of the office again just a couple of minutes later.

  ‘You can stuff your stupid job!’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Come on, Clare. We’re going.’

  Clare was completely bewildered, but she followed him all the same.

  ‘Well,’ said Gabriel. ‘I think that’s worked out rather nicely.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  The following morning, Kate woke bright and early as usual. Though she had worked until late into the night, now that Clare and Dave were no longer on the premises, Kate had to do a double shift. No matter that it was Christmas Day, someone had to be on the front desk before even the earliest riser among the guests. For Kate, that meant being in her uniform at six.

  It was worth getting up early. During those brief hours of sleep Kate had managed to catch, the snow had really arrived in the Cotswolds. The view from Kate’s narrow window was magical. The landscape was all dusted white. It looked like a picture from the front of a Christmas card. Kate knew the guests would be delighted.

  She headed for the lobby where Gabriel was already lighting the fire, which was the last of the duties for his shift. At six o’clock, the day porters would come on and Gabriel would go home. Or rather, back to his room in the staff quarters.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said to Kate. ‘What a night, eh?’

  ‘What a night indeed.’

  ‘Are you all ready for the big day?’

  ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

  Just then, they were joined not by one of the day porters, but by Richard Overton. Kate almost jumped out of her skin.

  ‘Miss Farley, I’m reporting for duty. If you’ll just give me my instructions…’

  ‘Mr Overton, good morning. I’ll make sure that the kitchen finds you some breakfast.’

  ‘I had breakfast in the staff kitchen already, thank you. I’ve come here to work so let me make myself useful. There’s no chance I’ll get to the airport with this snow on the ground and I know it’ll be a busy day.’

  It certainly was. The first of the guests came down for breakfast at seven. They were a couple from Birmingham, who were staying at The Stables but would be having Christmas lunch with family nearby. The King sisters gathered at eight. The Shepherds came down shortly afterwards.

  ‘Do you think we should see if our guests in the Shergar Suite want breakfast in bed?’ Mr Overton asked.

  Kate studied his face in an attempt to see if he was joking. But she didn’t have to put it to the test. While Kate was trying to work out what was happening, Jack and Mandy came down the stairs, with their new baby wrapped in a blanket. Mrs Shepherd had checked on them first thing and saw no reason why
they needed to go to hospital if Mr Overton was happy for them to stay at the hotel for a few more days instead. They had phoned the hospital and a post-natal midwife was going to call in and check on them that day.

  ‘We wondered if we might be able to get some breakfast?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Of course!’ said Mr Overton. ‘You are our guests of honour.’

  All the guests wanted to see the new baby. Though she was still so very new, everyone insisted that she didn’t have that scrunched up Winston Churchill look that afflicts so many newborns. When her fans said that she was gorgeous, they meant it. Mandy and Jack’s new baby was the most beautiful newborn anyone had ever seen.

  ‘Would you like to hold her?’ Mandy asked Kate.

  Kate had experience of a great many things – working in the hospitality trade, you have to deal with all sorts – but she had actually never spent much time around babies. Much less a baby who was so very new. But Mandy’s confidence inspired her. Kate took the baby and cradled her just as she had seen Mandy do. With careful fingers, she pulled the blanket away from the baby’s face so she could get a better look. As she did so, the baby uncurled her own fingers and swiftly clamped them around Kate’s. Then she opened her eyes and seemed to look right at her.

  ‘Wow,’ said Kate.

  ‘She’s taken to you,’ observed Mr Overton.

  ‘You are her fairy godmother,’ said Mandy.

  The birth of the baby at The Stables had made Christmas special for everyone staying there. And Mr Overton was very pleased that it would be the perfect tale with which to begin his New Year letter to every single person who worked for his hotel chain. And what a PR coup too, he admitted to Kate privately. ‘There’s nothing we won’t do for our guests at an Overton Hotel.’