Our main renovations come to end and, when we finish the walkaround with JP, I’m once again fighting off tears so Manon doesn’t scold me. His team have worked wonders on the old hotel and now it will have a new life with a fresh look until the next owner comes along and decides to change it. I only hope whoever owns it next appreciates the amount of love that went into the design and the amount of hard work the tradespeople put into it to achieve our dreams. JP will stay on in a casual role, fitting us in between other jobs, and take more time to renovate suites as funds allow.
‘This is it,’ JP says, holding out a hand. ‘Thanks for trusting us with the job.’
‘Don’t be so dramatic. You’ll be back after work, right?’ Manon says, shoving him with her hip.
‘Well,oui, if that’s all right?’
‘Of course, you’re part of the fabric of this hotel now, and part of the family.’ Things have progressed fast for the lovebirds. I guess, when you know,you know. If I could have dreamed up the right guy for Manon it would have been a man like JP, but she would have laughed in my face so I’m glad she’s been bittenby the love bug because there’s no way she would have listened to me anyway.
‘Don’t get so maudlin,’ Manon says as I swat at more tears. ‘I’ve got news to cheer you up! Our first guests have booked, arriving in three days on December nineteenth! Six pax coming from Germany.’
‘Pax?’ I ask.
‘Oh, it’s a fancy hotel term that means “people”. I’ve been studying up on hotel management, you know, just for fun.’
‘You know a condition of sale could be that I insist you’re kept on as manager.’
‘Merci, Anais, but somehow I don’t think an investor would choose an employee who learned hotel management from the internet. It’s not as bad as learning from TikTok, but it’s not far off.’
‘You could study hotel management while you worked here part-time?’ But, really, what am I saying? I can’t make promises like that. The fate of the hotel is still undecided. Even with the place running as a going concern it would be tight, and I never envisaged myself as a hotelier even if I’d love to hold on to it for Manon’s sake.
But… there is hope on the horizon. An idea I have that might just work out for all parties. I give JP and the wider team a hug and thank them for all their efforts. Manon walks JP to the door, before latching on to his back like she’s a koala bear.
I go to my suite and call my literary agent.
‘Margaret,’ I say with a determined edge to my voice. ‘My Christmas romcom is almost done. At this juncture I’d like to remind you, you said make it messy but make it happen. So prepare yourself for a veryroughdraft.’
‘Did I say that? It doesn’t sound like me at all.’
‘Margaret.’
‘Fine, fine. Get it over to me when it’s finished and I’ll see if I can make sense of it.’
I grin. ‘Sure. There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. At the hotel, sealed behind a makeshift wall, we discovered a secret library, hidden away for almost one hundred years. And in that library we found a great wrong had been committed by a man called Benjamin Marceaux.’
‘ThewriterBenjamin Marceaux?’
‘Yes and… no. We think Benjamin did write the children’s novels, but he didn’t write the adult fiction he’s credited for. His wife Chloe did.’
‘WHAT!’ She screams so loud I’m sure birds outside scatter from the trees. ‘You have my full attention.’
‘First we found what amounted to be her last words:Keep my soul in peace. Keep my last manuscript safe.’ I explain the treasure trove of papers that we found. Notebooks, love letters. The fact she was a literary genius who never got any credit and escaped to the hotel to be with her true love, a painter and patron of literature, a woman named Lily-Louise Toussaint. There’s so much more. ‘We unearthed letters from friends; many people who supported her knew she was the real author but were sworn to secrecy to keep her safe from her husband, who she felt would surely kill her if he found her, not only because she had the hide to leave him for a woman, but because she could also share the secret he wanted kept from the world. She wrote all of his books and we’ve got proof. This hundred-year secret is now ready to be shared.’
‘The manuscript? Did you find it? Please tell me you did!’
‘Oui,we did.’ A tingle runs through me. ‘It was hidden behind one of the bookshelves in her library.’ My gaze drops to a leatherbound notebook on my desk, and I smile. ‘And there was a note.’
‘What did the note say?’
‘Well, that is rather special and I’d really rather prefer you read it yourself.’
‘Anais!The suspense is killing me! The manuscript – is it like her others?’
I stifle a laugh. Margaret is not exaggerating – this will be killing her, the not knowing. ‘Non, it’s a memoir. At its core it’s a love story told with her usual candour. It’s her life story, how her family forced her into marriage with a violent man. How he discovered her writing talent and used it for his own gain. And how, just when all hope was lost, Lily-Louise stepped into her life and gave her something to live for. With Lily’s help, as a patron of literature, Chloe went on to earn a small income writing articles for journals and newspapers under a nom de plume to pay her expenses. But she saved her greatest work until the end. Her memoir. I haven’t come across a novel that reads so well, Margaret. It’s incredibly special. A great, lost, love story, about two women who found each other, against the odds. You haven’t read a romance like this before, and it’s even better because it’s all true. It’s one for the ages.’
‘And I hope this means you’re passing this manuscript on to your cheerleader, your voice, your fierce and loyal literary agent?’
I laugh. ‘Would I choose anyone else? With Noah’s help, I’ve vowed to prove who Chloe was and I want to get her novels re-released under her own name. She deserves that much. And that’s just the start of my plans to honour Chloe and Lily-Louise.’
