Be Careful What You Wish For Read online

  Be Careful What

  You Wish For

  Gemma Crisp developed her love of books and magazines while growing up on a sheep farm in the middle of Tasmania in the prehistoric days before the internet. It wasn’t until she’d hit the bright lights of London some years later that she realised she could get paid to write about mascara, threesomes and celebrities (not necessarily all at once!). After acing her first magazine internship, thanks to being a photocopying and coffee-fetching ninja, Gemma moved to Sydney and has spent more than a decade working for some of Australia’s glossiest magazines, including New Woman, Girlfriend, OK!, Cosmopolitan Bride and NW. She popped her editorship cherry at teen bible DOLLY, then moved to the editor’s chair at CLEO, where she spent her days fending off wannabe Eligible Bachelors, wrangling celebrity publicists and attempting to craft the perfect coverline. Gemma is now based in London again, where she’s trying not to buy Topshop out of shoes.

  GEMMA

  CRISP

  Be Careful What

  You Wish For

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, alive or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  First published in 2013

  Copyright © Gemma Crisp 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National

  Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74237 891 6

  Typeset in 12.5/18.5pt Joanna MT Std by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Printed in Australia by Griffin Press

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For the Adorables –

  you know who you are

  Contents

  London

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Sydney

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Acknowledgements

  LONDON

  one

  ‘GoodafternoonNinaspeakinghowmayIhelpyou?’ Nina warbled into the phone automatically while trying her best not to stare at Rob, the hotel porter she’d been fantasising about since her first day working on the front desk at the Bickford Hotel. Her mouth went dry as he ambled towards the elevator accompanied by a trolley stacked high with Louis Vuitton suitcases. ‘He’s so hot, I actually want to lick him,’ she thought to herself for approximately the 952,384th time.

  ‘Yeah, hi, this is Tyrone from the Royal Suite,’ an American voice said on the other end of the line.

  Nina dragged her gaze away from Rob’s thighs and forced herself to pay attention. Guests who booked the Royal Suite – which cost five thousand pounds a night – were either A-list celebrities hitting London for their film premiere or sold-out album tour, beyond-rich hedge fund gurus or, in the case of the Saudi family who had booked it for three months the previous summer, international royalty.

  ‘I’m calling to check on the fans,’ Tyrone continued. ‘Princess Cupcake wants the car to take her to Harvey Nichols in ten minutes, so make sure there’s a decent amount of fans in the lobby when she walks through. She wasn’t happy with yesterday’s crowd.’ His tone was slightly ominous.

  ‘Certainly, sir, I completely understand,’ Nina replied, knowing full well Princess Cupcake’s bodyguard wouldn’t detect the dripping sarcasm hiding behind her ingratiating tone. ‘I’ll get it sorted right away.’

  She scooted across the foyer to the concierge’s desk, where Big Tim had just finished twenty minutes of negotiating with the maître d’ of London’s hottest restaurant in order to get Mr Rothschild, one of the hotel’s regular guests, off the waiting list and onto a VIP table.

  ‘All done, sir, the Wolseley is expecting you at nine pm – just ask for Jean-Marc when you arrive. Thank you, sir, much appreciated; enjoy your dinner tonight,’ he said smoothly as Mr Rothschild slipped him a fifty-pound note for his trouble. Nina looked enviously at the pink bill as it went straight into the pocket of Big Tim’s waistcoat – she couldn’t recall Mr Rothschild tipping her when she’d checked him in and shown him to his room two days ago. Then again, he hadn’t exactly been in the mood to tip after realising he hadn’t received his free American Express Platinum upgrade. Nina cringed as she remembered explaining that the upgrade was subject to availability and unfortunately the hotel was fully booked. Not that Mr Rothschild had cared – he’d worked himself into a fury, threatening to move to another five-star hotel down the road and to tell his executive assistant to blacklist the Bickford for all future stays. She’d only managed to escape when Rob had arrived to deliver the luggage. Johan, her best friend who also worked on the front desk, had to cover for her while she’d cried in the switchboard office; even though she knew the hotel had more than its fair share of power-tripping guests, having a grown man scream in her face wasn’t what she’d file under F for Fun.

  ‘Orright, luv? Whatcha want, eh?’ Big Tim asked, lapsing back into his Cockney accent while looking down at Nina from his two-hundred-centimetre height. ‘Hurry up, there’s a cup of tea in the staff canteen with my name on it.’

  ‘Princess Cupcake wants the car to take her to Harvey Nicks in ten minutes . . .’ Nina began to explain.

  ‘. . . So we need to round up her adoring fans and make sure they’re in the foyer when she walks through,’ Big Tim finished. ‘Gawd, Harvey Nicks is only two hundred yards from here – do her legs not work or something?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘She probably doesn’t want to ruin them six-inch Gucci heels. Well, Victor just got back from Gatwick, so he can drive her.’

  Princess Cupcake had arrived at the Bickford five days ago with a twenty-strong entourage. An American singer with ten number-one hits and an ego to match, she was renowned for insisting the hotel redecorate the Royal Suite whenever she stayed so that everything was bubblegum pink and all the suite’s rooms were overflowing with plush Hello Kitty toys. Nina had no idea why she insisted on booking under a fake name seeing her fans knew she always stayed at the same hotel – they started camping outside days before she was scheduled to fly in to Farnborough on her record label’s private jet. To the annoyance of the hotel’s reservations manager, Cupcake’s management insisted that no other guests could stay on the same floor as the Royal Suite when the singer was in town, meaning the hotel’s occupancy rates took a hit. But hosting a celebrity as big as Cupcake was a
publicity coup for the hotel, plus the general manager’s fifteen-year-old daughter was a massive fan, so what Cupcake wanted, Cupcake got.

  As Big Tim called Victor over and instructed him to cherry-pick thirty fans from the gaggle waiting outside the hotel’s front door for a glimpse of their idol, Nina realised she’d left the front desk unattended – a pet hate of Mr Farrington-Smyth, the hotel’s manager. He had a TV in his office linked to a direct feed from the video camera that was constantly trained on the front desk so he could monitor the reception area.

  As she hurried back to her post, her four-inch heels clicking on the marble floor, Nina remembered the first time she’d walked into the hotel for her job interview. God, it felt like forever ago. She’d now spent almost two years dealing with ridiculously rich guests, showing them to their ridiculously overpriced rooms and putting up with their ridiculous hysterics when it dawned on them that their room didn’t have a view of Buckingham Palace. It didn’t matter that none of the rooms at the hotel had a view of the palace – in the guests’ minds, she should be pulling bricks out of the heritage-listed building with her bare hands to create a view especially for them, while simultaneously noting down their newspaper preference and reciting their credit card numbers off by heart. No wonder she had started dreading going to work.

  It had been a totally different story when she’d first scored the job. A decidedly unladylike snort escaped as she remembered the feeling of awe that had washed over her when she’d first laid eyes on the doormen in their dove-grey morning suits and peaked caps; the delicate white orchids on the pristine antique reception desk; the gold flocked wallpaper and obese chintz cushions in the guests’ rooms, contrasted with state-of-the-art technology. It was five-star luxury on crack.

  And then there were the guests themselves – fabulously wealthy and spoilt rotten. At first Nina had loved watching them strut through the lobby from her perch at the reception desk. The women were usually weighed down with the haul of an afternoon spent at Bond Street’s designer stores after dropping thousands of pounds in Prada, Dior and McQueen while the men celebrated million-pound business deals with a fat Montecristo or two in the cigar bar. With the ink barely dry on the Australian immigration departure stamp in her passport, Nina had almost gone into anaphylactic shock when she’d spied her first Hermès Birkin bag (bright pink ostrich) hanging off the diamond-encrusted hand of Ms Giuliani, a New York stockbroker who jetted to London every two weeks and always insisted on staying in suite 329. But the novelty soon wore off. These days, Nina sniffed in disdain if she was handed a Gold American Express card, let alone a bog-standard green one. She barely blinked while charging outrageously inflated Wimbledon box-seat tickets to guests’ room accounts and she could no longer conjure up an iota of excitement when the reservations department breathlessly briefed her about the latest celebrity to book the Royal Suite. Even the salacious gossip about the guests from the butlers and housekeeping staff didn’t seem as juicy – nothing shocked her anymore.

  Sitting down behind the reception desk, making sure she was in full view of Mr Farrington-Smyth’s video camera, Nina was about to check how many more arrivals were due that afternoon when ninety-five per cent of the oxygen was sucked out of the room – Princess Cupcake was making her grand entrance. The babble of noise from the fans who’d been ushered into the lobby faded to a reverential silence, punctured by muffled squeaks from teenagers unable to control themselves. As Cupcake glided across the floor, dressed in a pink babydoll dress choked with ruffles and lace, she glanced coyly at the crowd from under her two-inch lash extensions. With a beatific smile on her face, she paused intermittently to sign a magazine cover or a CD, or pose with a fan lucky enough to be deemed worthy. Nina could see Tyrone, Princess Cupcake’s massive bodyguard, shadowing her every move, eyes flicking in five different directions at once, just in case a deranged fan happened to be in the vicinity. She caught his eye and he gave her a curt nod – Cupcake was happy with the turnout. Despite herself, Nina felt her shoulder muscles unclench. ‘Sheeeeeeeesh, anyone would think you’d engineered peace in the Middle East,’ she chastised herself while watching the singer swan out of the double doors, leaving a cloud of sickly sweet fairy-floss scent behind her. ‘Telling the concierge to round up a crowd of fangirls in order to keep a VIP guest happy isn’t exactly the stuff of Nobel Peace Prizes.’ She looked at the remnants of the adoring posse, still gazing after their idol with glazed eyes, some shaking with emotion, and sighed. ‘My brain is turning into polystyrene,’ she thought crossly. ‘There has to be something better than doing this for the rest of my life.’

  There was just one problem – well, two problems actually, if you wanted to get pedantic about it. The first was that Nina had no idea what else to do with her life. The second was that her working-holiday visa was fast running out. She’d got as far as moving to London and had managed to avoid not only the dreaded ‘Heathrow injection’ weight gain, but also the pedestrian fate of so many Aussies who had gone before her – pulling pints at a dodgy Earls Court pub was definitely not on her agenda, no matter how many guests threw tantrums about their room with no view. ‘Just suck it up,’ she told herself sternly. ‘You used to love talking shop with Johan and Tess. Comparing room rates, occupancy percentages, who had the biggest A-list celebrity booked in to stay, which guest had charged a second room for his mistress to a secret credit card so his wife wouldn’t find out . . .’

  It was true – when she’d first dipped her toes in hospitality, Nina had obsessed over every single industry detail, endlessly discussing fifty-quid tips, staff meals and industry gossip with her cousin Tess, with whom she shared a shoebox apartment. Tess worked at a small boutique hotel near Piccadilly, one that prided itself on its proximity to Buckingham Palace (although none of its rooms had an actual view of the famous landmark either).

  Tess was the reason Nina had packed her bags and booked herself a one-way ticket to London. With less than six months difference in age, they considered themselves sisters. Tess had been living in London for a year longer than Nina, thanks to her college’s industry placement program; unlike Nina, who had blagged her way into her front-desk job, Tess was busy carving herself a long-term career in hospitality, clawing her way up the ladder with her eye firmly on the front-office manager prize.

  ‘When are you coming to see me?’ Tess had asked during one of their Skype sessions back when they’d been stranded on opposite sides of the world. ‘You’d love it here – you haven’t lived until you’ve set foot in Topshop and the bars are ahhh-mazing . . . Oh my God, I’ve got the BEST idea!’ Nina’s cousin had screeched suddenly, flapping her hands like she always did when she got excited. ‘Why don’t you fly over for your birthday?!’

  Nina hadn’t needed much convincing. After two weeks of worshipping at the altars of Topshop, H&M, Oasis and Warehouse, and stumbling out of too many bars to count, Nina had been determined to call herself a Londoner as soon as possible. Three months later, her working-holiday visa got stamped by a miserable lump masquerading as a British immigrations officer, then she sardined herself onto the Tube and settled in for the commute to Brixton. She would be sharing a flat with Tess and Camille, a college friend of Tess’s who now worked in the food and beverage department of another posh London hotel.

  ‘Nina? Schweedie? What did I just say, hmmm?’ asked a singsong voice with a Scandinavian accent. ‘The late shift will be here in half an hour, so we need to get handover sorted.’ The smell of Marlboro Reds mixed with Coco Mademoiselle and fake tan interrupted Nina’s zone-out. She blinked and forced her mind back to the lobby of the Bickford, where Annika, the Swedish reception manager, was busy printing off the daily report of who had yet to check out so the late shift could chase them up.

  ‘Sure, no problem, Annie. Thank God we won’t have to deal with all the bump-outs tonight,’ Nina said with relief. ‘Reservations have done their usual trick of over-booking, so I called Claridge’s while you were downstairs on your ciggie break. Th
ey have a few rooms available so the late shift can offload the last arrivals to them. I’m thinking the usual “We’re terribly sorry, but a water pipe has exploded in your room; it’s uninhabitable at the moment, so we’ve arranged for you to stay down the road in another hotel while we fix the damage” excuse is the way to go?’

  Nina and Annika smirked at each other, both feeling smugly happy that they wouldn’t have to be the ones to lie through their teeth to the unlucky guests who arrived late at night, desperate to ensconce themselves in their plush rooms and help themselves to the top-shelf mini bar, only to be ambushed at reception and booted out the door to a completely different hotel before they realised what was happening. ‘Bumping out’ was standard industry practice but no one like doing it, thanks to the risk of the guests smelling a rat and demanding to see the supposedly flooded room.

  ‘I’m just going to the loo – back in a sec,’ Nina said hurriedly. She’d spotted Mike, the head doorman, escorting a family of five to the reception desk; the mother was decked out in head-to-toe Chanel while her triplets were dressed in matching Burberry outfits, with the nanny trailing behind. ‘Stuff it, Annika can deal with that can of worms,’ Nina thought as she pushed open the heavy doors separating the lobby from the hotel’s back-of-house area. There was no marble, orchids or thick luxurious carpet here. Utilitarian was the decor du jour – concrete floors, bare walls and the lingering aroma of laundry detergent mixed with chip fat from the staff canteen. She waved to the guys in the security office, as they sat slumped behind bulletproof glass with their eyes locked on the fifteen monitors in front of them. Nothing happened in the public areas of the hotel without them knowing. And thanks to the unstoppable tongues of the butlers and housekeeping staff, the security guys knew most of what happened in the private guest areas too.

  Nina entered the female change room and opened her locker. Pawing through the tangle of spare tights, the mandatory oversized pearl necklace she’d forgotten to put on when she’d arrived for her shift, and various bottles of duty-free perfume gifted to her by regular guests, she pulled out her Miu Miu tote (yet another gift) to find her lip gloss. Shoving her hands into the bag, her fingers brushed against a smooth glossy surface and she felt a thrill of anticipation. Somehow she’d forgotten all about the new issues of Vogue, Grazia, ELLE and Glamour she’d bought that morning from the newsagent in Green Park Tube station. Suddenly her afternoon was looking better – much better.