A Fine Profession (The Chambermaid's Tales Part One) Read Online Free PDF Page A

abandoned cleaning cart and I knew I was done for. Just my luck. My red face and the footballer inside that room would ensure my voluntary resignation. Irene had been gunning for me for some time.
     
    We were in her office a few minutes later.
    “ I was helping him fix his TV.”
    “ Sounded like it.”
    “ I was. Ask him.”
    “ I don't think a man photographed yesterday with another in a long line of women is to be trusted. See page six of The Sun .”
    I imagined Irene would breathe fire over the entire world if she could.
    My defence was this: “ How many times in five years have I gone above and beyond to get the job done well? How many others do you have who get one hundred per cent satisfaction in their audits?” Sarcasm emitted from my very pores. I could not help myself. It was a rotten defence mechanism…
    “ I can't have this anymore Charlotte. You never accept promotion. You sometimes fall asleep on the job.”
    “ Twice. Twice in five years!” I exclaimed. Though those two occasions were enough to earn me a reputation.
    “ Well, you never try to get on with other members of staff. Now, you've been caught entertaining guests!”
    I knew Irene hated me. I had known it for ages. She couldn't understand why I just wanted to turn up for work, do the job, and go home.
    “This is unfair,” I pleaded. This was a rotten twist of fate, too.
    “ I'll give you a reference. But, I don't know what else to do with you Charlotte. You should try to find something that suits you more.”
    I felt nothing actually suited me mo re than that job, though I'd never admit it.
    “ Fine, Irene, fine. I hated this job anyway!” I claimed.
    I l eft under the pretence of being happy to finally escape that hellhole. Secretly my lip was trembling. It would turn out that losing the job that had kept me steady for so long was about to undo me. It was taken away from me just like that. I felt at once bereft and liberated. I was about to sink further into the depths of something I still hadn't come to terms with but which was my real, daily battle.
     
    *              *              *
     
    I thought of myself as rather average. Not particularly tall. Brown hair one shade of mud; not shiny or multi-tonal like those models on the adverts. Blue eyes not unlike many other people's. I almost never really took time to look at myself. I just knew I could blend in if I wanted to and had an alright figure that I was completely unconscious of. My older brother and younger sister were both blonde and athletic, but I was shorter, curvier and dark, with girlish features that seemed out of place in a family of mostly Amazonian women and Barbarian men. I just knew I was different. I also knew the illnesses I'd had in youth made me distinct from the others. The childhood leukaemia had weakened me in more ways than one. Even though I overcame it, I had suffered pneumonia a few times since. I still easily caught bad colds and flu, and sometimes a headache for me felt like the weight of the world squashing my skull. My immune system resembled that of someone twice my age. My nervous system, in places, was shattered.
    I had kept in touch w ith only two people from school and had made no new friends since. The chambermaid thing had been a summer job at college that had stuck. The qualification in Leisure and Tourism I was undertaking fell by the wayside with a few bouts of illness and an uninspiring bunch of lecturers I hated.
    I was 25 years old and still not at one with myself and yet a few seconds with Cody had been enough to make me realise I must have had something that he liked; a little, amiable quality that he had espied. I also realised I was less shy than I thought.
    The unfulfilled dreams I suffered after that were terrible. It was more often than not, one parti cular scenario…
     
    Cody and I are kissing in that hotel room once more. Everything else evaporates and we become wrapped up in one another, blissfully