Wylder met with Beatrice, the new hotel manager whom she’d hired after a rigorous interview process first with HR, then Daphne and finally her and her sisters. Fifty people applied for the job filtered down to four by the Human Resources team. Beatrice is old school, but charming, she came with two decades experience in hospitality having worked at the Four Seasons and the Mandarin Oriental, and with impeccable references. She and Wylder bonded over her standards of perfection when it comes to the hotel, and she’d been through an intensive training course with Daphne, the Head Manager of Residences who trains all housekeeping and management hires out of the St Clare New York. Wylder thinks of Daphne as the general, exacting in detail and suffers no fools. She too will be coming down to spend two weeks with the team working the season here.
After meeting the rest of the staff trucking along, prepping for the first set of guests to check in, in a week’s time, Wylder heads up to her apartment on the fourth floor of the hotel where her luggage awaits along with a note from housekeeping informing her that the wardrobe team will be expecting her call for them to set up the walk-in wardrobe when she is ready. She smiles to herself before padding over to open the double French doors that lead to the balcony and the stunning views. She did it. They pulled it all off.
When she told her sisters about wanting a hotel on the French Riviera, they’d expected her to open one in Villefranche Sur Mer, her favourite place on the Riviera but she chose St Tropez instead after trawling for the perfect property. The asking price was more than what she was prepared to pay, but it will yield profit in next to no time because St Tropez is the fantasy island that everybody wants in on, there aren’t many hotels in the old village with their own private beach, she only knows of one and it is on the other side of the Island. Wylder’s estate agent knew it was catnip when she brought the details of the petit palais to her attention. It was privately listed, the seller was an old widow who had the property in her family for close to fifty years but she’d not lived there since losing her husband and only child so early on in their marriage. She’d boarded up the estate and moved further inland to the village. What she didn’t know was that Wylder and her family spent a great deal of their summer holidays, whenever they summered in Europe, in the same house when they were younger. Gaga rented the two ground floor apartments with their own access to the beach; the girls and their parents occupied one and Gaga and her staff, the other, though half the time, the girls flittered between both apartments. Summers spent here were always so idyllic; waking up to the sound of the water lapping against its bank, sailing all day, swimming in the open seas, dinners by the beach, it held their most cherished memories as children and young adults. Wylder flew out to meet with the woman and in a scene worthy of a sequel to Under The Tuscan Sun, only it would be set on the Cote d’Azur, Madame Avery agreed to sell to Wylder when she heard the story of her connection to the house, and her plans for its future; an eighteen – room hotel, one apartment, one restaurant, library, and bookshop.
On the adjoining carriage house was going to be a high fashion boutique, an identical one was to be built to house the pool & spa. Madam Avery was so touched when Wylder told her the name of the hotel and why, in a way she reminded Wylder of her grandmother in that way elders could. St Clare was an ode to her Gaga who’d gifted her granddaughters the St Clare books growing up, and she read it to them all the time. Books helped her escape into her fantasy world, inhabit a place where her life unfolded in its own unique way, it parlayed her journey to where she is today and it is all thanks to the woman who introduced her to them; her grandmother. She signed the papers there and then, and in the course of an afternoon was one million euros poorer. When she called her sisters and told them what she’d done after the fact, they nearly took her head off, because Luella, her lawyer, had not been involved in the vetting like she normally would. But Wylder knew giving Madam Avery any more room to consider her offer would most likely scupper her chances at owning it. The old lady had taken her to the house, and together they walked the old grounds that seemed to remember them as they reminisced on the their shared history with the house. It brought tears to the woman’s eyes.
It was a beautiful home, grand and intimate, sitting right by the sea, tucked into its slice of heaven behind iron gates at the front, up ten steps, a wraparound porch which in itself was unusual for the area. Two days later, her sisters came out to visit, not to talk her out of it, she’d signed the contract and gotten the keys but to make sure she was not having a nervous breakdown, but the minute they saw the house they were sold; it was their house, their memories growing up.
‘Wylder you sentimental bastard.’ Luella had said when they walked in. Her sister is such a sentimental soul, a go getter, a streak they all get from their parents; but especially Wylder. Nothing intimidates her; she’d navigated some tough times as a teenager, rebelled as a young adult but came out tougher. If she has her heart set on something, she moves the obstacles out of the way or works through them, she’s stubborn like that. She’d kept their grandmother’s legacy alive with the hotel in New York but created her own with the properties in Florence and The Hamptons. Her hotels are magnificent, sought after, tasteful and quietly opulent. Their sister never does anything by halves and she’d kept up that tradition with this one.
Her apartment on the fourth floor of the hotel, spans the length and breadth of the building; three-bedrooms, overlooking the sea at one end and the village at the other, she’d asked the builders to mimic the ground floor with the wrap around porch. On the rooftop was the pool house with four sun loungers. The good sized kitchen had been tastefully done by Devol, and complete with a breakfast nook for four. Outside of the parlour, beyond the french doors is an outdoor dining area that doubles as an extension of the sitting room if she needs it to be. Her office and library are just off the kitchen with windows overlooking the sea as far as her eyes can see. The other two bedrooms are large doubles; her sisters will be sleeping in them whenever they visit, all three bedrooms have their own walk-in wardrobes and ensuite. There is a cloak room just off the charming little hallway, a powder room, in a tucked away nook and a small room that was converted into a sunroom with the most stunning views of the village and the famed cathedral dome.
There are four suites, in the hotel, one three bedroom, one two-bedroom, and two one bedroom. On the third floor are two suites: the three and two bedroom suites. On the second floor are two one-bedroom suites and six double bedrooms all with varying views of the village and the sea. The first floor has eight bedrooms with similar views to the bedrooms on the second floor. All bedrooms are large double bedrooms with king sized beds, and good-sized walk-in wardrobes. Each room has its own balcony and windows with awnings in the signature navy and white stripe, of the St Clare hotels.
The ground floor is Wylder’s pride and joy, she worked incessantly with the architect to get it right, a through space, wide, and open so that the second you step into the lobby your view of the deep blue sea so typical to St Tropez is undisturbed; you hear the water play on the rocks and feel the breadth of it.
To the back of the lobby are the bar and restaurant, Sinclair, a fifty-person space with that atypical sea view, spilling out onto the wrap around porch on one side. It is separated by French doors that span the width of the lobby. The Fish Market Grill, a casual dining space on the deck by the beach is anchored by a small canopied outdoor kitchen; this was the same spot where their father grilled most of the dinners they ate by the beach on many a summer nights those many years ago. Her mother did not take well to meats so dinner most nights was seafood, and when they dined at home, it was the freshest catch of the day which he’d caught whilst out to sea with the girls. In turn, the girls would pretend to set up a fish market where they’d sell the catch back to their father, he would then take it home to present to their mother, evidence of the day’s hard work, and after she pretended to approve, it was cleaned, prepped, and grilled by the chef of the family, daddy. The Fish Market Grill will stay true to that tradition, only serving the best and the freshest catch of the day, done to perfection by the seafood chef, Dominique from Negril. Dominique was the daughter of their father’s best friend Sir Clint, first name Sir, he grew up in Jamaica but was a regular visitor to St Tropez, where he met the family, over the course of many summers they remained very close friends; it was Sir Clint who often came with his mix of spices that her father would use to season the fish, it became their inside joke. When Wylder told Dominique about her plans for the St Clare, St Tropez, she all but jumped at the chance to work for her.
Down a set of steps to the right is the newly built coach house that houses the medium sized infinity pool on the ground floor with its own access to the beach and the spa on the mezzanine. To the other side of the hotel down another set of steps is the old coach house turned boutique, selling the very best high fashion clothes, jewellery and accessories. St Clare Marché, the small pantry next to it will sell their brand of coffee, produce from the Tuscan farm and home-made baked goods from the kitchen.
The front part of the lobby holds the library and bookshop, a fully functioning library with a librarian, where guests can borrow books whist they stay at the hotel. At the entrance of the Sinclair is a grand Steinway piano a gift from her mother, who was a musical genius in her spare time. The soft seating waiting area is to the side of the reception desk with its own compact bar, and a door from there leads to a crèche facility, complete with three au pairs and further in is the playroom with every kind of board game one can think of, to pass the time and a life sized chess board complete with pieces as tall as an average five year old.
The cellar on the lower ground floor is another place that fills Wylder with pure joy, she and her sisters sourced every single bottle of wine in there, five thousand bottles and counting; they sourced them from wine makers they’d come across, from markets on their travels and some well-known houses. The best champagne and prossecco, tawny ports and rare vintages.
The linens, towels and robes are all hand spawn by the monks of the St Catherine’s in Egypt. Wylder and her sisters visited the country on one of their earlier trips without their parents, and took a road trip to the monastery, a most formative visit that would see them keep close contact over the years. She contracted them as the only supplier of all linens for all her hotels. The hotel post office is situated in one of the two outposts by the gates. The other is the command post for the front of house security team. The kitchen is state of the art, Wylder gave the Deborah, pastry chef, and Dominique carte blanche to kit it out with everything they imagine can be made in a kitchen, and then some. They did not disappoint.
Having walked everywhere in the hotel, Wylder walks through the restaurant where teams are hard at work setting up, and out the back onto the porch, down the steps and up one of three paths to the place that gives her the biggest butterflies, the place she’d fought tooth and nail to acquire. An old, abandoned church that stayed locked up for one hundred and twenty years, five doors from the hotel, at the corner of the commune accessible only to hotel guests, but even so, to hotel guests who were invited to whatever function was happening there.
The church was built by rival families trying to outdo one another but it’d never been used, so the city took possession of it. She approached the mayor’s office inquiring about purchasing it, he was reluctant at first, but Wylder was persistent, and he’d never come up against a woman like her. Months of discussions and permits and plans, silence and more discussions, emails and more discussions and stipulations until he caved and sold it to her. The church is the hotel ballroom. She had no plans to gut it, the high celestial ceilings, stained-glass windows, arches, the altar and six chapels on the side all stay as is. It was cleaned by a team of experts who restored the church to what would have been its original glory. The light takes her breath away. Storage beneath the church holds the furniture. The cherry on top of the cake, however, is the roof top. The church has an unusual shaped roof, set as a crown with a small dome to the back so it overlooks the sea. This was rumoured to be a retaliatory strike from the other rival family who bribed the builder to make this grave “mistake” instead of creating an eponymous dome to rival theirs in the centre of the crown, he built a small dome and set it at the back which meant the church was never ordained so could not be a place of worship, which also meant the family went to hell. Or isn’t that how it’s supposed to go? No matter, Wylder created into an outdoor amphitheatre, with a stage connected to the dome. The rotunda has two rooms with stairs leading up to the roof itself. She sourced old benches from a yard sale which had been polished to high shine, and set in theatre style, facing the stage and the problematic dome. It could all be moved if a different set up was needed. Wylder was gentle with the plans for the church, and it paid off big time. Much to the mayor’s delight.
She returns downstairs to the empty quiet church and only then is she able to catch her breath, the first time she allowed herself in months. This one really had taken everything from her and then some. Easily, as if by kismet, Fox floats into her mind. She’d shown him round the church, talked about her plans for it, the memory brings a smile to her face, those damn butterflies fluttering madly in her belly.