It’s opening day! It is opening day! IT IS OPENING DAY AT THE ST CLARE ST TROPEZ!
Wylder woke up at 4am with knots in her stomach, beating the sun to her rise, before anyone else in the village she reckons. Nerves threaten to get the better of her and there is only one person she wants to speak to. Just then her phone pings with a message.
Fox: good luck for today. x.
Wylder: thank you.
The three dancing dots tease her after she sends her reply, but the message doesn’t come. She knew what he wanted to ask or say, all things along the lines of, wtf is going on? Why are you avoiding me after we said those words to each other? And he would have a right to ask because they did declare their feelings for each other a mere six weeks ago but then she did that thing she always does, freeze, internalise, analyse, overanalyse until she was sure they only said those words because of the moment. She was so convinced they’d smash each other to bits before each got a chance to get out and she wanted to leave intact. She’d lost herself with a relationship before, one that nearly stripped her of all common sense and dignity until she up and left. She holed herself up at Gaga’s for a year, only going to classes at Uni. That was when she took a gap year and then extended it by another gap year in Florence. She couldn’t afford that again.
The three dots stopped dancing and her heart cracked with another little break.
‘Get up Wylder, you have a lot to do today we cannot afford to mope around because of a broken heart.’ She tells herself off and gets out of bed to get on with her day. It’s a big day.
Her sisters arrived yesterday, and they have gone through everything, walked every inch of the hotel and then some. She’d missed them so much, working on this beast of a project together has been so fun for her, having them on board so they could see how she made magic happen. They were blown away by the hotel, and that makes all the difference.
‘Want company on your run?’ Lilou was up as well.
‘Nervous?’
‘Not me, but I knew you’d be. Come on.’
Both sisters set off on their run on one of the three trails they’d created that loops thirteen miles down by the sea and back to the hotel.
‘Wanna talk about it?’
‘No.’ Wylder shakes her head, ‘I need to get my head round it and if I talk about it before that I’ll never stop and I don’t know if you’d noticed, but today is a going to be a big day for us. Let’s head back.’
Lilou let her sister be, giving the much-needed room, she will come to them once she is ready.
‘Good afternoon and welcome to the St Clare St Tropez.’ Wylder welcomes their very first guest to the hotel, she and her sisters are manning the reception desk for the first few guests, something she insists one, something she has done in all her hotels.
‘Thank you. It’s a lovely property and we’ve been looking forward to it.’ The elderly lady leans into who Wylder assumes is her husband. ‘It’s our fiftieth wedding anniversary and we have been trying to get to St Tropez for years, but the hotels are always booked up before we can even try. Our children surprised us with this for the week. I met him here the summer we turned sixteen.’
‘Oh thank you for choosing to celebrate this to us, and welcome.’ Wylder saw they’d booked the one-bedroom suite, so she sent a bottle of Dom to their suite along with flowers from the resident florist and comped them a special dinner at the Sinclair for any night of the week. Done with her check in, she moves on to the next part of her day, setting up the library with the librarian, her other happy place. But throughout the day she has her eye and ears all over the place, making sure things were ticking as they should. It is a full house, no rooms left at the inn, the restaurant is fully booked the month with reservations opening up every twenty-eight days for the next twenty-eight. Through the season they are at ninety-five percent capacity every day. She watches parents with their children, Lilou checked in a single father with his son into the two-bedroom suite; this was his first holiday with his son, six years since his wife passed away, and he wanted to make it special for the two of them. Wylder took the boy to the playhouse where he aptly lost his mind on the life-sized chess board, it took some cajoling to tear him away after three rounds of chess, but he promised to come down for a game with one of the bellboys who’d taken to him. A young couple checked in for the week to celebrate the last leg of their honeymoon, which they delayed three times, because they timed it to coincide with the opening of the hotel.
Guests who were not staying at the hotel visited the bar and the restaurant, and were awed by the hotel, its views and the impeccably perfect staff. With the season here proper, an ice cream stand is stationed outside the hotel; a big hit with guests and visitors. As was the café, the boutique, the pool, the patch of lawn outside the hotel that is now being used for boules.
…
‘Week one, down.’ Luella places two bottles of champagne in their midst at midnight on Friday, what a week, what a successful week, things that went wrong were dealt with behind the scenes, one no show room was snagged the second it went live on the site, the back end staff and the front of house worked in seamless rhythm to the training that they’d been put through and the sisters barely saw one another as they worked the hotel thanks to Wylder’s strict schedule. Lilou does the honours of filling up the flutes and they raise them in toast to each other.
‘To sisters who work together and remain friends together, to sisters who dream the impossible and make it happen. And to this bond.’ Lilou says.
‘And to Gaga. Mum and dad.’
Clink.
‘Now, it’s midnight,’ Luella says, ‘it’s the end of week one, we have given you the space you need but we know you are not going to talk so we are going to make you.’
Wylder groans, knowing what was coming.
‘We know, we know, but Wylder, we have watched work your arse off, much more than the three of us combined, we know how relentless you are about this but this was beyond beast mode and we know it has something to do with Sebastian so you either-’
‘I told him I loved him.’ Wylder blurts.
‘WHAT!?’
‘WHEN!?’
‘When we went away for the weekend.’ Wylder jettisoned the flute and went for the bottle of champagne.
‘And what did he say?’
‘Well, he said it first…’ Wylder told them all about the weekend and how it unfolded. Not leaving anything out this time. Her first version was very vague.
‘You kept that all to yourself?’
‘Yes, because I wanted to hold on to it for a little longer to know it was all real.’
‘It is all real Wylder.’ Lilou says taking her sister’s hand.
Willow flanked her whilst Luella scoots close so all three envelope their baby sister, because in this moment she is very much their baby sister, the one they always looked out for, the one Gaga always protected, the one that was denied a relationship with the man she is named after, their grandfather, the one their parents over protected so much so she rebelled.
‘We know what you’ve been through with relationships, trust me we get it,’ Luella starts, ‘but this feels real.’
‘It is real. Very real. I love him.’
‘So what’s stopping you?’
‘The thought that I might smash and burn. That he’d be able to raze my world to the ground if or when he walks away, that-’
‘Stop. Don’t say anymore. Don’t jinx before its started.’ Lilou says, ‘listen to me freckles,’ that was Wylder’s nickname growing up until people started making her feel terrible for them, but they have resorted to using it again. ‘So what? What if you don’t crash and burn? What if he doesn’t walk away and reduces you world to ash? What if he stays? What if you keep falling wildly in love with each other?’
‘The point is-’
‘I get the point.’ Wylder said before Willow can inflect. ‘What if it works out.’
‘You’ll never know if you don’t give it a chance. And if it comes to an end then you would have to be a total cliché, loved.’
Wylder rolls her eyes, ‘fucking hell that was a cliché and a half babe. But I get it. Thank you. I love you guys,’
‘We love you too freckles,’ Willow leaned goes in for the hug first quickly followed by the other two before they toppled over.
‘The champagne!’ Wylder nearly threw them off her to save the champagne. Which aptly gave them fits of laughter.