Aisling's Summer Diary

Chapter 23 | Making Our Own Luck

Ciaran’s genius plan to go national with our ad campaign hasn’t exactly gone to plan (i.e. our disappearing flyers got us more exposure), so Siobhan has come up with a Plan B.  But DON’T tell uncle Ciaran!

4 p.m.

When I left for the restaurant I could hear Ciaran holed up in the office and pleading with press secretaries.  He hadn’t had any luck landing a promotional slot with a national paper—even after he called his frontline contacts.  But now, he’d said, he was breaking out the big guns: his “little black book.”  Surely, one of his colleagues from his boom days as a celebrated hotelier would be more than happy to do us a favor. 

The chef, on the other hand, was in great form—the wedding had gone brilliantly, and the cake was a smash hit!  “I’ll be missing you come September,” he said.  “You’ve been such a great help, Aisling.  And,” he said as he pulled two whole Monkfish from the fridge, “you’ve reminded me that the best chefs never stop learning.  If they did, they wouldn’t really be creating!”  He laid the fish out on the work top and handed me a fillet knife.  

“Thanks, chef,”  I beamed and grabbed a hold of the fish.  It was slathered in a slick ooze and shot out of my hands and tumbled into the sink!  I froze, but the chef reached down into the basin for fish in hysterics.  “You’ve also reminded me how important it is to not take myself—or my work—too seriously,” he said.  

7 p.m.

Back at the hotel, Siobhan had barricaded herself in the board room, a list of phone numbers and figures scrawled on the pad in front of her.  Ciaran STILL hadn’t been able to secure a newspaper feature!  All of his colleagues in media had given him the brush off, or they’d been laid off!  

“He was so torn up about it,” Siobhan told me over tea and a slice of leftover wedding cake.  “And then he tells me he never meant for the Seacrest to be a hotel!  He had this master plan of turning it into a business school for disadvantaged kids!”  I nodded along, trying my best to look surprised.  

“Well I think THAT is just the push we need—a charity angle!”  She told me how she’d placed radio adverts for the hotel with the tagline: All proceeds to benefit the Ciaran Kelly Business School.  “ANNNND,” she gushed, “I finally got through to one of the editors at the Observer, and they’re running a front page feature on the hotel!”  Oh.  My.  God.  “That’s brilliant, Siobhan!” I said and gave her a big hug.  “With that kind of publicity, there’s NO WAY we can loose!”  

It wasn’t until I was lying in bed counting the cracks in the plaster board that it dawned on me—where did Siobhan get the money to pay for a week’s worth of radio ads?!  And the feature?  Was that some sort of donation to the business school?  How much would something like that cost anyway?!  I tried not to dwell on it—Siobhan knew what she was doing, right?  She’d probably found another mystery sponsor. Whatever she was up to, I had to trust her.  Anyway, she was too busy now to give out to me about slipping off to the restaurant!  

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