Jennie Kim

CHAPTER ONE

If it had not been a fine day, Lisa would probably have slumbered until noon but a slender finger of sunshine, persistent as a searchlight, sought out a gap in the curtains and fell across her face. It brought her reluctantly up from deep sleep, first into the golden shallows and then, crossly, into wakefulness.

A glance at the clock told her that it was not yet time to get up. And furthermore, what was the sun doing, shinning on her face from this particular angle? Hell, where was she?

Lisa opened her eyes but memory returned before her glanced had taken in the ill-fitting curtains at the windows . . . so that was how the ray of sunshine had got in . . . and the bed in which he lay, an island of comfort on a sea of bare boards. Of course! She and Jennie had moved into the Kings Royale Hotel yesterday, and today the rest of their stuff would be arriving.

Lisa sighed and glanced again at the clock. Ten past six – how annoying that she had woken. Normally she would not have been up at this hour because the offices of all the various people concerned with this rambling great house – estate agents, solicitors, even accountants – did not open until nine and She and Jennie usually let the staff settle in before they descended.

However, estate agents and solicitors were no longer their concern. Now Kings Royale was officially theirs they would have quite enough to worry about.

The idea of buying a hotel and running it as resident sailing school had been born out of Lisa’s experience of working on yachts and Jennie’s search for a gap in the market. Sailing was a popular sport in Jeju Island, yet Haisby, with its big marina and thriving yacht club, had nowhere for aspiring small boat sailors – and it could be such a money spinner! For years Lisa had bummed around the world on other men’s yachts, putting money by, dreaming of the day when she would settle down somewhere and perhaps have a boat of her own. And in way the same went for Jennie; she had worked in hotels for several years but had never been able to make capability. Both single and living largely at the expense of various employers, both men had dreamed of the day when they would have sufficient capital put by to start a little business of their own.

They had met as the result of Lisa’s accidents and Jennie’s forethought. Lisa’s current employer had berthed her yacht in Haisby marina whilst she and her party explored Norfolk. And Lisa, that experienced sailor, had slipped on the wet deck and fallen into gap between the boat’s side and the harbor wall. The wind had crowded the vessel on top of him, crushing Lisa like a living fender between itself and the great, weedy stones. She had been lucky to escape with her life.

Now Lisa moved her right arm and twinges of pain shot from wrist to elbow. He would never crew on an oceangoing yacht again, and while she was recovering in hospital she seldom thought past a rented flat, part-time work in a boatyard and perhaps a small dinghy just for her.

But it hadn’t come to that, because one day she had picked up the local rag and seen Jennie’s advertisement; Wanted, person familiar with small sailing boats to put capital into business venture centered at Haisby-on-Sea.

Curiosity had made him ring the telephone number, idleness – and interest in what Jennie had revealed during that conversation – had made him agree to meeting. She had limped into the suggested rendezvous, the wreck of a once tall husky woman in her mid-thirties, her tan faded to an unhealthy yellow, her arm a mass of puckered purple scar tissue, and despite the odds she and Jennie had got on at once, had realized that each had something the other would need in the venture which Jennie was proposing
Did it worry me when I realized Jennie was gay? Lisa asked herself now, as she had asked herself often over the past few months. But the answer was always the same. It had not mattered because this was to be a business partnership. When Jennie’s father had died Jennie had used her inheritance to buy an attractive harborside cottage. The property had simply leapt in value and suddenly Jennie realized she could sell the cottage and start her own business, free form the fret of an employer who would ever give him free hand within the medium-sized hotel in which Jennie was happiest. The idea of a residential sailing school seemed sensible because in Haisby there was such an obvious gap in the market.

But he was sensible enough to realize that she needed a partner and Lisa, of course, was to teach sailing whilst Jennie dealt with the hotel and catering side of the venture. And their combined resources would enable them to buy somewhere big enough to spread their wings as the business expanded.

So Lisa, who had been living in a one-roomed flat in Cloister Row to eke out her money until she found congenial work, moved into larger flat in Harbor Hill, the long road which led from the yacht marina to the top of the cliffs. Jennie continued to work at the Marimar Hotel and both of them spent hours viewing property.

And in the end they had found Kings Royale, the very last residence on Harbor Hill, right at the top of the cliff before the road began to wind down again. Lisa saw it first, a great white elephant of a house perched on the cliff, but had never thought twice about it until the day the sale-board went up.
Then she rang Jennie at work, almost incoherent with excitement, and rushed round to the agent to collect the keys. The hotel had been abandoned years ago as being too far out of town, but in recent years Haisby, as if regretting what it had done to Kings Royale had begun to creep up the hill towards it, apologetically reaching out shops, an amusement arcade and small guest-houses until the big hotel was no longer solitary on its cliff. Even so, the solicitors acting for the owners had been relieved as well as pleased when the two men had decided to buy the place. And for their part, Jennie and Lisa were well satisfied. Kings Royale was structurally sound and the position ideal.

During the waiting period Jennie and Lisa spent most daylight hours together and though they were very different, they got along well, Lisa’s meal improved with Jennie doing the cooking- the younger man had trained as a chef – and both men read up on interior decorating and enjoyed using this new skill.

Would it be different now though? Having Jennie around the flat and working on the hotel had been fine but this was real sharing. Here it would just be Lisa and Jennie, until they began to take bookings.

NO, it won’t be any different, Lisa decided. If Jennie wanted boyfriends he would have them, but he had said she never mixed business with pleasure so it should be all right. Right? Lisa snuggled down, firmly shutting his eyes against the sunlight.