The Clerembeax Palace Hotel and Spa – The Fourth Sunday of Advent

 

The beautiful Downshire village of Clerembeax St Giles was situated to the west of Abbeyvale located between Grace Hill and Bushy Down and on the outskirts was the Clerembeax Palace Hotel and Spa and when Yvonne Labuschagne inherited it from her cousin, the last remaining Clerembeax, she undertook the task of modernizing the Palace and opening a Hotel and Spa offering, fitness classes, gym, rock sauna, infra-red sauna, aroma steam room, ice fountain, drench showers, Jacuzzi, a Romanesque pool, Reflexology, Raki, facials, scalp massage, hand massage, Manicure and Pedicure, while also providing accommodation, meeting and function rooms, a superior restaurant and whatever temptation might attract potential visitors.

She was by profession a masseuse and had worked for many years along with her late husband at the Dancingdean Spa Hotel in Childean.

Staffing the Hotel and Spa was crucial, and Yvonne used her contacts in the Spa world to find the right specialist people in her field of expertise’s and employed Hannah Morgan to fill the remainder of the roles, on the understanding that she employ from the village populous where possible, and that was how the Ward girls came to work at the Palace.

 

The Ward family had a small holding on the North side of the village, parents Jack and Olive, and daughters Donna, Felicity, Josephine, and Maxine.

It was a profitable concern and gave them all a modest living but when the Palace opened, it gave them a chance to supplement their incomes without having to travel to Abbeyvale.

They were all hard-working girls and didn’t care what work they did so Hannah Morgan didn’t hesitate to offer them all housekeeping jobs.

 

Maxine was the youngest at twenty and was 5ft 2, and unlike her siblings, who all had brown hair, she was a redhead.

From almost the first day she started at the Palace she met and fell for Graham Watts, who was a shy young lad of a similar age to her, and although she didn’t know it, he felt the same way.

Everyone else knew, including all of her sisters, but they never told her, subsequently nothing happened.

 

When it got to the third Sunday of Advent and she was the only singleton among the nine at her mother’s Sunday lunch, she resolved to make her move.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the following Sunday when they were both working on the same day, and that was the day that she intended to ambush Graham armed with a sprig of mistletoe.

The only problem was that there was an incident three weeks earlier, when her sister Donna and girlfriend Laura thought they’d have some fun with him, before they left the spa, so Donna snaffled some mistletoe and they went after him.

When they caught up with him he was on the first floor.

“Hey Graham, you’re taller than us, can you hang this sprig over this door?” Donna asked pointing above the door.

“Oh ok” he replied and adopted a strange ungainly stance before reaching up, at which point they both kissed him on the cheeks beneath the mistletoe, just a peck on each cheek, but that was enough to make him turn beetroot red, drop the mistletoe and rush through the doors unceremoniously.

 

Had Maxine been in possession of that knowledge she probably wouldn’t have embarked on a similar course of action, but she was ignorant to the fact, so carried on with her plan, such as it was, basically it was find him and snog him.

 

The first part was easy, she knew where he was, he was up on the second floor restocking the linen cupboard, and once she got him cornered in there she figured it would be child splay, armed with mistletoe and the fact that she was gorgeous, and she would have thought it even easier if she’d known he fancied her.

 

She hurried to the second floor and she was right, he was in Linen Cupboard, standing with his back to her, so she slipped quietly inside and said

“Hi Graham”

It made him jump but it also made him smile and then when he turned around he saw her standing there brandishing a sprig of mistletoe above her head and he panicked, blushed and pushed past her to rush out the door and she was left standing there alone, mistletoe in hand.

“Oh great, Merry bloody Christmas”