Lola's Secret Read online

  It was twenty-three-year-old Luke who’d organised the entire computer setup in the charity shop. After finishing his apprenticeship with a local electrician, he’d moved to Adelaide, trained in IT and was now rising through the ranks of a successful computer installation firm. The shop computer was what he called his ‘after-work work’, a labour of love whenever he was back in Clare visiting his mother Patricia, another of the volunteers. There’d been opposition at first from some of the other ladies, but once they’d seen it in operation, well, it had become quite a computer club. Lola had needed to set up a schedule to be sure she got enough time for her own activities. Between Lola’s oldest friend Margaret and her online bridge club, Patricia and her Etsy handicrafts addiction, and another volunteer, Kay, with her eight hundred Facebook friends, it was sometimes hard to get even an hour at the computer to herself. There was also Joan, who loved posting videos of her cat on YouTube, another lady who skyped her son in Copenhagen every Saturday, and even Bill, the shop handyman, who made a big deal of not having a TV at home but spent hours each week watching reruns on TV network websites. Remarkable all around, really. Their average human age was seventy-five. Average computer skills age mid-twenties, according to Luke. ‘You oldies pick things up quickly, don’t you?’ he’d said admiringly, early on in his training sessions. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d get a handle on all of this.’

  ‘I’ll have you know I used to run my own accountancy business,’ Margaret announced, piqued.

  ‘I was CEO of a local council,’ Joan said.

  ‘These hands helped more than a thousand cows give birth,’ Kay the dairy farmer said, holding them up.

  Luke had looked quite shocked.

  As Lola pulled the door to her room shut behind her now and made her way to the front of the motel, she thought she saw Geraldine look out the dining room window. She gave her daughter-in-law a cheery wave. If Geraldine saw her, she didn’t respond. No manners as well as no personality, Lola thought. ‘Bye for now!’ she called to whoever else might be watching. ‘Off I go into town. Off I go to do some useful charity work.’

  An hour later, Lola’s mood wasn’t so bright. She’d been mistaken about the response to the Valley View Motel’s online Christmas offer. Yes, there had been more than a dozen enquiries via email, but not a single follow-up booking. God forbid she would actually have to spend Christmas alone. She peeked through the curtain separating the office from the shop itself – only one customer browsing and Margaret was well able to handle her.

  Lola frowned as she checked the emails again. No bookings at all? Why ever not? She clicked on one of the queries at random, and noticed the mobile number under the person’s name. Was it standard business practice to make a follow-up call? Perhaps, perhaps not, but how else was she to find out? She took out her mobile phone. Luke had been astonished to see that as well. ‘You use a mobile?’

  ‘Only for the time being. I’m saving up for an iPhone,’ Lola told him. It was true, she was.

  Her call was answered on the third ring. Lola put on her most polite voice. ‘Good afternoon. My name is Lola Quinlan and I wonder if you can help me. I’m doing a marketing survey into a recent online advertising campaign. No, please, don’t hang up. I won’t be long. Let me cut to the chase. You enquired about but didn’t book the Valley View Motel. Why not?’ She listened for a moment. ‘But it’s not expensive. Not compared to other places. Really? You did? For three nights and Christmas lunch included? My word, that is a bargain. I’d have gone there instead myself.’ She made three more calls. Two gave her the same answer – they’d found cheaper packages elsewhere. The third person had decided to stay home for Christmas.

  Lola clicked on the different computer files until she found the wording for her Valley View Christmas Special online ad. Jim had given her his version before he’d sent it to the online accommodation sites. She’d tinkered with it a little bit before sending it out to some more sites of her own choosing, but obviously she’d not tinkered enough. Luke had given her a lesson in something he called meta-tags, words that people might use when going searching – ‘surfing, you mean’, she’d corrected him – online. She’d rewritten Jim’s ad until it included nearly every Christmassy word she could think of. Christmas. Pudding. Santa. Carols. Holly. Come stay in our lovely ho-ho-hotel! The Valley View was actually a motel, but still … The special offer included three nights’ bed and breakfast and a special three-course Christmas lunch – turkey and all the trimmings! She’d also added a line about a surprise gift for everyone. They would be surprising – so far they included a travel clock, a wooden picture frame, a jigsaw puzzle that she hoped had all its pieces and a rather alarming red tie, all chosen from the bags of donations left for the charity shop. Lola had paid for them, of course. Above the odds, too.

  She peeked through the curtain again. The customer had left and Margaret was now dusting the bookshelves. ‘Everything okay, Margaret?’ Lola called out.

  ‘Counting down the minutes, Lola,’ Margaret called back.

  Drat, Lola thought. She’d hoped Margaret would forget about her turn. She quickly sent an email to Ellen, sending her lots of love and asking for all her news, then turned her attention back to Christmas. She shut her eyes to concentrate hard for a moment, trying to remember marketing tips from the online course she’d completed the previous year. Eye-catching headings, tick. Clear concise offers, tick. Irresistible offers. That was obviously where she’d gone wrong. Her current offer was too easy to resist. What would make something irresistible?

  If it was free?

  It took her only a minute to compose the new ad. Just as well, she only had eight minutes left before she’d have to hand the computer over to Margaret and her online bridge game. If Lola had followed Luke’s instructions correctly, the next group of people who emailed asking for extra details about the Valley View Motel’s Christmas package would receive this automated email in return:

  CONGRATULATIONS!

  You are the lucky winner of the Valley View Motel’s special Christmas package draw! Three nights’ accommodation, breakfast each day and a slap-up Christmas lunch – all completely free! Simply reply to this email within twenty-four hours and include your contact details and I’ll get right back to you.

  For extra authenticity, she added her own signature – she’d recently learned to scan it – and her mobile number. She pressed send, sat back and smiled. The bait was out there. All she had to do now was wait.

  Chapter Two

  Guest 1

  Neil didn’t even know for sure where the Clare Valley was. He knew it had something to do with wine. He knew it was in South Australia somewhere. Beyond that, he didn’t know, didn’t care. He’d picked it, and the motel, at random. Simply logged on to a last-minute accommodation website and scrolled through until one caught his eye. It didn’t matter to him what the view from his motel window was like, how many stars the motel had earned, whether they had in-room dining or an outdoor swimming pool. All he knew was that on Christmas Day he wanted to wake up as far away from home as possible. Not just from Broken Hill, but from his life, from every single atom of his stupid, wasted, pointless life. Leave it behind, and never come back. He sent off an enquiry email and was about to turn off the computer when he saw he’d received a reply already. The subject line read: CONGRATULATIONS! It was a long time since he’d been congratulated for anything he’d done. Frowning, he clicked on it.

  Guests 2 and 3

  As Helen heard the sound of the front door opening, she hurriedly clicked ‘close’ on the computer screen, clicked again several times until an innocuous shopping website appeared in front of her and then turned and gave her husband an innocent smile. He didn’t smile back. He didn’t smile very often any more.

  ‘Good day at work, darling?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. Any post?’

  She’d keep her voice cheerful. If it killed her, she wouldn’t let it show how much his distraction and depression day after day affected her. The do
ctor had told her to be patient. To offer stability. To keep the house quiet. He’s going through a normal reaction to a traumatic incident, he told her. The shock may have passed, but the mental scars take longer to heal. ‘You love him, don’t you?’

  Back then she hadn’t hesitated to nod. If she was asked that same question now, though? Did she still love Tony or was what she felt closer to pity, or exasperation? She had to keep trying, though. Weary inside, but hoping she sounded enthusiastic, she tried her latest attempt to make things right for him.

  ‘I was thinking about Christmas today,’ she said. ‘Only three weeks away. Where does the time go?’

  He didn’t answer, just kept walking through to the kitchen.

  It was his silence that hurt. She’d tried – she was still trying – so hard, every day, to be patient, loving, understanding. But the lack of communication was contagious. There was now so much she wanted to say to him – that she was worried for their marriage, worried for his mental health, for her mental health – and for so many reasons she couldn’t say any of it.

  And how could she tell him she’d realised that afternoon she couldn’t bear another Christmas like the previous year? He hadn’t bought any presents. He’d said sorry, he just hadn’t been up to it. Don’t worry, she’d said, as cheerily as she could, handing over the too many presents she’d bought him, trying to over-compensate as always. The rest of the day had been as hard. The two of them sitting silently in the dining room for lunch. The afternoon and evening in front of the television. There had been nothing and no one to distract them. Both their children were working overseas, their daughter Katie in London, their son Liam in Barcelona. They hadn’t come back last Christmas, instead arranging to meet one another for what they called an orphans’ gathering in Munich. ‘You don’t mind, Mum, do you?’ Katie had said. ‘It’s just one day. And it’s so amazing over here. It’s like Christmas should be, all cold and snowy, and the decorations look so beautiful and the Christmas markets …’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ she’d said. Of course she minded. She wanted them back. She wanted her husband back. She wanted to turn back time to before the accident at work that had changed her husband from the cheerful, enthusiastic person she’d married into this morose, silent man. She’d tried everything, from sympathy to plain speaking. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Tony. You didn’t kill Ben.’

  ‘But I did. I was his boss. I should have made sure he was safe.’

  Back and forth they’d gone, him blaming himself, her trying to soothe him, until they’d run out of words. Run out of conversation. Today, she’d found herself in tears about it again. She knew she had to do something, anything, as soon as possible. She also knew that if they were going to have another Christmas without their children, she just couldn’t have it here. She’d decided she and Tony would go away for Christmas Day, maybe even for a few days. She’d find some way to pay for it. Money was tight, certainly. The deeper Tony’s depression, the more his car repair business’s output suffered. If it wasn’t for the money she made working as a part-time teacher, they’d be in financial trouble. But if she had to break into what was left of her own savings, she’d do it.

  She hadn’t asked Tony for his opinion or for any ideas about where he’d like to go. She knew there was no point. So that afternoon she’d gone online, googled ‘Christmas breaks and hotel specials’ and, after a quick perusal of what was available, she’d found a motel in the Clare Valley of South Australia. It seemed perfect. A manageable five-hour drive from their home twenty kilometres inside the Victorian border. It would be even quicker to fly, but Tony had developed a fear of flying in the past year. Perhaps it was just an excuse not to go and visit their children overseas – another of her suggestions to cheer him up. She’d read through the Valley View Motel description – just an ordinary country motel by the sound of things, nothing special in itself, but there seemed to be plenty in the area to visit, historic buildings, lots of small wineries … Neither of them had been to that part of the country before, either. That might give them something to talk about, even for a few minutes. She missed their conversations. They’d always had lots to talk about and laugh about … Yes, forget the expense, the bother of driving, the cost of accommodation, petrol, all of it. She needed to get away, even if it didn’t do Tony any good.

  She checked where he was now. Once upon a time, he’d go straight from work out into the garden to his vegetable patch, or even announce that he’d cook dinner. Tonight, he’d gone into the living room and turned on the TV, his usual after-work ritual these days. Sometimes she was lucky if she got four words out of him in an evening. The sight of him there in the armchair now, staring ahead, almost broke her heart. She had to do something, change something in their lives.

  Three clicks of the computer mouse later, she was back on the Valley View Motel website. She didn’t bother reading the description of their Christmas special offer again, but just went straight to the enquiry form, quickly filling in the fields: one room, two people, their names and contact details. She pressed send, then walked into the living room, forcing a pleasant expression onto her face.

  ‘Tony?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  He wasn’t listening properly either, she knew that. He hadn’t listened for months now. She forced the bright voice out of herself. ‘Darling, I’ve had an idea. About Christmas …’

  On the computer in the room behind her, an email appeared in the inbox. The subject line was CONGRATULATIONS!

  Guest 4

  There had to be some place in Australia that didn’t insist on pretending it was wintertime or that it made sense to serve turkey and roast potatoes in the middle of a boiling hot summer, surely? Somewhere you could get a salad for lunch if you wanted? Some place cool? Green? Forget the tropical islands. Martha had made the mistake two years earlier of booking a Christmas break at one of the Queensland resorts, certain that sense would prevail there and she’d be offered seafood, cool cocktails and summery music, not carols extolling snowy days and Santa’s reindeer. No such luck. She’d arrived to find the resort covered in fake snow and the bar staff wearing a peculiar combination of beach wear and Santa hats, smiling gamely over the relentless sound of piped Christmas carols.

  Martha sighed in recalled exasperation, and clicked through several more hotels listed on the screen in front of her, dismissing each option as it appeared. No, she’d been to Byron Bay before. She also went to Sydney enough for work. Ditto Tasmania and Western Australia. Her recruitment consultancy business kept her travelling thirty weeks of the year away from the head office in Melbourne. Perhaps she should just stay still for Christmas. Turn the airconditioning up high in her small but expensive Carlton terrace and cook a seafood lunch … No, no way. She needed a change of scene. She kept clicking through the options, sighing loudly at the wording of many of the ads and descriptions. She couldn’t abide bad grammar, or lazy —

  ‘Is it okay if I head home now?’

  ‘You’ve finished that report?’ It came out sharper than she’d intended. About to apologise, Martha remembered her first boss and mentor’s advice: never apologise, never explain. It was his life’s philosophy. One that had served him well, and paid off even better, she knew. It had done the same for her in turn. Her business was booming, her bank account not just healthy but overflowing.

  At the door, her secretary nodded. ‘It’s printed and in the file on your desk.’

  Martha hadn’t heard her come in. She’d probably been shouting down the phone at one of their suppliers at the time.

  ‘Good.’ A pause. ‘Thank you.’

  Her secretary still didn’t leave. Martha waited, her impatience surely visible on her face. ‘Yes, Alice?’

  ‘I just wanted to say happy Christmas.’

  It was only the start of December. ‘You’re a bit early, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m taking a month off this year. Do you remember? I put in the special request, and you signed it. I’ve arranged a temp,
as you requested. She’ll be here first thing Monday, by eight —’

  ‘Oh, right. Yes. Fine. Well, have fun.’

  It was only after the door had shut and she heard the faint ping of the lift bell down the corridor that Martha remembered her secretary wasn’t just taking a long holiday. She was getting married the week before Christmas and going on honeymoon to Thailand. It was too late to go chasing after her now. And not the right thing to do in any case. It was important to keep the boundaries between employer and employee well defined. Never apologise, never explain.

  She turned back to the problem at hand. Where to go for her own Christmas break? Somewhere away from the city. She was sick of traffic and noise and people. If she couldn’t avoid the turkey and trimmings, surely she could at least find somewhere cool and green? A film her father used to love came into her head suddenly. How Green Was My Valley. Pushing down the memories it threatened to bring up, she googled ‘Valley’ and ‘Christmas’ and ‘hotel’. Four pages of entries appeared. She clicked on the first one. Valley View Motel, Clare Valley. Two valleys. That sounded twice as cool. That would do. What did she care anyway? Christmas only lasted one day and she intended to have her laptop with her and be working for most of it. It didn’t matter where she was.

  She scanned the information. Fine, yes, in the country, self-contained rooms, just a two-hour drive from Adelaide, the nearest city. Not that she’d be driving herself. As usual when she travelled interstate, she’d arrange for a car to collect her so she could work during the journey. She hoped her secretary’s temporary replacement would be competent enough to arrange that for her. More to the point, she hoped her secretary had left all the correct contact details for her preferred chauffeur company. If not, Martha would just have to call Alice, holiday or not. And perhaps take the opportunity to wish her well for her wedding and honeymoon. Or perhaps not. Never apologise … She barely read the rest of the entry, her decision already made. She‘d go to the motel for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and return home on Boxing Day. Two nights away was more than enough, even if it was a three-night break on offer. She wouldn’t join the other hotel guests for Christmas lunch either. She knew she’d prefer to eat on her own in her room. She clicked on the enquiry form, filled in her details and pressed send.