Did Someone Order Room Service?
Charlotte Phillips
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
Contents
HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
77–85 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2013
Copyright © Charlotte Phillips
Cover Images © Shutterstock.com
Charlotte Phillips asserts the moral right
to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International
and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
By payment of the required fees, you have been granted
the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access
and read the text of this e-book on screen.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,
downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or
stored in or introduced into any information storage and
retrieval system, in any form or by any means,
whether electronic or mechanical, now known or
hereinafter invented, without the express
written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © October 2013
ISBN: 9780007532049
Version 2014-09-30
Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
For Barry, who is always there for me. With love and thanks.
Layla Jones wondered, not for the first time, if there could be such a thing as an entire-adult-life crisis instead of just a mid-life one.
She reached the top of the stairs and turned to walk at speed down the hotel’s top floor corridor, heels sinking into the sumptuous ankle deep runner, phone clamped to her ear and eyes everywhere for the slightest sniff of another member of staff. Specifically anyone superior to her. Which actually amounted to quite a lot of people. Guest Services Agent was only a few steps above minion here at the Lavington Hotel. It had taken sixteen tries before her mother picked up the phone and she wasn’t about to hit disconnect after all that effort just because of a little thing like personal phone use during work time.
Unfortunately this wasn’t looking like a quick call since she apparently had to spell out the fact that what her so-called parent had done was unforgivable. She’d just have to dodge into a linen cupboard or something if push came to shove.
‘I lent you my savings because you wanted to set up a business,’ she said, and it sounded so laughable spoken out loud that she could scarcely believe she’d been so stupid. Her mother set up a business? In which universe would that be? ‘And instead you’ve blown the lot on travel plans and concert tickets.’
‘Don’t be so dramatic, darling.’ Behind her mother’s attempt at soothing she could hear an airport tannoy announcing some flight or other. ‘Chance of a lifetime this. Not just any concert tickets. This isn’t some flash-in-the-pan manufactured cutesy boy band, you know. We’re talking Sweet Victory here. Their comeback tour and I’ve got backstage passes. Did you hear me? Backstage Passes! I’m with the band, darling. I never missed one of their shows back in the Eighties and I’m not going to start now.’
