Hannah's attention was
attracted by someone clicking their fingers on table 3. It was
Daniel.
"Can I have a clean fork, please? This one's a bit
grubby." He asked.
"Are you doing this on purpose?" Hannah asked, picking
up the perfectly clean knife. "It's very patronising."
"The answers are 'yes' and 'I know'!" Said Daniel,
looking cross. He picked up his napkin and dropped it to the
floor. "And could you pick that up for me?" Hannah
scowled and stooped to pick up the napkin, getting kicked up the
arse by Jess as she came past, carrying 400 plates and trays.
"15 shrimp and 17 lobster…and do you have
partridge?" The guy Jess was serving asked.
"Um…yeah, think so." Said Jess, who couldn't
actually see her customer behind her wall of crockery.
"BRING ON THE PARTRIDGE!"
"OK!" Jess replied, imitating his tone of voice.
Jess kicked Hannah up the arse again on her way back to the
kitchen. (Hannah was still bending over as Daniel was dropping
every item on table 3 one-by-one (apart from Ben's steak which
Ben was particularly attached to)).
"Do we do partridge?" Jess asked the chef.
"Do we do partridge?" The chef asked back.
"Pardon?"
"Pardon?" The chef replied.
Jess walked out of the kitchen with some chicken. "Here,
have some partridge. "She handed the man the plate and
turned to look for Hannah who had all of a sudden disappeared.
"Oh, sod it." Jess ran off to the kitchen to fetch more
orders. Hannah appeared from under the tablecloth of table 15,
which was curious, as she had disappeared under table 2.
"Where's that SODDING salt shaker?" She muttered,
banging her head on the table as she stood up.
"Excuse me, young lady." A voice said behind her.
Hannah turned around, still preoccupied by the missing salt
shaker.
"Can I help? And can I have your salt shaker?"
"Well, actually, we asked for partridge and we got
chicken." Hannah gazed vaguely down the long table. The
party sitting there was huge.
"Come on, there are loads of you. There must be more than
one salt shaker on this table."
"Um, our partridge?"
"My salt shaker?" Hannah was getting pissed off. What
was WRONG with these people? They seemed to think she was there
to SERVE them, or something. "JESS? JESS?"
Jess came crashing out of the kitchen followed by a few pans that
rolled out past her.
"WHAT?"
"These gits want a partridge."
"They've got one!" Jess exclaimed.
"No dear, I think you'll find that this is a chicken."
"Yes, John should know…" A younger man, that
Hannah thought would look quite smouldering if only he had
longer, browner hair and a rough beard, piped in.
"Oh for-" Hannah couldn't stand hearing Jess swear, so
she put her hands over her ears. "-sake!!" Jess
disappeared into the kitchen.
Hannah heard a distant sound of finger clicking through her
hands. She turned to see Daniel trying to catch her attention and
Chris looking down both sympathetically and sheepishly – at
the same time!
Jess came bowling out of the kitchen and screamed:
"FETCH!!" And lobbed a partridge at the
man on the long table.
The partridge fluttered disdainfully above the table for a few
seconds before landing on the head of a tall grey-haired man at
the head of the table.
"JESS!" Hannah was shocked.
"That behaviour was COMPLETELY unacceptable!" The
Facilities manager shouted, stalking over.
"It's ok, it's ok!" Hannah ran over to Jess. "Her
behaviour switch was on rude, that's all." Hannah fiddled
around with the back of Jess' neck for a minute. Jess suddenly
exhibited a warm smile.
"Hello there," She said to the Facilities manager.
"May I take your coat? Is your room up to your standards?
Could I get you anything? Clean towels, room service,
complementary drinks?"
"See?!" Said Hannah. The manager gave Hannah a
suspicious look and walked off.
"HANNAH!" Hannah turned to table 3. "WHERE'S MY
SALT SHAKER?!"
"ARRRRGH!"
That night, thanks to
Colin's internal speaker system in the house from room to room
(much to his pleasure of helping Hannah in any way possible),
Jess and Hannah were having a conversation whilst lying in bed.
"Why is Daniel being so nasty to me?" Hannah asked,
whining.
"Maybe because you left him at the airport, in love."
"That wasn't my fault! I offered for him to come back to
England! It was his fault he didn't accept!"
"Yes but he still loved you…apparently."
"Apparently from who?"
"Ben."
"Oh, then it's bound to be a rumour."
"Plus, you killed his girlfriend with a huge pole."
"Yes, but I went back in time to fix that!"
Cried Hannah. "He'd never have known that now."
"Don't think about him – he's a mere mortal – I
can give you the WORLD!!"
"Shut up, Colin."
"Shut up." Said Hannah, not in the mood for an
over-excited in love computer. It was bad enough he didn't ever
sleep, let alone his annoying whirring all day long.
"Do you think I should call him?"
"NO, Hannah."
"But maybe I should-"
"NO."
"But do you think-"
"No."
"But what if-"
"Oh."
"What?"
"It's morning."
"Oh. Crap."
Jess crawled out of bed and reached into her wardrobe for her
clothes.
"Ready?" Hannah asked Jess, as they both entered the
living room from their respective rooms.
"For what?" Jess yawned and scratched her tummy.
"Jogging?"
"Oh."
"Yes."
"Hang on, I'll go get my pacemaker."
Jess closed the front door.
"Oh God! I'm SO TIRED!" Jess said. "Let's call it
a day." She opened the front door again.
"NO!" Hannah yanked it shut. "Time for
stretches!" Whilst completing them, Jess looked at the large
queue, leading out of the front doors of the convenient cinema
next-door to them.
"That's long."
"I know, I've been stretching it- oh, that, yeah –
wonder why so many people want to go in there? It's just an
ordinary cinema…"
"Shall we do the same loop as yesterday?" Jess asked.
"The one with that big statue with that man that looks like
Nelson on top of it?"
"Maybe it is Nelson…"
"Don't be stupid – we're not in London, we'd know
if we were in London." Jess jumped back onto the pavement
almost getting run over by a taxi cab.
"Sorry, Guv!" Shouted the driver, speeding off.
"Bloody motorists." Muttered Jess, doing up her
shoelaces.
"Ok. All warmed-up?" Asked Hannah. "Let's
go."
She and Jess started jogging off slowly together, turning the
corner of the road and scooting off down the busy streets.
"I'm going to be so, so sweaty and minging when we
get to work." Muttered Jess.
"We can break into one of the master suites and use the
shower while we're taking up luggage." Hannah offered,
turning the corner.
"Well, that would be unethical, but a lot of fun." Said
Jess, puffing heavily. "And they have those lovely fluffy
towels-" Jess was cut off as both she and Hannah ran
straight into two people coming from the other direction. Hannah
stumbled forward and rolled into the nearest drain while Jess
fell over backwards and bounced; doing a backwards flip and
ending up lying on her back in a puddle.
"Eeeeew!" Jess' pristine 'I'm-working-out' clothes were
ruined. "Dammit!"
"Watch where you're going!" Hannah muttered, whilst
simultaneously trying to fish a 20p out of the drain – well,
every little helped.
"Well, it's not
entirely our fault since you both just ran around that corner,
talking rather than looking where you were going." One of
the two mid-twenty-looking guys replied.
"I'm sorry?!" Jess said, exasperated. "When I say
'Dammit', I don't demand a reply."
"Sorry lady, he was just trying to explain himself. Let him
off, he's just had an argument with his wife.
"Oh and I also don't demand an entire life story, you
asshole!" Both of the men cowered. Hannah came and stood
next to Jess.
"She's right you know. Just you make sure you're not here
tomorrow at this time otherwise we'll kick your butts!"
It might have been the bounce on the head, but for a
split-second, Jess thought she saw the resemblance of a hobbit in
both of their faces. Just for a split-second, mind.
"MOVE!" The two of them scattered like hobbits
from a cave troll and Jess and Hannah both started to run again,
seriously infuriated.
"Honestly, my nice clean running clothes –
ruined!" Jess whinged. "Bloody Yanks."
"Only one of them was American, Jess."
"American, not American – they're all the same!"
Jess came to a halt. "That's it, let's walk."
"Aw, come on, J, we've only done a couple of blocks."
"I know. Now let's walk to the hotel and get cleaned
up."
� Jess and Hannah 2002