HE SAID
F: So what's she been saying about me then?
INT: I'm here to try and establish the facts.
F: Yeah right, she's been bad mouthing me then hasn't she? Fucking bitch.
INT: Please, let's just get on with the interview. You were newly appointed as temporary Hotel Manager here?
F: Yeah, I'd been involved in a couple of nightclubs in London then was asked to take the job on just after the Company bought this 'miles from nowhere Hotel', March 2020, just as this Covid-19 thing started. So they headhunted me, the right person for the job, it's all down to being good at what I do.
INT: Your Uncle, he owns the business, he asked you to come here?
F: My Uncle knows that I can handle a job like this, that's why he asked me. "Freddy, I want you to sort the place out for me," he told me.
INT: I'm right to understand that you were brought in to make everyone redundant?
F: Redundant, that's about right? Ok, As you can see I'm smart, l'm a people person and that's why I was asked to deal with the staffing of the Hotel during this Lockdown. I'm single, no ties and 29 years old so I can go anywhere you know, no strings attached. I was brought in to 'reduce' the number of employees while we were closed.
INT: You mean getting rid of them to save money?
F: That's what I had to do.
INT: How many employees were to lose their jobs?
F: Look, I was told that I needed to save the Company money and the policy was to make as many people redundant as possible to save costs and that was what I was doing, so to answer your question, pretty much all of them. The Hotel had just been bought out and had to shut down because of the Covid lockdown so it wasn't making any money.
INT: Good opportunity for a clean sweep then?
F: Yeah exactly, the Owners at the top decided that they didn't want to go down the Furlough route for this Hotel as it needed an upgrade and this was the perfect opportunity to do it. When it's all over we can recruit new staff, but on lower wages of course.
INT: Tell me about Sarah?
F: Sarah? Yeah, fucking hot bitch she is, whatever she says to you, she's a fucking goer, know what I mean?
INT: Let's get on, but why did you bring her back to work?
F: Oh, well I needed someone to do the admin and send out the redundancy letters and she seemed the right person to bring back in, she knew everyone of course and she dealt with the personnel side of things anyway.
INT: You'd not met her before had you?
F: No I'd not met her before. See that picture on the wall, of all the staff that were working here? Yeah, third from the middle at the front, fucking nice looking or what? I thought that if I had to bring someone back it might as well be a bit of eye candy. Take a look, probably she's slightly older than me, taller, probably, 5'7" maybe, that wavy blond hair just cut above her shoulder, dresses smart and check out her legs.
INT: I see. So you decided bringing her in because she was a bit of eye candy? You liked the look of her, not because she dealt with the personnel?
F: If I've got to work with someone you don't want to be looking at something fat or ugly or a Grandma do you? So why not the good looking tart, you can see she's the kind of girl that's up for anything and she fucking was up for anything.
INT: What do you mean she's up for anything?
F: When she came in that first day I just knew there was a spark between us. I just knew it, I know women and I can read them like a book.
INT: Really?
F: What do you think? She was flirting with me from the moment she came in. She came in and I asked if she wanted to join me at the bar to talk about what she was going to do, she says, "A glass of red wine would be nice." Good start I thought. Skirt well above the knee, tight blouse, she was getting my attention.
INT: So you did go to the bar?
F: Yeah, that's where we went. We sat on the bar stood and she was giving me the eye, I mean she sits there facing me letting her skirt ride up high giving me a flash of her inner thighs. Every now and then for effect she'd move her legs apart and give me a little look up her skirt, a few times I could see her panties, they were blue, and she had too many buttons undone on her blouse. Look I knew she was interested in me because she was fucking flirting all the time.
INT: Flirting with you all the time.
F: Yes, she was. I mean we finished the bottle of wine, she was stroking her hair and kept giving me flashes of her thighs. She made me hard I can tell you.
INT: So then it was back to the job in hand, you sent out the redundancy notices?
F: Yeah. Did that, on her second or third day, can't remember which it was, the day she told me her husband had been laid off I think, as joke I put her name on the list.
INT: The redundancy list? It was a joke?
F: Yeah it was a joke, she knew it was a joke, it was a laugh, she thought it was fucking hilarious.
INT: What happened when she got the letter?
F: So she comes in to my office "Are you getting rid of me too?" she was holding the list in her hand. I forget what I said, she says "I need this job, I really need this job, what do I need to do to keep my job?" and she's smiling at me and I saw three buttons undone on her blouse, she was flashing her bra at me. So I play along with it.
INT: You played along with it what do you mean played along with it?