Excerpt from High Dive by Jonathan Lee, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

9. Riots. (PF)
10. Irish protesters. (PF)
11. Security threats. (PF)
12. Any other business.

In the "any other business" section of the meeting—so seldom used for anything except birthday announcements—there was a discussion about the fact that the hotel hadn't suffered an overflowing bath for the best part of nine months, which was thought to be a record. There was also a complaint from a maid about further strings of semen found on floral-pattern curtains. Who were these curtain fuckers? What was their plan?

Once item 12 was dealt with, the ever-sleazy Peter Samuels asked Fran a mischievous question. She was the p.m. Housekeeping Manager, a black lady with striking eyes. Turndown, purchasing, scheduling. Thirty-two staff under her command.

Fran said to Peter, "Nah, no no, not what happened. Here's the story. OK. So. The wife came out of the bathroom, yeah? Wet and naked." Fran paused for effect. Silence fell around her. Only Marina smiled. Perhaps she'd heard the story already. "And this guest, she's wearing nothing except a skimpy little white towel tied up around her hair. This is when I'm covering for one of those lazy-ass summer girls, Veronica the Vomiter, you got it." A nervous laugh from the assembled staff, two of whom had personally recommended Veronica for the job. "And she says to me, this guest, her tits out, her ass out—everything out—she smiles and says all casual, 'Carry on, darling, but shut the curtains, will you? I don't want the neighbors seeing me naked.'"

Hush around the table. Men full of longing leaned in. "What did you do, Fran?"

"Well," Fran said, "I carried on making the bed, didn't I? And then I explained to her, real polite, that if the neighbors saw her naked they'd shut their own fucking curtains."

The room exploded. Fran had worked in hospitality for the best part of three decades. Her principal complaint about the Grand was that tights weren't supplied with the uniform.

As the sky over the Channel became a deep purple, only a few fragile coral swirls surviving up high, Moose took a seat in the bar area for his pre-dinner beer and cigarette combo. His Zippo was engraved with the words "To Viv, Love Phil." His ex-wife hadn't shown much commitment with her smoking. Marina came over, clutching a pack of menthols. Moose provided a flame. The best thing about smoking was that people like Marina sometimes asked you for a light.

He dropped a twenty-pence piece into the till, opened a packet of crisps, pulled up a chair for her. Pictures of famous guests adorned one wall: Napoleon the Third, John F. Kennedy, Harold Wilson.

"Take a holiday, Moose," Marina said. "A couple of days you could spare, no?" She lifted her arms. A little pink yawn as she stretched. He noted once again the miraculous mundanity of her elbows, tiny angry creatures that seemed too awkward to belong to her body.

Technically he was, via a dotted line, Marina's boss. But the clash of continents in her voice gave the Grand's Guest Relations Manager a worldliness he couldn't ignore. Also: he was still suffering a little from The Infatuation. He took to heart everything she said and respected also the fact she didn't explain too much about her past. Viv used to say there were two types of person in life, past tense and present tense. Viv had seen herself as a present-tense person, which gave her an excuse never to discuss what she felt about a thing that had already happened. She'd dwell on that thing silently instead. Marina, though, was genuinely present tense. She inhabited it. Owned it. Male staff members at the Grand waded through the myths that surrounded her, enjoying the feeling of being stuck. The story that she'd once been married to an adulterous game-show host in Argentina. That she'd previously been a model and a children's entertainer. That recently, on her thirty-eighth birthday, a woman with short blonde hair had proposed to her in a cafe in the Lanes. No one quite knew what was true.

Excerpted from High Dive by Jonathan Lee. Copyright © 2016 by Jonathan Lee. Excerpted by permission of Knopf. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.