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Guest Character Profiles > Penny Shrewster Jessica Husband

Penny Shrewster 2023, 2024
Occupation: Lassiters Hotel Housekeeping

When Reece Sinclair arrived at Lassiters Hotel, seemingly to check out the business that her father’s company, Sincast, had invested in, it soon emerged that she had an ulterior motive for the visit. Reece was actually searching for her half-sister, Krista, the wild child of the family who’d gone missing, her last contact being a postcard from Lassiters. As Reece started trying to work out whether Krista had definitely been at the hotel, she started asking staff to do ‘market research’ for her, eventually working out from the records that Krista had stayed in room 302. As Penny was cleaning the rooms - and about to sneak some biscuits from the trolley - Reece then approached her and asked when room 302 would be empty. Penny checked the records and told her that the guests would be checking out in two hours.

A few months later, Penny was one of the hotel staff working at the Lassiters Longest Lie-In. The event was designed by Krista - who'd since turned up and was working for Lassiters - to improve hotel business, and involved people signing up to see who could spend the longest in a bed in the Lassiters complex, with the winners receiving an all-expenses paid stay at Lassiters New York. Penny, in her usual style, managed to annoy Krista by checking her phone, and caused drama by moving Melanie Pearson's bed away from outside the entrance to Harolds cafe, and putting her right next to Melanie's ex-husband Toadie and his new wife, Terese.

A few weeks later, after repeated lateness and complaints from colleagues, not to mention the mistakes she made during the Longest Lie-In, it was decided that Penny would have to be fired. With Paul Robinson wanting to give Krista more responsibility at the hotel, he tasked her with giving Penny the news, and the young employee didn't take it well. Despite having already had her three warnings, she claimed that it was unfair dismissal and that Krista was going to regret it. Penny later returned and, whilst everyone was distracted by the news that Krista had become trapped in the hotel sauna and had passed out, she helped herself to some cosmetics and bottles of wine from housekeeping. When she was caught by acting manager Chelsea Murphy, she claimed that this was her 'golden handshake' but was made to give it all back.

The sauna incident had actually been caused by Chelsea, who was jealous of Krista doing so well at the hotel and remotely locked her in the sauna. When this led to Krista losing her baby, Chelsea was desperate to cover her tracks and suggested to Paul that Penny might be to blame. Chelsea claimed that she would look into it, then explained that Penny had gone overseas, so it would have to wait. When an investigation by a software company showed Chelsea's guilt, she managed to seduce technician Jeffrey Swan into changing his report, but Krista was growing suspicious, having twice caught Jeffrey in Chelsea's hotel room. When Paul then spotted Penny near the hotel, he confronted her and she denied any knowledge of Krista's ordeal in the sauna, and a passing Krista overheard Penny insisting that she'd been caught stealing by Chelsea and thrown out, with Krista wanting to know why she hadn't been told about their suspicions over Penny. Paul admitted that they had no evidence, and the report on the incident had been inconclusive, but Krista couldn't stop thinking about it. Later that night, as she attempted to take her mind off things with drink and drugs, she suddenly put all of the pieces of the puzzle together, realising that Chelsea had been responsible for everything. She rushed to the hotel to confront Chelsea, who tried to stop her leaving the hotel room, but their scuffle led to Krista falling and hitting her head, waking up in hospital with no memory of what had happened.

When Krista's memory came back, she realised that she was going to need some proof of her belief and she contacted Penny and asked to meet. Krista explained her theory that Chelsea had been trying to frame Penny and asked her why she'd disappeared overseas so soon after the sauna incident. Penny explained that Chelsea had paid for the trip, supposedly as an apology from Lassiters for her sudden firing, and all the pieces finally fell into place for Krista. She contacted Jeffrey, telling him that Chelsea was now engaged to Paul and celebrating at the hotel with a party. Realising that he'd been used, Jeffrey showed Krista the original IT report, proving Chelsea's guilt, and together they went to the engagement party. Finally confronted with her actions, Chelsea was unable to deny her guilt and Paul took back the engagement ring and told her to get out of his life.