One Glass Is Never Enough Read online

  Gaynor glanced over to where he was shaking hands at the door. In his dark suit, he looked every inch the successful executive he was. Tall, self-assured, clean-cut. With his charming, almost apologetic smile, the lock of hair that curled across his forehead, the even, slightly boyish, features, he could always endear himself to women. They watched him stoop to kiss a small brunette in a red dress. For a mad moment Gaynor thought about telling Chloe. Once, she might have done. Once, when they saw each other a lot, when they used to giggle together behind Victor’s back, when they sometimes really did feel like sisters. Until Chloe met Oliver. And something changed.

  Chloe was gesturing around her. “You’ve made it lovely. What’s this Claire like? Will you all get on?”

  Gaynor took a mouthful of wine. “I think so. Anyway, I’m not involved in the day to day…”

  They’d worked it all out. Gaynor would put up a third of the cash and be a sleeping partner. “I’ll come down and circulate,” she’d said – seeing herself perched at the bar, champagne glass in hand – “and Victor and I will get all our friends down, but I can’t do things in the kitchen or anything.”

  Sarah had laughed. “No, I wasn’t visualising you doing the washing up, don’t worry.”

  “Claire’s very efficient,” Gaynor said now, remembering the spreadsheets and the PowerPoint presentation she’d prepared for the bank, the decisive way she’d dealt with the solicitor and the accountant. And a little scary, she added silently to herself. “She’s got all sorts of systems worked out. We’re going to…”

  “Oh well, that’s good.” Chloe had lost interest already. “I’ve got tomorrow off, did Dad tell you? I thought we could have lunch and stuff – catch up properly.” She gave a sideways smile. “I might even stay another night. I’ve got so much to tell you.”

  Gaynor made herself look pleased. The further achievements of Oliver the Oracle no doubt. But her heart sank. Victor was home tomorrow and she’d wanted to talk to him. If Chloe stayed it would be yet another chance for him to avoid her, another lost opportunity to confront him about what she’d found...

  She switched on her bright voice. “No, he didn’t. I’ve hardly seen him.” And he barely spoke to her these days anyway. “But that’s great, great. That’ll be fun.”

  She’d have to do it after Chloe had gone to bed. She glanced across the room. Victor had disappeared. She took another mouthful of wine and then a deep breath. “I’ll have to go back on the door.”

  “Who’s your friend?” Danny blocked her path.

  “My step-daughter.”

  “Hi.” Chloe looked at him coolly.

  “Catch you later.” Gaynor shot a warning look at Danny and made her way back to the entrance. She hoped he wasn’t going to make trouble. Things were complicated enough as it was.

  And her glass was empty again. Gaynor sighed.

  Welcome to Greens. Kiss. Welcome to Greens…

  “Well,” said a spiky blonde to Sarah at the bar. “I see our Gaynor’s not worried about mutton and lamb…”

  Sarah looked from her to Gaynor on the door. “She looks wonderful, doesn’t she? Wish I had her body.”

  The blonde examined her nails. “She’s got nothing to do but go to the gym all day. We could all be like that if we didn’t have to work.”

  Sarah lifted a tray of glasses. “You a friend of hers, are you?” she asked sweetly. “Gaynor’s done a lot to get this place up and running.”

  True, most of it had been on the phone to the fabric department of John Lewis, she thought, but she wasn’t going to have this old shrew running her new business partner down. “Excuse me.”

  She dodged behind Jack and turned to serve the next couple. Gaynor might not be too hot on the practical stuff but she was perfect at this sort of thing – air-kissing everyone, greeting each new guest as if they were the most important of the evening.

  Sarah smiled as she watched Gaynor thrust her chest out a fraction as two blokes walked in on their own. She wondered if she knew she did it. One of them kissed her on the mouth, his hand lingering for several seconds on her bare back. Gaynor smiled up into his eyes. Sarah shook her head. If only they’d flock round her so easily.

  She thought of her mother’s words earlier. “You won’t find it so easy now, you know. At your age everyone’s paired off.” Her mother had sighed. “When I think of that lovely house…”

  That lovely house with the repossession order on it. With the unpaid bills piling up on the window sills, the detached garage housing the car with the overdue HP payments. That house…

  “And you nearly forty…”

  Sarah was thirty-seven. Though first thing that morning, she could have passed for ten years older, she thought ruefully.

  “Bottle of Bud, please, darlin’” The young man the other side of the bar could probably have been her son. If she’d got pregnant at fourteen, like half the other girls at school, he could be her grandson. Well, not quite. But he could have given her a grandson by now. If not two.

  Over at the door, Gaynor turned and caught Sarah’s eye – her eyebrows raised suggestively. Sarah shook her head. “Do you want a glass for that?” she asked the boy. He shook his head, and put the neck of the bottle to his mouth. Sarah gave a small smile. Of course not.

  It was late and nobody new was likely to arrive now. Gaynor headed back to the Chablis. Sarah was polishing glasses, talking to Seb, a friend of Claire’s naughty brother Neill. With their tight T-shirts and bleached-out jeans, both young men looked more like pop-stars than city bankers.

  Sarah had her school-teacher face on. “I’m much too old for you – I’ve got three children.”

  Seb laughed. “I wasn’t thinking of marriage, I was thinking of giving you one.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes but also flushed. Gaynor moved round behind the bar and gave her a small prod. Sarah brought her foot up and poked Gaynor back with the toe of her shoe.

  “How very kind of you,” she said dryly to Seb. “I’ll bear it in mind if I don’t get any better offers tonight.”

  “Oh yessss,” Gaynor said, looking at Seb’s behind as he wandered off in search of more willing prey. “Just what you need – a nice, firm young body...”

  “A toy-boy?”

  “I wouldn’t say no.”

  “You never do.”

  Gaynor jabbed at her with a long nail. “That’s not a very nice thing to say. I thought you and Jack were going to get it together.”

  “Don’t be silly – we’re just mates. Though I think he might have got a bit of a crush on me, actually. We were having a little banter earlier…” Sarah laughed selfconsciously. “ I think he’d quite like to take me to bed.”

  “Of course he would. Bloody hell, he’s nineteen – he’s going to be gagging for it all the time.”

  “Yeah, but he’s a bit frightened of us.”

  “Rubbish. Go and give him one – he’d be terribly grateful.”

  Sarah shook her head. “I’d be grateful – it’s been that long.”

  “You didn’t get anywhere with…?”

  “He’s not interested.”

  They both turned and surveyed Richard, who was sitting on a bar stool looking pained. Gaynor could see he was a good-looking bloke in a quiet civil-servant, mightstill-live-with-his-mum sort of way, but she couldn’t understand why Sarah viewed him with such longing. He’d clearly had a personality bypass and it was no surprise to her he’d never been married. But Sarah insisted he wasn’t gay, that he lived on his own in quite a big house, earned mega bucks in some important job at Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company, and that lots of women would fall over themselves to get him to bed.

  Hmm. As far as Gaynor was concerned, he should think himself jolly lucky someone like Sarah would look at him twice, and he should have been falling over himself to woo her! So far, however, Sarah reported sorrowfully, he barely appeared to have noticed her.

  “Hmmm,” said Gaynor out loud, weighing up the options and making a snap deci
sion. “Jack AND Seb – shag both of them.”

  Sarah laughed. “Is that what you’d do?”

  The last of the stragglers had gone and they were sitting in the courtyard. Tea-lights and lanterns flickered among the hanging baskets and tubs, throwing soft shadows up the whitewashed walls and over the trails of greenery. In the fairytale light the pansies and geraniums had lost their sharp crimsons and purples and looked dark and velvety. It was after one but the air was still warm and sultry. Or perhaps she was just full of alcohol. Gaynor breathed in the scent of the sweet, heady jasmine that climbed among the ivy and surveyed the various bottles and glasses littering the wooden tables. She looked around at the faces in the candlelight and felt a surge of pride and pleasure.

  “Isn’t this lovely?” she said, waving an arm around her. “Isn’t it all wonderful?” She was slurring slightly and Victor frowned at her, but who cared. She took a large swallow of Pinot Grigio – it was the fourth different wine she’d had this evening; she’d just drunk what was open – and raised her glass to the others. “To us!”

  “To us!” Claire, leaning back in her chair with Jamie, her partner, perched on the arm of it, raised her own drink. “It went so well, didn’t it?”

  Jamie squeezed her shoulder. “After all that!” he said.

  Neill, sitting on the paving slabs, his back against the wall, sucked on a large joint before handing it across to Seb.

  “Yeah, you really had your knickers in a twist earlier didn’t you, Sis?”

  Claire pulled a face at him.

  Sarah laughed. “When that water started dripping through the bloody ceiling…”

  Claire poured another glass of wine. “He’s coming back tomorrow, our so-called plumber, and I’m not letting him out of here until he’s checked every pipe in the place. And there’s still the hanging sign…”

  She pulled a notepad towards her, suddenly frowning. “There’s a hell of a lot to do. It’s going to have to be all hands to the pump during the day until this is all sorted. She looked at Gaynor. “You’re around tomorrow, aren’t you? There’s still some cleaning…”

  “I thought we were going to court for the full licence.”

  “You don’t need to come – it’s only me and Sarah.”

  “I want to support you both.”

  “It’s only a formality. We’ve got the protection order and nobody’s going to object to us now. So who cares if we sell a few spirits too?” She nodded at the tumbler in Victor’s hand. “People like to have a choice.” She looked back at Gaynor. “And someone needs to be here when the deliveries come.”

  “Chill, Sis.” Neill shook back his floppy brown hair, blew out a long stream of smoke and closed his eyes. “I’ll do it. You don’t want to give yourself high blood pressure. You’ve only been open a day.”

  Claire screwed her mouth into a sarcastic pout and wrote more on the list. “No danger of that,” she said tightly.

  Neill gave her a languid smile. Victor, glancing at Gaynor over the top of his Scotch, raised his eyebrows in an infuriating gesture that said, “Oh dear! Trouble already?” She ignored him.

  “So how’s life with you, Chloe?” Sarah spoke brightly.

  Chloe looked across at Victor and giggled, putting her hand over her mouth, uncharacteristically girly. Then her eyes flicked to Gaynor’s. “I was going to tell you both tomorrow,” she said.

  Gaynor swallowed the last of her wine and poured another glass. As if they couldn’t guess. Ever since Chloe met Oliver and her idea of a thrilling conversation had moved from Crème de Mer and Manolos to pensions and quality of life, she’d known it was only a matter of time.

  “What’s that, my darling?” Victor was smiling indulgently at his daughter.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Ollie should be here really…”

  Gaynor cringed inside. What, to go down on one knee in front of them all? Only Chloe would upstage their opening night by announcing her engagement. This was supposed to be a celebration. A toast to the opening of Greens and their brave new enterprise. Now they’d have to gush over her and Oliver – probably look at the wedding dress samples and swatches for the colour scheme Chloe would whip from her handbag.

  “Oh, go on.” Sarah was smiling at Chloe encouragingly.

  Chloe lowered her eyes for a moment. In the candlelight, her oval face looked exotic and feline. It held an odd mixture of self-conscious shyness and smug pride. She sipped at her drink for a moment before answering.

  As Gaynor looked at the juice in her step-daughter’s hand, it all fell into place. Her stomach flipped coldly and the walls seemed to roll downwards.

  Now there was real triumph in Chloe’s eyes. For a moment Gaynor wanted to lunge at her, clap a hand across those wine-coloured lips to stop her saying it.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  NO.

  “Oooooh.” The chorus of approval roared in Gaynor’s ears.

  “Champagne!” Victor was standing up, taking his daughter in his arms.

  The room shifted and blurred. Gaynor stood up too. Thinking she could do it. Could move quickly, speak brightly, add her noises of pleasure. But as she opened her mouth and tried to summon the words, something else welled up inside her in a sickening swirl. Panic-struck, she stumbled across the courtyard and into the corridor, hearing Sarah’s voice exclaiming in delight behind her.

  She just made it to the loo before she threw up.

  2. Rheingau Riesling

  A heady number with lingering aftertaste.

  “Nurofen Plus,” said Sarah, handing Gaynor two of them with a pint of water. “You should have taken them hours ago.”

  Gaynor, slumped at the kitchen table in the flat above Greens, amongst the used mugs and cereal packets, groaned deeply. “I was out cold.”

  Sarah, still in her dressing gown, hair on end, shook her head pityingly. “Forward planning. I set the alarm for five-thirty just so that I could swallow them down and get another hour’s sleep before this lot did my head in. And now we’re out of milk.”

  She held up an empty plastic container. “This is your fault!” she said crossly to her eldest son, Luke, who’d wandered in in a pair of boxer shorts. “Couldn’t you have left enough for cereal?”

  The boy shrugged.

  Sarah handed him her purse. “Get dressed and go to the newsagents – two pints. Make that four!” she yelled after him as he slouched off. “Thirteen, and he eats more than me and the other two put together. Take your eyes off him for a second and the cupboard’s bare.”

  Ten year-old Charlie was still holding the Weetabix and – quite clearly – a grudge. “He always drinks it all,” he said darkly.

  “What about toast?” Sarah asked him. She nodded at Gaynor. “You’d better have some, too.” Gaynor shuddered. Charlie shook his head.

  “I want Ready Brek…” Bel appeared in the doorway looking sleepy-snuggly in her pyjamas. Gaynor held out her arms to the little girl.

  Sarah sighed. “Come on, you two!” She clapped her hands, wincing in a way that told Gaynor the dawn painkillers hadn’t quite done the trick. “Get your clothes on – Luke will be back in a minute.”

  They disappeared. Sarah sat down at the table and put her head in her hands.

  “Bloody hell.” She looked up again. “How come you’re here so early, anyway?”

  “I didn’t want to see Victor and Chloe.”

  She’d woken feeling like death, and slid quietly out of bed, praying for Victor to stay asleep while she staggered downstairs with an armful of clothes. She knew she looked a complete mess. “Can I have a shower here?”

  Sarah waved an arm. “Sure. If you can find it.”

  Gaynor drank more water and looked around her at the piles of packing cases and half-filled black sacks. “It’s going to be fabulous,” she said encouragingly.

  “Ugh. One day. If I ever get straight. I am so sick of living with cardboard boxes. Have you seen the lounge? Have you seen their bedrooms?”

  “You’ll make
it lovely.”

  Sarah had that knack – wherever she lived felt like home. Even her last house had been the sort of place you never wanted to leave. OK, it was terrible and stressful for her, all the business with Paul. She said the atmosphere was dreadful but still, to Gaynor, there’d been that feel. She’d loved it, admiring all the details that Sarah got exactly right. The colour of the curtains, the angle of a throw on a sofa, the placing of a pot in a fireplace, the tossing of a cushion in an old wicker chair.

  Once Gaynor had thought it was a matter of interior design. She’d go home dissatisfied, thinking that she, too, should have a yellow kitchen or deep red walls. She remembered going to Sarah’s one dark winter’s afternoon when the fire was lit, lamps were glowing in corners, and the kids were playing on the floor. She had felt this huge wash of emotion. She’d sat on a stool in the kitchen watching Sarah slowly turning onions in olive oil, lowering chicken joints into an earthenware casserole dish, one hand stirring, the other reaching down to stroke Bel’s hair as the child wound her arms around her mother’s leg.

  Gaynor had sniffed the air, fragrant with herbs and wine and realised all at heart-punching once that it was nothing to do with the colour scheme or the position of things – it was that sense of Home. That comfort that came from people belonging together. Her own house was beautiful – everyone said so – but it was just that – a house. An arrangement of rooms. There was no warmth...

  “When am I going to have time?” Sarah raised her voice. “Charlie! Bel! Get dressed!” She looked at Gaynor. “Why didn’t you want to see them?”

  Gaynor swallowed. “Victor will have a go at me – he was really cross. Said I’d made a fool of myself. And I can’t face Chloe.”

  Sarah put a cup of coffee down in front of her. “You were ill, that’s all. Weren’t you?” she asked searchingly.

  “I drank a bit too much but…”

  “You drank a lot too much but I’ve never known you be sick before.”

  “No, well I was upset.”

  “So what was the problem?”

  It lay like a brick, hot and heavy in her stomach. The words were hard to say.