by Isabella May
Chapter Eighteen
GEORGINA
“What the flamin’ hell is she doing here?”
“Excuse me? I could well ask the same of you. Where the eff have you been? We’ve been worried sick,” said River, clearly stunned at Georgina’s nonchalance over her recent disappearing act. “Two days and not a word from you, and now you just swan into the bar as if nothing happened.”
“Those days were mine to do with as I pleased… holiday days… or had you forgotten to check the diary? Oh, I see, you had. If you must have an explanation, I decided to decline your kind invite for a movie and stinky grub, and walked straight home after my last shift instead.”
Georgina also declined to reveal that shortly before this decision, she had slunk out the fire exit on the third floor of the hotel, shimmied down the drainpipe since the outdoors stairs were covered in ivy, moss and cardboard boxes full of who only knew what, loitered on the High Street for fifteen minutes, spotted Lennie waiting at the town’s one and only taxi rank, and swiftly traversed the street to introduce herself.
“You are unbelievable,” said River, approaching her for a hug, relief flooding his face. “I was beyond worried, and I could hardly call you on the landline. I could only guess that the fact the local rag and radio station hadn’t reported on the disappearance of a stunning twenty-nine year old brunette, meant you just wanted some time out.”
“Something like that,” she said, basking for a few seconds in his public adoration, smoothing down her hair which was much longer than Alice’s – ha; flicking it over her shoulder to signal time out from her rant was most definitely up.
“I took myself off to a boutique hotel in Bath if you must know, bit of pampering and TLC. But backtracking to my initial question, pray what is this all about?” She looked Alice up and down, recycling the words Blake had recently spat at her, eyes purposely scanning her opponent for defects, of which of course, there were none. But ha again, she was older. She would always be older than Georgina. That was match point nailed as far as she was concerned.
“Alice meet Georgina, Georgina meet Alice,” said River.
Ooh, how dare he say her name first?
“See, I really should remember you,” said Alice holding out her hand to shake Georgina’s, which remained welded to her hip, but the face doesn’t ring a bell at all. You’re Blake’s lil’ sis I understand?”
“Yes, I’m well aware of who she is but that hasn’t answered my question, babe,” Georgina ignored Alice’s question, throwing a stern look at River coupled with a counterfeit smile, relegating his former band member to the status of spectre. “And why is she waiting on tables? Am I suddenly not good enough? Did you not think to run this past me first, seeing as we were, the last time I checked anyway, a team of just two?”
“She’s quit the band – well, done a bit of a runner following in my footsteps.” They smiled a mutual smile which spoke of the places they’d been and the people they’d seen; a mutual smile which dropped a big fat bomb on Georgina’s perfectly scripted plans.
“Yeah, please don’t talk to Riv like that,” said Alice. “He’s been my Guardian Angel and rock all rolled into one these past couple of weeks, stowing me away while Lennie and the media have been hot on my trail. People like you haven’t a clue what that feels like.”
“People. Like. Me? Well excuse the rest of us for being common as muck.”
“That came out all wrong, I’m sorry, it’s not at all what I was implying. It’s just, well, it’s been stressful, listen, let’s start all over again, shall we?” Alice went in for another handshake and Georgina stood firm in her decision not to accept it.
“Talk to the hand, lady,” Georgina removed her right one from her hip and put it flat in front of her, swiftly breaking the dialogue, flung her bag across the bar and onto the floor with her left hand and then caught River by the edge of his collar, summonsing him to the backyard.
“I can’t believe you’ve hired her!” she said once she’d slammed down the latch on the bar’s back door. “She doesn’t need the money, surely? And as for not telling me she was back… and… and hiding her away… I’m not even going to ask where, because now I know who that posh totty running up and down The Guinevere’s staircase was… eugh! So she was just down the corridor from us while we were at it… I’m surprised you didn’t invite her in for a threesome.”
“Actually she does need the money,” said River, his naivety not catching on in the same way as it had with Georgina as to the hideous picture that he was painting with regards to her last few words. “Her cut in the band was significantly less than mine, less than everyone’s.”
“So? She’s not your responsibility.”
“She’s a mate. We go back years. Mates look after one another.”
“Yeah, Blake filled me in pretty well when it comes to exactly what mates do… funnily enough.”
“We’re just good friends, Georgina,” he moved closer to her, stroking her cheek, something about his words feeling like a double entendre, which, intentional or not, applied to their own relationship and she knew it. “That’s it,” he went on, “nothing more, nothing less.” And there it was again.
“Hmm, I s’pose.”
“Don’t you think that if there was some sort of magnetism between us, it would have transpired by now? Twelve years in a band, on tour all over the world, drink… mostly drink… put up in places ten times more glamorous than our kinky love nest at The Guinevere. Actually, make that former love nest… we’ve had to move out.”
A question mark of a silence hung in the air.
“You s’pose right,” he added finally. “Besides, it’s not like you and I are an item-item, now is it? We’ve always been clear about that. Nothing’s changed in that respect for me, me luvver.” He grinned at his piss poor attempt at a Somerset accent and moved in for a kiss.
Georgina obliged, quickly drawing away for effect as his hand travelled down her back.
“Well no, obviously, of course not for me either,” she said.
“And so your problem is?”
“I just don’t want her comeback to affect my brother, that’s all.”
“Oh man.” River closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Blake has to move on, yeah? For heaven’s sake, it’s not natural to hold someone who was clearly always unobtainable as your object of attention for twenty years. Especially not when you’ve been married, had a child.”
That was it. That was the straw that broke her back, the sting in the tail, the salt in the wound and just about every other cringe worthy cliché besides.
How dare he pin all of this on Blake’s ‘warped imagination’? What happened in the teenage years left you scarred, haunted; it ate away at the mind, not to mention the soul in an irretractable act of injustice. Any psychologist could tell you that.
This was all River’s fault, every last drop of it. And now she had her blossoming friendship with Zara right where she wanted it, and a band manager almost eating from the palm of her hand, Georgina would ensure the ever turning wheels of karma would be set in motion, very quickly indeed.
Chapter Nineteen
RIVER
There had been nothing else for it but to try his luck with Aunt Sheba. His mother and her sister may not have exchanged a word since the evening Sting had wrapped up his music video filming on the Tor all those years back, Sheba being completely miffed that Heather had ‘cashed in’ on her wisdom without bothering to invite her along to be a groupie too. But River was her nephew, and with no children of her own, he knew he’d soon melt her heart and be granted a free caravan in such a dire situation – even in the height of peak season.
“You couldn’t make it up,” said Alice, as River recounted the tale of her resentment towards Heather, and pulled the car into the driveway which would take them to the sales office of the ‘Baa Caravan Park’ on the outskirts of town – so named because it was housed on the land of a former sheepskin factory.
“You
’re not kidding me.” River cringed, as he drove them slowly past the sign – complete with its token sheep jumping over a rainbow, hurdled the speed bump and looked for a parking space. If this were a romantic trip away, he’d have failed miserably. Despite both of their lack of morals that early spring morning, he couldn’t see Georgina standing for the idea of intimacy here, not when she’d got a little too used to The Guinevere’s comparatively luxurious surroundings.
“I can’t believe you’ve put her first, sacrificing our special place, what a cop-out, do I mean nothing to you?” Georgina had screamed when the realisation had finally tumbled down upon her a few days ago in the bar’s backyard, that actually, “we’ve had to move out”, did not mean he’d found the house of his dreams where they could shack up together. And the royal ‘we’ referred to himself and Alice, Georgina not as much as figuring in the equation.
It was becoming more and more of a question to ponder: did she mean anything to him, after all? He opened another filing cabinet in his head and stored away another conundrum. Puzzles: instead of solving them, all he seemed to be doing was creating new ones lately, piling them up in an overflowing in-tray inside a head that felt it might spontaneously combust. If it wasn’t Blake and his reticence then it was Georgina and her jet stream versus cold front forecasts, and if not brother and sister, then it was his mother and her censorship as to the episode at the windowsill with Lennie. Never mind Heather fleeing to the Goddess convention for a little mindfulness, River was beginning to feel that he should have traded places and gone there himself.
Aunt Sheba, sitting at her desk by the window, leafing through paperwork and donning her half-moon glasses, raised her hand to indicate she’d be with them shortly. River parked the car, stretched his arms as if he’d been five hours on the motorway and finally reached the service station for a cuppa, stepped out of his mustard tin on wheels, and ran to the passenger door to play chauffeur.
“Honestly, Riv, there’s no need, I’m not Geor—”Alice stopped herself and pressed her lips together so they were almost invisible, like an old lady before she’d lodged in her false teeth, a little too late to take back her blunder. “What I meant to say was I’m not posh… anymore.”
That was a kick and a half. But then he remembered the thriftiness was his choice; little did Alice know his grander plans, well, not quite yet.
“We’ve met each other in the middle.” He found himself responding in the kind of deep and meaningful dialogue that usually comes from sitting around a drunken campfire, guitar strumming a rendition of Hotel California, goose bumps on T-shirted arms on some Cornish beach where woes are a million miles away.
“You’re right. I think we have. Wanna know something hilarious?”
“I’m listening.” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
“This is the first time I’ve ever… like ever set foot on a caravan park. Lennie’s RV hardly counts,” she giggled. “I’m actually really looking forward to it. How cosy it’s going to be!”
The difference between the two women in his life, in this bizarre circle which seemed to be running rings around him of its own accord, a circle in danger of turning into a triangle like some tragic ménage a trois, could not have been clearer right then.
Sheba practically flew out to greet them, her approval of Alice only backing up River’s growing realisation.
“Oh my darlings.” She threw herself at them both in a warming group hug, as if she’d known Alice her entire life. “You cannot imagine how long I have waited for this day… Heather to one side, of course.” She suddenly released them, as if the uncalled for mention of her sister couldn’t possibly collude with an embrace.
“Now, now, Auntie,” said River. “We did say Mum was a word to be strictly prohibited.”
“Yes, yes, slap me on the wrist several hundred times now, I’ll try to refrain from another slip up, but you know how easy these things are.” She sighed. “Losing that once in a lifetime opportunity to see Sting, not so much on tour but on the Tor.” She shook her hands and screwed her eyes tightly shut in this spiel that was clearly oh-so-over-rehearsed, “well, that was a hard cross to bear for me, I’m afraid. You’ll never meet a bigger fan of his.”
“I know what you mean,” said Alice. “I’ve long been enamoured by his music: The Police, right through to the modern day, such a skilled artist, he’s really stood the test of time.”
“Never ever,” Sheba added, still in a trance hanging on her very own words.
“Anyways,” said River, poking Alice gently in the ribs to indicate his preferred direction of future dialogue. “Would it be okay for us to take our things to the caravan now, get settled in and unpacked?”
“Why yes, of course.” Sheba mutated to business-woman all over again, half-moons now folding back random parts of her fringe atop her crown, so her forehead resembled the keys on a piano. “Walk this way.”
They followed her along the winding path which opened out onto a play area and sandpit complete with squealing toddlers and watchful parents, and then became more neat and orderly; static homes and caravans facing one another off as if in hierarchical battle, a stony path slicing between them dotted with children on bikes, and walkers pretending to be mountaineering with their Nordic poles. People sat outside reading, eating on their wooden chalet style balconies, enjoying the great outdoors, raising their heads a fraction to give Sheba an acknowledgement style nod, good-afternoon-ing the three of them as they carried their worldly possessions to their latest abode.
“So here we are then,” Sheba announced. “I’ve saved the best for last, literally. I’m not going to make your eyes water by telling you the price this one should be rented out for per week at this time of year.”
Which was so clearly an invite to enquire, leading River to remind his Aunt that:
“I am prepared to foot the bill for this, you know.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t.” Sheba pursed her lips together as if about to wolf whistle. “Family is family.”
“In that case, maybe one evening, we could invite Mum round for supper… and you could come down to join us?”
“Righty-ho.” Sheba tapped her finger on the laminated instructions and welcome pack lying on the draining board. “If there’s anything else you need, you know where I am.”
“Thank you so much, for everything,” Alice shouted to her as she dramatically scooted out of the caravan and closed the door on the two of them, as well as River’s proposition.
“I had to try.” He shrugged.
“This is just incredible. I don’t know how to repay you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But I owe you so much. You haven’t let me open my purse since I’ve been back.”
“Do you, really? I tempted you… away to a land that was meaningless, at a time in your life when you had the world at your feet, the love of two parents – that’s something I’ll never know, not to mention a place in the Olympics. And now look at you… holed up in a peasant’s holiday camp.”
“River, no.” She put her arms around him, giving his back a long languorous rub; which he sensed that she sensed was all of a sudden the height of inappropriate, and so began the descent to a pat on the back. “This is hardly Butlins… which I hear is actually very upmarket these days… I made my choice back then, and I made it by myself. I had a tongue and a voice besides, and you know what? I will never regret Avalonia, the places it took me, the lessons I’ve learned along the way. Don’t you ever let me hear you say that again, okay?”
He didn’t answer and so she withdrew from her embrace, looked him in the eye. “Okay?”
“Okay,” he said the word.
But it wasn’t okay. Not until he’d made it up to her. Set her back on her path. All he could do right now was trust that Mercedes actually did somehow know more about his life. The idea that anybody else could have better tabs on his destiny than him; that was something that used to frighten him, the reason he had never been into the n
otion of a ‘God’. And yet, perhaps this very hut without wheels – albeit a brand spanking new one with every home comfort required – was another small puzzle piece slotting into a bigger picture, the one that wise old Mexican woman had hinted at?
Much later at supper, as Alice insisted on trying for the second time to cook them scrambled egg and beans on toast without burning anything, a skill she’d clearly never had thrust upon her as a basic mode of survival in her teens unlike the majority of those who grew up in the early 90s, he started to get a glimpse of what that completed puzzle might look like.
Chapter Twenty
RIVER
“Nah ah, cheapest ingredient first, if you build it wrong you’ve cost me less money.”
River winked playfully, although he was semi-serious. This was the third time they’d had to start from scratch on Lord Rigby-Chandler‘s order. How hard could it honestly be to make The Smoking Geisha? Okay, it was as barbaric as it got to even contemplate drinking said cocktail outside of autumn, but constructing this tipple was hardly rocket science.
The wink was not reciprocated. In fact he noticed something about Georgina’s demeanour sharpen right then; a bond unravelled, the disappointing taste of flat Champagne, whose cork would never recapture the bubbles.
He was training her up, slowly, patiently to help him out behind the bar. He’d thought Georgina’s not-so-distant future title of mixologist (she was off to London that very weekend) could only ease Alice’s much needed transition into their lives.
It was funny really how she had appeared at just the right moment, business had more than tripled and an extra pair of hands was essential now. He’d even increased Georgina’s salary in a bid to soften the apparent but mystifying blow that was his friend. Sure, Alice possessed a beauty that was simply mesmerising, sure, they were sharing a caravan (although it was eight birth, in many ways giving them more distance at night than The Guinevere had ever done), but beneath all of that, her inner beauty was even more compelling. So why couldn’t Georgina at least try to like her? What was it with women and their competitive, cat-like nature?