“Well, I’ll stay in the flat, watch TV till you come home. I can do some shopping tomorrow and then…” She hesitated. Was she imagining it or had a flicker of fear crossed his face?
He turned back towards his wardrobe. “You don’t want to stay in the flat. I let Laurence stay there a few nights last week when Paula kicked him out again – it’ll be a right mess. I need to get it cleaned and decorated anyway – it’s really looking tatty these days. He gave a forced-sounding laugh. “A real bachelor pad.”
“I’ll clear it up while you’re at work.”
Victor gave his tie a final tweak. “There’s no need. Look, come up sometime next week and we’ll stay in a hotel and I’ll take you out then, OK?” He buttoned up his jacket.
“I want to be with you now – we’ve had such a lovely weekend.”
Victor didn’t look at her. “We did have a good weekend,” he said, a hint of impatience in his voice, “but I’ve already had an extra day and now I have to go to work.”
“I know, but I wouldn’t…”
“And don’t you have to, too? Aren’t you supposed to be working in that wine bar of yours? Fed up with it already? I thought the novelty would soon wear off.”
“It hasn’t. But it’s not going to be that busy on a Tuesday and one of the students would cover, I’m sure. Look, I don’t care about the state of the flat…”
“Gaynor, not today, all right? I’ve got a pile of work to do – I’ll need to stay up late and get through it. I can’t have any distractions.”
He didn’t meet her eyes. He opened the top drawer of his chest and pulled out a handkerchief, obviously desperate to be gone. “Another time, OK?”
She got out of bed, determined not to let him off the hook. “I don’t see why I can’t come tonight.”
Victor looked really irritated now. “Just leave it, will you!”
“I’ll bloody leave him,” Gaynor said to Lizzie a week later. They were sat at a table in the window of Greens. Gaynor was supposed to be behind the bar but there was nobody in yet so she had time for a glass of wine first. She’d seen Claire and Sarah exchange glances as she poured two Frascatis.
“Don’t worry – I’m paying for them,” she’d said gaily, deliberately misinterpreting the looks. “I don’t know,” she said to Lizzie now. “I don’t know what to think. He was absolutely lovely all that weekend and then he went back to London, stayed away three days, came home and was all peculiar again. He must be seeing someone. Mrs Voluptua with the big calves, I presume.”
Lizzie shook her head. “I don’t know. He seemed happy enough with you when I was there – distinctly cuddly, I thought. I know we’d all been drinking but he seemed really relaxed and happy – not like a man with a guilty conscience at all.”
Gaynor sighed. “Yet the moment I suggest going up to town with him he makes all sorts of excuses.”
“Like what?”
“First he said I wouldn’t like it much ’cos Laurence – his sidekick at work – has been staying there and it’s a mess and that he’d be home really late. Then he turned it all round and said wasn’t I supposed to be working in the wine bar and he knew I’d soon get bored and how I never stick to anything and why didn’t I stay here and do the job I was supposed to be doing and we ended up having a row and he walked out.” Gaynor tugged at her hair. “As he does, the bastard. Leaving me somehow feeling it’s all my fault.”
“Well it isn’t,” said Lizzie. “I wonder if you should just turn up there – arrive at one in the morning and let yourself in and see what he’s up to?”
Gaynor pulled a face. “If he’s even there. Perhaps he’s staying with her. And if I turn up and nothing’s going on he’ll really get cross. If I haven’t phoned first it’ll be obvious that I’m checking up on him.”
Lizzie shook back her shiny hair. She’d had bits of it braided in yellow and purple and gold and the little beads at the end of each colourful strand jiggled together as she gazed at the ceiling thoughtfully.
“Shall I turn up?” she asked after a moment or two. “Say I was up in town and my date got cancelled and I wondered if he fancied a drink?”
Gaynor twisted her wine glass round and round on the polished table “But he can fob you off just as easily as he can me. He’ll tell you he’s with a client.”
“I’ll turn up at the flat – say I tried to phone but the line was constantly engaged. He’ll just think it’s faulty.”
Gaynor gave a wry smile. “No, he’ll think you’re lying through your teeth. There’s no line in the flat – he’s never bothered to put one in. He just uses his mobile – keeps saying he must install broadband for his laptop but as he’s only ever there to sleep…”
“Hmmm. So you can’t even check he’s really there at all?”
“No.” Something stopped Gaynor telling Lizzie that she’d tried to phone him several times late at night recently but his phone was always off or just rang unanswered. That she’d sat clutching herself, feeling wretched, well into the early hours, trying every twenty minutes. It made her sound so desperate. So bloody sad.
“Look,” said Lizzie, “I wouldn’t mind a day or two up in the smoke anyway – want to catch up with Jules apart from anything else.” Julie was Lizzie’s older sister – a commercial lawyer and as respectable-looking as Lizzie was bohemian. “Why don’t I just turn up at Victor’s office while I’m there – say I’m at a loose end and see what I can find out?”
Gaynor hesitated. She knew she was being stupid but there was something in her that didn’t want Lizzie going to find Victor. She knew if he was free he’d be charming – take her out to dinner, look after her. He might even invite Lizzie to join him if he wasn’t free. Might judge she’d be good company for whatever fat cat he was wining and dining that evening. She could hear him now: And this is the lovely Elizabeth – a very good friend of my wife’s – come to check up on me – ha ha ha. Peals of laughter all round.
She didn’t want Victor paying anyone that sort of attention. Even Lizzie. Especially Lizzie. He’d never made any secret of the fact that he thought her attractive. She’d even found herself wondering if it had been the sight of Lizzie cavorting about belly-dancing a week ago that had turned him on. He was never usually that passionate.
“Think about it.” Lizzie got up to go. “Or we’ll both pay him a visit. Say we’re doing a spot of girly shopping. You’ve got a spare key to the flat, I suppose?”
“Um, yeah – well, I think I know where it is.”
“We could check it out – see if it looks like she’s been staying there. One thing’s for sure,” she picked up the empty glasses in one hand and then bent and put her other arm around Gaynor’s neck, hugging her, “you can’t carry on in this state.”
Sarah had openly glared at Gaynor when she’d had a second drink but Gaynor ignored her. “I always say I do this job better pissed than sober,” she’d told Lizzie firmly. Lizzie had laughed.
Still she felt slightly light-headed as the bar filled up and got hotter and smokier. She turned the extractor to full and poured herself a glass of water. She realised she hadn’t really eaten all day. “Hey, Kate,” she called, as the girl prepared to carry a pile of dirty plates down to the kitchen. “Can you ask Benjamin to send me up some leftovers?”
The bar was packed now. All the tables in the restaurant area were taken and Kate and Claire were constantly up and down stairs with trays. Jack was behind the bar with Gaynor who was halfway through a long round and had forgotten where she’d got to.
Shit! Two large Frascatis, a small Shiraz and how many bottles of Bud had they had?
“And a Diet Coke,” said the guy she was serving, helpfully. “Oh, and a dry white spritzer. No ice,” he added as Gaynor added a shovel-load to the glass. He turned to greet Maurice, one of their regulars, known to them privately as The Cappuccino King. Gaynor’s heart sank.
“Oh how kind.” Maurice did a little twirl. Gaynor tried frantically to get the adding-up back on trac
k.
“Oooh, I just don’t know.” Maurice surveyed the wine list carefully as he did every time he came in. “Such a choice.”
Gaynor tapped her foot as six girls came up behind him and the bloke up at the end of the bar waved an empty bottle at her. Jack had disappeared down to the cellar and not come back and the music had stopped.
“What are you having, Maurice?” she asked, forcing a smile. “Nice glass of Sauvignon? One of our Specials this week.”
Maurice giggled. The guy ordering the round had wandered off somewhere. “Oh I know,” he said, “I’ll have a latte.”
“He always does it when we’re rushed off our feet,” Gaynor complained as she banged the coffee grouts out of the steel filter. ’It’s a bloody wine-bar – why doesn’t he drink wine?”
“Lot of mark-up on coffee.” Claire put two plates of nachos on the bar. Gaynor leant out and took a tortilla chip while her back was turned. She crunched it hastily.
“But it’s always when we’re busy. Where’s Jack?”
“I think Sarah’s got him helping her. She’s doing her pieces in that kitchen.” Claire shrugged helplessly.
“I’m doing mine. Look at all these people waiting.”
And now there were two more. Gaynor looked across to where Danny stood grinning at her. He had his arm around the waist of a tall, model type in a tiny leather skirt and what looked like a bikini top, sporting acres of flat brown stomach and a large chunk of silver in her belly button. She glowered at Gaynor.
Danny winked. “When you’re ready, gorgeous.”
But Maurice was leaning over the bar. “I don’t suppose,” he said coyly, “I could have a little chocolate powder on my frothy bits?”
“Try being in here all night!” Sarah ran a hand through her hair. “It’s so bloody hot.”
Benjamin looked up from the dessert he was preparing. “It’s been very warm indeed,” he confirmed, as he carefully drizzled strawberry sauce in a lattice work around the edge of the plate. “ Approaching intolerable.”
“Lovely sandwich though.” Gaynor put a friendly arm around his shoulders. “Just what I needed.”
It had been a work of art – brown bread and tuna artfully decorated with swirls of cucumber and a lettuce leaf folded into the shape of a swan.
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Just what we needed when we were rushed off our feet.”
She put the cloth down from wiping the steel tables and took a large swallow of water. “I’m going to have to talk to Claire about spacing the orders better. It’s ridiculous – there’s a limit to how much this kitchen can physically turn out. She needs to remember there’s only me and Benjamin here!”
“The dream team.” Benjamin lovingly placed half a strawberry on the top of a mound of whipped cream and scattered a little grated chocolate around it, standing back to consider his creation. “There!” he said. “Who could resist that?”
“They’ll have gone home if you don’t hurry up,” Sarah said sourly. “It’s all very beautiful but there are three other sweets on that list and one of them’s a cheeseboard!”
“All in hand.” Benjamin selected a stick of celery from the plastic box of salad and considered it. “And don’t carve anything,” Sarah snapped. She pulled a foil card from a drawer in the kitchen and emptied two tablets into her hand. Gaynor gestured to her.
“Come upstairs and have a drink if you’re finished here,” she said. “You need to relax a bit.”
Sarah scowled. “And the floor will wash itself, will it?”
“I’m sorry.” Sarah sipped at the glass of Beaujolais Gaynor had handed her. “That kitchen does my head in.” She smiled ruefully. “Didn’t mean to be an old bag.” Claire whizzed past them with a tray of glasses. “Lots of ashtrays need emptying,” she said briskly.
Behind her, Gaynor grinned and clicked her heels. “Yes sir!”
Danny placed a proprietary hand on her bottom as she bent over his table to clear it. “When’s that husband of yours away?” he murmured. Gaynor saw the model coming back from the loo.
“New girlfriend?” she asked brightly.
Danny smiled. “You’ve got my number,” he said.
I most certainly have. Gaynor carried handfuls of empty glasses to the bar. She couldn’t think how she’d ever been attracted to him. He was so arrogant and shallow.
She thought fondly of Sam who was neither of those things and then of Victor who could, for all she knew, at this very moment be in a bar somewhere in London behaving just like Danny. One woman was clearly not enough for some bastards. But she thought it without bitterness. In fact she laughed to herself. She’d had enough to drink to have reached that happy state where she really didn’t care. Let Victor do what he wanted. He could have his overweight fancy woman and when she finally caught him at it he could have a great big divorce settlement to deal with too. Sod him!
She hoped Sam would be up when she walked home. She’d take a bottle of wine and make him share it with her. Tell him what she was going to do. That from now on she’d live her own life and ignore Victor – let him bloody get on with it. Maybe have a little hanky panky of her own. Who knows, perhaps even with Sam? He might have all that moral fibre. But most men, when you got down to basics, wouldn’t turn away a woman gagging for it. She giggled to herself, knocking an empty bottle over as she piled more empties on to the bar.
“Careful!” Sarah caught it. “What are you suddenly so amused about?”
“Just happy, that’s all!”
Sarah smiled. “Oh good! Things better at home now, then? Are you…”
“Just resolved to make the most of life.” Gaynor looked up at her mobile phone propped high on a shelf with the pint pots. She thought about phoning Sam and asking him to wait up but there was no signal at all tonight – even up there. And someone was using the main phone.
“He’s been on there bloody hours,” grumbled Sarah, nodding at the young man who was draped over the end of the bar, the receiver tucked under his chin. “We’re going to have to get a second line in here. Oh damn it,” she sighed as he dropped another coin into the slot. “I want to phone Mum to see how the kids are. Hurrah,” she said, as he eventually put the phone down and sloped off.
It rang immediately. “Bet that will be her!” Sarah shot over and grabbed the receiver.
“Oh,” Gaynor heard her say. She sounded surprised. “Of course, I’ll just get her for you.” She beckoned to Gaynor. “She’s just coming,” she said into the phone, adding in a concerned voice, “are you OK there?”
Gaynor frowned as she came across the room. Was it Victor?
“Who is it?” she mouthed.
Sarah ignored her. “Oh, I am sorry,” she said to whoever was at the other end of the line.
“Who?” said Gaynor again, reaching her side.
Sarah handed her the receiver, looking serious. “Your mother.”
Gaynor sat on a barstool, suddenly sober again, her elation quite gone.
“It’s David,” she said, as Sarah put a black coffee in front of her. “He’s taken off somewhere. He does this when he’s bad.” She bit her lip. “My mother’s so worried.”
“Where will he go?” Sarah put a hand on her arm.
Gaynor shook her head, feeling suddenly sick. “Could be anywhere – he just gets a fixation. One time he went to the Isle of Wight to try and find the cottage where we’d once been on holiday.” She pulled a face. “Pretty bloody dismal it was too. Another time it was London. Got picked up by the police wandering about all confused. But this time –” she looked at Sarah anxiously as the full realisation made her heart begin to pound. “This time, Mum thinks he’s coming to find me.”
14. Pinot Noir
Appealing red though unbalanced.
She went straight home in the taxi Claire had called her. “Just go,” Claire had said. “Don’t worry about anything.” But Gaynor was worried. David had disappeared some hours ago – for all she knew he could be waiting on the doorstep. She tri
ed his mobile, knowing he wouldn’t answer.
She wondered where he was – her mother had said he hadn’t taken the car. On the train? The station was a fair walk from her house and it was beginning to rain. Her own mobile was full of messages from her mother who seemed to have been trying all evening before she tracked down the number of Greens. As she let herself into the house, she saw the answer-phone flashing. That message was from her mother too.
Pointlessly, she tried David’s number once more. Still switched off. It was nearly half-past eleven. She sat on the stairs in her coat. Should she drive to the station and meet all the trains? But what if she missed him and he arrived at an empty house? What if he’d already been here and gone off somewhere again?
She sat looking at the small lamp on the hall table, the jug of flowers she’d put there earlier, the oriental rug on the polished wood floor. Part of her willed him to appear at the door, unable to bear the thought of him wandering about in the dark on his own, distressed. But a much bigger part longed for her mother to phone to say it was all OK, he’d arrived home. That she was dealing with it. Because that part of her, Gaynor admitted to herself, was scared.
She’d changed her clothes and was waiting for the kettle to boil for her third cup of tea when the doorbell rang. As ever, she steeled herself for what she’d see. However many times she saw David when he was unwell, it was always a shock.
And there he was on the doorstep. Beyond him the rain poured down. The shoulders of his duffle coat were saturated, the rucksack he held in one hand dripped. His hood was down – his brown floppy hair was soaked and droplets of water ran down his cheeks. He was shivering and behind the long wet strands of hair his eyes were huge and terrified. She was filled at once with that huge surge of feeling she’d had for him when they were children. When she just wanted to make it better. She opened the door wide and gestured him in. “It’s OK,” she said. “It’s OK.”
She’d finally got him to take his coat off. He stood in her kitchen in the familiar pose that sent a chill through her. His shoulders high with anxiety, hands in front of him as though he were holding an imaginary knife and fork in front of his chest. He was terribly thin. She put her arms around his bony shoulders. “Come and sit down,” she said for the fourth time. “I’ll make you some tea.”
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