Instead, she read it again to check she was understanding right.
The poster clearly stated: JOIN US on OPENING NIGHT of BOTTOMS UP – the best bar in town!
Each flyer held details of the opening date and time, which was just over a week away. How had none of them known about this?
‘Get over here,’ Olive said, being rather direct in a way only true friends could.
‘What’s up?’ Randy said, quicker to respond as he wasn’t busy uploading pictures to social media.
‘I don’t frigging believe it. Read that.’ Olive pointed a finger to the posters, tempted to rip every single one of them off the wall. How dare they declare themselves as the best bar in the area when they hadn’t even opened?
‘We need to get to the Gin Shack and let everyone know,’ Randy said, ripping one off the wall, making sure to keep all the details intact. ‘Come on, Vee. This is urgent.’
Randy started heading off and it took Olive and Veronica some effort to catch up with his mighty strides.
‘What’s the rush?’ Olive knew they needed to be told, but she didn’t think it meant going at breakneck speed. She wished she had her new motor, but hadn’t brought it as she intended to have a drink this evening.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Randy stopped in his tracks and turned to let them catch up.
‘What? What’s obvious?’ Veronica asked between panting to catch her breath.
‘This craft-fiti business… I kept saying I didn’t understand because what was the point? Well, there was always a point, we just didn’t know about it.’
‘Do we know now?’ Olive said, knowing she’d missed something.
‘Bottoms Up wine bar. Those bums weren’t a prank. They were a very idiotic way to advertise their new business. And considering what they put up on the front of the Gin Shack and the way they’ve declared themselves as the best bar in town, well, they’re not planning on playing nicely, are they?’
‘I guess not,’ Veronica said. ‘We best tell Richard and the others.’
Olive didn’t find her pace again quite so quickly. The feeling of unease that hadn’t left her for a few weeks swam in her stomach making her queasy. She’d been right to trust her gut instinct. She’d known something had been off about the sign originally tacked to the Gin Shack. And knowing why it had been placed there didn’t calm the sensation at all. In fact it did the opposite, because she had a definite sense of this only being the start of their troubles.
Chapter Fourteen
It was busy at the Gin Shack that evening and Olive and her friends turned up looking far more bewildered than they had been ten minutes earlier.
When Olive had caught up, they’d discussed things on the short walk from the beach. None of them knew exactly what to do about this news. So their only plan was to talk to Richard. Forewarned was forearmed and all that. At least if he knew a new bar was opening a month before Christmas, he could consider advertising their Christmas events more heavily so they didn’t lose out to a shiny new bar less than a five-minute walk away.
‘Where’s Richard?’ Veronica said, as the trio burst through the bar doors, making things seem far more dramatic than they actually were.
‘He’s at the bar, of course.’ It was Paul answering, as he regarded them with a look that said, “Have you gone nuts?” without actually saying it.
There was every possibility they had. There really wasn’t cause enough to panic just yet, but despite that, Olive’s heart was pounding that much faster, as if it had been put on high alert twenty times over.
‘Everything all right?’ Paul asked, moving away from the party of friends he’d been talking to. He was obviously here as a customer tonight, wanting to try out the first of the Christmas cocktail tasters. It was quite funny to think, for a man who only drank beer, that Olive had made a fine gin connoisseur out of Paul. He was like many of the other regulars at the Gin Shack. They’d never realised there were so many makes and varieties until Olive’s club and the bar had opened up. Now they were here every week to try out that week’s tasting selection.
Rather than say anything, Randy just passed Paul the poster and let him read it.
‘Oh,’ Paul said, summing up just about everything with one sound. ‘Whereabouts is it opening?’
For all the information that was on the poster, it didn’t give the address, but then it didn’t really need to when it had been pulled off the building where it was all going on.
‘The Beach Café. It’s closed down and this is what’s opening.’
‘Oh,’ Paul said again, once again summing up the situation with a single syllable. ‘You best go tell Richard then.’
As quickly as possible, the three of them eased their way through the crowds in the bar to go and speak to Richard. Olive’s jumper jingled as they went.
Richard was busy at the bar chatting to customers, making drinks and sending contented smiles in Skylar’s direction. It took a while to get his attention. Olive understood why. It was always best not to be too attentive to people acting like drunken twats, and with their arms waving and hollering his name, it would be easy to understand if he thought a group of undesirables had arrived.
‘Richaaarrrrddd.’ Olive finally went for using her best mum voice. The one she’d used when he was younger and she needed to keep him from danger and stop whatever he was doing in his tracks.
It had the desired effect and Richard’s head turned in their direction.
Olive waved her son over, aware she was disrupting whatever flirtation might be going on, but this was urgent.
Stopping what he was doing, Richard headed over and Randy handed him the poster straightaway.
Letting him study it for a few minutes, Randy opened up the questioning. ‘Did you know it was going to open?’
Richard pursed his bottom lip and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nope.’
‘Aren’t you worried?’
Richard didn’t appear at all flustered, unlike the three of them.
‘I never worry until I need to.’
Olive could have argued that one easily. Her son had worried about her constantly when he’d not needed to. It was part of the reason she’d ended up in retirement quarters when she had. Not that she minded that fact. But she knew he was a worrier. Maybe it was the change in lifestyle. The fact that the business he was now running was so different from the one he’d run before. Or perhaps he was playing at being cool for a certain lady at the end of the bar.
‘But the bottoms,’ Olive said, wanting Richard to realise their concerns were grounded. ‘Whoever is running this new bar obviously planted the bottoms.’
‘We’d never be able to prove they had anything to do with those. It might be purely coincidental.’ Richard’s lawyer-head was in place.
‘It’s not, though, is it?’ Randy said, convinced he was right over the matter.
Olive thought he was right as well. Otherwise none of them would have been quite so keen to let Richard know.
‘Whether it is or it isn’t, we have nothing to prove it was. We’ll just have to see what happens.’
‘What’s your plan, though? You can’t just let a brand-new place come along and start announcing they’re the best bar in town,’ Veronica said.
‘My plan is to enjoy the evening, which is what you lot need to do as well. We’re just about to start serving up Skylar’s Holly and Ivy cocktail. Why don’t you enjoy one of them and we can talk about it afterwards.’
‘But…? What about…? Oh, never mind.’ Randy had had the wind taken out of his sails, as had they all, so they headed off to find somewhere to sit and ended up squeezed in the snug.
‘Do you gain a sixth sense as you get older?’ Olive pondered out loud. ‘Because it only seems to be us that’s worried.’
‘We’ll have to wait and see what his plan is before we judge. Maybe he’s mulling it over,’ Veronica said. ‘What would you do about it?’
Thinking on it, Olive didn’t know. There was no point hav
ing enemies in this world, even if the bar was being underhand in its advertising. And they were a wine bar, so they were catering for another set of tastes to the Gin Shack. Hopefully the two businesses would be able to work well side by side. Although the early indicators weren’t especially great. Retaliating in any way would only make it worse, though. ‘I honestly don’t know. Nothing might be the best answer.’ Richard might well be right. Enjoying the evening was the only reasonable thing they could do.
The Salter boys were now going round the room with trays of cocktails, exchanging them for people’s tokens. After the initial few weeks they’d found this the easier way of doing things, save a surge towards the bar when the next lot of drinks were ready.
Olive and her two friends hadn’t purchased their tokens this evening like they normally would, so Aiden offered them a drink from his tray with a cheeky wink. They weren’t shareholders, but they were often allowed free drinks as a thank you for all their help. Although it wasn’t normally Aiden who got to dish them out.
Lifting the glass off the tray, it looked beautiful in its simplicity, but it wouldn’t have been easy to construct by any stretch of the imagination. Inside were three perfectly round cranberries, each with a leaf coming from them. They weren’t holly leaves, because that wouldn’t have been the best thing to sit in a glass people were drinking from. Inside, the holly was being mimicked by mint leaves. At a guess, Olive figured they must have been frozen like that to keep the formation within the glass. She didn’t like to think how long that fiddly task had taken, but it was very effective.
When she tasted the drink itself, the simplicity continued with what she guessed was a gimlet – a mixture of gin and lime juice. It was a perfect recipe to demonstrate gin at its best. It probably wasn’t complicated enough to be put forward for the cocktail competition, because although by no means simple to create, it might lack the flavour depths the judges would look for. It was because the cranberry and mint leaves were a garnish for visual effect, but without actually adding flavour to the drink itself.
That’s what Olive would think if she were judging. As it stood, it was a great cocktail to start their Christmas drink offerings. She just had to hope her recipe idea ended up tasting half decent. Fortunately she had the next couple of weeks to perfect it and she really did have to get a move on.
‘What do you think?’ It was Skylar who’d come to join them.
Skylar was beautiful. She’d been Olive’s beach-hut neighbour for about three or four years and from the offset Olive had liked her. She was all long skirts, strappy vests, flawless skin and thick long hair always styled differently. Today it was in a fishtail plait running to the middle of her back. Skylar had always been cool and quirky. She’s how Olive would have liked to have been earlier on in her life. Instead, Olive had waited till later life to go a bit wild.
Olive missed seeing Skylar and Lucas so much, now she’d moved to Oakley West and the Gin Shack took up more of her time. It meant she wasn’t always there the days she knew he’d be coming to play after school. She also didn’t see Skylar as much with the Gin Shack taking up time on both their parts. Maybe that was why the romance developing between Richard and Skylar had escaped her. Although, even if they had been seeing each other as frequently as before, there was every chance Skylar wouldn’t have let on. Meeting the parents was a scary prospect, so getting his mother’s approval before anything really started up would be even scarier.
‘Well?’ Skylar prompted.
Olive realised she’d gone off into an entire fantasy land of hoping that whatever was happening between her son and one of her adored beach-hut friends turned out to have a happy ending. She really hoped it would.
‘The cocktail is beautiful. Did you freeze the holly and the ivy?’
Skylar went on to explain the process and the exact ingredients added to the recipe, with lots of ears listening in, wanting to know how it was done. It would be a really neat idea to recreate if any of them were having Christmas dinner parties.
It wasn’t something the kitchen staff at Oakley West would have the time to create, but maybe, if the care manager would allow it, it was something she’d be allowed to organise at Oakley West for Christmas Day. Maybe, if she spoke to Richard and Tony, they would help provide all the residents with the favourite cocktail from the six-week challenge they were hosting at the Gin Shack. Olive secretly hoped her recipe would win, but she wasn’t far enough along with it to have any kind of confidence on that front.
Soon, once everyone had their cocktail to enjoy, Richard came over to join them. He briefly placed a hand on Skylar’s shoulder and asked if she was okay.
It was a brief gesture, one that was over almost before anyone would have chance to notice. But Olive had noticed. And with it, the flickering beat of hope she was holding become a fraction stronger. Not that she was willing to go well or anything. She was remaining as calm about this as she possibly could. And as absolutely neutral as a neutral thing.
‘Did you tell Skylar about the bottom place?’ Randy asked as they unintentionally created more of a huddle.
‘It’s called Bottoms Up. It’s a play on words. You can’t go round calling it the bottom place. It sounds… well, rude.’ Veronica gave a disapproving eye-roll as she spoke to Randy.
‘I told her about the new wine bar opening, yes.’
‘So, what’s the plan?’ Veronica asked.
Sometimes Olive wondered if Veronica, with her expert time-keeping and tech know how, and her always wanting a plan, had actually been a spy in her previous incarnations. Maybe the reason they’d met all that time ago, because of Veronica’s early-morning swim, was because she was an ex-Royal Navy marine. It wouldn’t surprise Olive in the slightest. But as with all things in the past, it was up to the person what they revealed about themselves. Some history remained secret for a reason.
‘I don’t think we need one. New business in the area can only mean good things. It’s investment.’
‘Aren’t you worried about how they’ve conducted their advertising?’ Randy had a bee in his bonnet (Olive was sure he’d look cute in a bonnet) over that.
‘Like I said, we don’t have any evidence to support the fact it was them. This is the only true advertising as far as I can tell and, as it’s off the front of their own building, it’s hardly misconduct in any way, shape or form.’
‘Time will tell,’ Randy said.
‘Indeed it will. Personally I think we shouldn’t rise to any kind of threat of competition, if that’s what this has been. I’m going to talk to Tony and see if he’d be happy for us to close the bar that night. Everyone will want to check the new bar out. It might as well be on their opening night and we might as well all go and do the same. I think we all deserve some time off and one night a week isn’t always enough.’ Richard caught Skylar’s eye as he said it. ‘I’ll chat with Tony and see what he says. It’s his business after all. But I think we’d be better off letting our regulars get the chance to try it out. Then they can decide for themselves which establishment is the best bar in town.’
There was a chance the opening of the Bottoms Up wine bar would affect the number of people coming to the Gin Shack. But there was also a chance that the wine lovers visiting the wine bar would also see the Gin Shack and be the kind of people wanting to try out both. A new business coming to the area didn’t mean missing out – it could also mean gaining extra. Randy was right. Only time would tell whether it would end up being a good or bad thing for them.
The only thing to do was to continue what they were doing and do it well. They weren’t about to start popping decoupage gin bottles everywhere to make the score even. Not that there was a score to settle. At least not one that anyone could prove. But Olive knew she wasn’t alone in not being as on the fence as her son. It would be hugely coincidental if those bottoms weren’t anything to do with the new owners. A hugely round, peachy, derrière-shaped coincidence.
Chapter Fifteen
Seeing
the prettiness of Skylar’s Holly and Ivy cocktail had made Olive realise she really needed to start putting some effort into her recipe, not just in terms of how it tasted, but also how it was presented. She had thought the flavours might match up well with a cinnamon stick, but that seemed way too simple and not Christmassy enough on reflection. She had an idea of what to do, but that all depended on whether they tasted like she hoped.
She’d invited Tony to meet her at the beach huts so they could do a taste testing today, and then she would be able to decide what other ingredients to add. Brainstorming with Tony was always fun. In a way, some of the others might say it was unfair to get the overall boss’s input, but she was inviting him on Esme’s instructions, so there was no way she would get in trouble for that.
Apparently the physiotherapist had said Tony needed to be up and about more, so from now on he needed to be meeting her rather than the other way round. Little did Esme know that Olive had already been helping Tony get out more.
Olive parked her Segway up on the patio part of the beach hut. She found it squeezed very nicely behind the door once it was open, so it didn’t get in the way and neither was it on show for any opportunistic thieves.
She busied herself with getting everything out and ready and, by the time Tony arrived, she had a sample of each of the marinaded gins in glasses. They’d all taken up the brown colouring of the mincemeat, which wasn’t the most appealing look. She’d have to do something to make it more attractive. Would edible glitter mixed in work? Or would that make it more disgusting still? Although it wouldn’t matter if her presentation plan worked.
‘Can I borrow your scooter to head back up the hill?’ Tony threw himself down into a deckchair to catch his breath. It reminded Olive that it wasn’t so long ago she’d nearly lost her friend. Her last memory of him in a deckchair was a very different one.
Christmas at the Gin Shack Page 10