The Gin O'Clock Club

by Rosie Blake

  ‘Right,’ Amy said, rubbing her eyes.

  ‘Drink?’ I sing-songed, realising this hen do was heading downhill and fast.

  ‘What about public transport?’

  ‘Balloon now.’

  ‘No . . . I . . . not sure, is she frightened of buses or something? Maybe, darling, it’s not a balloon for playing really . . . ’

  ‘Mojito?’ I lurched over to the counter.

  ‘Oh,’ Natalie said, ‘that jug is the non-alcoholic one actually. We’ve got a couple of pregnant people coming, and Katy is still breast-feeding—’

  The doorbell interrupted the rest of the sentence. Tom was now scaling the chair the penis was attached to and I was frantically pouring tequila into a shot glass.

  ‘Come on, Ames, let’s get this down you.’

  Amy slouched over to me in the kitchen. ‘God, Lottie, is this going to be the worst?’

  ‘Of course not!’ I said, smile plastered on as two women with enormous bumps pushed into the room and Tom released the penis from its mooring so it floated up to the ceiling to rest on its side.

  Minutes later more guests arrived and Amy looked a little cheered, helped along by three tequila shots. A couple of her colleagues from the school appeared: a brunette head of PE with the kind of toned upper arms I’d only ever seen on professional tennis players, and an earnest-looking head of Teaching and Learning pushing tortoiseshell glasses up her nose. Then university friends and school friends joined us and the room was suddenly full with people clutching glasses, introducing themselves, Tom weaving between their legs on a continuous hunt for his mother.

  After an hour the clock hands seemed to be dragging. It was only four o’clock as we sat in a small circle, Tom’s episode of Peppa Pig filling the long gaps in conversation. I was sitting next to Amy’s sister-in-law who didn’t know anyone and was borderline obsessed with long-haired cats. After five minutes I’d had my fill.

  The group was fading into intermittent coughs and silence. I was aware I should stop serving tequila for a little while as Amy’s right eye was already wandering.

  ‘This is a good episode actually,’ Natalie said, around the group. ‘It’s about Peppa’s fish being bored. They take her on the bus and . . . ’

  Stony stares met her story and I found my bottom clenching as she continued. Amy looked bereft, shoulders slumped, both hands cupping her watered-down mojito, her hot pink satin Bride to Be sash lacklustre.

  I clapped my hands together. ‘Sooooo, when is company arriving . . .’ I waggled my eyebrows suggestively.

  Natalie started shaking her head at me, making cutting motions on her neck. ‘I’m sorry, I know we planned . . . I just couldn’t have a S-T-R-I-P-P-E-R here, not with’ – she gestured towards Tom – ‘I’m sorry, Amy I cancelled him this morning. I made carrot batons and homemade hummus everyone!’ She thrust the plate out in front of her.

  No one reached to get one. Amy didn’t even raise a smile.

  ‘How about we do the Mr and Mrs Quiz?’ I suggested in a hearty voice, eyes flicking nervously round the circle. I had already forgotten everyone’s names.

  Natalie looked worriedly across at Tom. ‘We could, I mean, I don’t like to turn off the television once he’s settled in front of it, and we need it to attach the laptop to, but we could . . . ’

  ‘We could just play it on the laptop,’ I suggested brightly, determined to move this party along and desperate to see Amy’s face light up.

  I fussed over the keys of the laptop, turning up the volume on the small screen to maximum. The whole circle of women gathered around the small coffee table to watch. Transpires maximum really wasn’t very loud, Peppa’s voice sailing above it all, and we spent twenty minutes straining to make out Will’s answers in between his barks of laughter.

  ‘ . . . Amy . . . lucky . . . we used to . . . haha . . . ’

  Natalie, distracted now because Tom had started to roam the room, was attempting to translate. ‘Oh, that bit was so cute, he said . . . he said . . . Don’t climb on the table . . . he said, Tom, I am warning you, he said how much he was looking forward to spending his – Tom, I am being serious, Mummy does not want you to do that . . . life with you. His life. Or the rest of his life. I forget the exact wording, we filmed it a while ago. It was heart-warming. If you could hear it properly I really think you might be welling up.’

  The video ended and there was an uncomfortable pause. The long-haired-cat sister-in-law got up to go to the loo and the silence was so complete that we could all hear her pee in the downstairs toilet. Oh God. Amy looked on the verge of tears, her willy straw drooping in her empty drink.

  Two of the pregnant girls had started to swap stories of thicker mucus and sore breasts. Tom was currently attempting to drink from the cups left lying around, non-alcoholic mojito liberally poured down his front before Natalie leapt on him to wrestle them away. Then full-blown screaming, rolling on the floor, before he could be placated with another ‘snack’ (he’d also sensibly refused the carrot batons and was stuffing his face with Jaffa Cakes).

  I had to rescue this day.

  We still had money in the pot, a saving from not using the stripper, and with a quiet word to Natalie in the kitchen, Tom straining on her hip while intermittently head-butting her shoulder, she looked resigned as I outlined a new plan. Notably, hot-footing it out of there and heading earlier than we had planned to the bars and pubs of central London. Natalie would join us once her husband got home.

  ‘Right,’ I said, clapping my hands together, twisting my body to the rather sad-looking circle of women.

  Amy looked hopefully up at me.

  ‘Drink up, ladies, we’re heading into town.’

  We lost a couple of people on the way. Katy needed to head back to feed her baby, cat-obsessed sister-in-law couldn’t face the last-minute change of plan and was muttering about Outlander, but the rest of the group were herded out of the door and into the taxis I had ordered. Stepping into the last cab I felt sheer relief as the house disappeared from view in the rear window and Amy reached across from the leather seat opposite me to squeeze my hand.

  The rest of the night was a blur of happy, smiling memories. I took responsibility for the group, ushering them into the nearest pub from the Tube station, ordering a round of tequila shots and then fabricating absurd made-up dares to make everyone behave badly or drink more.

  Within twenty minutes the head of PE had flashed a table of football players and the earnest head of Teaching and Learning was swapping her number with the goalkeeper. Amy watched in amazement, clamping a hand over her mouth.

  That seemed to set the tone and it wasn’t long before one of the pregnant friends was dancing provocatively on a low velvet stool, penis straw clamped between her teeth, and another girl from Amy’s university days, with the whitest teeth, lay down on the bar while the football players did shots off her stomach. The barman started yelling at her, and us as we whooped and cheered, and we were ejected at that point by a giant of a bouncer who also ended up swapping numbers with the head of Teaching and Learning.

  Moving on to another bar packed with pinstriped men drinking and nodding along to terrible house music, we immediately forced most of them to join us on the dance floor. I remember grinning across at Amy as we pulled out some of the old moves, moving my hips and shaking out my hair as if it was five years earlier and we were in a nightclub before collapsing back at our shared flat.

  It became hazy after that but I remembered directing everyone down the stairs of a dimly lit karaoke bar, straight into a booth where I forced people to sing every song on the Grease 2 soundtrack. We moved swiftly on to ballads, all believing ourselves to be as good as any X Factor winner. We were awesome.

  I remembered choosing ‘Nobody Does It Better’ and dragging Amy into the centre of the room.

  ‘Be the Barbra to my Carly,’ I had crooned at her. I remember her grin, so wide it forced my mouth into one too, as we clutched our microphones and sang like it was n
obody’s business.

  I remember smuggling an inflatable plastic guitar, a blue Afro wig and a long blonde curled wig with a hot pink rhinestone cowboy hat attached to it under my coat as we weaved back into the street to head home.

  I remember the taxi ride back, the tickle on my face as Amy, now wearing the electric blue Afro, pulled me towards her to give me a hug. ‘Thank you for tonight, thank you. You’re back.’

  I was too drunk and exhausted to really notice the last words, just filled with a woozy warm glow that my best friend was happy and that I had helped make that happen.

  Chapter 16

  Love is knowing something will be made better simply because you are sharing it with me

  SHEENA, 81

  Hangovers really shouldn’t last this long. It was Monday morning and I was outside the court hoping I could stay on the hard wooden bench all morning.

  Sunday had been spent in a fog of misery, Luke bringing me Lucozade Sport and painkillers at various intervals. I had practically snapped his head off when he had slid a hand across my bare stomach that morning.

  ‘Are you trying to have sex with me?’ I mumbled into my pillow.

  ‘Oh, well, I cou—’ His voice was low and drawn-out.

  ‘Cos are you kidding me?’ I interrupted him, feeling the damp patch where I’d dribbled into my pillow. ‘Na-uh. I need . . . ’

  I passed out before finishing the sentence.

  I woke two hours later, a glass of water and two white paracetamol tablets placed on the bedside table, the flat looking clean, the living room hoovered, the surfaces in the kitchen wiped down. He’d left a note next to the kettle.

  ‘Out for a couple of hours on a secret mission!’ The jaunty smiley face next to it blurred in and out. I could feel the energy leaping off the page. Why had I drunk so much? Why wasn’t I feeling in a buoyant mood drawing emojis on notes and flitting round the flat on my day off with energy and the desire to do things? Instead I closed the curtains, slumped down on the sofa, picked up the remote and trawled endlessly through Netflix, bemoaning the fact there was simply nothing on television before picking up where I’d left off in my last Friends rerun marathon. Then I trawled social media and read a beauty article about the fact that noses never stop growing in your lifetime, and spent the next half an hour looking at my nose from every angle in my camera phone. It boggled my mind. I was convinced my nose had already grown in those thirty minutes and I was doomed soon to be all nose.

  Covering my nose I stared across the room to the desk in the corner, the half-finished statement for the plea and directions hearing I had the next day waiting for me. I had met with the client last week and was trying to structure her rambling answers into some kind of a concise document.

  The key went in the lock and I felt a small swell of relief for the excuse to resist work.

  ‘Hey,’ Luke called as he closed the door behind him.

  He was holding a small bunch of bright red tulips tied together with a piece of twine and held them out a little self-consciously. ‘I bought you these,’ he said.

  Still in my dressing gown, hand over my nose, hair mussed up, eyeliner smudged beneath my lower lashes, I probably didn’t look like a worthy recipient of flowers. I took them from him.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, feeling a little shy. ‘I’ll get the vase.’

  Returning with the flowers I kissed Luke on the top of the head. ‘Thank you, they’re lovely,’ I said. ‘In celebration I thought I might get dressed! Also, did you know that noses never stop growing? As in, they keep getting bigger until you die.’

  ‘Er, I did not know that.’

  ‘It’s OK for you, you have a neat nose. What am I going to do? This could get serious.’

  Luke’s face twitched. ‘I think you’ll be all right, your nose is lovely, on the small side even . . . ’

  I covered it again. Was he slagging off my nose? Saying it was too small?

  ‘You’re worried I think your nose is too small, aren’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Go and get changed, crazy person.’ He pointed at the bedroom, flopping down in the space I had left on the sofa.

  In all the flower/nose excitement I failed to ask him where he had spent the morning. His squash racket hadn’t moved from the rack by the door and he hadn’t been out running.

  Luke rested his head back on the sofa. ‘So, tell me about last night,’ he said, when it was clear I wasn’t going anywhere. He pulled me into a hug as I sat back down.

  I had told him about Amy’s hen do, memories patchy and blurred, and we had laughed and eventually I had got dressed and Luke had made me food and let me finish my work. And then we’d gone to bed ridiculously early.

  So I should have felt a lot better by now. Instead I wanted to weep as I was called through to the court, my scalp itchy and hot under my wig as I adjusted it outside the heavy oak double doors, nausea at the clash of beeswax polish and mothballs.

  The hearing didn’t take long and I was soon back in the corridor, slumped on a bench and psyching myself up for the public transport ahead. A familiar voice called my name and I sat up quickly, smoothing at my hair.

  ‘Lottie, hey.’ A figure took a seat beside me.

  It was Toby, an absurdly slick and good-looking solicitor who often sent me work. He was clean-shaven and smelt of lemons, skin radiant, exuding health. Angling myself away from him I nodded a quiet hello, mouth clamped tight in case I still smelt of drink.

  ‘I’m glad I bumped into you. I was with my boss and Alan only yesterday at a drinks party and your name came up.’

  Alan was my head of chambers so immediately I started an internal panic. Why had my name cropped up? What had they discussed? I mentally scanned the last few cases he’d sent me for problems, still none the wiser. The same creeping feeling I got when I saw a policeman, as if suddenly I would remember the terrible murder I’d committed, stole over me as I continued to wrack my brains for something to confess. Toby was smiling, though, even rows of white teeth good enough for any Colgate advert.

  ‘Don’t look so worried. He was gushing about you, determined that you’ll be the youngest silk they’ve ever had, etc, etc. Full of all the wonders you’ve pulled off . . . ’

  I felt myself swell with the praise, wriggling upright. ‘Oh, well, I’m sure—’ I bumbled a response, grateful when Toby cut me off.

  ‘Actually, I’ve got a case for you. The client has just fired someone on it. He allegedly rammed his ex-wife with the family car but he claims he didn’t know it was in Drive mode. Want it?’

  ‘Always.’ I grimaced at the bare details. ‘Everyone deserves a defence,’ I stated as a mantra.

  ‘Quite.’ Toby nodded earnestly. ‘And perhaps one day we could go for lunch? Always good to get out of the office.’

  Something in his look, his eyes darkening, his lowered voice, made me bite my lip. ‘Lunch would be . . . ’ Lunch would be what, Lottie? For a start there was a code of conduct to adhere to, ensuring barristers weren’t seen to bribe solicitors to send them work. And Toby and I weren’t friends, so what was this? And Toby was absurdly good-looking, so there was that too.

  I hadn’t spoken in what felt like an age. ‘Great,’ I finished.

  Toby thrust his card at me. ‘My mobile is on that one. I think you’ve only got the office line.’

  I pocketed it with what I hoped was a normal smile. My skin felt taut across my face. Maybe this was normal and I had just been with Luke too long so I didn’t know the signs. He didn’t seem to be reacting in the same way.

  ‘Well, give me a call when you’re around,’ he said cheerfully, getting up and straightening his jacket.

  ‘I will,’ I said, looking up at him, trying not to stare too long. His face was so symmetrical.

  ‘I’ll get that brief over to you then.’

  ‘Great,’ I said again as if I only knew this one word.

  ‘Great,’ he repeated, his voice slightly mocking, a smile lifting the side of his
mouth.

  As he walked away I shook off the exchange, holding the card between two fingers. Then, as if making up my mind, I tapped his mobile number into my mobile. It couldn’t hurt to have it. I thought back to what he had said about Alan. I knew Alan liked me but it was gratifying to hear that he really thought I could become a QC in my thirties.

  That thought triggered something in me, the knowledge that I needed to concentrate, to seize this opportunity. Recently I had lost focus and, although things had been great fun, I shouldn’t be neglecting my career. I had worked too hard to let things slip now. And my life was fine now that Grandad was happier, Luke and I were back on track and I had even proved to be a decent friend to Amy this weekend. I needed to ensure I wasn’t slacking off any more, no more days hungover from having fun. I knew I could do more, needed to be seen to be working the hardest if I was going to make my goal. If that meant a few things had to be sidelined, then so be it.

  Chapter 17

  Love is why I kept marrying them

  PAUL, 79

  ‘So, what have you planned for us tonight?’ Luke grinned as Grandad let us both in, wearing a striped apron. ‘Cupcake making? Pancake tossing?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that,’ Grandad said, drawing me into a hug. ‘It’s good to see you both, come through, come through.’

  I could make out noises from the living room and we walked in to see furniture pushed to the edges of the room, the dining table pulled out and a cluster of people sitting or milling around. Arjun and Geoffrey looked to be deep in conversation next to the reading lamp, Howard was lifting his shirt up and seemed to be showing Paula something on his lower back, and Margaret was sitting quietly on the armchair, sipping a drink.

  ‘Hello, Lottie,’ she said. ‘The gin’s infused with a rare tea, apparently.’

  Laughing, I moved across to her. Grandad had placed some flowers in a vase on the mantelpiece and the room was filled with the sweet scent.