In Just One Day

by Helen Mcginn

  In Just One Day

  Helen McGinn

  For my sister, Alex, and my brother, Tim.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Book Club Questions

  An interview with Helen

  Acknowledgments

  More from Helen McGinn

  About the Author

  About Boldwood Books

  1

  There was nothing Flora loved more than a good wine atlas. Well, apart from an actual glass of the stuff, obviously, but when it came to studying the subject of wine, she could get lost in a book of maps for hours. And given the current state of the wine shop – not a single customer in sight – she did indeed have all the time in the world to pore over the contours of the hills of the Côte-d’Or or get lost, on paper at least, in the vineyards of Piedmont.

  The sound of the bell signalling the door opening made her jump. She quickly closed her book and shoved it under the counter.

  ‘Hello, Flora!’

  ‘Oh, hi, Colin.’ Flora’s heart sank a little; then she immediately felt guilty. Colin was a very sweet man, always dressed in matching jumper and trousers, sometimes mustard from head to toe, sometimes red, sometimes blue but never mixed. He was a regular in the shop, visiting perhaps twice a week, each time to pick a bottle of wine. But choosing that one bottle involved a lengthy chat, and much of that was Colin telling Flora how much he knew about wine rather than an actual conversation. Flora thought maybe he was just a bit lonely, and if coming in to talk wine to her meant that he wasn’t, just for a short while, then she was happy to help. Even if her mind often wandered over to her mental to-do list as she listened.

  ‘How are we today, Flora?’ Colin beamed at her, brushing down the front of his – today, light blue – jumper over his round tummy.

  ‘Very well, thank you, Colin. So what are you in the mood for, wine-wise? What’s on the menu tonight?’ That was the other thing with Colin: he knew everything about cooking, and would recount in detail how each element of the dish was sourced, then cooked.

  ‘Tonight I’m pushing the boat out, Flora. Tonight,’ he paused for dramatic effect, ‘I’m making pie-yay-yah.’

  Flora looked at him quizzically before remembering that he took on the country of origin’s pronunciation of words for added effect. ‘Ah, paella! How delicious…’

  ‘Exactly, how delicious. And let me tell you the secret of a great pie-yay-yah.’ Another pause.

  Flora racked her brains. ‘The saffron?’

  ‘Oh, no, my dear. The ingredients are the easy part. The secret is in the socarrat.’

  ‘Carrots in paella?’ Flora thought back to the last time she’d eaten paella, ready-made and hastily heated up from Marks & Spencer. She didn’t remember it having carrots.

  ‘No, not carrots. So-kah-raht. It’s the lightly toasted rice at the bottom of the pan. It sort of caramelises and goes crunchy. And there are certain ways of getting the crust.’ He looked at her over the counter. ‘Shall I tell you the best way?’

  Just then the doorbell went again. Saved by the bell, thought Flora. ‘Mack, you’re back!’ She greeted him a little too enthusiastically. ‘I’m so sorry, Colin, I’m going to have to go. But I’m sure Mack would love to know your paella secret.’

  ‘Your what?’ Mack hung his coat up on the wall behind the counter and turned to face them both. His thick white hair stood up at crazy angles, half-moon glasses perched on his nose with bright blue eyes twinkling behind them.

  ‘Pie-yay-yah. It’s what I’m making tonight, Mack.’

  ‘Seafood or traditional recipe?’ Mack fixed Colin with a stare over the top of his glasses.

  ‘Er, seafood.’ Colin was suddenly a little less verbose.

  ‘Well then, you’ll be needing a bottle of this to go with it.’ Mack walked across the shop to a shelf on the other side and reached down for a bottle. He turned and held it up.

  ‘Rosé? Really? I’m not sure I…’ Colin took the bottle. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Spanish Garnacha, from Navarra. Just the right balance of fruit and freshness, not so heavy that it’ll drown out the flavours in the dish, but with enough weight to match it. Made by a lovely producer – he farms organically and makes the best paella I’ve ever eaten.’ Mack walked back over to the counter.

  Colin studied the bottle. ‘Well, if you say it’s worth trying, I’ll give it a go. I’m not really a rosé man, to be honest, but…’

  Flora busied herself stuffing her books into her canvas tote bag and picking up her handbag. ‘Mack, if you don’t mind I’ve got to run.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Flora. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Mack started wrapping the bottle in tissue paper for Colin.

  ‘How did it go?’ Flora asked Mack quietly as she passed.

  ‘I’ll tell you in the morning. See you then.’ He smiled at her, clearly trying his best to make her think there was nothing to worry about.

  ‘Thank you kindly, sir.’ Colin took the bottle from Mack. ‘Bye, Flora, see you next week.’

  ‘Yes, and you can tell me how the paella went. And what you thought of the wine…’ She smiled at him. No doubt Colin would be an expert on rosé by then.

  ‘Is that you, Flora?’

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ Her mother, Kate, looked up from Flora’s sofa, the floor of the small sitting room covered in books and toys. With her flowing red skirt and multicoloured cardigan, she looked like a fabric rainbow.

  ‘Oh, darling, you do look tired.’

  ‘Wow, thank you…’ So soon, thought Flora. Her mother usually left it at least a couple of minutes before getting a dig in. Flora had been up late the night before, studying. Again.

  ‘Sorry, darling, I just mean… I worry about you taking on too much. What with the shop and everything.’

  Flora suspected what really bothered her mother was the fact that she worked in a shop. ‘Mum, how many times do I have to explain? Having a job that fits in, most of the time, with school hours is a godsend. It’s not like I have to commute for miles and I’m not stuck in an office for hours on end. Not to mention that I’m doing something I really love.’

  ‘But, darling, don’t forget the children need you, too.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, please don’t do this now. I’m there for them most of the time. And Johnny is really supportive, so I don’t see what the problem is.’ Flora knew that one mention of Johnny and her mother would zip it. Kate adored Johnny. ‘Anyway, thank you for picking the kids up. Normally, they’d go to Tilda’s after school today, but one of hers is sick.’ Tilda had been one of the first friends Flora had made when they’d moved to the area. She lived five minutes away and, with both of them working and having children roughly the same age, they helped each other out as much as they could.

  ‘Oh, anytime. You know I love seeing them.’

  ‘Where a
re they, anyway?’ Flora looked out through the French windows into the garden but there was no sign of the children. She suddenly clocked how quiet it was.

  ‘Upstairs, I think. They went to go and clean something.’

  As if on cue, water started to slowly drip from the corner of the ceiling onto the cushion next to Kate.

  Flora looked up. ‘Oh my God! What have they…?’ She was halfway up the stairs by the time Kate stood up.

  Flora ran into the bathroom to find water overflowing from the sink, cascading onto the old wooden floorboards and pooling in the corner by the bath. ‘Pip! Tom!’ Flora shrieked, feeling both relief that they were clearly fine and fury that they’d been up to no good. She turned the taps off and threw as many towels as she could get her hands on onto the floor.

  ‘We’re in here!’ Pip called. Flora raced to Pip’s room to find her sitting in her wigwam with Tom, their faces lit up by the light of a screen.

  ‘Where did you find the iPad? You know you’re not supposed to help yourselves. And what have you done in the bathroom?’

  Pip looked horrified. ‘Oh, Mum, I’m so sorry. We were trying to clean Tom’s comic. He’d drawn on it and wanted to rub the pen off. So we tried to wash it but it wouldn’t come off so we… we… then it started to fall apart in the sink…’

  Tom stood up. ‘But it’s OK, Mama, because Granny gave us this to watch instead.’ He held out the iPad. ‘I’m really sorry.’ Tom swiped his blond hair with his other hand, his enormous brown eyes looking up at her.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake… well, that was clearly a stupid thing to do, to wash paper in the sink. Come on, Pip. You should know better.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Mum. I’ll go and clear it up.’ Pip looked up at her mother, her brown eyes peering through her thick dark fringe.

  ‘No, I’d rather you went downstairs and helped tidy up, and we’ll say goodbye to Granny, too.’

  Kate appeared at the door. ‘Well now, you two. What were you doing up here?’

  Flora bit her bottom lip. She was so cross, but she knew it wouldn’t end well if she reminded her mother that the time to really worry was when the kids were quiet for too long.

  ‘Oh, you little monkeys, I told you not to let Mummy see you with the iPad! It was supposed to be our secret!’ Kate winked at them.

  Flora thought she might actually taste blood if she bit her lip any harder. She took a deep breath. ‘Mum, it’s OK. You go. I’m going to clear up the bathroom. The kids can help me.’

  ‘Are you sure? I’d probably just be in the way. I’ll get going, then. Let me know when you next need me to step in…’

  Flora resisted rolling her eyes. ‘OK, thanks, Mum. I will.’

  ‘Bye, darlings!’ Kate blew kisses to Tom first, then Pip. They both waved back and thanked her in unison. ‘I’ll let myself out.’

  ‘Bye.’ Flora sighed. She looked back at the children. ‘Right, let’s sort this mess out.’

  ‘Flo, wake up, my love.’ Johnny tried to wake her without giving her a fright, by gently prodding her arm.

  Flora was at the kitchen table, her face flat against the foothills of the Andes on the pages showing maps of Argentina’s vineyards. She opened her eyes, adjusting to the light. She wiped at her mouth and sat up, blinking. ‘What time is it? I must have…’

  ‘It’s just past ten. I’m so sorry I’m so late. Trains were a nightmare tonight.’ Johnny looked down at her, his tie loose at his neck, his face pale with tiredness.

  Flora rubbed at her eyes then stretched her arms out wide before wrapping them around Johnny’s waist. ‘There’s some leftover chicken pie in the oven, if you’re hungry?’

  ‘Ooh, yes, please. Have we got any baked beans?’

  ‘I’m sure we have.’ Flora held on to him for a moment before letting him go, taking in the warmth and smell of his skin through his shirt.

  He ruffled her long brown hair. ‘Thank you. How’s it going?’ He walked over to the oven and peered inside.

  ‘What, this?’ Flora looked down at the pile of books, the files of work and stack of notebooks. She sighed, pulling her hair back and tying it into a messy bun on top of her head. ‘Sometimes I worry that I’m doing all of this work and when it gets to the exams, I’m not going to remember a thing. I can barely remember where I left a cup of tea half the time, let alone what Burgundy’s best Chardonnay clone is.’

  ‘Chardonnay what?’ Johnny grabbed a tin from the cupboard.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s very boring, really. Unless you own a vineyard in Burgundy, of course. Anyway, Mack had his meeting with the bank today.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Colin was in the shop…’

  ‘Colin’s always in the shop.’

  ‘Yes, but unfortunately we cannot run on his custom alone. He only buys a bottle a week, two at a push.’

  ‘Shame.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Anyway, we couldn’t really talk so Mack said he’d fill me in tomorrow. Honestly, I think he’s hanging on by a thread. I’ve told him to let me go, that he doesn’t really need me, but he won’t.’

  ‘He knows how much you love that job, that’s why. And it wouldn’t be much fun sitting in an empty wine shop all day on your own, would it?’

  ‘I know, but still. I do feel we’re nearing the end of this happy arrangement. And that makes me really sad.’ Flora sighed. She closed her makeshift pillow and piled it up with the other books.

  ‘Well, see what he says tomorrow. There’s nothing you can do about it now. You need sleep. Go on, go to bed and I’ll be in as soon as I’m done here.’ Johnny poured a glass of water and passed it over to her. ‘Here.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Slowly, she got up and started climbing the stairs.

  Johnny waited until she was gone. He let out a long breath. He’d meant to tell her as soon as he came in. All the way home on the train he’d been planning how to break it to her. But telling her he’d just been made redundant face to face wasn’t nearly as straightforward as he’d imagined.

  2

  Flora hadn’t ever actually planned to get into wine in a serious way. It had all happened rather by accident. She’d spent the first five years of her working life in advertising with a number of large London firms. She’d loved the pace and glamour of it at first – she’d once flown to New York for lunch – but after a while something began to gnaw away at her, a sense that what she was doing didn’t really matter, at least not to her. Around that time, she’d met Johnny. He was a friend of a friend and they’d met at a party, both taking refuge in the kitchen to get away from the karaoke in the other room. Flora had not long extricated herself from a long-term relationship with someone from work – her boss, in fact, not the smartest move she’d ever made – and getting into another relationship definitely wasn’t the plan.

  But then meeting Johnny wasn’t in her plan either. Previous boyfriends included a musician (disaster) and a before-he-was-famous actor (also a disaster). Johnny just seemed so uncomplicated compared to her usual ‘type’, and as the months passed he continued to pursue her with gentle persuasion rather than grand gestures. Before long her resolve to stay single for a while was forgotten and Flora had never been happier. Everything was perfect, in fact, except for her job, which, by now, she hated.

  It was Johnny who suggested one evening over noodles at their favourite local restaurant that she might look at evening courses at a local college.

  ‘To do what?’ Flora spoke through a mouthful.

  ‘Well, that’s the point. They’re bound to offer all sorts of courses. It might lead you to something you’ve never even thought of.’ Johnny took a sip from his bottle of beer. ‘Look, you’ve been doing this job for how long?’

  ‘Too long. Feels like a lifetime.’

  ‘Exactly. Come on, you need to find something you really love doing and now’s the time to start doing it. What do you think?’ He looked genuinely excited. The fact that he was so invested in her happ
iness slightly threw her, in a good way. Previous boyfriends had all been far more interested in themselves to worry about a girlfriend’s growing existential crisis.

  ‘Fine, I’ll have a look online tomorrow, I promise.’

  Of course, Flora hadn’t looked the next day, or that week, and before long months had gone by and she still hadn’t done anything about it. She was ridiculously busy at work, but with every day that passed she felt more nauseous about going in. She and Johnny were still hopping between each other’s flats, which suited them both. It seemed too soon to have the ‘shall we move in together’ chat; it had been barely six months since they’d met.

  So no one was more surprised than Flora when she realised she was pregnant. That growing sick feeling in her stomach hadn’t been about the job at all, it had been the work of a very tiny human growing inside her. At first she’d put off finding out for sure, not wanting to see it in black and white, or rather in blue lines on a stick. But after a week or so of knowing in her bones that she was almost certainly pregnant she took a test and called Johnny.

  ‘Is everything OK? You sound… a bit weird.’ She could picture his face, a frown on his forehead.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. But I need to talk to you. Like, now.’

  ‘Are you… are we…?’

  ‘Johnny, please can you just come?’

  ‘On my way.’