“Yes, hasn’t she done well?” Grant said. “She’s always been a business woman. Could tell it even when she was a little girl. Always been clever. She can succeed at anything she turns her hand to.” He winked conspiratorially at Gaynor. “I wouldn’t tell her that, of course.”
Gaynor remembered Claire’s face on their opening night when Neill had told her their father was too busy to make it. The tone of her voice when he’d cancelled the last visit.
She gave Grant a penetrating look. “Well, perhaps it’s time you did!”
“Are you OK?” she asked Jack, who was giving his very best attention to three blondes who had come in decorated with flashing seasonal lights and wearing tinsel in their cleavages. “Need any help?”
“I’m lovely, sweet-pea!” he called, while not taking his eyes off the nearest plunging neckline. “Maybe get some more glasses?”
Claire, behind him, was pulling the cork from a bottle of Bollinger. She folded a white cloth over the ice bucket and reached up for champagne flutes. “Oh yes, Gaynor, please. We’ve got almost none of these left.”
Gaynor began to skirt the room, collecting empties, stopping to kiss and chat to those she knew. Squeezing through to the bar, her hands full, she felt a hand on her bottom. “Hello gorgeous! Mmmm…” The hand felt around a bit more. “You’re not putting on weight, are you?”
“Do you mind!” Gaynor turned crossly on Danny. He had on a new leather jacket and a deep tan and was looking exceptionally pleased with himself.
“Have you missed me?” he asked, “I’ve thought about you every day.” He tried another experimental fondle.
Gaynor stepped back, holding the glasses out in front of her. “Keep them to yourself.”
But another arm had already wound itself around Gaynor’s waist and a different hand stuck itself out in front of her.
“I’m Sam and you must be Danny. I’ve heard such a lot about you…”
It was nearly midnight and everyone was in Christmas mood. Gaynor smiled as yet another couple did a spot of profound snogging under the mistletoe that Sarah had strategically dangled.
“Am I really putting on weight, already?” she asked Sam, smoothing her hands over her hips. The slinky silver dress did seem a bit tighter than the last time she’d worn it.
“Not that I can see,” he said. “But you’re bound to, sooner or later, aren’t you? After all, you’re carrying someone else about too.”
She smiled at him. “Victor always went on about how heavy I was.”
Sam kissed her ear. “I’m not Victor.”
She was flagging by the time they rang last orders. Everyone in the place seemed to close in on the bar and she and Claire and Sarah all found themselves behind the bar helping Jack serve.
“Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble…” Claire’s brother Neill called out wittily.
“The Witches of Eastwick…” His friend Seb lounged across the bar, grinning.
“Do you want to get served or not?” asked Gaynor, severely. “It doesn’t do to upset the management.”
“Come and give me a Christmas kiss,” said Seb, unrepentant. “Since Sarah has spurned me.”
Gaynor leant over the bar and brushed his lips lightly with hers. “She always did have good taste.”
It was a minute to time. Gaynor was adding up seventeen drinks in her head. “Don’t speak to me,” she instructed Jack as he leant round her to open the till. “And don’t even think about a cappuccino,” she said to Maurice who was dithering over what to have for himself, now he’d bought a round for his entire end of the bar.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, dancing from foot to foot and looking fetchingly at the blackboard. “I’ll you what,” he said, through lowered lashes. “I’ll have a hot chocolate.”
“I thought they were going to be here all night,” Gaynor said to Sarah when she’d kissed the last giggling customer and propelled them gently through the door. “I am totally kissed out.”
“I hope not,” said Sam, squeezing her.
Gaynor yawned. “I think I need to go to bed.”
“Mmmn,” said Sam softly in her ear.
“Not yet!” said Jamie. “We’re having champagne.”
“I can’t really…”
“A bit won’t hurt,” said Sarah authoritatively. “You can drink in ‘moderation’.” She grinned at Gaynor. “Though I’m not sure you and the medical authorities would share the same interpretation of that phrase. When I got pregnant with Bel I told the midwife I was going home for a bottle of bubbly and she just said, “Well, don’t get too pissed.”
“We’ve got through our first six months,” said Claire. “That’s worth celebrating. And then there’s Gaynor’s baby and Jamie’s new job…” She flashed a huge, brave smile as Jamie took her hand, “and Sarah moving in with Richard and…”
“Poor old Seb without a woman for Christmas,” said Seb, sadly.
“Come clubbing in Margate,” said Jack, putting on his jacket. “Never mind this girly champagne stuff – let’s go and find some totty.”
“Totty?” said Sarah. “What sort of an expression is that? Those lucky girls, eh?” She grinned. “Seeing you two coming…”
“l can’t stay too long either,” she said, when they’d gone. “Richard is at home with the kids. We’ve told them HE won’t come if they don’t buckle down and sleep but that’s no guarantee of anything.”
“We’ve got my parents waiting at home for us,” said Claire as they all sat round a table in front of the fire and Jamie popped the cork from a bottle of Bolly. “But hey, I want to have a drink with you all.”
“Yeah, when did they go?” Neill nudged at his sister.
Claire gave him a look. “Mum was tired,” she said, her voice loaded.
Neill nodded. “Dad had had enough, in other words.”
“He’s so proud of you,” volunteered Gaynor. “He told me – he thinks you’ve done brilliantly.”
Clare gave a humourless laugh. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to impress him. But golden boy here has always taken the biscuit.”
Neill shook his head. “I don’t know why you think that. He thinks I’m an idle loafer most of the time. I’ve never been forgiven for not going into the licensed trade and getting a beer gut to match his.”
Jamie leant out and patted Neill’s middle. “Oh, I don’t know.” He looked at Claire. “He is proud you know. He told me I had to be very sure I knew what I was doing – taking you away from your glittering career here.”
Claire looked embarrassed. “Happy Christmas, everyone!” she said, raising her glass. “Here’s to us and Greens and the future and a very happy Christmas.” They all drank. “And,” Claire went on, “Thank you, Sarah and Gaynor for a successful partnership and, look after the place, eh?” Her voice wobbled and she took another big swallow of champagne. Jamie hugged her. “And happy Christmas!” said Claire again.
They all laughed. Gaynor leant over and chinked glasses with her, then turned to Sarah. “Happy Christmas!” Then she stopped, looking stricken. “Oh Sarah, what’s the matter?”
Sarah gave a sort of choke, half laughing as she sniffed. “Oh God, I don’t know, Christmas is like children’s birthdays – if you’re not careful you always start blubbing. I cry every year at the nativity play,” she told them all, shamefaced. “The minute they start ‘Away in a Manger’ I’m off.”
Claire jerked her head towards the speakers from which ‘Frosty the Snowman’ tinkled out for the thirty-seventh time. “Oh dear, I think it could be on in a minute.”
“You’ve got all this to come,” Sarah told Sam and Gaynor. “Birthdays are just as bad. Every year, I used to tell myself I wouldn’t cry when the kids blew out their candles, but I always ended up grizzling.”
All at once, Gaynor felt that peculiar feeling in the pit of her stomach that was half nostalgia, half self-pity, laced with fear. A baby. A grown-up life where you went to school plays and had birthday parties and sang over
candles. She glanced at Sam, wondering if he too had suddenly faced the enormity of what they were doing. He looked perfectly relaxed, sitting there with his largely untouched drink in his hand, listening to whatever Sarah was saying.
Gaynor stood up. Of course it would be all right, she told herself. They were going to be together and have a beautiful son or daughter. It was just that the champagne had gone straight to her head and she felt slightly disorientated and a little faint. She stepped behind Sam towards the door to the loo, praying she wouldn’t be sick.
She could hear them behind her, laughing, singing along to the strains of ‘I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day’. She walked down the corridor, breathing deeply, suddenly wanting to be at home, snuggled up with Sam in bed. Just the two of them.
As she washed her hands, feeling cooler, she thought how cheerful he’d been since he’d finally stopped smoking and how passionate…
She smiled as she reached out to unbolt the loo door then screamed, as she was plunged into darkness. She heard a far-off shriek echo hers. Heart beating, she fumbled with the door in the blackness, feeling the panic rise in her chest as her fingers felt for the cold metal of the catch.
The swirling dark pressed in on her and she found herself gasping, as if short of oxygen, as she stumbled out into the corridor beyond, eyes struggling to focus on anything in the windowless passageway.
Faintly she could hear them – “Get that candle! Bloody trip switch again! What’s Benjamin doing down there?” – but she couldn’t reach the door, the door that would open on to the light of the fire, Claire lighting the restaurant candles, Jamie poking in the fuse box with a torch, Sarah rolling her eyes as Neill sat back and simply lit another joint…
She knew they were only yards away but she felt trapped and powerless. She tried to keep calm as she felt her way along the cold stone walls. “Sam?” she called, frightened. “Sam, where are you?”
And then the door to the bar opened and a shaft of light came in and she heard the music come back on. Hark ye Herald Angels Sing! And Claire calling: “Crisis over – more champagne, Jamie!”
Sarah’s kind voice: “Benjamin, they’re beautiful – I’ve never seen chocolate-covered Snowman Crème Brulée before, but you really must be careful with that hairdryer…”
Gaynor stopped, heart pounding with relief, as Sam came towards her, tall and strong, holding out his hands.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m here.”
The End
ALSO BY
JANE WENHAM-JONES
Wannabe a Writer?
Wannabe a Writer We’ve Heard Of?
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9781906373979
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One Glass Is Never Enough Page 29
