Another Glass of Champagne

by Jenny Kane

  Containing a groan, Rupert saw that his plan of being cruel to be kind was going to have to be brought forward. ‘Come on, let’s go and have a drink.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Helena fiddled with the purple streak at the edge of her fringe in what he suspected she thought was a seductive manner. ‘I know it’s warm, but I quite fancy a hot chocolate.’

  Rupert tried not to notice how she seemed to be walking with an extra wiggle of her hips as he politely answered all her questions on the way to the café, which suddenly seemed miles away.

  Finally settling her at a secluded table, he queued up for their drinks, his brain madly deciding how to phrase his let down as nicely as possible.

  ‘Look, Helena,’ Rupert put the unseasonably warm drink down in front of her, ‘we need to talk.’

  Helena smiled brightly. ‘You sound like someone in a film.’

  ‘Do I? Well, I suppose ... I mean, what I have to say is hardly original. It’s probably been said in lots of films.’ Rupert took a drink to stop himself talking rubbish.

  Sipping her drink, Helena asked, ‘Do you watch a lot of films?’

  ‘No. Yes. Some. I’m quite picky. The thing is, Helena...’

  Cupping her mug, making sure that he had a good look at her scarlet fingernails, she interrupted again, ‘I love going to the cinema. My favourite movie is When Harry Met Sally. I know it’s old, but it is soooo sweet. All that stuff about men and women never truly being able to be friends because the sex bit gets in the way. Inspired storyline! Mum would have killed to have been the first person to write that. That must have been the first time that plot angle was ever used in a film. What do you think?’

  Opening his mouth to say that the sex part would never get in the way for them, Rupert was feeling lucky for being given such an easy opening into such tricky subject, when he realised that Helena hadn’t actually been expecting him to answer. She was still ploughing on with her film-based monologue.

  ‘That angle has sort of been integral to most chick flicks since then. Mind you, I like a good action movie as well, don’t you? My dad was so excited about the last Star Wars film. He was like a kid again, waiting to see Han Solo on the screen after so long. Mind you, I have to admit it was better than I thought it would be. The woman playing Rey was fantastic. Do you have any favourite stars? I really like...’

  Realising that every question Helena asked was merely rhetorical, Rupert began to let the conversation wash over him like white noise. He was fairly certain she’d worked out that he was going to give her the “we can only ever be friends and no more” speech, and was trying to delay the inevitable. Or maybe she wasn’t? He didn’t know her well enough to judge.

  Eventually, after what like a lifetime, Helena ran out of steam, and Rupert noticed that she was looking at him expectantly, probably waiting for some sort of response to whatever question she’d just asked.

  Taking his chance, with no idea of what she was expecting him to say, Rupert grabbed the pause in conversation and launched into the speech he’d been rehearsing in his head while she’d been talking, ‘Helena, you’re a lovely girl, but I can’t be the person you want me to be. Not only are you way too young for me, not to mention my boss’s daughter, I simply don’t go out with women. I’m sorry.’

  Helena’s mouth opened and closed once or twice before she said, ‘Don’t be silly. Of course you do. You haven’t found the right girl yet. The right type of woman, if you like. And don’t worry. Dad really likes you.’

  Even though she was sounding as positive and self-assured as she always did, Rupert could see that Helena’s expression had darkened a fraction, and her eyes had a sheen of doubt.

  ‘Helena, beautiful though you are ... at the risk of quoting from another film, even if you were the last woman on earth you still wouldn’t be my type.’

  Rupert wanted to evaporate into thin air. Not only did he feel like the most despicable person on the planet, but he felt as though every single pair of eyes in the busy café was burning into his back, hating him for upsetting the young woman who’d flounced out in an embarrassment of angry tears.

  Her accusations of leading her on rang in his ears, but none of Helena’s hurt-fuelled retorts had hit him as much as the last that she’ll hurled at him. As tears cascaded down her made-up face, making her look like a soggy Bratz doll, she yelled, ‘Well, it’s your loss! Your loss! If you think Jack bloody Brown will ever fall in love with you, you’re very much mistaken. He is bad news, just you ask my mum. Ask Amy!’

  The look on his face must have given far more away than Rupert would ever have wished, for Helena, grabbing a handful of serviettes from the tables dispenser to wipe over her face, smearing her make-up further in the process, hissed at a volume that was less than subtle, ‘Oh my God, you are, aren’t you? You’re in love with Jack!’

  He didn’t turn to watch her storm out.

  Rupert sat where he was for a long time. It was bad enough that he’d hurt her. He knew he hadn’t led her on, but if she needed to believe that, then so be it, but he wasn’t secretly in love with Jack – was he? He just found him attractive – which was perfectly understandable as he was very handsome. And Jack was the only gay man Rupert knew locally, and he got on with him well. They had lots in common, and...

  ‘Oh, no. I can’t be. Everyone says Jack is a total nightmare in the relationship department. Even Jack himself says that.’

  Rupert stared blankly into his cold coffee.

  So much for a peaceful afternoon off.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Saturday 9th July

  One look at Helena’s smudged mascara was enough for Kit to guess what had happened.

  Pulling her daughter in for a cuddle, she said nothing, but passed her the box of tissues from her dressing table so she could clean up her face. Then, kissing the top of her head, Kit sat Helena on the edge of the bed, found her daughter’s favourite jeans and cosy hoodie, and placed them next to her. ‘You get comfortable, and then we’re going to go out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We are going over to Amy’s for cake and champagne.’

  ‘What the hell do I have to celebrate?’ Helena angrily scrunched up the soggy tissue in her hands.

  ‘We have plenty to celebrate. The most important thing being that you, in about three hours’ time, are going to feel like toasting the rest of your life.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘But I want to hide. I’ve been such an idiot.’ Laying her head on her mum’s shoulder, Helena sniffed loudly, ‘And I can’t go out for champagne in an old hoodie anyway.’

  Kit couldn’t help but smile at her daughter. Helena might be heartbroken, but she was still worried about her appearance. ‘You can wear anything you like. Now, take a deep breath, and I’ll be back in thirty seconds.’

  Helena felt the tears well back up inside her. She felt so stupid! As her mum came back in, she scrubbed at her eyes crossly with the sleeve of her faded blue top. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For not saying I told you so.’ Helena dissolved into a fresh flood of tears, as she cuddled against her mum in a way she hadn’t done since she was ten years old, when her beloved pet rabbit had passed away.

  Paul had been ushered out to do the shopping so that Amy, Kit, and Helena could have some girl time. The champagne was on Amy’s patio table, her a glass jug of chilled orange juice was ready in, and a giant sugar-frosted lemon cake stood ready to be sliced. As an afterthought, Amy had put out a pretty square box of tissues, just in case the tears hadn’t finished flowing before her visitors arrived.

  Then, with an encouraging kick from her baby, Amy sat in the sunshine to wait for a ring on the doorbell.

  Rupert headed to Reading Nature at top speed. He knew he didn’t really have anything to apologise for, but he felt he owed Phil an explanation as to why he could be going home to a very angry, tearful Helena that evening. Fearful that he could be about to lose t
he only job he’d ever enjoyed because he’d upset the boss’s daughter, he knew he couldn’t leave things alone, otherwise he’d only worry until he went back to work on Tuesday morning.

  Glad that the shop was fairly quiet, Rupert steered his confused boss into the tiny staff kitchen and, with his pulse racing, explained exactly what had just happened at Kew.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Phil. I honestly didn’t do anything to encourage her. It’s not like I’d ever go out with –’

  Phil interrupted Rupert with a patient sigh. ‘What is it about the women in my family?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Thanks for telling me, Rupert. It can’t have been easy for you, especially as Helena can be ... shall we say single-minded.’ Putting the kettle on, Phil told Rupert not to worry and to stay exactly where he was. ‘Hide out in here for a while and have a cuppa.’

  Heading back into the shop, Phil picked up the phone. ‘Jack, mate, I know you’re busy, but if you’ve got a minute, then we could do with you over here.’

  Amy ushered Kit and Helena through the house and out into her sunny narrow garden. ‘Just what the doctor ordered?’

  Helena’s bottom lip began to wobble as she saw the effort Amy had gone to for her. Unable to speak for fear of letting out another landslide of emotion, she simply nodded her thanks.

  ‘This is amazing, Amy, thanks.’ Kit gently hugged her friend. ‘Look at you! Are you sure you still have a month to go?’

  ‘Tell me about it! I’m not going to be able to fit through the front door soon.’ Turning her attention to Helena, Amy smiled, ‘Right then, Helena. I know we are going to come across like two interfering old women, but please, if you never take any of our advice ever again, trust us now. You have to talk about this today. Don’t bottle it up. Let it out. We aren’t being nosy, we know precisely what damage bottling this stuff up does – and we care for you too much to let you be as stupid as we are!’

  Pouring Helena an iced Buck’s Fizz, and Kit some of the champagne Paul had bought for after the baby was born, Amy lowered herself back onto her chair.

  ‘Now then,’ Amy raised her glass, ‘here’s to not getting mixed up with men who are confused about their sexuality!’

  ‘You did it then?’

  Looking up from tweaking the photographs on his laptop, Rupert was surprised to see Jack. He felt colour rise across his face as Helena’s accusing words echoed in his ears. ‘Hello, Jack. Yes, I did it. But not quite in the way I’d planned.’

  ‘Does it ever go to plan?’

  ‘There speaks the voice of experience.’

  ‘You have no idea!’ Jack poured himself a coffee from the jug in the corner of the kitchen. ‘That’s why I’m off men right now. Well, off relationships, anyway. I never quite manage to get it right. No matter how I try, I always end up hurting the people I care about...’

  Feeling oddly as if he was being warned off, Rupert replied, ‘I guess I’ve been living the single life for similar reasons.’

  ‘So then,’ Jack stirred his drink slowly, ‘tell me.’

  Helena’s hand shook as she took a sip of the blissfully cold drink. ‘It seemed so perfect to start with. I found him at taking photos at Kew. He was on his own, and it was easy to chat and felt so relaxed...’

  Rupert pushed away his empty coffee cup, knowing he’d already had enough caffeine that day to give his heart palpitations. ‘I’d planned to find Helena on my day off on Monday, to tell her it was hopeless, just like we discussed yesterday. But then she turned up at Kew this lunchtime. I have no idea how she found me. I was tucked away in the trees. It was beginning to feel like I was being stalked. Talk about uncomfortable.’

  Amy nudged the tissue box nearer to Helena as the tell-tale shortening of breath became more pronounced and tears began to brew.

  ‘He asked me to go for drink. I thought it was a date. It felt like a date. We chatted all the way to the café, and Rupert got me a hot chocolate. He was so kind and...’

  ‘Honestly, Jack, I know Helena is your goddaughter and everything, and I don’t want to cause offence, but my God, she can talk! I didn’t get a word in on the whole walk from the wood to the café.’

  Jack smiled ruefully. ‘You were taking her for a drink to try and soften the blow?’

  ‘Try is the right word.’

  ‘Tried and failed?’

  ‘In spectacular style.’

  ‘And then ...’ The tears were in full flow now, but silently, as if Helena was all sobbed out but her tear ducts hadn’t registered it was time to dam the waterfall. ‘Then Rupert ... Rupert ... sat me at this lovely secluded table. I thought it was because he wanted us to be alone, but...’

  ‘I picked the table as far as way from other people as possible, so that if Helena went insane not too many people would notice. I have to work at Kew after all, and most of the café staff know me.’

  Jack groaned. ‘Let me guess. Helena thought you were being romantic rather than diplomatic?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Blowing her nose with a sound like a foghorn, Helena took another glug of the Buck’s Fizz, which was rather stronger than she’d expected, and was definitely making her confide more than she normally would. ‘We had this chat about films. I was so sure Rupert was about to ask me out to the cinema, and then...’

  ‘It was awful, Jack. Awful. I’m sure Helena sensed I was going to give her the whole, “I can’t go out with you” speech, and she just talked and talked so that I wouldn’t be able to get the words I had to say out. She started on about films. It was unbelievable; she just kept talking.’

  Jack fought back the instinct to put his hand over Rupert’s as it rested on the table. ‘But eventually you must have been able to get a word in edgeways?’

  Kit nodded encouragingly at her daughter. ‘You’re so brave. It’s so horrid having a broken heart, but not bottling it up and hiding it inside is important. I don’t want you to go all bitter like I did, or all sad and lonely like Amy did.’

  ‘Thanks, Kit!’ Amy raised her eyebrows at her friends.

  ‘I didn’t mean...’

  Amy raised her hand, ‘I’m joking.’ Cutting another massive slice of cake and sliding it across to Helena, she confided, ‘I was a mess, hun. A feeble, embarrassing, ashamed, pathetic heap of a person when I lost Jack. And although we’d been together a year, so it was a bit different from what you’re suffering now, I made it so much worse for myself by not talking to anyone about it for thirteen lonely years.’

  ‘Thirteen years?’ Helena whispered in shock. ‘You didn’t even tell your best friend?’

  ‘Jack was my best friend.’

  ‘Oh God, how awful. You poor thing!’

  Amy grinned. She patted her stomach, which had started twinging in a way that was extremely inconvenient. ‘I think things turned out alright in the end.’

  Kit finished the contents of her glass and poured herself a top-up. ‘So, what happened next? Come on, you might as well get it all off your chest, then you can make a totally fresh start, and have no emotional hang-ups on your shoulders when you go to university.’

  ‘If I get my A levels.’

  Shaken by Helena’s unusual lack of confidence, Kit inwardly cursed the side effects of unrequited love. ‘You will, sweetheart. You will.’

  Taking another deep breath, Helena relayed Rupert’s statement that he’d never be able to be with her, even though she was beautiful, because she’d never be his type. She sniffed hard. ‘He was saying he was gay, wasn’t he? Like you guys thought all along. Right?’

  ‘You did it, then? You told her you were gay?’

  ‘Well.’ Rupert looked a bit uncomfortable, ‘What I actually said was that even if she was the last woman in the world, she wouldn’t be my type.’

  ‘Isn’t that a line from a film?’

  Rupert groaned. ‘Don’t you start!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Rupert lowered his eyes to the computer screen which had gone i
nto sleep mode.

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve never said it, have you?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’ Rupert turned the screen back on, simply for something to do. ‘You must think me a terrible coward.’

  Oh, sod it. Jack put his hand out and put it over Rupert’s as it rested on the mouse he’d attached to his laptop. ‘No. I don’t think that. Not at all.’

  The tears had disappeared in time with the champagne.

  ‘You’ll be drunk!’ Amy laughed at Kit as she knocked back the remains of her drink.

  ‘Nah, this stuff doesn’t do anything for me.’ She glanced at her daughter, ‘You alright, love?’

  ‘What?’ Helena, although far from drunk – as her mother had been putting no more than a token gesture of champagne in her glass after the first properly proportioned Bucks Fizz – was looking very sleepy.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘I feel like a complete fool. I won’t ever be able to look Rupert in the eye again, but surely it’s better to find out now, than to go out with him and then discover he was gay, don’t you think?’

  Amy and Kit looked directly at each other, and toasting her with their full glasses, answered Helena with an emphatic, ‘Yes!’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Monday 11th July

  Kit’s face broke into a broad smile. She waited for Peggy to be between customers before beckoning to her with an almost forgotten rush of excitement.

  It had been a long time since she’d had an email from an erotica publisher addressed to her old pen name, Katrina Penny, and even longer since she’d had an email which made her smile from ear to ear.

  ‘What’s up?’ Peggy refilled her friend’s coffee cup by way of automatic pilot, and then rested her weary legs for thirty seconds. ‘Helena’s doing fine. She’s a bit quiet, but that’s not a problem; and until about ten minutes ago, we’ve been so busy that she’s had plenty to take her mind off things. Which you’d have noticed if you ever lifted your head from your work!’

  Kit had called Peggy the evening before to let her know that Helena was suffering from bruised pride, and might need handling with kid gloves today. ‘Thanks, hun, that’s good to know, but no, that’s not it. I wanted to tell you, Peggy McIntyre, that you are a total star!’