Spin the Bottle

by Monica McInerney

  ‘No, call the media and let them know where she was going to be, tip them off. So that gave me the idea. I rang all the papers in Dublin and in London and told them I’d heard on the grapevine that Hilly Robson and Noah Geddes were coming to stay here. And then Joe decided we should take it one step further and actually pretend to be them.’

  ‘So we hired this limousine for the day –’

  ‘Went to that costume shop in the city and hired this wig and Joe’s rap gear and da da! Here we are. The driver thought we were the real thing, I’m sure of it.’ Eva was laughing so hard she could hardly speak. ‘Especially when Joe started singing this ridiculous rap song, “Hilly you’re the dilly and my number one babe”. And I just kept repeating all the Australian expressions I could remember you and I laughing about last year in Melbourne, you know, “Strewth, look at that gorgeous cottage”, and “Bloody oath, it really is forty shades of green”. Then as we were getting out, Joe said to the driver…’ Eva looked over at her husband, giving him his cue.

  Joseph put on the fake rap accent again. ‘Pal, let me tell you, I’m a fair man. Sell this story, make what you can.’

  They were nearly weeping laughing now. Lainey peered through the curtains. Sure enough, the limousine driver was down the lane, surrounded by photographers and a TV camera. Lainey jumped as someone peered in at her as she was peering out. She dropped the curtain as the ringing of the doorbell started again.

  She turned back to her friends and started laughing too. ‘We’re stuck here for the night, you mad eejits. Maybe even the weekend. You realise that, don’t you?’

  Joseph held up a case. ‘We’ve brought supplies with us. Champagne, wine, food. We can stay holed up for weeks if we need to.’

  ‘So go on, Lainey, get out there and give them a statement,’ Eva said, thoroughly enjoying seeing Lainey lost for words. ‘And don’t forget to say the words Tara Lodge as often as you can. We’ll nip upstairs out of the way. Come on, Noah. Time for a love tryst.’

  Lainey waited until they were upstairs, then opened the door, blinking as several of the photographers set off their flashes. Trying to keep a straight face, she stood her ground. ‘Could I ask you all to leave, please? My guests need their privacy.’

  The questions came flying at her. ‘So you can confirm that is Hilly Robson and Noah Geddes?’ ‘Is that Hilly Robson and Noah Geddes?’ ‘Is it true you went to school with Hilly Robson in Melbourne?’

  Lainey smiled serenely, moving slightly to one side so the brass Tara Lodge nameplate was clearly visible. ‘I couldn’t possibly say. But I have heard they both have very good taste and as you can see Tara Lodge is a wonderful place to stay. So who knows?’ With that, she shut the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  LAINEY PUT DOWN the phone. Eva was a genius. Joseph was a genius. It had worked. Pictures of the alleged Hilly and Noah running into Tara Lodge had appeared in five newspapers. The place had been staked out all weekend, while the three of them had lived it up inside, drinking all the wine, eating the food, watching television, occasionally peering through the curtains. Come Monday morning, Lainey, Joseph and Eva had just walked out as themselves, disappointing the remaining reporters, climbed into Lainey’s car and driven away.

  Eva had insisted Lainey drop them off in town so they could catch the bus back to Dublin: ‘We need to get back in touch with our roots after the glamour of the limousine. Besides, you need to be home to answer the phone calls.’

  And there had been plenty of them, sparked either directly by the newspaper coverage or by people who had already heard about the Feast of Ireland weekends and realised they had better get in quickly if the place was in such demand. That morning she’d had a call from one of the social magazines too. Lainey just kept denying they’d been here, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  It hadn’t been a matter of lying either. To any question about Hilly and Noah she’d simply answered, ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’ Perhaps there was a job as a media adviser to a politician ahead of her when she went back to Australia.

  The next day another videotape arrived from Hugh. They were like little jewels arriving in brown paper, Lainey thought, going through her usual routine – getting a coffee, settling herself in front of the video player, looking forward to another update on her family. She was surprised when quite a different title came up on screen.

  The Hatted Chef Bites

  Then a subtitle

  Cooking Tips for Guesthouse Owners

  There was no pretence that it wasn’t Adam this time. Lainey laughed as a scooter came into view down her own street in Richmond, ridden by Adam, who was at least two feet too tall for it. ‘Wotcha,’ he shouted, leaping off, letting the bike fall to the ground. It was Adam pretending to be Jamie Oliver, scampering up the stairs in their apartment building, speaking in an appalling Cockney accent. ‘Roight then, luvverly jubbley. We’ve bin to the markets, roight, so wot I’m going to show you now is a roight delicious Irish meal.’

  The delicious Irish meal he started to cook came straight from Lainey’s Feast of Ireland menu, the one she had emailed Hugh. Adam kept up the Jamie Oliver voice and behaviour, but it was his own sureness of hand and skills as a chef on display. It was filmed in stages, with lots of close-ups of him selecting oysters, telling her what to look for at the market, how to open them and arrange them on the serving dish. A fast-forwarded segment came next, showing him eating half a dozen oysters and drinking a pint of Guinness, with a soundtrack of tiddley-aye Irish music playing underneath. Then he demonstrated the oven-roasted lamb from start to finish, advising about the oil and seasoning just as Eva had done, and taking her through every stage of the preparation of the parsnip mash and green beans with toasted almonds, right down to the peeling of the almonds. Not a detail was missed.

  The next segment started with a glass of wine being poured, drunk out of shot and then poured again. It was Adam, wearing a bow tie and suit, looking wild-haired and very drunk, standing out on his balcony, with a large whole salmon and a very large crab on a plate beside him. Keith Floyd, Lainey realised. Adam’s well-bred English accent wavered in quality, but the wine drinking continued throughout, a glass being waved at the camera now and again, with long slurping sounds from the camera operator and the cook himself. But the close-ups were no joke. There was shot after shot, carefully framed, first showing her how to select and prepare the best-quality crab claws, then how to make a perfectly simple, garlicky tomato sauce to serve with them, the voiceover recommending she offer lots of fresh-baked bread to ‘mop up those lovely, lovely juices’. He then showed her how to fillet a whole salmon and exactly how long to grill the luscious pink fillets so no flavour or moisture was lost, and finally how to serve it with the tzatziki and cucumber and dill salad. The final shot showed the beautifully presented fish main course, an enticing display of colours and textures, surrounded by at least a dozen empty wineglasses.

  There was an uneven edit, a flash of static and then a new setting. The kitchen at Adam’s restaurant. Lainey recognised it immediately. Then, into shot came Adam, but it was Adam wearing a long black wig and a sexy dress, clearly stuffed with a pair of football socks. One of the sock’s heels was poking out of his cleavage. He was speaking in a husky, upper-class British accent, looking coquettishly at the camera. ‘Dessert should be sexy, indulgent, fulfilling,’ he/she said slowly, batting his eyelashes (false, Lainey noticed in astonishment). ‘First take plenty of cream.’ The camera lingered lovingly on the thick cream, the melted chocolate, the soft butter, as Adam – or Adamma, as he was referring to himself – showed how to make a rich chocolate pudding. At first every shot had a lock of hair draped across the food, generally covered in cream. As the preparation went on, though, it became serious, as Adam showed Lainey step by step how to mix the ingredients, fold the mixture, grease the small ramekins, sprinkle the icing sugar – even where exactly to place them in the oven (‘or Aga’, he said, pronouncing it ‘Agaah’). He did the same with the golde
n syrup dumplings and the crunchy walnut and fig pudding.

  Then the credits rolled – a shot of a computer screen with hundreds of names scrolling upwards so quickly there wasn’t a chance of reading any of them. Lainey pressed pause and managed to read a few. There was every mad job title under the sun – Best Boy, Key Grip, Script Editor, Properties Manager, Caterer, Masseur, Driver, Runner, Walker, Crawler. In each case the name beside the title was Hugh Byrne. Until the end, when she saw the line Suggested, Devised and Produced by Adam Blake. And then the final line: An Angel Production.

  The next day she was watching it again, taking notes on how Adam filleted the salmon, when Nell came in behind her.

  She watched it silently for a moment. ‘Is that a homemade video? Not a real cooking show?’

  ‘Yes, it’s my brother and my –’ she stopped. ‘My brother and a friend of mine did it in Melbourne for me.’

  Nell watched a bit longer. ‘Your friend’s very tall, isn’t he?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Was he your boyfriend?’

  ‘Mmm,’ she said after a pause.

  ‘I thought you fancied Rohan.’

  Lainey spun around. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I thought you fancied Rohan. You go funny when he’s around.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘You do. Your voice changes. You watch him all the time.’

  Lainey realised right then that she hated teenagers. They were ridiculous and should all be banished to a far-off island until they had grown up. ‘You’re imagining it.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  Lainey made a point of staring at the screen for a moment, then she couldn’t help herself. ‘He’s practically married, though, isn’t he? He and Sabine?’

  ‘But she’s not here, is she? She had to stay in Munich,’ Nell said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Why was that?’ Lainey asked in as casual a voice as she could muster.

  ‘She teaches in a school for special children. Rohan said she thought it would be too disruptive for them if she left for the year.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  Nell had a mischievous smile on her face. ‘Maybe Rohan fancies you as well? Do you want me to ask him?’

  Lainey leaned across and turned off the video. That was quite enough watching TV and talking to Nell for one day. ‘Don’t be silly, Nell. Now come on, we’ve got floors to scrub.’

  A phone call from her mother that night put thoughts of Adam and Rohan right out of her head. The insurance company had sent someone to try and video her father. Lainey was livid. ‘Those stinking creeping bastards, that pack of –’

  ‘Elaine Byrne, watch your tongue, please.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ma. But how dare they try and film Dad like that? That’s an invasion of privacy, isn’t it? You’re sure, are you? Sure they were from the insurance company? It wasn’t some documentary film company? A news crew?’

  ‘No, we’re sure. Hugh picked them first. He was coming home and saw the car cruising, looking for an address. And then he saw them go past our house and stop and set up something. So he stood at the lounge-room window and started filming them. And that’s how he saw it. He used the zoom lens and saw them filming him.’

  ‘Did they know he was filming them filming him?’

  ‘They weren’t filming him – they were trying to film your father.’

  ‘You know what I mean, Ma. Did they know?’

  ‘No, Hugh was very careful. He was great, actually, just took control of the whole situation.’

  Lainey felt a pang of jealousy. She should have been the one there taking control, not Hugh. ‘So what were they waiting for? Dad to come out on a pogo stick? Isn’t this against the law?’

  ‘No, it’s not, apparently. It’s their job to satisfy themselves that the claim is completely valid, so they have to gather evidence.’

  ‘Why aren’t you raging, Ma? Ringing up the police?’

  ‘I was when it first happened, but Hugh said it didn’t matter at all. It meant the case was progressing. He seemed pleased, to be honest.’

  ‘That’s just because there was a video camera involved. And what about Dad?’

  ‘We didn’t tell him. We thought it would only make him more depressed.’

  ‘More?’

  ‘He’s had a bad week. Again. I spoke to his physio. She was asking if he’d been doing any of his exercises at all. He should have been up and about by now, she said.’

  ‘Well, give her a medal for that startling diagnosis.’

  ‘You getting cranky isn’t going to get us anywhere.’

  Lainey forced herself to change the subject. ‘How are the boys? And Rosie and the twins?’

  ‘Everyone’s absolutely grand. Brendan’s been working back late a lot these past weeks, some big project on, apparently.’

  ‘Give them all my love, won’t you? I’d better go, in case anyone’s trying to ring and book.’

  ‘Bye, love. And thanks again. For being there.’

  ‘For being there? For being me? Have you been watching too many American films?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I know. And it’s no problem, really. Bye now.’

  After she’d hung up she realised that she hadn’t mentioned the call from Leo Ramsay. Her hand hovered over the phone for a moment, as she thought about calling back. Then she decided she didn’t want to tell her mother. Something about the whole Leo situation had made her feel quite uncomfortable.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  LAINEY STOOD BACK several nights later and gazed around the dining room. She’d decided to do a trial run of the two dinners, serving all the dishes just as she would when the theme weekends were up and running. She’d invited Rohan and Mrs Hartigan over this evening to try Friday night’s menu. Eva and Joseph were coming the following night to try the Saturday night’s dishes.

  Rohan and Mrs Hartigan were due to arrive any moment. The table was polished and set with real linen, for three places rather than the ten it would have during the weekends, but the effect was still charming. The fire was lit, there were fresh flowers, and candles flickered here and there around the room. She just had to hope that having Mrs Hartigan there would stop the mind-film imp. Since Nell had planted the idea in her head that Rohan might in fact fancy her, she’d been cursed with lurid images at all hours of the day. She’d begun to wish she’d invited Mr and Mrs Fogarty for dinner rather than Rohan and his mother.

  The ring of the doorbell brought her to her senses. She had to count to ten before she answered. It would be bad enough blushing in front of Rohan, but in front of Mrs Hartigan as well?

  Mrs Hartigan wasn’t there. It was just Rohan.

  He smiled apologetically. ‘Lainey, I’m sorry for the late notice, but my mother isn’t well tonight. I know how important it is that you try out the meal, so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I brought a friend along instead. I met him coming out of one of the pubs in town.’

  His friend stepped into the light, having clearly just been relieving himself in the garden. It was Bill, the ginger-haired man from the pub.

  Three hours later Lainey knew more about the Bayern Munich football team than she would have thought it possible to know. As for anything happening between her and Rohan – there hadn’t been the slightest possibility of it. Bill had completely monopolised the conversation all evening, treating Lainey as though she was a rather annoying waitress who for some reason insisted on sitting down and eating with them. She and Rohan had barely exchanged any words, let alone anything else.

  As for their opinion of the food – she could have served gnats on toast for all the two men would have noticed.

  Second time lucky, Lainey thought the next night. Once again, the dining room looked beautiful. The fire was lit and the lamps were low. She watched, fingers crossed, as Joseph and Eva dipped their spoons into the chocolate puddings in front of them. They had already declared the crab claws delicious. They’d raved about her fresh salmon. She te
nsed now as their spoons broke the crispy chocolate crust of the dessert, releasing the molten chocolate inside. She leaned forward, waiting, holding her breath. They took three more mouthfuls each before they delivered their verdict. Joseph spoke for them both.

  ‘Lainey, it’s superb.’

  She opened a new bottle of wine in celebration. ‘Thanks so much, you two, really. I can’t tell you how many practice runs I’ve had. There’ll be a salmon shortage in Ireland by the time I’m finished here.’

  ‘You can relax, Lainey, really. It was all just fantastic,’ Eva said. ‘And not just the food, the whole room looks beautiful. We should have booked in for a couple of these weekends ourselves.’

  ‘I want you to come down as my guests when this is all over, anyway – let me spoil you rotten for a weekend after all you’ve both done for me,’ she said, trying to pour wine through the hand Joe had spread over the top of his glass. ‘Ah go on, Joe, have one more. To mark the fact I didn’t blow up the kitchen.’

  ‘No, thanks, Lainey. I’m driving.’

  ‘Come on, half a glass then. It’ll drown out any bad memories of the meal.’

  ‘All right, just a half. And I don’t have any bad memories of the meal to drown out. It was delicious, really.’

  Lainey didn’t confess that she had watched Adam make it all on the video at least a dozen times before she tried it herself. She hadn’t even told Eva about Adam’s video. She didn’t know why.

  Eva and Joseph left soon after, running out to the car through the rain. They were barely visible through the mist as Lainey stood in her porch waving.

  She went inside to the warmth of the kitchen and had just finished clearing the dining room and drying the dishes, about to go to bed, when the phone rang. Nearly midnight, it would be Australia calling.

  She wiped her hands on the tea towel. ‘Good morning, Australia,’ she said.

  It wasn’t Australia. It was Eva, her voice barely recognisable. ‘Lainey?’