Page 23 of The Cocktail Bar
River had gone out of his way to drive her there before the bar had opened that day, sacrificing pre-slicing of his citrus fruit for what? So she’d get her own heart sliced in two.
Next she’d called Tamara, pointless really, given her parents and sister had always sided with one another, no matter how trivial and banal the issue – from the CDs Tamara ‘hadn’t stolen’ from Alice’s music collection to the hot pants Tamara ‘hadn’t pilfered and dyed British racing green’. This, it seemed, was the moment in life Tamara had always been waiting for. Revenge is, as they quite rightly say, a dish best served cold, and from her sister, it couldn’t have come any icier.
“Al, sweetheart, I’ve told you, I’m not your bank. Now you made your choice. Daddy gave you the world, the Milky Way and the universe besides on a silver platter but you rejected him – you’ve no idea how deep that cut, his youngest angel shunning his love. Yes, you were twenty-two and naïve, god knows we’ve all been there, but it’s no use running to me now your life’s gone down shit creek without a paddle. I’ve acted as Chief Advisor to you for long enough. I’ve my own family to think about now: Harry and I must put our own children first. If I’m handing out charity to you, why that’s thousands taken from Sienna, Allegra, Margot and Humphrey’s trust funds, something we simply cannot do. If you ever make it to motherhood, something one seriously doubts given the way you’ve wasted your life thus far, you’ll understand that one day.”
And with that Tamara had put down the phone, an act which had dissolved their bond for eternity. Alice would never make the mistake of calling her a sister again. She’d imagined Tamara happy dancing her squeaky clean chequered hallway in sweet victory, telephone script tossed over her shoulder as Harry and the nannies uncorked theMoët.
Vain Alice may not have been, but the gift of her physical appearance in contrast with that of her older sister’s, as well as her mother’s fading looks, was definitely not lost on her. Tamara had clearly waited all those long and bitter years to stick the knife in where it would hurt, and generally, in Alice’s family’s posh circles, if you didn’t have a face to graceVogue, never you mind, sweetie, you had money, nerve, self-importance, and an upturned nose with high cheekbones that gave the world the impression you were the human equivalent of a Faberge egg anyway. Stick aCartierpendant around your neck and who’d be any the wiser?
Somebody knocked on her hotel door at six pm Sunday night. She put down her novel, double checked she no longer resembled a panda, cleared the streaky black crumpled tissues from her bed, and hoped that if it was River, it was River on his own. She was not in the mood for making new friends tonight.
“Have you made any plans for uh… dinner?” he said, all too obviously trying not to get flustered at the sight of her in ivory silk spaghetti strap pyjamas. Once she’d returned from the swings and unpacked her few belongings, all she’d wanted to do was laze on the bed, cry and catch up with the queue of novels on her Kindle. Plus it was hot; heat really did rise in a boutique hotel with non-existent air conditioning, it turned out – as opposed to the instant gratification style suites with remote controls coming out of every orifice that she was more accustomed to.
“We’re usually closed then, at the uh,” his eyes flitted moth-like, “at the erm… bar, but I want to make sure you’re eating properly. It’s all too easy to turn into a waif.”
Evidently Georgina had left the building then.
“I can’t say food is the first thing on my mind at the moment,” her short term memory flashed back to the half-eaten sushi she’d binned at the park’s gates, “but yes please, that would be lovely. I still haven’t seen the inside of this famous bar after all.”
“It’s hardly that… although yeah, it’s certainly gotten itself into the papers a few too many times already. Why don’t I call for you in a couple of hours?”
“It’s a date.” Oops, she hadn’t meant to say that.
“It is a date,” he replied.
“Well, not adate-date… I um, I totally didn’t mean that kind of a rendezvous,” she tried in vain to shake the image of The Vulture in the corridor from earlier out of her head, “you’re a taken man—”
“No, course not that kind of a date, just friends, good friends and food and equally good cocktails… but I told you before, Georgina isn’t my girlfriend. We’re just, you know, having fun. That’s it. She knows the score too, she wouldn’t tell you any different, but anyway, enough about her. Tonight’s about us, and well, making plans for your future.”
“That sounds a bit hard core.”
“I mean getting you out of here at some point soon, as glam for Glastonbury as it is, The Guinevere is hardly anyone’s definition of a long-term home, mine included.”
His words circled her head as she showered, spritzed herself – sparingly - in the slightly more upmarketGuerlain,ever mindful of the fact that less was more, mystique everything when it came to captivating a man. Not that she was attempting to do that this evening, of course. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder how the conversation would flow, especially after a couple of drinks. They’d never spent much time alone since the mayhem of the music world. They were about to enter brand new territory.
***
Precisely two hours after his earlier rap at her door, he chaperoned her down the High Street to his bar, unlocked the door, pulled down the blinds, and dimmed the lights to reveal a table sparkling with candles, fairy lights, and just about everything that stereotypically encapsulated the Danish – and now British borrowed – wordhygge, plus a couple of takeaway pizza boxes.
“Wow, is all this for me?”
“Yes for you, you deserve it. Take a seat.” He patted down the fluffy cushions on the pew Alice had slithered herself onto. “Look, I know that it’s pizza again, but it’s Cagnola’s Special Margarita… not a carnivorous morsel in sight… plus I don’t have an oven here… but I do have one of these,” he said excitedly, passing her the cocktail menu.
“Oh my god, where to start?” she said, turning the pages as if she were regarding a treasure in a museum wearing her finest kid gloves. “This is mind blowing, and you’ve put it together so beautifully… I’m no cocktail connoisseur but in all my travels, even in the likes of Hollywood, I’ve never seen a menu quite as fancy as this.”
“I like to think I’ve given things a twist.”
“That you have,” she said. “It really is up there with the masters.”
“I’m not sure I’d go as far as to say that. I mean I’m self-taught after all, no formal credentials other than absorbing the methods of many a bartender, but hopefully it’s not your bog standard excuse for a cocktail bar either, if I’ve pulled that much off I’ll be happy.”
“Why all these blank pages at the end though?” Alice threw him an equally blank expression.
He raised his head behind the bar, looking more than a little unsure of himself.
“Oh, you know, it’s kind of a trend nowadays.” The bottles he was moving from station to station clinked like church bells interrupting his flow. “Especially in the London bars… I guess… I guess it’s my attempt at re-creating the mystery, the evocative nature of the speakeasy… people used to pen one another messages over a cocktail, did you know that?”
“No, I can’t say I—”
