Page 30 of One Midnight With You
‘Gladys, I really do appreciate the offer, but I’m afraid I have plans tonight already.’
‘Oh. Is your Eric coming over then? Must be difficult at all these special occasions after what happened with him and Ailish. Nothing like families, eh? I was just saying to my Fred that when our Wynette split up from her man – we named her that after Tammy and she says it’s a curse because people are always singing to her about standing by her man – not ideal when you’re on your fourth husband. Anyway, where was I? Aye, that’s right. When our Wynette split up from her man…’
Another wave of light-headedness swept in with no warning and Minnie gripped the door handle tighter.
‘Gladys, I…’
The other woman wasn’t even listening, so intent on ploughing right on with her story. ‘…Well, it caused all sorts of problems, so it did. Not that I liked him right enough. He was probably better than the second husband, but nowhere near as nice as the first. Liked a drink and didn’t know when to stop. Anyway, are you sure you won’t change your mind? I’ve made my soup and my special steak pie – I put sausages from the butchers in it and my Fred says…’
Minnie never did get to hear what Fred said, because before she heard the rest of the story, or had a chance to comment on the wonderment of Gladys’s steak pie with sausages, she felt herself begin to slide down the door frame.
And her last thought before everything went dark was that she really hoped Henry wasn’t hearing all this commotion.
4 P.M. – 6 P.M.
17
AILISH
Ailish prayed that there wasn’t a hidden camera in the salon recording them, because the parents of her pupils definitely did not need to hear that once upon a time, her twenty-one-year-old self had consumed so many Slippery Nipples before 6p.m. on New Year’s Eve 1991, that she’d fallen into a bush singing ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’ by Color Me Badd. The spelling alone was atrocious.
Beside her in the chair, Rhonda squealed with laughter. ‘Oh lordy, I remember that. You’d come into the salon I was working in because there was a rumour that my last appointment of the day was going to be Marti Pellow from Wet Wet Wet. We sneaked you in, but he never showed up. Some of the stylists who’d already finished for the day decided to drown their sorrows by making cocktails in the staffroom and you got pished pished pished.’ Rhonda was hooting now. Actually hooting like an owl because she was laughing so hard. ‘And then I gave you a boob tube and my favourite silver trousers to wear…’
‘And I looked like I was about to re-enact the moon landing,’ Ailish giggled, trying to hold her drink steady and failing miserably. Not that much different from 1991.
‘I’m seeing a whole new side of you lot,’ Alexis chuckled, as she continued to shape Gwen’s short grey pixie cut. Her hair had regrown with a salt-and-pepper hue after her last round of chemo and it looked fabulous on her. Over on the other side of Gwen, Kaden was working product into Rhonda’s mass of curls before her blow-dry, and Roxy was currently loading Ailish’s hair up with more tinfoil than a roast chicken. It would have been a natty accessory to the silver outfit back on the night in question.
‘Anyway, yes, I won’t dispute that I was slightly on the inebriated side of sober, and may have fallen into a large, misplaced plant pot when exiting the salon, but if you two had been sensible enough to take me home at that point, then it would have been a sliding doors moment.’
‘I think that was my fault,’ Gwen joined in. ‘I decided that we should go to this little Italian place I’d been in the week before, because I’d totally fancied one of the waiters.’
‘But you didn’t tell us that,’ Ailish countered. ‘You just said something about pasta being the best thing for sobering me up.’
‘I may have slightly manipulated that situation,’ Gwen conceded and Ailish forgave her immediately because it was just so bloody amazing to be sitting here with her and to be watching her come alive again for the first time in ages. Today was turning out to be the best medication for all of them.
‘So you two took a very tipsy me – I still can’t handle any more than three drinks in a twenty-four-hour period – along to this gorgeous little Italian place that turned out to be Gino’s. And that started something that lasted for decades.’
Ailish tried to wrap the story up there, because whatever was in her cocktail had suddenly, out of nowhere, caused her chin to wobble and her windpipe to tighten. Decades. All wasted. Because Eric had decided to take a wrecking ball to their lives. Sometimes she wondered if there would ever be a time when shedidn’t think of him and feel devastated about what he’d done. She’d just begun to drift back down that wordless path to grief and regret, when she realised that everyone had gone silent. Raising her gaze, she saw five pairs of eyes, all staring at her questioningly.
‘What?’
‘We’re waiting for the bit about the life-changing choice and the sexual encounter,’ Rhonda informed her, harping back to the checklist that had sparked this conversation.
Gwen was leaning forward, eager for the details. ‘And don’t leave anything out because I haven’t had so much as a snog for the last two years and I might need instructions.’
Ailish felt her toes curling. Why was she the centre of attention in this little cabal right now? That was Rhonda’s natural habitat. Maybe Gwen’s when she was feeling up to it. Ailish had always much preferred the side-lines and the ‘here for backup only’ position.
‘Also,’ Gwen went on, ‘I remember this night very clearly, so don’t think you can skip over anything. We want all the gory details.’
Ailish sighed, cornered, with no weapons to shoot her way out of this.
‘Okay, so we get to the restaurant and it’s pretty quiet because it’s only about seven o’clock. Obviously now we know that things get going there much later on New Year’s Eve, so that’s why there were only a few tables taken. Anyway, we had dinner, and, of course, the most handsome guy I’d ever seen brought our pasta out.’
‘Dario!’ Rhonda sniggered. ‘That man has aged like a fine wine. He still sets my ovaries spinning.’
‘And mine,’ Gwen piped up.
Ailish barrelled on, desperate to get this over and done with. ‘Correct. Anyway, so you were right, the pasta did help to make me feel a little more sober…’
