Page 35 of The Gin Sisters' Promise

‘Maybe she needed to.’ Nola rolled her eyes. To be fair, they were having a glass every evening to take the stress out of living together.

‘So, what do we do now?’

Nola ran her hands through her hair. ‘Nothing, I suppose. I mean, she’s definitely old enough to know what she’s about. I think all we can do is try and make sure she doesn’t go lifting anything too heavy or drinking too much. But she’ll do what she wants, either way.’

‘You’re right.’ Georgie nodded slowly. ‘Crikey, we could have done without this on top of everything else.’ She shook her head, but at the same time, she could feel a tiny smile trace up along her mouth. A baby.

‘We’ll be aunties.’ Nola smiled too, breaking into her thoughts.

‘Huh. Only if Myles will let us anywhere near them,’ Georgie said, suddenly remembering that theirs was hardly a conventionally happy family. Myles had hated Georgie forever, or at least since all those years earlier when Georgie had told Iris she’d seen him kissing Denise Hawley when he was meant to be dating Iris. The final straw had been when she caught him selling stock from the back door of the distillery. That had ended up in not only the mother of all rows, but also in halting any ambitions he might have had for the distillery one day. Mind you, he probably hated Nola even more for the stink she’d caused! They stood there for a few moments, silence stretching their thoughts out between them until the pipes began to rattle loudly overhead as they tended to do for no good reason that Georgie could figure, pulling them back to the real world.

‘Would you like to see the marketing plans?’ Georgie asked, surprising herself.

Nola looked surprised, too. ‘All right, go on so; I’d love to take a look.’

Georgie led her sister up the stairs to the rook’s nest that was the office she shared with Robert these days.

Georgie pulled out her drawings. There were almost a dozen, but she had whittled them down to five. Robert had been kind in his feedback, but the truth was, he didn’t represent the lion’s share of the market they were going for. Gin was a woman’s drink, always had been, and if they were going to make a real impact on the market, it was the twenty-five to fifty-five-year-olds they had to target. Women with enough money to buy a quality product that was pitched directly at everything they aspired to. She laid five different images on the desk before Nola. These were the ones that had survived her own critical eye, but there was still a lot to choose from. She dug around for the colour combinations she’d been deliberating over earlier and placed them on the desk also.

‘Wow.’ It was all Nola could manage. She took up each one and inspected it closely. ‘That’s all I can say, Georgie, just wow.’ She shook her head and a small tear ran down her cheek.

Georgie felt a flicker of annoyance. God, how had she managed to upset Nola now? Seriously, sometimes it was like walking on eggshells. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ Nola said, wiping her tears. ‘It’s nothing, just…’ She smiled then, although her voice sounded as if she might be holding back more tears. ‘It’s just, I feel so useless. There’s Iris. Whether we like Myles or not, she’s managed to stay married to him and even if it’s late in the day, they’re going to have a baby. She’s going to produce an heir to the Delahaye legacy. And you’re so talented, really making a difference, whereas, as usual, I’m just…’

‘Don’t be silly.’ Georgie shook her head, but she could see that Nola really was upset. She shuffled up the samples on the desk before her, uncomfortable with Nola’s raw vulnerability.

‘You don’t have to say that. I know I’ve just…’ Nola looked away. ‘All I’ve ever been is a pretty face and one day that’s going to fade, and then where will I be?’

‘Oh, come on, Nola.’ Georgie had never heard her sister speak like this before; it was completely out of character. ‘All this over a couple of drawings?’ Suddenly, she wanted to put her arms around her younger sister, but she couldn’t seem to manage to move the couple of feet close enough to touch her.

‘It’s not just a couple of drawings, though, is it?’ Nola shook her head. She looked down at the distillery below them, which had picked this moment to fall into complete silence, and then Nola turned around to look at Georgie. ‘You know, I always thought what you did in London didn’t matter. I thought it was self-important bullshit, to be honest. But I was wrong, Georgie, these are just brilliant.’

Georgie didn’t know what to say. Her breath had caught in her chest and she really couldn’t put the words on what she wanted to tell her sister, so she resorted to the one thing she knew would break this uncomfortable tension.

‘I bet the baby has Myles’s nose. Think about it: if he has Myles’s nose and the Delahaye feet he’ll be—’

‘Oh, God, don’t. It’s not right to be making fun of the poor child when it isn’t even born yet.’ But it did the trick, because now they were both laughing, ticking off all the things they’d always disliked about Myles and now there was even more to add to the list. In fact, top of the list was the fact that he’d let Iris come over here on her own into a situation that everyone knew was going to be really stressful. It only confirmed what a total creep he was.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me these days. I seem to do nothing but cry like a little girl,’ Nola said eventually.

‘You’re lucky,’ Georgie said regretfully. ‘I’d probably be a lot better off if I cried more often.’

‘Oh, Georgie, if you cried, we’d all be sunk – you’ve always been the strong one.’ She reached out and placed a hand on Georgie’s arm, which took them both by surprise, but she left it there for a moment and Georgie smiled at her. ‘Seriously, we’d have been lost without you all those years ago and even now, it’ll probably be you who’ll get us through the next six months.’ She turned away. The loaded silence of the distillery felt completely overwhelming to Georgie, as if it had suspended them in this surreal moment of something akin to normality, or what normality might have looked like if they hadn’t all fallen out so spectacularly all those years ago. Georgie wondered whether to bring up what had happened between them. The old Georgie wouldn’t have hesitated, but the new one she’d become in the last few weeks didn’t want to ruin the moment.

Georgie cleared her throat, cutting into the stillness. ‘I bet you make a fantastic go of teaching those kids for the next few months. They’ll be talking about you for years after you’ve gone back to London – the famous actress who turned their drama class around!’

‘Come on,’ Nola said, but she smiled, as if Georgie’s few kind words had somehow made a difference. She reached behind the chair that had been their father’s and pulled Georgie’s coat from the back of it. ‘It’s definitely time for dinner.’

*

Secondary schools had changed a lot since Nola had left. On her first day, Gary gave her a map of the grounds and sent her off in the direction of the classrooms. For now, she had senior classes only, until her Garda clearance forms were returned. It was halfway through the school year, but drama wasn’t an examinable subject, so she had free rein, so long as the kids learned something and they managed to get two stage shows out of what remained of the next two terms.

‘Good luck,’ he said, and as she walked along the seemingly endless corridors Nola had a feeling she was going to need it. Eventually, she found the classroom and pushed the door open before she had a chance to change her mind. Walking to the desk, she felt the eyes of twenty wary teenagers upon her, the silence that had fallen across their exuberant shouting was somehow gratifying – as if they were waiting for her to perform.

‘Good morning, everyone. I’m… Miss Delahaye. I’ll be taking you for drama’ – she looked down at her timetable – ‘twice a week.’ She looked up and smiled. She was greeted by a mixture of expressions from mild interest to a smattering of enthusiasm and just a little truculence from one or two at the back. In many ways it was like walking on stage and the show was all hers, and she felt a surge of confidence. ‘Now, we have a lot of work to do so let’s take out our notepads and start with a piece of drama I want to share with you all…’ She smiled and suddenly, somehow, she knew, this was going to be fine. Maybe even better than fine.

After her first day, Nola was making her way back through the village, having stopped to pick up some shopping, and she was filled with a fizzing feeling of satisfaction. It was a mixture of having thoroughly enjoyed her day’s work and maybe also the fact that since that night in the distillery with Georgie, it felt as if some sort of balm was slowly spreading itself across their relationship. It gave Nola an extraordinary feeling of warmth, which of course she knew was just ridiculous; after all, it was nothing more than a moment when she’d managed to let slip her own vulnerability. But Georgie had been kind – kinder than Nola could remember her being in years.

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