The plan up until now – if you could call it a plan – was a crash course with my brand-new copy ofWine for Newbies, and Sir Google, as my tutors later this evening. Surface knowledge. A bluffable amount. Enough to blag my way through the summer at a crappy hotel in the middle of nowhere. Only the crusty, ramshackle, shithole Scottish hotel has not materialized, and instead I find myself in a fine-dining, luxury boutique property. This place is in need of a world-class sommelier to decipher the brand-new twenty-page wine list. Which I am definitely not.
It’s time to call for help.
It’s time to call therealHeather.
2.
Two weeks earlier
‘So, are you all packed?’ I asked, shaking my head as I looked around her bedroom for things I could ‘borrow’ while she was gone. I spied her T-bar heels poking out from under her chair, and her hair straighteners, for starters. Then I saw the bikinis laid out on the bed. Just how fancy was this Scottish hotel?
Heather had been my very best friend since primary school, arriving with her father in our home town of Plymouth not long after her mother had died. I could see right away how afraid she was, twisting and pulling on her curls, eyes permanently on the floor. It went round the playground like lightning about her mum. I knew immediately: this girl needed me.
I marched right up to her. ‘Don’t be scared. I’ll show you round. I’m Elizabeth Finch and I’m already six.’
‘Finch? Like the bird?’ she whispered back. ‘I have a pencil with little birds all over it. Do you want it?’
‘Sure.’ I marvelled at the bright little pictures and the beak-shaped eraser. I had never had a special pencil.
‘Now it’s yours. Can we be friends?’
‘Sure, but you’re going to need a lot more pencils,’ I replied, grinning at her. Though of course it was never about the pencil.
From that day, we became inseparable. Me, her fierce protector, and Heather the kindest, most encouraging person in my life.
And little had changed. Here we were some twenty-five years later, and she had the London flat, the clothes, the make-up and a steady income that meant there was always milk for tea. And, following in her father’s footsteps, she was now one of the brightest young wine experts in the country. Heather had found her way in the world. I still felt like the kid with no fancy pencils of her own.
She perched on the edge of her bed, taking a deep, steadying breath before looking at me nervously. ‘Birdy, something big has happened. I’m fine, though. It’sallgood. Great, in fact.’
‘Oh-kay, this soundsexciting,’ I replied, a little tingle inside me at the thought of some high drama. I rested my butt on the edge of her dressing table and readied myself. ‘Lucky for you I’m now officially unemployed again and so have time forallthe drama,allthe time. So do go on, I’m ready.’
‘It’s not drama,’ she said, her large eyes narrowing on me, hurt.
‘Shit! Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound flippant. Please. What’s going on?’
‘I think I’m in love with Cristian,’ she said as her mouth curved into a nervous smile.
‘Oh,’ I replied, trying to sound buoyant as my heart sank.
‘I know, I know.’ She was blushing and grinning, and I wanted to break something in half.Not him. Cristian, the coked-up shoe guy.
‘Really?’ I said, bracing myself. ‘The cobbler?’
‘The shoe designer – Cristian, yes,’ she said, sighing. ‘Anyway, I’m going to Rome for the summer with him, to see if it can be a thing.’
That explains the bikinis.
‘He’s going to break up with his girlfriend,’ she said quickly. To reassure me, I suppose. And then she took a deep breath. ‘Birdy, I think I might … I mean I thinkwemight be in love. I think this is it.’
‘Oh-kay,’ I said, turning to inspect her bamboo-and-ceramic paddle brush, so I didn’t have to look at her. I flicked my finger across the bristles and made a mental note to blow-dry my frizzy mess of a head more often. ‘What about this job? You’re not going to throw it up for Cristian, are you?’
I already knew the answer. This was her Achilles heel. Heather wanted Love. She jumped in boots first at the sniff of it. In the last two years alone there had been Vile Kyle, the forty-eight-year-old pet therapist who called her ‘little kitten’; Kahlil the artisan baker, who couldn’t get a rise in the bedroom and told Heather it was her fault; Woke Warren, the world’s most sexist feminist; and now Cristian. Cristian with a girlfriend, whom he was apparently goingto break up with, and a deep and lasting relationship with Class As. I’m no expert psychologist, but for a girl who lost her mum very young, and then her dad a few years later, there had to be some kind of connection between that and Heather’s desperate need to be loved.
It was incredibly frustrating, because if anyone deserved to meet a reallyfucking goodlife-partner, it should be Heather. She was a reallyfucking goodperson.
‘That was never mydreamjob.’
‘What do you mean? You said you wanted to gothere. Specifically, that very place. You spent ages waiting for a role to come up. Why would you just bail?’
