It pulled him back into the moment. Something shifted inside him. The rushing in his ears remained, along with a vague sense of being off-balance – like one might experience on a cross-Channel ferry – as he tried to place one foot in front of the other, but he could move again. That was something.
It seemed to take hours instead of minutes to get back to the car park. A woman with a pushchair scowled at him from the other side of the road, obviously thinking it was a little early for him to have staggered out of the pub.
When he got to his Land Rover, he climbed inside. The lack of central locking meant he had to reach over to press the buttons down on the passenger side and both the back doors one by one. That done, he sat with his elbows on the steering wheel, rested his head in hands and tried to get the world to stop shaking.
Chapter Sixteen
ANNA SAT AT one end of a long table in the upstairs room of a funky bar in Covent Garden. It was decked out like a nineteenth-century gentlemen’s club, complete with wood panelling, richly upholstered chaise-longues and a stuffed stag’s head above the fireplace. On the table in front of her was a large balloon glass full of wonderfully aromatic alcohol, finished off with a giant ball of ice and a sprig of rosemary. She was joined by eight other people, each with an identical glass, and the tenth seat, beside her, was empty.
As she listened to a smartly dressed man with a waxed moustache detail the history of gin, she surreptitiously checked her phone.
There was a text from Gabi.Be with you in 2 mins!
Gabi had messaged earlier to say she was going to miss the beginning of the gin tasting class but that she would definitely make it before the end.
Anna sighed. This was yet another activity Gabi had talked her into not long after the New Year’s Eve debacle – just in case salsa had proved to be a flop – but there had been a three-month waiting list, and now the actual day had come,Gabi’s photo assignment for the day was running late, and Anna was sitting here on her own.
A short while later, a rather hot and flustered-looking Gabi slid onto the empty chair beside Anna. She leaned in and whispered, ‘I will tell you all about my nightmare photoshoot later. You won’t believe what the client…’ She trailed off as she noticed the gin expert pause and glance disapprovingly in her direction.
‘Sorry!’ she mouthed back at him and mimed zipping her lips shut.
Tom Collins (not his real name, Anna suspected) gave Gabi a disapproving look then turned to the rest of the group and resumed his lecture. Anna dipped her head to hide a smile. The man obviously took his gin very seriously. Anna and Gabi sat and listened attentively while ‘Tom’ explained the difference between London and New Western dry gins.
‘When I booked this session, I thought we’d be doing a lot more tasting and a lot less listening,’ Gabi muttered under her breath.
‘Shh,’ Anna replied, not taking her eyes off their instructor. ‘It’s educational.’
‘Finally!’ Gabi said, as they were presented with a new combination of gin, tonic and botanicals to sample.
Anna took a demure sip. She wasn’t sure if she could discern all the notes of the different botanicals in this one, as Tom had said they would, although she could definitely detect a hint of cinnamon. She wasn’t sure what arrowroot tasted like, so she had no idea if she could identify that.
During the time they were supposed to be discussing the gin with each other, Gabi leaned in and said, ‘We were shooting a burger cookbook today.Five burgers! And I hate doing burgers.’
‘Why?’ Anna asked. ‘They’re not difficult to cook, are they?’
‘No…’ Gabi glanced at the instructor, who was chatting seriously with a group at the other end of the long table. ‘But each bit – meat, bun, lettuce, tomato, and other ingredients – have to be picked and styled individually, even the way the mustard drips and the cheese melts, and then it is a race to get the shot before the bun goes soggy. We were just about to do the last dish of the day when the client decided he did not want the brioche bun he’d picked. He wanted sesame seed instead!’
‘Not good?’
‘No. Not good. I had to go shopping, and they were out of stock at the local supermarket, so I had to spend forty minutes gluing sesame seeds onto a plain bun. With tweezers, Anna! This is why Ineedgin tonight…’ She sighed dramatically and flipped her long hair over her shoulder. ‘Sometimes I think I need a less stressful career, one where I can work with food, but I don’t have to deal withpeople.’
Anna smiled. ‘No, you don’t. You love your job, and not everyone has that. You’re very lucky.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I don’t feel that way about my job at all.’
‘I guess you’re right.’ Gabi nodded grudgingly. ‘About my job and your job. You never talk about it. Nothing good, nothing bad. That says something.’
Anna frowned. Did it? When she’d applied for the position at Sundridge Plumbing and Heating, it had just been a way to cover the bills. Everything had seemed dull and pointless at that time, so why should her job be any different?
‘It’s not like when you worked with BlockTime,’ Gabi said. ‘You neverstoppedtalking about work then.’
Anna shrugged. ‘It was a start-up, so it was an exciting time, and it’s hard to get fired up about invoices and plumbing bookings in the same way.’
Gabi looked thoughtful. ‘Why don’t you go back?’
‘To BlockTime?’ Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why? You loved working with Vijay and Rhys.’
And Spencer,Anna silently added.What I really loved was working with Spencer.
