‘What do you taste? Which flavour?’ asked Carlotta, waiting for an answer.
‘What do you think, Maddie?’ asked Sophia sweetly, leaning forward to direct her question to me.
I was almost certain she was putting me under the spotlight because she knew I’d have no idea what ‘notes’ it was supposed to have. Was the flavour really that developed that I’d be able to pick it out without so much as a clue?
‘Um …’
I took another mouthful, buying myself some time. Somewhere in the midst of my panic, I saw Aidan doodling on his Tasting Notes card. He’d written the word: BANANA. Surely he couldn’t be helping me, could he? Not intentionally, anyway. But in the absence of any better suggestions, it was all I had. I gave it a couple of beats for authenticity, pretending to mull it over.
‘Is it banana?’ I asked, as though it had just come to me naturally.
‘Very good!’ trilled Carlotta. ‘You have an excellent palate for tasting wine.’
I leaned forward to smile at Sophia, who looked slightly less superior than she had sixty seconds ago.
I’d thank Aidan later. Maybe.
Carlotta shot out of her seat again, this time with a bottle of Chianti Classico. She proudly showed us the black rooster on the label, which, thanks to Gino, we knew all about.
‘I’m looking forward to trying this,’ I said to Rosamund.
‘So am I,’ she said. ‘Waitrose do a very good one, apparently. Peter’s already looked it up.’
Course he had.
‘Are you a red or a white drinker?’ I asked.
‘It depends very much on what I’m eating,’ she answered.
That I still did not understand. Why did it matter what you ate with what? Did it really make that much difference?
‘Nick’s very into his wine,’ said Rosamund. ‘I’m sure he’s told you, already. His favourite spot at our gite in France was the wine cellar. Do you remember, Peter? We’d be wondering where he’d got to and then we’d find him down there, peering at labels and counting bottles.’
Although I wasn’t going to give Rosamund the pleasure of me saying so, this was news to me. I knew Nick liked looking at the wine list when we were out for dinner, and always took the lead on choosing something (mainly because I didn’t care enough), but as for him spending hours in a wine cellar, there’d been no mention. Nor of the fact his family had a second home in France. With a wine cellar! I wondered what else I didn’t know about him and had this pang of not being sure that I wanted to know. Our relationship had moved steadily forward, in the way that society deemed it should: first the dating, then the declarations of love and then him asking me – quite quickly, in my opinion– to move in with him. And now marriage. When I let myself acknowledge the part of me that wasn’t sure – which wasn’t often – I would wonder whether I’d rushed into something with Nick because of what had happened with Aidan. And then I pushed the thought to one side, reminded myself that I loved him despite all of that and that what I’d had with Aidan hadn’t been sustainable, anyway, obviously not. And then I carried on.
Loch Lomond
Two Years Earlier
I rounded everyone together and we climbed up the steps onto the pier, just as the boat withLoch Lomond Lake Cruiseemblazoned on the side moored up. Tim, of course, barged ahead onto the boat, paying little heed to the mostly elderly passengers trying to disembark. They were probably off for a look around the picturesque village of Luss, where we were based. I couldn’t blame them, I’d had a wander around myself and it was like stepping back about a hundred years, with cute, chintzy tea rooms and adorable little houses that looked like ornaments on somebody’s mantelpiece and gift shops selling tartan and fudge.
‘We want to be at the front of the boat, otherwise we’ll have a bunch of heads in the shot,’ barked Tim, clearly expecting us to follow him.
Much to his annoyance, the rest of us took a more leisurely approach to getting on. I introduced myself to the captain and showed him the paperwork from Visit Scotland giving us permission to shoot footage on his boat. Possibly because he’d taken an instant dislike to Tim, he didn’t exactly seem thrilled at the prospect of having us on board.
‘You’d better not be blabbering on over the top of the commentary,’ he said, pointing at the boom I was conspicuously holding.
‘Definitely not,’ I replied. ‘We’ll be very respectful. You’ll hardly know we’re here.’
Not for the first time, I wished Holiday Shop had a decent budget so that we could have booked ourselves a private tour. In my experience, these impromptu shoots never worked out as well as you’d hoped and the sound was usually awful. You couldn’t expect paying passengers to stay quiet every time you wanted to shoot a link, could you?
As I took a seat next to Lou, I noticed a last-minute passenger sprinting up the steps of the pier and leaping on to the boat like something out of a James Bond opening sequence. OK, that was possibly a bit of an exaggeration, but it was Aidan and he was, well, impressive. He headed in my direction and grabbed the seat opposite. I noticed he was very slightly out of breath, but nothing like the hot mess I’d have been if I’d had to run up steps at that speed.
‘That looked like hard work,’ I said, grinning at him because I couldn’t help myself. I was just so happy to see him, which was worrying, when you thought about it.
‘Thought I was going to miss it,’ he gasped. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this.’
Lou glanced across at me and I knew what she was thinking so I refused to catch her eye. I pretended to check my script, getting out my pen in case I could make any last-minute adjustments when I heard the commentary. They were bound to have some interesting facts to add.