‘They’ve introduced a new range of cocktails, have you seen?’ Peggy said excitedly. She passed the menu to Candy, who then showed it to Claire.
‘We have to have this one!’ Claire said, tapping at the menu with a fingernail and grinning at the other two.
‘It would almost be unpatriotic not to,’ Peggy agreed. She flapped the menu closed and signalled for the barman. ‘Three Doris Days, please,’ she said, batting her eyelashes at him.
He smiled back at her. ‘Coming right up.’
Candy sighed. ‘I liked the look of the Ginger Rogers too, but we really have to drink Doris first.’
‘What a genius idea,’ Claire said. ‘Inventing cocktails named after old movie stars.’
A few minutes later, the barman returned with three long glasses, filled with ice, alcohol and decorated with sugar round the rim. All three women looked at their cocktails.
Candy squinted at hers. ‘It’s very … um …’
‘I think the word you’re looking for is “pink”,’ Peggy said helpfully.
They exchanged looks then picked up their glasses and put the straw in their mouths. Claire took a long hard sip, then put hers down on the bar, frowning. ‘Wow,’ she said.
Candy nodded. ‘It starts off sweet, almost sickly, and then – bam!’
‘I got that too!’ Peggy said. ‘There’s a warmth to it, reminds me of brandy, but it isn’t brandy.’ She smacked her lips. ‘Nope, can’t tell what it is. I wish they’d label the ingredients of these things. I don’t like blind cocktail drinking.’
‘I did ask,’ Claire said, taking another long slurp, ‘but he said these are secret recipes and that if he told me he’d have to kill me. I don’t like it that much, even if it is named after Doris.’ She paused as another layer of flavour hit her taste buds. ‘Ooh, have another taste! There’s something else, too. Something almost—’
‘Sharp?’ Candy suggested. ‘No, that’s the wrong word. It’s more refreshing and clean, despite the warm notes. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything quite like it.’
All three of them nodded as they sat on their bar stools.
‘I’m not sure we’ll ever work it out,’ Peggy said.
‘Maybe we’re not supposed to,’ Claire said. ‘After all, it’s surprising and complex, a bit of a mystery. A bit like the woman herself.’
The other two smiled at her.
‘I think you’re right,’ Candy said. ‘Perhaps we should just enjoy its indefinable qualities without analysing it.’
‘You go ahead,’ Peggy said, fixing her eyes on the bartender, who was serving someone at the other end of the bar, and smiling. ‘I think I might work on getting the secret out of that one there, and I don’t think he’ll shoot me afterwards, either.’
Claire chuckled. ‘Peggy, you’re incorrigible.’
Peggy sighed and took another sip of her cocktail. ‘I know. Fun, isn’t it?’
‘So …’ Candy said, leaning forward. ‘What’s the news on the hunky Nick? Have you heard from him recently?’
Now it was Claire’s turn to sigh. She shook her head. He’d been gone for two weeks and two days, which meant he was roughly halfway through his trip. It was torture. ‘He’s off in China, in the mountains. He said he might not have any signal for a couple of days.’
‘Aw, you’re missing him,’ Candy said.
‘It’s fine,’ Claire replied. ‘When he does have Wi-Fi we totally make up for it.’ Since he’d left, their messaging and emailing had gone into overdrive, way more prolific than it ever had been before, and way more intimate, too. That last night had changed things between them. She sighed. ‘I don’t know if this sounds stupid, but I feel like I don’t have to hold anything back from him. I can tell him anything.’
Candy smiled at her. ‘I don’t think that sounds stupid. I think it sounds pretty wonderful.’
Claire nodded. It was. She sat in bed each night, phone on the pillow beside her, and waited to hear from him. He was eight hours ahead, so he’d often get in contact when he got up bright and early before work. Sometimes she’d hear from him just before she started work, after he’d come back to his hotel after a long day.
‘He seems like a great guy.’
‘Pretty easy on the eyes, too,’ Peggy chipped in. ‘Has he got a brother?’
Claire laughed. ‘What about the poor barman? Is he yesterday’s news already?’
Peggy gave her a cheeky smile. ‘Just keeping my options open.’
Claire frowned. ‘Actually, I don’t know if he has a brother. I’ll have to ask.’
‘You’ve been seeing each other for … how long?’ Candy said, ‘And you don’t know about his family?’
Claire stared at her half-finished drink. How odd. No, she didn’t. She realised there were great big gaps in her knowledge of him, like those holes in a lump of Swiss cheese.
She didn’t know if he’d always lived in London, for example, or had moved here after university. In fact, she didn’t even know if he’d gone to uni, or what he’d studied. She frowned harder. How did she not know these things, especially when they’d spent hours messaging back and forth? She’d thought they’d covered everything there was to know.
But she did know everything that really counted. She knew how Nick thought, how his brain worked, that he was funny and loyal and – like Doris, really – had much more going on under the surface than he let people see. And she knew he thought she was amazing … and strong. Surely, those things were more important than knowing if he was an only child or had chicken pox when he was five.
‘I’ll ask him when he gets back,’ she told Peggy.
‘Ask who what?’ Peggy said.
‘Ask Nick about his brother.’
Peggy and Candy both burst out laughing.
‘What?’ Claire asked, starting to get a little irritated.
‘We were having that conversation five minutes ago,’ Candy explained. ‘Now we’re arguing about what Fred and Ginger’s first film together was. I say it’s Flying Down to Rio and Peggy says it’s The Gay Divorcee.’
Claire blinked. Had she really tuned out for that long?
‘Somebody’s got it bad,’ Peggy teased in a sing-song voice. ‘Somebody’s falling in lurve.’
Claire said and knocked back the last of her Doris Day. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said.