Oh, for crying out loud, seethed Charley, as the ditzy young woman who’d just spent twenty minutes sniffing every single bath bomb, body wash and bottle of bubble bath in the entire shop left without actually buying anything at all. Charley wasn’t usually so easily irritated but, in her defence, she was not having the most brilliant morning. As she was cycling into work the heavens had opened, drenching her completely, and she was still steaming softly, with rain dripping off her curls, and desperate for a coffee – but she couldn’t leave the shop to get one because Tara was even later than usual. She was just about to text her mate to see if she was actually going to show up when an insistent rapping on the door distracted her. Looking up, she cursed silently. Possibly the most unhelpful delivery man in the world – dubbed ‘Jobsworth’ by Tara and Charley – stood outside, in the pouring rain, with a huge pile of boxes on a sack truck.
Charley groaned as she went to open the door. ‘Can’t you wheel them in?’ she pleaded. ‘Just this once? The boxes are getting soaked.’
‘Nope. I’m only supposed to deliver them to the building,’ he informed her, with undisguised pleasure. ‘It’s not in my contract to move the goods around inside the store.’
‘But it’s only another metre.’
He eyed her unflinchingly. ‘I’m not insured to enter the premises.’
Charley was pretty sure he was lying but, not wanting to antagonise him further, she said brightly, ‘Oh, but that’s okay, then. I’ve got ten million pounds’ worth of public liability insurance, so that’ll cover you if you have an accident in the shop.’
‘I’m not going to have an accident in the shop,’ he replied, shoving the bottom box off the sack truck with his foot before adding smugly, ‘because I’m not coming in.’ Then he turned his back on her and walked off.
‘Bye! Have a nice day!’ Charley called, deliberately chirpily, to his retreating back. Look on the bright side, she told herself, at least you’re not married to him.
Eyeing up the stack of heavy boxes, the cardboard already sodden, she briefly considered nipping round to the bike shop and asking Ricky if he’d just carry them in for her. But she was pulling in enough favours as it was and besides, he had his own shop to run, so she braced herself and starting hauling the boxes in one by one, hoping the cardboard wouldn’t disintegrate and silently cursing the delivery man under her breath.
She’d just finished lugging the last of them into the dry when Tara finally arrived, nearly two hours late, but Charley couldn’t say anything, since her mate was an unpaid volunteer.
‘It’s pissing down!’ cried Tara, a tad unnecessarily, before taking off her wet coat and slinging it onto a chair. ‘I’m late because I had to catch Monnie’s teacher at school. Honestly, teachers! They’re so precious about their time, I swear to God it’d be easier to get five minutes with the bloody queen.’
Swallowing her resentment, Charley said, ‘No worries. But is everything all right with Monnie?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Tara waved a dismissive hand. ‘Just a misunderstanding about homework.’ She headed over to the pile of boxes. ‘Come on, Charley, let’s get this lot sorted. The place looks a right mess with this lot piled up in the middle of the floor.’
In all honesty Charley agreed, but that didn’t stop her inwardly bridling at Tara’s implied criticism. Whatever. She held her peace, and the two friends instantly slid into their well-practised routine with Tara unpacking and Charley logging the items on a spreadsheet.
‘Twelve tea towels with the slogan, “Don’t cry over spilt milk – it could have been your Prosecco!” Oh my God, I love that! We should get it printed onto T-shirts!’ said Tara gleefully before ripping open the next box. ‘Twenty bottles of Prosecco and raspberry bubble bath. Ooh, mind if snaffle one?’
‘Of course not.’ Charley was only too happy to be able to give her mate at least some recompense for her time.
‘Two dozen boxes of Prosecco and vanilla truffles,’ continued Tara, and then she frowned. ‘I thought we still had a stack of these stashed behind the till?’
‘Have we? I thought we’d sold them all. I’ll see if I can return them.’
‘Or I can eat them, if that would help,’ deadpanned Tara.
Charley grinned, then told her to take a couple of boxes home with her since she’d clearly ordered too many.
They went on companionably tearing open boxes and logging the contents, breaking off only to deal with the slow but steady stream of customers who came into the shop looking for that perfect Prosecco gift. Tara was just unpacking a cushion emblazoned with the legend Relax! Prosecco’s got your back! when she glanced up at Charley and casually wrecked her day. ‘Don’t forget it’s half term next week, so I won’t be in.’
Dammit. Charley hadn’t even been aware that it was half term next week. Not having any children, she wasn’t au fait with the school timetable, but that never occurred to Tara, whose entire life was dictated by Monnie’s calendar and assumed everyone else’s was too.
‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ lied Charley, but her heart sank since, after Tuscany, she was massively behind with her admin and had planned to catch up in the shop’s quiet moments. More than anything, she needed to catch up with the dreaded accounts. To be totally accurate, she needed to start them. She’d intended to faithfully do them every month but somehow they kept slipping to the bottom of her fire-fighting list and then falling off it completely.
It would undoubtedly have been a lot easier for Charley to keep on top of the work if she wasn’t effectively running two businesses. Well, one and half. A year or so, ago when Charley had been made redundant, she’d taken a bar job, which she’d absolutely loathed, and also launched a small business selling Prosecco-themed gift bags to local pubs and hotels, which she’d absolutely loved. Building on that budding venture, she’d taken the hugely adventurous step of ditching the bar job and starting a gift shop, but she still ran the party bag business as a side-line.
It would also undoubtedly have been a lot easier for Charley to keep on top of the work if Tara came in more. Still, she was good value when she was in, as Charley often reminded herself, and not just because she was free labour. The woman was a born salesperson – far better than Charley. Breezily buoyant and assertive, with a Teflon-coated self-confidence, Charley reckoned her mate could sell inflatable water wings to lifeguards on Bondi Beach. Whereas Charley preferred to hang around unobtrusively at the till, ready to deal with any queries, Tara always leapt straight in. Watching her enviously, Charley wondered how she did it.
‘Morning!’ Tara trilled as a sodden and thoroughly miserable-looking middle-aged woman plodded gloomily into the shop. Charley suspected the poor woman had only come in to get out of the rain, but Tara clearly wasn’t prepared to let her leave without buying something. Chatting away nineteen to the dozen, Tara pounced and then swept her unsuspecting prey round the shop. ‘Ghastly out there, isn’t it! Have you seen our range of Prosecco-flavoured chocolate truffles? They’re the perfect pick-me-up on a dismal day…’ By the time she’d finished the customer had happily bought a box of the Prosecco and vanilla truffles, a pack of Prosecco bath bombs, and a couple of sparkly tealights.
At the end of the morning Tara waited until Charley had bought herself some lunch from the deli before sloping off. ‘Are we still on for drinks at yours on Friday?’ she asked, pulling on her raincoat.
‘This Friday?’ Charley queried, not recalling any plans.
‘Yes, this Friday. Your place. You, me, Angie and Nisha,’ intoned Tara pointedly. She locked eyes with her mate. ‘You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?’
‘No!’ Charley tried to look wide-eyed with innocence, but she knew Tara had rumbled her and she felt a twinge of guilt.
The friends usually met up at Charley’s once a month to catch up, drink cheap fizz and put the world to rights, and she was well aware the get-togethers were just as important to the others as they were to her. For workaholic Nisha, it was the one night she prioritised her social life over her business, and for Angie, it was an oasis of calm away from her four young children, while Tara just loved the banter and camaraderie of getting the gang together.
‘Liar!’ retorted Tara good-naturedly. ‘Honestly, woman, you are losing the plot!’
‘Sorry!’
‘Well you can’t back out. Angie will be gutted, Nisha will shred you, and I will never let you live it down.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Charley promised, but the second her mate left the shop she called Ricky. ‘About our date night on Friday…’ she started awkwardly. ‘I’ve sort of double-booked myself. I’d forgotten Tara and everyone are coming round to mine.’
‘No worries,’ he said. ‘The lobster will wait.’
‘Lobster?’ Charley wailed, mortified that she’d messed up what was apparently going to be a special meal and a very expensive one at that.
‘I’m joking! It’s only prawns and they’re in the freezer.’
‘I’m really sorry—’
‘Charley, it’s fine,’ he broke in lightly. ‘Honestly. Have fun with your mates. Don’t worry, there’s always another night.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Charley rang off and slipped her phone back into her pocket, feeling unexpectedly uneasy. For some reason, Ricky’s phrase – There’s always another night – remained in her thoughts. His casual assumption that there was always going to be ‘another night’ for the two of them tripped her up – how was it so simple for him to assume that? Perhaps more to the point, why wasn’t it so easy for her?
Pulling up outside her flat on the Friday evening, Charley cursed. She was late for her own drinks do. She’d completely forgotten an order for fifty pamper bags she needed to deliver to the Avalon for a hen party that weekend and since the hotel was her biggest client, she didn’t dare let them down. Fortunately, they’d phoned just before she’d left the shop so she’d managed to compile the bags, but she couldn’t manage them on her bike – well, not without them getting trashed. She’d had to cycle home to get the car, and then the traffic had been chronic… so here she was, nearly fifteen minutes late.
She slipped off the seatbelt and leapt out of the car, locking it as she ran across the road. When she got to the top of the steps down to her flat she could see her mates already standing on the doorstep. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry!’
‘For goodness’ sake, Charley!’ admonished Tara, as Charley arrived at the bottom of the steps.
‘Is everything okay?’ Nisha asked. Charley nodded and pushed her way through them to open the front door.
‘No worries,’ said Angie, patting Charley’s shoulder as they all trooped inside.
Moments later, they were clustered round the coffee table in the living room, Nisha and Tara on the sofa and Charley and Angie squatting on floor cushions opposite them, each happily clutching a glass of fizz. Tara was eagerly outlining the list of outings she’d lined up for Monnie over half term.
‘A trip to London with shopping at Westfield, a day on the beach at Weston if the weather holds, a movie… the zoo of course – we always go to the zoo, or the aquarium if it rains. A bike ride somewhere… Oh, and Legoland.’
‘Is that all?’ Nisha asked dryly.
‘We were going to go to Center Parcs for the week, but Baz put his foot down.’ Tara pulled a face. ‘Tight wad! Anyhow, what are you doing with your lot, Ange? D’you fancy coming to Legoland with us?’
Angie had looked increasingly astonished by Tara’s holiday plans; now she seemed caught on the hop by the invitation. ‘Oh… er, it’s lovely of you, but we’re saving big trips like that until all four of them are big enough to remember going.’
Angie’s eldest was only seven, whilst her youngest was still a babe in arms, so it was a plausible excuse, yet Charley wondered if it was actually because Angie couldn’t afford it.
‘Oh, I meant to say, Ange, I sold a couple more of your canvasses this week. I must settle up with you.’ Charley doubted the money would cover the cost of a trip to Legoland but every little helped.
‘You’d better get cracking on some more,’ Tara told Angie. ‘We haven’t got many left. Do some really large ones. A bloke came in last week and he wants some this big.’ She held out her arms to indicate the dimensions.
Nisha snorted. ‘That’s not large, that’s outsize.’
‘I don’t have any canvases that big!’
‘Get some!’ Tara narrowed her eyes Angie. ‘You know what people are like. They don’t know anything about art, but they like to buy it by the metre!’
Angie’s Prosecco-themed paintings were good sellers, and Charley could have easily sold way more than her friend could ever supply. The vibrant, brightly coloured pieces featured foaming glasses of fizz, or bottles of bubbly, and they always attracted compliments from customers browsing in the shop.
‘Can’t you just knock off a few pieces over half term?’ demanded Tara, causing Nisha to raise an eyebrow, Angie to flush pink with indignation, and Charley to protest that Angie didn’t just ‘knock off’ her artwork.
‘No, I can’t!’ Angie put her flute down sharply on the coffee table. ‘I might not be taking the kids on countless day trips but I’ve still got to entertain them!’
‘Get Will to look after them,’ replied Tara.
‘I wish! Ofsted’s looming and Will’s like a cat on a hot tin roof.’ Angie’s husband was a lovable, big bear of a man and a great dad, but he was also headteacher at a primary school so he couldn’t always drop everything to look after his children.
‘I’d offer to babysit but I’m up against deadlines,’ Nisha said apologetically. Cool, elegant and ‘happily divorced’, Nisha ran her own marketing company, and her free time had long been a victim of her significant success.
‘I can’t either, Angie. Sorry,’ said Charley, without even needing to explain why. ‘But don’t worry about it, Ange. You can only do what you can. The sky’s not going to fall down if a customer has to wait a couple of weeks or so for a picture. It’s not like he’s waiting for a vital organ transplant!’
Angie shot her a grateful smile, but Tara instantly wiped it off her face. ‘That’s not the point. We don’t want to disappoint our customers.’
Angie flushed, and Charley could have happily thumped Tara, but fortunately for both of them, a coffee table laden with glasses and snacks was in the way.
Nisha stepped in to defuse the tension. ‘Meanwhile, in other news…’ She paused for dramatic effect before announcing, ‘I’ve been headhunted!’
‘Bloody hell, Nishe,’ beamed Charley. ‘How exciting!’
‘Fantastic! Who by?’ Angie asked.
‘Wait!’ ordered Tara, immediately recovering her good humour and leaping up from the sofa. ‘Hold that thought! I need to know too, but I’m getting more fizz!’ She dashed into the kitchen to get the second bottle she’d brought. Tara never arrived anywhere empty-handed. Tonight she’d brought two bottles of fizz, a cheese selection pack, a box of fancy crackers, a large bag of tortilla chips and three different dips. Charley had long given up protesting at her mate’s over-generosity because she knew treating people was Tara’s way of expressing affection. This was due, Charley had long surmised, to Tara having had an impoverished childhood, brought up by a single mum who, her mate would fiercely insist, had more than made up for a lack of funds with a surfeit of love. But even so, treats had been thin on the ground and now Tara could afford them, she loved to spoil those she loved every chance she got. Anyhow, tonight Charley was only too grateful. She hadn’t had time for supper and was eagerly hitting the dips and chips.
Rushing back in with the other bottle of Prosecco, Tara proclaimed, ‘You may proceed, Nisha!’
Laughing, they all held out their glasses for a refill, while Nisha carried on.
‘So, there’s this upper echelon PR company, based in London, but they have offices all over the country, including Bristol. They do global brands, celebrities, televised events and so on, and they have invited me – yes, little old me – to meet to “discuss opportunities”!’ She pulled a self-effacing grimace as if she couldn’t believe her luck.
‘What do they mean by “discuss opportunities”?’ Tara asked shrewdly.
‘Good question,’ replied Nisha. ‘I won’t know until I meet them. But it’s tempting. Ten years on and running the business still hasn’t got any easier.’
Charley’s hand froze, her glass poised halfway to her lips. Bloody hell, she thought. Ten years and it’s still a struggle? And that’s with Nisha at the helm. How much longer was it going to take before her business got any easier? Evicting that disturbing thought, she raised her glass to Nisha cheerily. ‘Well, it sounds fantastic! Good luck.’
‘Good luck!’ chorused the other others, clinking glasses.
The evening broke up earlier than usual with Angie being the first to leave because Will had, unusually for him, texted her an SOS.
‘Sorry, Charley, but Lily is the demon baby from hell at the moment. She’s teething and Will says she’s been crying solidly for thirty-five minutes, poor little mite.’ She pulled an apologetic face. ‘I’m going to have to rescue them from each other!’
Nisha took Angie’s exit as her cue to leave too since, as ever, she had a mountain of work to get through when she got home.
After seeing them out, Charley wandered back into the living room where Tara was clearing up the remains of the snacks.
‘Take the cheese back with you,’ she told Tara, ‘I’ll never get through all of it.’
‘I’ll take the Stilton,’ said her mate, wrapping it up. ‘It’s Baz’s favourite and it’ll be a useful sweetener for when he sees the credit card bill after half term!’
Charley inwardly rolled her eyes. Like Tara, Baz was the soul of generosity, but even he baulked at the amount of money Tara lavished on their daughter.
‘The trouble is, he never used to see the holiday fund when I paid my credit card bill myself. But now there’s no pulling the wool over his eyes anymore!’
Although her friend’s tone was jokey, Charley flinched inside. ‘I’m sorry the shop can’t afford to pay you yet—’ she started, but Tara cut her off.
‘It’s not a problem! I love working with you. It’s a hoot. If I’d wanted to carry on earning a wage I would’ve stayed working at the Avalon.’
‘If you stayed working at the Avalon you’d be doing life for murder by now!’
Tara had loathed her previous boss, once describing him as ‘a pimply prick of a micro-manager with the intelligence and people skills of a plastic garden gnome’. Having met him, Charley could vouch for the accuracy of the description.
‘Highly likely,’ agreed Tara.
Although she was smiling, Charley still felt the usual onslaught of guilt when her inability to pay her colleagues came up, not least since both of them had invested in the shop to help Charley stock it in the first place. Pam always maintained that the five grand she’d put in was a gift and she didn’t want anything back. Tara, on the other hand, had invested three grand, with a view to getting a share of the profits at a future date. The trouble was, Charley had absolutely no idea when that might be and, judging by Nisha’s earlier comments, it might turn out to be a lot longer than either she, or Tara, hoped.