Page 77 of The Cocktail Bar

Chapter Thirty-Seven

GEORGINA

The real reasonGeorgina decided to use the bar for her private carnival party that night was that she was angry. Several weeks of her life had been spent learning how to bore a hole through a wall, a discretionary act which had been completely unnecessary. He’d entrusted her with a bunch of keys that weekend in late November, and that bunch of keys would have made for a far easier journey to a skittle alley cupboard and its cloak-and-dagger bottle. Revenge was essential every step of the way. Who wouldn’t invite two of the semi-fit male employees from the local DIY store where she’d purchased said tools for the job, for a little weekend flirtation – pregnant or not?

But she hadn’t returned to work because she wanted to keep River on his toes. Remarkably, her weekly wages kept being paid into her account, a sure sign that she had him right where she wanted him, at her beck and at her call. And yet it wasn’t enough. The more you had, the more you wanted.

Desire was a diva like that.

Lennie may well have run off with the bottle, Blake may well have found his second chance of lurve in the arms of Zara – the so-called friend who had ditched Georgina with all the haste with which one of her bakers would bin a weevil-infested bag of flour, and her father may well have decided to take things one step beyond with Heather. Happiness may have abounded forthem, but all it did for Georgina was leave her with a very bitter pill to swallow. Because it was one thing to watch your former lover run into the arms of another, but it was quite another to see this gut churning happiness do the rounds like a Mexican sodding wave.

And now it seemed it was Lee’s turn, the wedding to that pint-sized excuse for a woman of his was only taking place on the weekend, and Georgina was fuming that she hadn’t been invited, but it was her fury over Blake’s lack of an invitation which really pushed her imagination over the edge. They’d been friends since the water and sandpit of primary school. Wherever Blake went, Lee, like Mary’s little lamb, would go.

Shoelace undone? No worries, Lee would stoop to tie the bow again; Mummy forgot for the gazillionth time to put a bag ofWalkerscrisps in his lunchbox? Like a disciple, Lee was there with the supermarket branded back-up supplies; scolded for something Blake kind-of-did-but-kind-of-didn’t-do… a littleTippexillustration added to the classroom geek’s blazer, the Valentine’s card stuffed unimaginatively in Alice’s rucksack as they crunched the gravel up the back lane while the peels of the school bell trilled in the hinterland? Legendary Lee would come to the rescue.

Friends didn’t abandon one another like that, and whilst Blake may have been floating on a cloud shaped like a number nine, Georgina was only too happy to turn his weakness to her advantage.