Chapter Twelve #2
I felt like reassuring her that it hadn’t moved an inch since we’d left the hotel. It couldn’t possibly with that amount of hairspray on it.
We were introduced to our workshop leader, Carlotta, whose name I didn’t catch for ages because although she was very smiley and very nice, she spoke so fast and with such a strong Italian accent that I could only understand every other word she was saying. I wondered if it was just me.
‘She needs to slow down,’ said Peter, too loudly.
Fine. Not just me, then.
I was the last to sit and in my determination not to end up next to Aidan, I’d faffed around so much, trying to second-guess where he was headed that I’d messed up and was, of course, sitting right next to him.
Great. Sophia was on the other side of him and Rosamund was opposite me, so it pretty much couldn’t get any worse.
I looked longingly at the bottle of wine Carlotta was brandishing and watched impatiently as she opened it, pouring quite a substantial amount of white wine into each of our glasses.
‘This is a Tenuta Torciano, number 32. Very nice wine. Take it in your left hand, right hand, swill. Like this.’
I watched as Carlotta flung the glass of wine effortlessly from one hand to the other and then swilled it wildly in her right hand so the pale yellow liquid spun around in the glass like the contents of a washing machine.
‘Impressive,’ I said under my breath.
‘Pretty sure I’m not going to be able to do that,’ commented Aidan.
I dared to look at him out of the corner of my eye.
Had he been talking to me? He’d probably worked out that if we sat here in frosty silence the whole time, then the rest of our group was going to wonder what on earth was going on.
And I didn’t think either of us wanted to draw attention to what had actually gone on.
I attempted to have a go at the swilling, worried about dropping the glass and then managing to slop wine over the top of the rim.
‘Ooops,’ I said. ‘How are you getting on, Rosamund?’
Rosamund was swirling smugly away like a pro. ‘Oh, it’s easy when you’ve done this as many times as we have. Look, hold the stem here. Not the glass, because that will warm up the wine and we want it nice and chilled.’
I followed her lead, holding the glass by the stem, which felt very unstable and all kinds of wrong. It worked though, and the swilling came much easier when I tried it again.
‘Good!’ said Rosamund, and I perked up, as I tended to when I’d inadvertently managed to please somebody.
‘Now, I want you to take a mouthful of wine and hold it for five seconds only,’ commanded Carlotta.
‘And then we swallow it?’ I asked, realising too late that it was probably a silly question.
Everyone except Carlotta and Aidan laughed.
‘You swallow it, yes, then if you like, you drink more, if you don’t like, you pour what is left of your glass into this bucket here, in the middle of the table.’
I nodded sheepishly, deciding there and then that I was going to drink the entire glass, come what may.
I took a sip, held it in my mouth as instructed and then nearly laughed out loud when I caught sight of Aidan; his nose was wrinkled in disgust and he closed his eyes as he made a meal of swallowing it.
Aidan hated white wine, I’d forgotten that.
My own mouthful, on the other hand, slipped effortlessly down my throat.
‘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.