Chapter 18
18
Raquel needed no persuading to put James and Abby forward for a date night, as she’d already noticed that James was keen on Abby, although she wasn’t entirely sure his feelings were reciprocated. Abby was duly summoned for interview where, according to what Raquel told me afterwards, she admitted she’d initially dismissed James as a ‘posh knob’ with whom she had nothing in common. However, despite him being totally not the kind of guy she normally went for, she found him easy to talk to and he was definitely growing on her. I, on the other hand, was summoned to see Gus, who was practically salivating over the footage of my chat with James; annoyingly, I’d forgotten that the whole thing would be recorded. On the plus side, he thinks my ‘sage advice’, as he put it, will further endear me to the viewers and help to shut down the few remaining trolls. I’ve been firmly avoiding any social media to do with the show, so I’m happy to take his word for it.
I’m helping Rosa to clear up after lunch when James appears, looking a little nervous.
‘What’s up?’ I ask him.
‘You know Abby and I are on a date night tonight?’
‘Yes. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?’
‘It is, absolutely. But, umm, don’t take this the wrong way, I’d like to serve her something a bit more special than the run of the mill wine we normally have. I also thought…’ He stops and I notice he’s blushing.
‘What is it?’
‘You might say this is hideously old-fashioned, and you must tell me if it’s a stupid idea, but I thought I’d like to get her some flowers.’
‘I think that’s a lovely idea. Just say what you want and I’ll chat to Gus and see what we can get organised for you.’
‘Umm, no. I was rather hoping you would help me to get them myself. I’m not sure it’s very romantic to give her flowers that someone else has bought on my behalf, do you know what I mean? I noticed you speak Spanish, and I know you drive, so I was hoping I could commandeer you for a couple of hours to take me to the nearest town and translate for me.’
‘Goodness, James. I’ll have to check with Gus and Rosa, but I don’t imagine there will be a problem. Do you know where you want to go?’
‘I’ve already researched the wine, but I’m happy to be guided by you on the best place for flowers.’
I should have known that buying wine with James wasn’t going to be as simple as a trip to a supermarket. We’re heading into the mountains to a winery called Bodega Ribas.
‘I remembered Abby saying she liked Shiraz,’ he tells me excitedly as I negotiate the narrow roads. ‘The wine I want to buy is called Ribas de Cabrera. It’s only twenty per cent Syrah grapes, with the remaining eighty being Mantonegro, a local grape variety, but it tastes like Shiraz on speed. They only make it when the harvested grapes are of exceptional quality and, get this, they select the grapes for this wine individually.’
‘Wow, I bet that doesn’t come cheap.’
‘It’s not as expensive as you might think. Depending on where you get it from, you can pay anything from sixty to eighty pounds a bottle.’
‘That’s still a hell of a lot, James. I don’t want to rain on your parade, but do you think you might be overthinking this, just a little? I’m sure she’d be happy with something a fraction of that price. What if she doesn’t like it, or just knocks it back?’
‘She might be happy with something cheap, but what does it say about my feelings for her if I skimp on the wine? She’s an exceptional woman, and I wouldn’t be comfortable serving her anything less than an exceptional wine.’
I give him a brief grin. ‘You’re the boss.’
I’m relieved to discover that the people at the bodega speak fluent English, so I’m not forced to translate wine-talk. I also should have guessed that James knows the owners, so there’s lots of discussion about their various wines and different vintages. A seemingly endless array of bottles is brought in, opened, tasted and discussed at length. I’m also relieved to note that he carefully spits each wine into a container after tasting it; he’s never going to impress Abby if he’s plastered. We’re there for nearly an hour before we finally climb back into the minibus with James cradling his bottle of Cabrera like a baby.
‘Right,’ I tell him. ‘Rosa has recommended a florist not far from the villa, and I’m afraid she’s also given me a list of things I need to pick up for her. What sort of flowers are you after? Roses would be the obvious choice.’
‘Yeah, but they’re terribly clichéd. I don’t know what I want exactly, but hopefully I’ll spot something when we get there.’
If I thought the visit to the winery was drawn out, the florist is agonising. In the end, I set James and the florist up with a kind of pointing and gesturing system so I can leave them to it and go to get the things on Rosa’s list. When I get back to the minibus, he’s waiting for me with the largest bouquet I think I’ve ever seen.
‘Goodness,’ I exclaim. ‘Did you buy the whole shop?’
‘It does feel a bit like that,’ he admits. ‘I couldn’t decide, so in the end I asked her to make me a bouquet with a bit of everything.’
‘I bet she loved you. I dread to think how much it cost. I just hope Abby appreciates all the effort you’ve gone to.’ I stow Rosa’s shopping in the boot while James reverentially lays the bouquet on the floor between the back seats.
‘I’ve just had a thought,’ James says suddenly as we drive through the gates of the villa. ‘How am I going to smuggle the flowers in without Abby spotting them?’
‘Leave them with me,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll take them into my room and store them until you’re ready. Do you want me to put them next to your seat so you can give them to her at dinner? I don’t think we have a vase big enough, so I might need to put them in a bucket.’
‘That would be brilliant, thank you. Do you know if you have any decanters?’
‘I would have thought so. I’ll ask Rosa for one and bring it to your room.’
‘Thanks. The wine is too young to have a sediment but it will still benefit from breathing properly.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I tell him with a smile.
Rosa is unimpressed by both the flowers, which she dismisses as ‘ridiculously extravagant’, and the fuss over the wine. ‘He’s putting too much expectation on the poor woman,’ she says with a sniff. ‘I saw it a lot when we had the restaurant – men making lavish displays and ordering everything expensive, when it’s clear the woman would have preferred something simple. It was good for our profit margin, but for the women? Not so much.’
‘I think it’s only a problem if he becomes a wine bore over dinner. Nothing is likely to turn her off more than a lecture on top notes and terroir .’
‘How did you become such an expert all of a sudden?’ Rosa asks.
‘An hour at a vineyard listening to wine buffs will do that to you. Between you and me, I was fidgeting with boredom by the end. If anyone offers me a job doing vineyard excursions, remind me to say no.’
‘People like James are useful, though. Neither Pedro nor I know very much about wine, so we relied on a woman called Isabella to suggest the right ones for us to stock.’
‘Maybe we should introduce her to James if things don’t work out between him and Abby.’ I laugh.
‘She’s married, and she wouldn’t thank him for the flowers. She once threw a man out of one of her wine tastings because he was wearing aftershave.’
‘Why?’
‘She said the scent of the aftershave would interfere with his ability to smell the wine properly, and therefore it was a total waste of her time him being there.’
‘Wow. How to win friends and influence people. I doubt he bothered to darken her doorstep again.’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you. But he was back for the very next tasting, minus the aftershave of course, and now they’re married.’
‘Goodness.’
‘Exactly. And do you know the one thing he has never, ever done?’
‘Wear aftershave?’
‘That, and he’s never bought her flowers. Her nose is a sensitive instrument, so they don’t have any distracting odours in the house.’
‘That’s a bit extreme. Anyway, Abby works in construction so I don’t think she’s going to have the same sensitivity.’
‘Ha. Building sites are no place for a woman,’ Rosa declares, shrugging her shoulders expressively.
‘Nonsense, Rosa. This is the twenty-first century; I think we’ve left those kinds of attitudes behind.’
‘I can’t help being traditional.’
The smell in my room is intoxicating when I go to collect the flowers just before dinner, and I pause for a moment, breathing in the heady scent. I like a glass of wine as much as the next person, but I’d happily smell this over all the stuff James was discussing with the people at the bodega. The guests are all enjoying their pre-dinner drinks on the terrace, so I take a circuitous route to place the flowers in the bucket by James’ chair. The bouquet really is enormous, and I need both hands to carry it. One thing is for certain – Abby is not going to be in any doubt how James feels about her. I just hope she lets him down gently if she decides she’s not interested.
The decanter with the wine is already waiting, so James has obviously been here before me. I carefully place the bouquet into the bucket, but it takes a few goes before I feel confident enough to let it go without the bucket tipping over. We’re going to have to split it across several vases once he’s delivered his grand gesture.
I normally steer well clear of the control room unless I have a specific reason to go in there, but Gus has asked Rosa to serve the date-night tables tonight so I can watch, given how much effort I’ve invested in James and Abby today. Chris and Tim are in front of their enormous monitors, which are showing live feeds from every camera. Gus, Dom and Raquel are standing behind, watching and occasionally requesting a particular feed be made full screen so they can see it more clearly.
‘Ah, here’s our matchmaker,’ Gus comments with a smile. ‘There aren’t any spare headphones I’m afraid, so you’ll have to lipread if you want to know what they’re saying.’
‘It’s OK. I reckon I’ll be able to pick up what I need to from their body language.’
The table is currently vacant, but James and Abby appear after a few minutes. He’s very solicitous, I notice, holding her chair for her while she sits down and helping to push it in. The conversation appears a little stilted, which is hopefully just down to James’s nerves.
‘Give her the flowers,’ I mutter under my breath.
‘Patience,’ Gus laughs.
I watch as he pours a glass of wine from the decanter for each of them and wait for him to start swirling it around and sniffing it like he did this afternoon. This could be make or break; if he goes into wine-bore mode, he’ll lose her at the first hurdle. To my astonishment, however, he merely chinks his glass against hers and they each take a sip. I see her eyes widen as the liquid hits her mouth and, from her expression, I think she’s being complimentary about it. A few sentences pass between them before he reaches down and lifts the bouquet out of the bucket.
If Abby liked the wine, I think it’s safe to say the bouquet has blown her away. She’s beaming as she takes it from him and sticks her nose in for a good sniff.
‘Oh, he won’t like that,’ I murmur.
‘Why?’ Gus asks.
‘It’ll upset all her olfactory nerves and probably ruin the taste of the wine.’
‘I didn’t know you were a connoisseur.’
‘Oh, I’m not. It’s just something Rosa said.’
Gus looks perplexed but obviously decides not to delve any further into Rosa’s and my supposed wine knowledge. On screen, Abby has carefully laid the bouquet on the grass, got up from her seat and planted a smacker of a kiss on James’ cheek. He looks as if all his Christmases have come at once. From that point on, everything seems to go swimmingly. The conversation appears to be flowing naturally, and they demolish the wine between them. At the end of the meal, Abby picks up the flowers but, like me, needs two hands to hold them. To my delight, James offers to carry them for her, cradling them in the crook of his arm as they stroll hand in hand back towards the terrace and the rest of the group.
‘I’d better go and take those off him,’ I say to Gus. ‘Rosa’s waiting with some vases so we can split them up and put them in her room.’
As if on cue, James appears with the flowers just as I exit the control room.
‘Happy?’ I ask him.
‘Ecstatic. It couldn’t have gone better.’
‘I was expecting you to do the swirling and sniffing thing with the wine. I’m glad you didn’t.’
‘Of course I didn’t!’ He looks amused. ‘That kind of thing is fine when you’re tasting a wine, and I did check it when I was decanting it, but not when you’re drinking it. Anyway, she really liked it, and that’s the main point. Can you do the necessary with these?’
‘Of course,’ I tell him. ‘Give them to me.’
As I climb into bed and close my eyes later that evening, the lingering scent of the flowers is still clearly discernible, but that’s not what comes into my head as I start to drift off to sleep. Normally, I think about Jock, but tonight he’s joined by images of a beautiful, derelict hotel in Margate.