The Things We Do to Our Friends(13)

Then Tabitha reached out and I wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but when she let her middle finger run along the skin of my throat very slowly, as if it was only the two of us in the flat, it seemed perfectly natural. When she was almost at the point of reaching to the back of my neck, she pulled away as if nothing had happened and said brightly, “That plastic frame’s vile, isn’t it? One day I’ll sort it out. Give her the proper one she deserves.”

And if ever there was a warning sign, that was it, but I just stared on at Judith’s beautiful dress.





10


After that night, they all came into the bar often to see me, and Finn was vocal in his scorn. “Those girls, there’s something off about them. They’re…mean. I’m being serious. Like sharks, like a shoal of sharks.”

I looked it up on the computer in the office later.

“A shark is a shiver, not a shoal. A shiver of sharks,” I said.

He laughed loudly. “Yes, that’s exactly what they fucking are, a shiver.”

He gnashed his teeth together to make the point.

The Shiver. That’s what I called them from that point onwards. When I told Tabitha, she adored it. Her impression of a shark swimming around me in her flat, with her fin made from two hands clasped high above her head, was so over the top I was glad she hadn’t performed it in public.

Finn was a good, calming contrast. Kind eyes. Easy.

The story of Finn and me doesn’t involve grand romance. It happened one night when we were talking after closing time, although not about anything in particular. We drank expensive wine, dregs left over from a tasting earlier in the day, inches of Malbec, tart sips of Soave, swilling it, and we ended up becoming very, very drunk, and his mouth was on mine. The two of us as one pressed up against the bar, his hand up my skirt, clawing at me with a hunger I hadn’t seen in him before.

“Clare just gets on with it,” Finn said to the rest of them. “She doesn’t moan or complain that there’s too much cleaning up to do, or that she’s tired.” He was right—I didn’t complain much. My lack of any objection to the job they paid me to do seemed to have inspired Finn’s attraction to me.

It certainly wasn’t based on our conversations. Finn was prone to long stories about his childhood summers in the Shetlands or detailed rants about trying to return something or other to a shop unsuccessfully—But, Clare, I had the receipt!

The conversations didn’t excite me, but from the beginning I found him calming, like white noise. He was willfully uncomplicated in my new world, which worked well, as I was having to use all my energy to keep up with Tabitha and the rest of them to justify my place in the group.

The main surprise was that whatever we had together didn’t fizzle out in those early months when I was navigating so many different things. But once it started, the pattern continued. It revolved around waking up late in the afternoon, hungover, our mouths dry, and chasing away the night before with coffee and buttered toast.

He didn’t care about my course, and he never asked about my background. The evenings we worked together were fun enough, and the job grew easier. I liked the ceremony of it. Endless hours of prep, picking mint leaves from off the stem and stacking them away, crushing ice and preparing sugar syrups. Grabbing coats from the lost property to wear home, because who cared whether the owners ever got them back.

I wouldn’t have said I was a good cocktail bartender.

“You’re slapdash,” Finn said, shaking his head. “No care for the presentation. Imagine what the customer would think, getting that.” He placed his own neat daiquiri on the bar with care. “There you go.”

I apologized and nodded, practiced making them again and again. But he was right. Of course, I didn’t want to get fired, but also, I didn’t care about the final product. I could hear Finn’s voice droning on, talking about the importance of the customer. To me, it was just a drink, and the buzz I got was from throwing the drinks out as fast as I could, challenging myself to remember the quantities, the techniques, and the garnishes until there was no room for anything else. It was an effective escape—the attention from Finn, from our customers.

At the bar, Finn was the only one I got on with. He had a reputation, which may have caused some ripples. The other bartenders we worked with had told me about him. First with their raised eyebrows when they saw us leaving together and then more explicitly later on, but it didn’t matter to me that there were nights when I didn’t know where he was. He came in smelling of cloying perfume that wasn’t mine, but I didn’t mind. Then I would arrive at work and I would feel his finger brushing my arm on shift or his hand grazing over my back, and then he didn’t seem so boring, and it was enough to start the whole thing off again. I considered us to be quite casual.

One night I went in to pick up my pay slip. It was early, and the door should still have been locked, but it wasn’t. I heard two of the girls we worked with talking in the back room. Then a tinkly laugh from one of them.

“Yeah, I know.” I recognized the voice—Kaylie, an Australian who I’d initially thought I could be friends with.

There was a mutter from someone else, and then Kaylie spoke a little louder. “She seems nice enough, but she’s just a bit weird, you know? Like, you say something and she just…stares at you gormlessly.”