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‘Quite.’ Liz grinned. For a moment, she thought of Paul, but then banished the thought from her mind. She was aware that she herself could easily become an “old maid” now that Paul had left her and taken her dreams of a family with him. Yes, there was the option of the clinic, but she still didn’t feel ready to think about that. Her stomach twisted, thinking of his voice on the phone. She still didn’t know what to think about it, but her body told another story. She wanted to see Paul – despite everything.
‘Anyway. I thought, why not launch a new range of whiskies named after local women? I thought if I could come and find out more about any of them, that might give some inspiration as to what their special whisky could include. Or, there could be a good story there. Stories sell products,’ she explained, pushing the feelings to one side. Now definitely wasn’t the time.
‘Fascinating,’ Gretchen said. ‘I love the idea. So, you could have a Muriel Whisky? And a… what were the other names?’
‘Elspeth, Felicity and Evelyn.’ Liz looked at her notepad. ‘Yeah. That’s my thinking, at the moment, anyway. Or, alternatively, we could reclaim the whole ‘old maid’ thing and the whisky could just be one new product called Old Maid, but there could be four collectible bottles, each featuring the details of one of these local women. Something like that. I don’t know yet.’
‘Oh, I wish I could be one of them!’ Gretchen held her hands out in front of her. ‘What about: THE GRETCHEN. She’s a smoky old bird with an initial bitterness, but warm afterwards,’ she chuckled. Liz adored Gretchen’s gravelly voice and her quintessentially old school British way of speaking; she thought, if she could choose how she would be as an elderly woman, she would choose to be like Gretchen in a heartbeat. Gretchen was like a bookish, slightly cantankerous, polyester-slacks-wearing version of the Queen, if the Queen had once dated Norman Mailer and was ready to dish.
‘Look, THE GRETCHEN’s not off the table, by any means,’ Liz said with a laugh. ‘We might use you if these women didn’t have anything happen to them. But I kind of feel like they might have. And I think the historical angle would interest people, you know?’
‘Well, I’d definitely buy a bottle of THE GRETCHEN.’ Hal patted Gretchen on the shoulder. ‘Okay, then. These’re in date order, and you can usually see on the spines where they belong – see?’ He showed Liz the way that the books were ordered on the shelf. ‘I’ll go an’ make the tea. I’ll be back.’ He left them to it, and Liz looked at the next dates on her list.
‘Okay. Let’s see what we can find out,’ she mused, and ran her finger along the lines of ledgers and notebooks. ‘Come on, ladies. I know you lived amazing lives. Let’s prove there was more to life for you than being old maids.’
‘Anyway, as an old maid myself, I can very much recommend the lifestyle.’ Gretchen sniffed, opening the first book in her pile.
‘Good to know, Gretchen.’ Liz pulled out some likely-looking books and sat down beside her. ‘Let’s do this.’
TWENTY-TWO
‘So, I was thinking, and Liz was right, last time.’ Bess was pouring hot water from the big metal canister into a large teapot as Liz settled herself down next to Mina with some lunch and her crochet hook. She’d actually gone out and bought her own hook and some wool and had been working on a crochet square at home. After a few false starts, it was actually coming along quite well. Liz was strangely proud of it. She’d never crafted anything before.
‘What?’ Mina looked up as Liz sat down. ‘Bess is always thinking. So much going on in that head of hers.’ She tutted as her hands turned the wool hat in her hands expertly, her hook going in and out of the wool without her looking at it at all.
‘Well, I don’t know that thinking a lot’s a bad thing.’ Liz grinned and sipped her coffee.
‘I concur,’ Sally chipped in. Liz had tapped on her office door today before she’d headed down to the village at lunchtime, and invited Sally to come with her. She’d remembered Sheila saying that she and Sally were friends, and Sally had accepted Liz’s offer of a brisk walk and some amazing cake. ‘You should try it some time, Mina,’ she said playfully. Mina made a shooing gesture with her hand.
‘Sally Burns, you know very well I beat you at the general knowledge quiz last year. Don’t make me tell Liz all the questions you missed. I still remember them all,’ Mina shot back, grinning. ‘Oh, Liz. Ignore us. Sally and I are long-standing rivals. She thinks she has the best general knowledge in the village. She doesn’t.’
‘Oh. I see.’ Liz laughed. ‘I had no idea you were into quizzes, Sally.’
‘She’s a dark horse,’ Bess agreed, putting the lid on the teapot and setting out some mugs. Today, some mums with toddlers had joined the space in the community centre, and the toddlers were enjoying a variety of toys and soft play slides, mats and other safe toys. Bess served the mums tea and cake, smiling and chatting to them.
‘What were you thinking, anyway, babe?’ Sally held out a hand for Bess, who took it and gave it a squeeze. ‘Oh, sorry. Liz, you’ve met Bess. I should have explained, she’s my partner.’
‘Oh! I didn’t know. But that’s lovely.’ Liz beamed, happy to feel like she was getting to know Sally better. ‘I do remember you saying you lived with someone.’
‘Yes. We’ve been together five years. We actually met at the inn, at a general knowledge quiz,’ Sally explained, gazing up at Bess with love in her eyes. ‘Bess fell instantly in love with me because of my in-depth knowledge of the Suez oil crisis.’
‘Yep. That and your amazing legs.’ Bess leant down and placed a kiss on the end of Sally’s nose. ‘The legs might have swung it, though. Anyway. What I was thinking was,’ Bess continued, after the mums had gone to play with the kids on the other side of the hall, ‘That Liz was right when she said we could make money from our baking. You know that we give all our profits from these coffee mornings to the Mum and Toddler group anyway, right?’
‘Yes. It’s a lovely thing to do.’ Liz nodded.
‘Well, it is, but we don’t exactly make much. Just enough to keep the mums in free tea and sandwiches, and the occasional new toy for the kids.’ Bess smiled as she watched some of the little ones climbing on the padded mats. ‘I was thinking that we could do something bigger. A fundraiser. Some of that equipment’s getting old, and I was thinking it would be great if we could get one of those big trampolines for the kids. One of those big round standalone ones, with the netting around it? It could go outside in the summer. We could have it in here in the winter. It’d take up some space, but we rarely use this place for anything else anyway.’
‘That’s a great idea.’ Kathy looked up from her crochet. Today, her two-tone hair was in a schoolmarm-ish bun on top of her head, and she wore drainpipe jeans with zips and a long stripy mohair jumper. ‘Kids love those things. And a lot of families here can’t afford one, or don’t have the outside space for one. The kids can really tire themselves out on one of those.’
‘Oooh, how fun!’ Mina’s eyes lit up. ‘Ashoka would love that. How much are they?’
‘A few hundred pounds I think,’ Bess said. ‘Sally’s niece has one. We bought it for her last summer. They couldn’t afford to go away on holiday, so at least it was something she could do outdoors. It worked really well.’
‘What about getting the distillery involved?’ Liz looked up, thoughtfully. ‘We could make it a whisky and cake evening or something. You guys could bake, and I could definitely arrange for some contributions from the drinks side. We could just charge once for the ticket, and then people could have unlimited food and drink once inside. Maybe some entertainment?’
‘What aboot havin’ it at the inn?’ Sheila had been chatting to one of the mums, standing at the edge of the soft play area, and now came over to sit next to Liz. ‘Dotty’d let us, I’m sure. She’d do anythin’ for the kids.’
‘That would be nice.’ Liz hadn’t been to the inn yet, though she’d seen it from the outside. It was a large, yellowy-brown cobbled stone pub with sash windows and a black slate tiled roof. Every time she’d passed it, Liz had thought how cosy and welcoming it looked, bedecked with hanging baskets of orange, cerise and white begonias and geraniums. ‘I don’t think we’d have any trouble making a few hundred pounds. Not if the tickets were, say, ten pounds each? What do you think?’
