‘Because …’ I paused. ‘Because you know nothing about distilling, do you? And it’s a highly specialised thing. That Harry guy, the master distiller – hasn’t he been doing that job for thirty-five years?’
‘Yeah, but Harry would still be there,’ Paul insisted, ‘and I wouldn’t need to actually do anything in a hands-on kind of way—’
‘Please tell me you’re not serious about this!’
‘I am. I really am,’ he said firmly.
‘It’s completely mad,’ I exclaimed. ‘You might as well buy a fishmonger’s for all you know about—’
‘I don’t want to buy a fishmonger’s,’ he cut in. ‘I want to buy a fantastic distillery that’s been doing brilliantly for decades now. I mean, it can’t possibly go wrong.’
‘My God, Paul.’ I placed a hand over my eyes momentarily as my sister’s question rang in my ears: Will he still be like this when he’s fifty? Sixty? For the rest of his life?
He took my hand and kissed me gently on the lips. ‘It’d be an amazing adventure for us,’ he said firmly. ‘Please, my darling. Please say yes.’
Back at home in York, I decided that my best plan of action was to throw myself into my work in the hope that Paul’s obsession would soon be forgotten. I wrote obituaries of actors, composers and a celebrated winemaker who had established a vineyard in Sussex. Her niche English wines had garnered accolades until her death at ninety-two.
Since Sgadansay, everything I’d read about the drinks industry suggested at best the need for copious patience and experience, and at worst, that the wrong kind of booze can cause serious harm. For instance, I’d read that the first liquid to run off after distillation may contain methanol. Once ingested, this can turn into formaldehyde, which is useful for chemical loos and the preservation of corpses – but it’s not something you’d want to be swishing around your insides while you’re alive. It can severely damage the central nervous system, I’d read, and cause blindness and death.
I knew Paul would laugh in my face if I mentioned this stuff, so instead I was trying to gently persuade him to reconsider what to do with his inheritance. ‘It could really make a difference to your future,’ I ventured as we lay in bed one night.
‘To our future,’ he said.
‘Well, yes. But maybe there’s something else you could invest in, that’s slightly less risky—’
‘It’s not risky,’ he insisted. ‘Okay, I might not be experienced but I’m committed and passionate. You know the owner’s keen to sell up and retire …’ I nodded mutely. We’d been over this already. ‘And he’s eager to pass it on to someone like me, who’ll bring a fresh approach, rather than a big conglomerate that’ll just gobble it up.’
Since when was Paul committed and passionate about the spirits industry apart from – and I hated to concede that my mother was right – when it came to drinking the stuff?
‘I’m not jumping into this,’ he added. ‘I’ve been looking into it for months.’ We had already established that he’d lured me to the island under false pretences. ‘All I want to do is make more of the heritage and the island setting,’ he insisted. ‘And you’d be brilliant at handling the media side …’
‘But I have a job already!’
‘Yeah, but you could take this on as another strand.’
‘What if I don’t want “another strand”?’
‘And you’ve got tons of newspaper contacts …’
‘Yes,’ I countered, ‘but only on the obituaries side—’
‘C’mon, Suze. Let’s be daring and bold. Live a little!’
Don’t you ‘live-a-little’ me, I seethed, resenting the implication that I was the one spoiling his fun. Suzy Medley: Trampler of Dreams. This was coming from a man who hadn’t been able to sell his spicy sausages without accruing a rack of debt – which I’d helped him pay off. ‘Paul,’ I said firmly, ‘just leave it, will you? I can’t talk about this anymore. I just can’t.’
A couple of days later he found me in Frieda’s room, which wasn’t really Frieda’s room anymore but my office. I’d had to admit, it was silly to keep it as some kind of shrine after she’d left for university. So I’d carefully packed away the curly-edged posters and heaps of battered old trainers and conducted a thorough archaeological excavation under her bed. There I’d found yet more trainers, a musty old sleeping bag, tatty school jotters and, startlingly, a half-eaten pizza in a greasy box.
I’d also rescued the withered cheese plant she’d refused to let me ‘interfere with’, as she put it, insisting it was ‘fine’ crammed into the rusting olive oil can she’d found lying in the street. I seem to have a lucky touch with houseplants. The first thing I’d done, when I’d come home from dropping her off at student halls in Cumbria, was ease it out of the can and re-home it in a roomier earthenware pot so it could breathe. I’d imagined it groaning with relief – like a woman ripping off a constricting bra at the end of the day.
‘Can I show you something?’ Paul asked now, laptop clasped to his chest.
‘Sure,’ I replied. If it was going to be a YouTube clip of a man being chased by a hippopotamus, I hoped it’d be quick as I had urgent work to finish off. He pulled up a spare chair and opened his laptop on the desk.
I read the document on the screen. It certainly went into far greater depth than any of his previous business plans, which had amounted to scribbled notes in tatty notebooks or, on one occasion, on a Pret a Manger lemon cake wrapper. This time he had acquired a full list of the distillery’s employees, and their salaries, plus detailed costs of raw materials, bottling, transport, property maintenance, insurance, utilities and legal shenanigans; every overhead seemed to have been accounted for. He had also written an impressive marketing strategy with the aim of bringing the small distillery to the attention of the world.
‘This is really thorough,’ I remarked.
Paul nodded. ‘My dad would be so proud,’ he said, with a catch to his voice. Startlingly, his eyes were wet.
‘Oh, darling.’ I pulled him close and kissed him. ‘This is all about your dad, isn’t it? You’re not over it, I can tell.’
He shrugged mutely and raked back his hair. It was still abundant, peppered with just a little silvery grey at the sides. ‘You don’t believe in me, do you?’ he muttered.
‘It’s not that,’ I insisted.
‘Wasn’t I supportive to you, when you gave up your job to write full-time?’
‘Of course you were! I don’t think I’d have had the courage without you—’
‘Well, I thought it was daring,’ he went on, ‘and it made me love you even more—’
‘I hated that job though,’ I cut in, which was true. The atmosphere at the recruitment consultancy had been toxic and I’d been relieved to get out. ‘And it felt like the right time,’ I added.
‘Well, this feels like the right time too,’ he said firmly. ‘What are you worried about exactly?’
‘That you don’t know anything about it.’
‘It’s only whisky, Suze. You saw how they did it. It’s not difficult—’
‘What about the chemicals?’
‘What chemicals?’