Weeks in Naviras by Chris Wimpress Page B

pure as the driven?’ He looked up at me with a smile before explaining how Rav had also been trying and failing to find himself a Commons seat. Although he’d been put on the approved candidates list, that was only half the battle. Less than half, actually. He’d recently got down to the final two in a fairly marginal constituency but had lost out to a woman. In an earlier time it had been common for the party to just parachute people like Rav into safe seats, but that had gone out of fashion, as things do.
    I don’t think Rav overheard us talking about him when he appeared at the top of the stairs to the main house and called for James to join him. James went off quite reluctantly, leaving me alone for about fifteen seconds before Lottie came back, a bottle of liqueur in her hand.
    ‘Oh, Where’s he gone?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He was summoned.’ I raised my eyebrows at Lottie.
    ‘Well, it’s a bit early for me,’ said Lottie, coming around the bar and sitting on the stool vacated by James.  ‘But after the shock of those ghastly words in my complaints book I think I’m entitled to a drink, don’t you?’
    I nodded, was learning that when Lottie asked a question it normally didn’t require an answer. ‘How long have you had this place?’
    ‘Oh, I’ve lived here just over twenty years,’ she pulled the stopper off the bottle with a low thwump. ‘I’d come out here quite a few times, then when work ended suddenly in London…’ - she paused as she poured – ‘I was left with quite a bit of money, in what they like to call a severance.’ She hissed the word.
    ‘You used to be a weather forecaster?’
    Lottie threw her head back and laughed, a high-pitched giggle. ‘Forecaster’s putting it a bit strongly, darling. I was a weather girl, for the morning TV news.  Bottoms up,’ she looked at me, making firm eye contact, before downing her drink.
    ‘Cheers,’ I said.  The almond liqueur wasn’t as syrupy as I’d expected. I knew I’d be drunk very quickly if I kept up that pace. ‘Was it glamourous?’
    ‘Well it had its moments, certainly,’ said Lottie, resting her elbow on the bar and placing her forefinger below her slightly jowly chin. ‘Getting up at four in the morning for ten years was a struggle, I must say. My first forecast was always at three minutes past six, on the dot, straight after the news. You try being perky at time of the morning!’
    ‘I don’t think I could,’ I said.
    ‘But I went to all the parties, of course. The award ceremonies, the big premieres, met all the film stars. Although of course everyone always asked me about the weather.’ Lottie had a way of making you feel like you were in her confidence, if she liked you.
    ‘And you told them?’
    ‘Well, they used to give me the three-day forecast, but also I had some training. I have to say, after I’d done it for years I always had a hunch about what would happen next. You’ve seen that picture of me, over there, by the piano? There was a running joke in the studio, they used to think I was going to corpse on-air when I pointed to the Mull of Kintyre because it looks like a male appendage,’ Lottie was pouring yet another Amarguinha. ‘They used to write it into the scripts all the time on purpose, and the cameramen used to pull faces whenever I pointed at it. I never corpsed, though, not once.’
    ‘So you retired here? With your husband?’
    ‘Oh no, darling, I never married, no children. I always preferred cooking, food’s much easier to control than people.’ She smiled at me, but lowering her head slightly, checking I understood her. ‘I’d been cooking Portuguese dishes for people in London for years, based on all the lovely meals I’d eaten out here. So, when they finally signed the deal and paid me off I came straight here. I’d heard that the old Portuguese gentleman who’d owned this place had died and it was up for sale, so the next day I put in an offer.’ Her eyes