paradisalost | Girls' Night Out

Current Location: The Lux

Entry tags:

Girls' Night Out

Who: Natalie (

detectivedrake)
What: Wine, more wine and a bit more wine probably.
When: Early evening, Natalie's first proper day here after arriving last night.
Where: The Lux
Rating: Probably NC-17 for discussion topics.

Natalie was sitting at the bar, perched cross legged high on a bar stool. Idly she ran her fingers up and down the dewy cold stem of her wine glass, contemplating. She wasn't usually the type to advocate alcohol as the answer, but these were exceptional circumstances she conceded with a sigh.

The shock of arriving here probably wouldn't have been so bad, but if she were honest Peter not remembering her hurt far more than she'd care to admit. It had placed a decision in her hands, a decision that ultimately she'd have had to have made anyway, but now it felt prematurely forced and she knew more than anything that she was lying to herself. Even as she'd left him, she'd wanted nothing more than to be lost to his kisses again, to bury her hands in his hair and feel that unbridled rush of passion.

But things were different now, and in the face of her presented reality; it was the perfect opportunity to end it, or never start it. Only, as much as she tried to remain stoic on that matter, her thoughts kept drifting to euphoric memories, and she missed him already.

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Making her way down to the bar, Alex felt an odd mixture of apprehension and optimism about meeting Natalie. Apprehension mostly due to the pressure on her to keep quiet about the nature of her work with Peter (as if there was something to hide-- she hated the slightly sick guilty feeling in her stomach of being an accomplice in whatever deception this was). And yet she couldn't help feeling relief at the relative normality of going for a drink with someone, someone new and not a man and not a relic of her past.

Once there it only took a moment of scanning before her eyes lit upon the pensive looking lone woman at the bar, who she assumed must be Natalie. So she walked over, wearing a cautious smile.

"Penny for your thoughts?" She asked, taking a seat on the next stool.

"Huh?" Natalie's reverie broken by the arrival of the other woman as she turned to her. "Oh those, you'd be better served spending your penny in the public toilets on Blackpool front I think. Alex, I take it." She smiled warmly. "Well y'know the voice gave it away a bit", Natalie half heartedly laughed.

"I just got a bottle and two glasses", she gestured with a glance to the awaiting glass on the bar. "Hope you like red."

"The very same." She returned the smile, resting an elbow on the bar. "Nice to meet you-- in the flesh, I mean."

She gave Natalie an infinitely grateful look and then set about filling her glass. "I do indeed. I'm sure this is doing no favours for my burgeoning alcoholism of course, but it's been one of those days."

"You too." Natalie replied with a friendly but thoughtful and slow nod, before she took a sip of her own wine.

"Well if it's on free tap, like everything seems to be here, I can see how that'd be a temptation." She gave her companion a pointed look.

"Oh well", c'est la vie attitude dripping off her shrug, "Join the club then, because I think I might just possibly have had the worst twenty four hours of my life."

"Cheers!" she added sarcastically, raising her glass.

Hmm yes, she certainly caught the look and the possible subtext, but having already pleaded innocence on that count she wasn't going to repeat herself-- and she didn't have energy for frosty half-said things.

"I'll drink to that!" She laughed, a bit mirthlessly, before taking quite an unladylike gulp, then wiping her lips with a finger. God she needed that.

"It certainly takes some getting used to, the castle. Especially when it seems to have a sadistic sense of irony."

Natalie's mouthful was no less than Alex's probably, but she did seem to pull off the task with a good deal more subtletly before placing the glass back on the bar. Resting her head in one hand, elbow propped up on the bar, she gave Alex a thorough inspection as she listened. Privately weighing up whether she considered her to be Peter's type.

What would I know about his type. she resignedly decided, although it hadn't passed her by that the woman was a similar height to herself and brunette. Possibly a bit skinny though, she mused.

She snorted out a laugh at that last comment though. "You're not kidding."

"So where are you from Alex? Southern counties somewhere?"

Alex's excuse for the decline in her manners is that she seems to spend most of her time in the company of big burly blokes. Her mother probably wouldn't approve. Mercifully Alex can't hear what's going on in Natalie's head, or else she'd be feeling completely exasperated- not only due to the continued suspicion, but also: 'a bit skinny'? Alex's evaluation of Natalie hadn't gotten any further than a vague passing notion of her being pretty, but then Alex didn't see her as a threat.

As it is she was beginning to relax, a little bit. The ice was broken now at least. She nodded in confirmation.

"Yes. London, actually. How about you? You mentioned Blackpool?"

In her defence, she's not normally like this at all. But the idea that Peter's been here five months and didn't know she even existed is really dawning on her now. Natalie wouldn't use the word threat, more just a possibility, a possibility that's making her feel pangs of jealousy she'd really prefer she didn't.

"Yeah, Blackpool. The Glamorous Vegas of the North," she added dryly, "I'm from Manchester originally, moved to Blackpool when I got married."

Edited 2008-11-12 20:20 (UTC)

"Oh, you're married?" Ooooh. Alex was connecting a few dots here- admittedly it wasn't difficult, and she is a detective after all. They both live in Blackpool, she's married, he's not...

"I'm sorry. Not that you're married-- though being divorced myself I'm not really that big on it-- but it must be weird to be here without your husband."

Well technically Peter was just working in Blackpool, as relief cover for a murder case, he's from the Lakes. But Natalie doesn't know all this, just her typist.

"You'd think wouldn't you?" There she goes with the eyerolling again. "To be honest, I think if Ripley showed up here, no-one would ever forgive me."

She takes a greedy gulp of her wine, plonking it unceremoniously back on the bar. "No, that's unfair," she tilts her head, realising that came across as rather more callous then she thought she was capable of. "I don't mean that. He's not a bad bloke, and he's seen me okay over the years."

Natalie's first, uncensored reaction regarding her husband certainly adds fuel to Alex's suspicions. She takes another sip of her wine, then reaches for the bottle to top both their glasses up as she considers how best to reply.

"Just okay? It's probably not my place to say, but it doesn't seem to me like he makes you very happy, Natalie."

"S'funny. That question just keeps popping up recently," she stares blankly into her now refilled glass, succesfully evading actually answering it with her despondency.

"Anyway," she breathes dismissively turning back to Alex to steer the conversation back on to her, rather than herself. "You're divorced? That can't have been an easy decision."

Talking about other people and their lives is far more familiar territory than this emotional upheaval.

"No, it wasn't." And now it's Alex's turn to roll her eyes. "He's in Canada now, seeing a woman called 'Judy'. I hope they're very happy together."

No bitterness there at all, as she gulps down a bit more wine, as though needing to banish the memory of a bad taste. However she can't resist adding: "I mean, what sort of a name is 'Judy', anyway?"

"You know what?" Natalie reaches for her glass again with the smirk of a good 'punch'line on the tip of her tongue. "Judy's are nothing without a good Punch anyway."

"Seriously though," she continues after a drink, "I'm sorry. It can't have been easy for you. How long were you married?"

"Or a Richard." She laughs, the sort of laugh that turns into a sigh, and waves her hand dismissively.

"Oh, I'm over it now, really. It was..." (Thoughtful pout here as she works it out.) "Six, seven years or so. We got married far too young, and we grew up-- and apart, until we just weren't the same people anymore. I kept his name though, 'Drake'. Wouldn't feel right going back to Price now."

"Please tell me your ex-husband wasn't called Richard, because that'd just be too funny."

This wine's going down rather easily Natalie considers as she realises her second glass is half finished already, perhaps she should slow down. "I was still a teenager, it doesn't get any younger than that. Well-- unless you're on Jeremy Kyle."

"No, he wasn't, thankfully. In the last few months I'd pretty much christened him 'The Wanker', anyway." She smirks, amused, into her glass.

"Jeremy Kyle?" She laughs, shaking her head. "God, I'd forgotten how good it is to talk to someone from 2008."

"Anger's good," she nods giving Alex her Samaritan smile before taking a more tentative sip than her previous drinks. "You seem fairly well adjusted about it all, nothing like injecting a little humour."

Then she's laughing herself, because despite her charity work and having listened to half the problems he features first hand, the show never fails to amuse her. Perhaps it's that whole 'listening to people worse off than herself' that Peter had recognised so easily, yet never had it occured to her that was why she did it.

"2008? Well--nearly, take four years off. So what do you do Alex? Well-- I mean what did you do?"

"Oh, you're a bit earlier? My mistake. Still, it's a definite improvement anyway."

The question pains her, being so direct, and she's completely lost for a moment, a moment which she covers with finishing her wine. 'Alex, do me a favour -- please don't tell her about our job. Don't ask why.'

She's very familiar with the body language people display when lying; the closing off, the looking away, the head shaking- so she tries to appear as casual as possible and looks Natalie in the eye as she replies, vaguely:

"Oh, well you know what Peter does, I take it? That sort of thing. Very dull. How about you?"

...which wasn't strictly a lie, so she's just praying Natalie doesn't ask her to elaborate on the subject.

Natalie has probably had a little too much wine to be as sharp or astute as she might normally, and although Alex is definitely being vague, she attributes it to the presumably lacklustre nature of Quantity Surveying rather than evasiveness for any other reason.

"Me? Oh I never had a career so to speak," she replies with a slightly transparent sense of disappointment in herself. "I do voluntary work. Oxfam and the Samaritans."

"It keeps me busy," she adds, defending her choices in life with a nonchalant shrug and then draining her glass.

Alex is deeply relieved.

"I really admire that, actually." She remarks, noting that both their glasses are empty and moving quickly to rectify the situation.

"You're helping people who obviously have nowhere else to turn, making a difference in their lives. That must be very rewarding. And I suppose that explains why you're such a good listener."

"Well, it's not all suicidal depression. Believe it or not, we get regulars. I could tell you exactly how every wall in a house I've never been in has been decorated, and he agonises over every choice." She explains wryly, subconsciously playing down any real difference she does make.

"But yeah, I suppose it is rewarding in its own way. People just get lonely."

She wasn't going to have another glass just yet, but it'd be rude not to now, so she sips from it after a grateful smile.

"You know, we're not supposed to tell anyone actually. Samaritans. But seeing as how it was in another life... well you know."

She sips her wine and listens, laughing a little bit at the fastidious decorator, then subsides into thoughtfulness- Alex sometimes has the tendency to wax philosophical once the vino kicks in.

"Yes, I know what you mean. Things are very different here, the old rules don't really apply anymore. You could be a completely different person without anyone knowing. Well-- almost anyone, depending on your luck." She adds, as an afterthought.

"You know what Alex." Natalie shoots her a very enlightened and perhaps slightly devious look. "I think you might have a very good point there."

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Girls' Night Out

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