18
‘THAT WAS SO much fun!’ Flo collapsed backwards onto the sofa and kicked off her boots. Her socks were pink and fluffy. She shook the snow out of her hair – it had started again on the drive back. ‘That was ace! Tom, you were a crack shot!’
Tom grinned and slumped back into an armchair. ‘I used to do a lot of archery as a teen. I guess the skills are similar.’
‘Archery?’ Nina eyed him disbelievingly. ‘As in, Robin Hood and his Merry Men? Did you have to wear tights?’
‘As in, the stuff they do at the Olympics,’ Tom said. He was obviously well used to teasing and it barely registered. ‘No tights involved. I used to do competitive fencing too. It’s very good for you. Very physical. I’m out of shape now.’
He flexed one biceps and looked at it with what was supposed to be a rueful expression, but the undertone of slight self-satisfaction rather showed through.
Nina made a sympathetic face. ‘God, yeah, it must be awful having pecs the size of a teen girl’s boobs and a six-pack to match. I don’t know how Bruce puts up with it.’
‘Stop it, you two!’ Flo scolded.
Clare watched them from the far sofa, and I found myself watching her, remembering how she loved to observe, how she used to throw a remark out, like a pebble into a pond, and then back quietly away to watch the ripples as people scrapped it out. It was not an endearing habit, but it was one I could not condemn. I understood it too well. I, too, am happier watching than being watched.
Clare turned her head and caught me watching her watching Tom and Nina squabbling, and she smiled a small conspiratorial smile that said, I see you.
I looked away.
What had she hoped to accomplish by inviting me here? Nina saw it as an attempt to salve her conscience at my expense – the equivalent of an adulterous husband confessing to his wife.
I did not. I don’t think Clare lost any sleep over hooking up with James. And in any case she didn’t deserve my condemnation. She owed me nothing. James and I broke up long ago.
No. I thought that perhaps … perhaps she had merely wanted to watch. To see how I took it. Perhaps that was the same reason she outed Nina. Like a child who sees a teeming anthill and simply can’t not poke it.
And then they step back … and watch.
‘How about you, Lee?’ Flo said suddenly, and I looked away from Clare, jerked out of my thoughts.
‘Sorry, what?’
‘Did you enjoy that?’
‘Ish.’ I rubbed my shoulder, where I could feel a bruise already forming. ‘My shoulder hurts though.’
‘You got a right jolt from the recoil on that first shot, didn’t you?’
The kick of the gun had surprised me, whacking back against my shoulder bone with a whump that knocked the breath out of me.
‘You have to hold it firm in the first place,’ Tom said. ‘You were like this, look.’ He reached up and took down the shotgun over the mantelpiece and braced it against his shoulder, showing me the loose stance that had cost me a bruise.
The muzzle of the gun was pointing directly at me. I froze.
‘Hey!’ Nina said sharply.
‘Tom!’ Clare struggled up straighter against the sofa cushions, looking from me to Tom and then back again. ‘Put that down!’
Tom just grinned. I knew he was joking, but in spite of myself I felt every muscle in my body tense.
‘God, I feel like Jason Bourne,’ he said. ‘I can literally feel the power going to my head as I speak. Hmm … let’s interrogate a few people. How about this for starters: Nora, why in all the years I’ve known Clare has she never mentioned your name?’
I tried to speak – but my throat was suddenly so dry I could barely swallow.
‘Tom!’ Clare said more sharply. ‘Call me paranoid but should you be waving that thing around after all Grig’s wise words about guns fucking you up?’
‘It’s not loaded,’ Flo said, and yawned. ‘My aunt uses it for scaring rabbits.’
‘Still,’ Clare said.
‘Just kidding around,’ Tom said. He gave another wolfish grin, showing those unnaturally white teeth, and then lowered the muzzle and hooked the shotgun back on its pegs.
I slumped back against the sofa feeling the wave of adrenaline recede, and my fingers uncurl from their rigid fists. My hands were shaking.
‘Ha fucking ha,’ Clare said. She was frowning like someone totally failing to see any funny side at all. ‘Next time you want to wave that thing around, can you make sure it’s not one of my friends on the sharp end?’
I shot her a grateful look and she rolled her eyes at me as if to say, ‘Dick’.
‘Sorry,’ Tom said mildly. ‘Like I said, just kidding, but I apologise if any offence was caused.’ He gave a mock bow in my direction.
‘Right, scuse I,’ Flo said with another yawn. ‘I’d better make a start on supper.’
‘Want a hand?’ Clare said, and Flo’s face lit up. Her smile was extraordinary – it transformed her whole face.
‘Really? I feel like you should be acting like the queen of the day.’
‘Nah, come on. I’ll chop or something.’
She heaved herself up off the sofa and they left the room, Clare’s arm slung companionably round Flo’s shoulders. Tom looked after them, as they left.
‘Funny couple, aren’t they?’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘I can’t quite fit the Clare I know together with Flo. They’re so … different.’
The remark shouldn’t have made sense, given that they were so physically similar, and both dressed in an almost identical uniform of grey stonewash jeans and stripey top. But I knew what he meant.
Nina stretched. ‘They’ve got one really important interest in common though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They both think Clare’s the centre of the fucking universe.’
Tom snorted, and I tried not to laugh. Nina only looked sideways out of her glinting dark eyes, a little wry smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. Then she stretched, and shrugged, all in one fluid movement.
‘Right. I might phone the old trouble and strife.’ She pulled out her mobile and then made a face. ‘No reception. How’s yours, Lee?’
Nora. But there were only so many times I could correct people without seeming obsessively controlling.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, and felt in my pockets. ‘That’s odd. It’s not here. I’m sure I had it at the shooting range – I remember checking Twitter. Maybe I left it in the car. I don’t think I’d have any reception either, though – I haven’t had a bar since I got here. You got a bit of reception from our room earlier, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah.’ Nina had picked up the phone receiver and was jiggling the cradle. ‘This one’s still out. OK. I’m going upstairs to hang off the balcony and try to get a bar or two. Maybe I can send a text.’
‘What’s so urgent?’ Tom asked.
Nina shook her head. ‘Nothing. Just … you know. I miss her.’
‘Fair play.’
We both watched as she disappeared upstairs, long legs eating up the stairs two at a time. Tom sighed and stretched out on the couch.
‘Are you not phoning Bruce?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘To tell the truth we had a bit of a … disagreement, let’s call it. Before I left.’
‘Oh right.’ I kept my voice neutral.
I never know what to say in these situations. I hate people prying into my business, so I assume others will feel the same way. But sometimes they want to spill, it seems, and then you look cold and odd, backing away from their confidences. I try to be completely non-judgemental – not pushing for secrets, not repelling confessions. And in truth, although part of me really doesn’t want to hear their petty jealousies and weird obsessions, there’s another part of me that wants to egg them on. It’s that part of me that stands there nodding, taking notes, filing it all away. It’s like opening up the back of the machine to see the crude workings grinding away inside. There’s a disappointment in the banality of what makes people tick, but at the same time, there’s a kind of fascination at seeing the inner coils and cogs.
The trouble is that the next day they almost invariably resent you for having seen them naked and unguarded. So I’m deliberately reserved and non-committal, trying not to lead them on. But somehow it doesn’t seem to work. All too often I end up pinned to the wall at parties, listening to a long tale of how so-and-so fucked them over, and then he said this, and then she got off with him, and then his ex did that …
You’d think people would be wary of spilling to a writer. You’d think they’d know that we’re essentially birds of carrion, picking over the corpses of dead affairs and forgotten arguments to recycle them in our work – zombie reincarnations of their former selves, stitched into a macabre new patchwork of our own devising.
Tom, if anyone, should have known that. But it didn’t stop him. He was speaking now, his voice a bored drawl that didn’t disguise the fact that he was clearly still angry with his husband. ‘… What you’ve got to understand is that Bruce gave James his first big chance, he directed him in Black Ties, White Lies back in … God, what, we must be talking seven, eight years ago? And maybe – I mean, I don’t know – I never asked what went on, but Bruce wasn’t exactly renowned for his professional chastity. We weren’t together then of course. But naturally Bruce feels that James owes him a certain amount, and maybe equally naturally James feels that he doesn’t. I know that Bruce was pretty angry over the business with Coriolanus and the fact that Eamonn sided with James … And then when those rumours got round about him and Richard, well, there was only one place those could have come from. Bruce swore he never sent that text to Clive.’
He carried on, a stream of names and places that meant nothing to me, and plays that had left only the sketchiest impression in my own cultural landscape. The politics flowed over me, but the point was clear: Bruce was angry with James and had a past with him – of whatever kind. Bruce had not wanted Tom to come to this hen night. Tom had come.
‘So anyway, fuck him,’ Tom said at last, dismissively. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Bruce or James. He walked across to the sideboard where a cluster of bottles stood: gin, vodka, the pathetic remnants of last night’s tequila. ‘Want a drink? G&T?’
‘No thanks. Well, maybe just a tonic water.’
Tom nodded, went out for ice and limes, and then came back with two glasses.
‘Bottoms up,’ he said, his face set in lines that made him look a good ten years older. I took a sip and coughed. Tonic there was, but also gin. I could have made a fuss, but Tom raised one eyebrow with such perfect comic timing that I could only laugh, and swallow.
‘So tell me,’ he said, as he drained his own glass and went back for a refill, ‘what happened with you and James? What was last night about?’
I didn’t answer at first. I took another long sip of my drink, swallowing it slowly, thinking about what to say. My instinct was to shrug it off with a laugh, but he would get it out of Clare or Nina later. Better to be honest.
‘James is … was …’ I swirled the drink in my glass, the ice cubes chinking as I tried to think how to phrase it. ‘My ex,’ I said at last. It was true – but so far from the whole truth that it felt almost like a lie. ‘We were together at school.’
‘At school?’ Tom raised both eyebrows this time. ‘Good lord. Dark ages. Childhood sweethearts?’
‘Yes, I guess so.’
‘But you’re friends now?’
What could I say? No, I haven’t seen him since the day he texted me.
No, I’ve never forgiven him for what he said, what he did.
No.
‘I … not exactly. We sort of lost touch.’
There was a sudden silence, broken only by the sounds of Clare and Flo chatting next door, and the hiss of a shower upstairs. Nina must have given up on trying to phone Jess.
‘So you met at school?’ Tom asked.
‘Sort of. We were in a play together …’ I said slowly. It was strange to be talking about this. You don’t bring it up much as an adult: how you got your heart broken for the first time. But Tom was the next best thing to an anonymous stranger. I was highly unlikely to meet him again after this weekend, and somehow telling him felt like a release. ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I was Maggie and James was Brick. Ironic, really.’
‘Why ironic?’ Tom said, puzzled. But I couldn’t answer. I was thinking of Maggie’s words in the last act of the play, about making the lie true. But I knew that, of all people, Tom would know what that meant if I quoted the line, he would know what Maggie was referring to.
Instead I swallowed and said, ‘Just … ironic.’
‘Come on,’ he said and smiled, his tanned cheek crinkling. ‘You must have meant something.’
I sighed. I wasn’t going to tell him the truth. Or not the truth I’d been thinking of. A different truth then.
‘Well, I was supposed to be the understudy. Clare was cast as Maggie – she was the lead in almost every play we ever did, right from primary school onwards.’
‘So what happened?’
‘She got glandular fever. Missed a whole term of school. And I got pushed on stage.’ I was always the understudy. I had a good verbal memory and I was conscientious. I felt Tom looking at me, puzzled about where the irony in that lay.
‘Ironic that she should have been the one to get together with him, and now she is? Is that what you mean?’
‘No, not exactly … It’s more just ironic given that I hate being looked at, being watched. And there I was in the main role. Maybe all writers prefer being behind the page to being on stage. What do you think?’
Tom didn’t answer. He only turned to look out of the great glass window, out into the forest, and I knew he was thinking of his remark the night before: of the stage. The audience. The watchers in the night.
After a moment I followed his gaze. It looked different to last night: someone had switched on the external security lights, and you could see the blank white lawn stretched out, a perfect unbroken snowy carpet, and the sentinel trees, their trunks bare and prickly beneath the canopy. It should have made me feel better – that you could see the blank, unspoilt canvas, visual evidence that we were alone, that whoever had disturbed the snow before had not come back. But somehow it was not reassuring. It made it feel even more stage-like, like the floodlights that illuminate the stage, and cast the audience into a black morass beyond its golden pool, unseen watchers in the darkness.
For a moment I made myself shiver, imagining the myriad eyes of the night: foxes with their eyes glowing yellow in the lamplight, white-winged owls, frightened shrews. But the footsteps of this morning had not been animal. They had been very, very human.
‘It’s stopped snowing,’ Tom said unnecessarily. ‘I must admit, I’m quite glad. I didn’t really fancy being snowed in here for days on end.’
‘Snowed in?’ I said. ‘In November? Do you think that could really happen?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Flo’s voice came from behind us, making me jump. She was carrying a tray of crisps and nuts, and clamped her tongue rather sweetly between her teeth as she set it carefully down on the table. ‘Happens all the time in January. It’s one of the reasons my aunt doesn’t really live here in winter. The lane is impassable if you get a big dump. But it never snows as heavily in November, and I don’t think it’ll happen today. There’s no more forecast for tonight. And it looks pretty, doesn’t it?’
She straightened up, rubbing her back and we all stared out of the window at the black lowering trees and the white snow. It didn’t look pretty. It looked stark and unforgiving. But I didn’t say that. Instead I asked the question that had been nagging at me.
‘Flo, I meant to ask, the footprints going out to the garage this morning – was that you?’
‘Footprints?’ Flo looked puzzled. ‘What time?’
‘Early. They were there when I got back from my run at about eightish. Maybe before, I didn’t look going out.’
‘It wasn’t me. Where did you say they were?’
‘Between the garage and the side door of the house.’
Flo frowned.
‘No … it definitely wasn’t me. How odd.’ She bit her lip for a moment and then said, ‘Look, if you don’t mind, I might just lock up now – that way we won’t forget later.’
‘What do you mean? You think it could have been someone else? Someone from outside?’
Flo’s cheerful face looked suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Well, my aunt had a lot of trouble when she built this place – there were a lot of planning objections, local people didn’t like the fact that it was a second home for a start, and there were quite a few complaints about the style of the build and the site.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Tom drawled. ‘Native American ancient burial ground, right?’
Flo hit him with a paper towel and cracked a smile through her worry. ‘Nothing like that. The only thing buried round here are sheep as far as I know. But this is a protected area – I’m not sure if it’s actually in the national park, but it’s near as makes no odds. It got through because it was extending an existing building – an old croft-type place. But people said it wasn’t in the spirit of the original … Anyway, to cut a long story short it burnt down halfway through construction and I think it was pretty much accepted that it was arson, although nothing was ever proved.’
‘Jesus!’ Tom looked horrified. He glanced out of the window as though expecting to see flaming torches coming up the hill at any moment.
‘I mean it was fine!’ Flo reassured us. ‘It was mid-build so the place was empty, and actually it worked out really well for my aunt because the insurance was very good, so she ended up with a higher-spec build. And according to the original plans she had to keep a bit of the original croft in place, but that burnt to the ground so it meant she didn’t have to bother with that any more. Overall I’d say they did her a favour. But, you know, it kind of affected how she feels about the neighbours.’
‘Are there any neighbours?’ Tom wanted to know.
‘Oh yes. There’s a little cluster of houses about a mile through the forest that way.’ She pointed. ‘And a farm down the valley.’
‘You know—’ I was thinking aloud ‘—what really creeps me out isn’t the footprints – or not as such. It’s the fact that if it hadn’t have been for the snow, we’d never have known.’
We looked out, contemplating the unbroken white carpet across the path to the forest. My own steps from the run that morning had been filled in, and now you would never have known a human foot had passed. For a long moment we all stood in silence, thinking about that fact, thinking about all the times we could have been observed, completely unaware.
Flo walked to the window to try the latch. It was firmly locked.
‘Good!’ she said brightly. ‘I’m going to check the back door, and then I think we should stop all this gloomy talk and have another drink.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Tom said soberly. He picked up my empty glass and this time, when he poured me a double, I didn’t complain.