The night Shafeen got shot, I didn’t really expect there to be a dinner.
But I should have known better. It would take more than a human shooting to keep the upper classes from their meals.
I sat on my bed in Lowther for a long, long time, cold despite the merry fire, thinking and gazing unseeing at the dying light outside. Jeffrey watched me, saying nothing. That’s what I liked about Jeffrey. He knew when to keep quiet and let a person think.
When Betty came with my clothes, I didn’t even let her get as far as laying them out on the bed. ‘Betty,’ I said curtly, ‘I’ll dress myself tonight. That will be all.’ Weirdly, she looked a lot less fierce as she nodded and left. Maybe she preferred a world without pleases and thank-yous, a world where her masters knew their place and she knew hers. Was she more comfortable that way? With commands, rather than requests? Was Henry right about the natural order of things?
Either way, I didn’t need her tonight. I knew exactly what I was going to wear and how I was going to have my hair and do my make-up. I shook my mother’s dress out of the case – luckily it was the kind of material that fell perfectly, with no creases.
I put it on, and decided there would be no princess ringlets tonight. I warmed up my tongs and ironed my black hair dead straight, fringe to my eyelashes, bob skimming my shoulders. I looked in the mirror with a kind of grim satisfaction. The Dress was perfection – silver grey, strapless, with thousands of tiny jet-black beads swirling and clustering down the front like a murmuration of starlings. My mother might not have been much of a mother, but she sure as hell could make a dress, and I respected her for that. There was a lot of work in it, every bead sewn on by hand. I thought then that she must have loved me a little, to make this dress for me.
I rummaged in my make-up bag for my blackest eyeliner and drew two smooth wings over my eyelids, flicked up at the outer edges. I took one last look in the mirror. The princess was gone. I looked like myself again, and, I was pleased to see, a little bit dangerous.
I decided I couldn’t face drinks in the drawing room, if they were even happening, so I went straight down to dinner, alone. I wasn’t surprised to see at once that Shafeen was missing. I had half expected Nel to stay away too, so that there would be one less at dinner every night, like in that Agatha Christie film And Then There Were None. But she was there, or at least half there, a ghost of what she’d been.
Now I was sitting one place away from Henry, with Lara in between us. At lunch I’d been next to him. I expected that I was being punished for shouting at him about the ambulance.
The dinner was very serious to start with, but within the space of a couple of courses, once the wine started to flow, the Medievals were as rowdy as ever, chattering away and shrieking with laughter. It was as if nothing had happened to Shafeen.
I toyed with my food. It was fish soup, which I’m not a fan of at the best of times, but especially when I remembered that this was what they did – we’d had venison the night before we killed the deer, pheasant with lead shot garnish before the shoot, and tomorrow we were to go fishing. I couldn’t believe the sports would continue after what had happened, but apparently, from what I was hearing around the table, such incidents were not uncommon. I must have heard the words ‘these things happen’ about a hundred times.
These things happen. These things happen. Everyone had a story about an uncle, cousin, guest, who had been shot during a drive. I was not convinced.
The only direct reference to Shafeen came when Henry stood up, tapped his silver knife on his glass till everyone fell quiet and said, ‘I will not, of course, be giving the shootin’ toast tonight, out of respect for Shafeen, who sustained a slight injury.’
I thought of the blood seeping through Shafeen’s jacket and had to bite my tongue. ‘Instead I give you Shafeen, and our best wishes for his speedy recovery.’
‘Shafeen,’ they all said, seriously and respectfully. Then Piers added, glass high in the air, ‘The Punjabi Playboy!’ And they all fell about laughing. I put down my glass. I felt the wine would choke me.
Then two servants approached Henry. One placed the morocco-bound black book in front of Henry, open at the right page, and the other one handed him a fountain pen. Oh, I thought, he’s still going to write in the game book though.
From where I was sitting I couldn’t see exactly what he was writing, but I knew he’d be recording the number of pheasants massacred that day. Then he wrote one last entry, and he turned the book to face Lara. Their eyes met and they both smirked. That was his mistake, because when he showed the book to her, he also showed it to me.
I’ll never forget what I read there. I can still, to this day, see the scrawl of ink, drying on the paper in the candlelight.
1 x Shafeen Jadeja
That was when I knew.
All the terrible thoughts I’d tried to keep at bay upstairs, sitting on the bed while night fell outside, crowded in on me, gathering like the darkness had outside my window. Henry de Warlencourt had listed Shafeen in the book as prey. He was of no more value than those pheasants. Henry had not just written his name down, but had entered him as a quantity. ‘1 x Shafeen Jadeja’, as though there were thousands of him in the world. Pheasants and peasants, both expendable and worthless.
I thought I was going to be sick.
Fortunately, as soon as the game book was closed, the table all rose as we ladies retired into the drawing room for coffee, giving me an escape. Nel, the three sirens and I settled into various chairs and sofas, the Medieval girls absorbed in the ritual of handing round and lighting cigarettes. I wondered how the hell I’d be able to make conversation now I knew what I knew. I made sure I sat next to Nel. I had to speak to her, had to apologise for not believing her. I was a very new friend to her, but I had already been a totally rubbish one. And I had been an even worse feminist, dismissing her as a hysterical, crazy psycho.
I looked for a distraction, and when the maid came in with the silver coffee tray, and there was all the milk-and-sugar kerfuffle, I seized my chance.
I grabbed Nel’s arm, hard enough to hurt. I had to wake her from her zombified state – had to let her know that I was serious. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you. You were right all along,’ I muttered in a low voice.
‘Wha—’
I cut across her. ‘No time. Don’t ask any questions. Tell them you’re going to bed. Meet me in Shafeen’s room in ten minutes. Bring the seeds.’
‘The seeds?’
‘Yes. The seeds.’