In a Dark, Dark Wood

‘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.

18

WHEN I WENT up to change for dinner, I found Nina sitting on the bed, her head in her hands. She looked up as I came in, and her face was grey and pinched, her expression so different from her usual wry sarcasm that I did a double-take.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah.’ She pushed her dark glossy hair back from her face and stood up. ‘I’m just … ugh, I’m so fed up of being here. It feels like we’re back in school and I’m remembering everything I hated about myself back then. It’s like we’ve slipped back ten years, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know.’ I sat down on my own bed and pondered her words. Although I’d had very similar thoughts last night, in the light of day they felt unfair. The Clare I remembered from school wouldn’t have put up with Flo for a second – or not unless she had some powerful motive. She would have nodded along with Flo’s dumber remarks, stringing her along into saying something painfully weird, at which point she would have stood back, pointed and laughed. I’d seen none of that cruelty this weekend. Instead I’d been impressed by her tolerance. It was clear that Flo was a damaged person in some way – and I admired Clare’s compassion in trying to help her. I didn’t know if I could have put up with Flo for ten days, let alone ten years. Clare was obviously a bigger and a better person than I’d given her credit for.

‘I think Clare’s changed a lot, actually,’ I said. ‘She seems a lot more …’ I stopped, searching for the right word. Maybe there wasn’t one. ‘She just seems kinder, I guess.’

‘People don’t change,’ Nina said bitterly. ‘They just get more punctilious about hiding their true selves.’

I chewed my lip while I thought that over. Was it true? I had changed – at least, I told myself I had. I was far more confident, more self-sufficient. All through school I’d relied on my friends for self-esteem and support, wanting to be one of a pack, wanting to fit in. At last I had learned that wasn’t possible and I’d been happier – albeit more lonely – ever since.

But perhaps Nina was right. Perhaps it was simply that I’d learned to hide the awkward, desperate-to-fit-in child that I had been. Perhaps the me I’d become was just a thin veneer, ready to be peeled painfully back.

‘I don’t know,’ Nina said. ‘I just … Didn’t you think lunch was painful?’

Lunch had been painful. It had been exclusively wedding talk: where the reception was to be held, what Clare was wearing, what the bridesmaids were wearing, whether smoked salmon was overdone as a starter, and why the vegetarian option always contained goats’ cheese. It had been made worse by the realisation that I’d crossed an invisible line and gone past the point where I could have admitted I wasn’t invited. I should have said something straight away, fessed up, made a joke out of it on the first night. Now it had gone too far to look like anything other than deception, and I was trapped in a lie by omission. Clare’s sympathetic glances hadn’t helped.

‘I’m not going to say “bridezilla”,’ Nina continued, ‘because actually here I think it’s more like a bridesmaidzilla. But if I have to hear one more time about wedding favours, or leg waxes, or best-man speeches … Can you imagine James in the middle of all this?’

I had been purposely avoiding thinking about James and the wedding, like a sore bit of skin you can’t bear to have touched. But now, as I tried, I realised that I couldn’t. The James I remembered, with his head shaved at the back and a scraped-up top-knot, his ripped school tie, the James who’d got drunk on his dad’s whiskey and climbed on the school war memorial at midnight to shout Wilfred Owen poems to the night sky, the James who wrote Pink Floyd lyrics on the head teacher’s car in lipstick on the last day of the summer term … That James, I couldn’t imagine in a dinner jacket, kissing Clare’s mother and laughing dutifully at the best-man speech.

The whole thing had been painful to the point of nausea, made worse by covert sympathetic looks from Nina. If there’s one thing I dislike more than being hurt, it’s being seen to be hurt. I’ve always preferred to creep away and lick my wounds in private. But Nina was right. It wasn’t a case of bridezillitis. In fact Clare had been uncharacteristically quiet all through lunch. The conversation had been driven by Flo, egged on by Tom. At one point Clare had even suggested they change the subject. It was not likely that she had lost her love of the limelight since leaving school. More likely, she was thinking of me.

‘If I had more balls, I’d have said no,’ Nina said glumly. ‘To the wedding, I mean. But Jess would’ve killed me. She loves weddings. It’s like some obsessive-compulsive disorder with her. She’s already bought a new fascinator for this one. I ask you. A fucking fascinator.’

‘She’d have forgiven you,’ I said lightly. ‘Though you might have had to propose to make it up to her.’

‘It may yet come to that. Would you come?’

‘Of course.’ I gave her a punch on the arm. ‘I’d even come to your hen. If you had one.’

‘Sod that,’ Nina said. ‘If – and I repeat if – I ever get married, I’m having a night out clubbing and that’s that. None of this prancing about in cottages in the arse-end of beyond.’ She sighed and dragged herself upright. ‘Do you know what Flo’s got sorted for us tonight?’

‘What?’

‘Only a fucking ouija board. I’m telling you, if she’s got one with “sexy” answers on the board I’m pulling that gun down off the mantelpiece and shoving it up somewhere painful – blanks or no blanks.’