Flo looked taken aback, but gamely took Nina"s huge, wheeled case and began to lug it up the flight of frosted-gla.s.s stairs.
"As I was saying," she panted as we rounded the newel post, "there"s four bedrooms. I thought we"d have me and Clare in one, you guys in another, Tom will have to have his own, obvs."
"Obvs," said Nina, straight-faced.
I was too busy processing the news that I"d be sharing a room. I"d a.s.sumed I"d have my own s.p.a.ce to retreat to.
"And that just leaves Mels Melanie, you know as the odd one out. She"s got a six-month-old so I thought out of us girls, she probably deserved a room of her own the most!"
"What? She"s not bringing it, is she?" Nina looked genuinely alarmed.
Flo gave a honking laugh and then put her hand up to her mouth, smothering the noise self-consciously. "No! Just, you know, she"ll probably need a good night"s sleep more than the rest of us."
"Oh, OK." Nina peered into one of the bedrooms. "Which one is ours then?"
"The two back ones are the biggest. You and Lee can have the one on the right if you like, it"s got twin beds. The other one"s got a four-poster double, but I don"t mind squishing up with Clare."
She stopped, breathing hard, on the landing and gestured to a blond wood door on the right-hand side. "There you go."
Inside there were two neat white beds and a low dressing table, all as anonymous as a hotel room, and, facing the beds, the creepily obligatory wall of gla.s.s, looking north over the pine forest. Here it was harder to understand. The ground sloped up at the back of the house and so there was no spectacular view as there was from the front. Instead the effect was more claustrophobic than anything a wall of dark green, already deepening into shadow with the setting sun. There were heavy cream curtains gathered in each corner, and I had to fight the urge to rip them across the enormous expanse of gla.s.s.
Behind me Flo let Nina"s case fall with a thud to the floor. I turned, and she smiled, a huge beam that made her suddenly look almost as pretty as Clare.
"Any questions?"
"Yes," Nina said. "Mind if I smoke in here?"
Flo"s face fell. "I"m afraid my aunt doesn"t like smoking indoors. But you"ve got a balcony." She wrestled with a folding door in the gla.s.s wall for a moment and then flung it open. "You can smoke out here if you like."
"Super," Nina said. "Thanks."
Flo struggled with the door again, and then swung it shut. She straightened, her face pink with exertion, dusting her hands on her skirt. "Right! Well, I"ll let you get unpacked. See you downstairs, yah?"
"Yah!" Nina said enthusiastically, and I tried to cover it by saying "Thanks!" unnecessarily loudly, in a way that only managed to make me sound weirdly aggressive.
"Um, yeah! OK!" Flo said, uncertainly, and then she backed out of the doorway and was gone.
"Nina ..." I said warningly, as she made her way over to gaze out across the forest.
"What?" she said over her shoulder, absent-mindedly. And then, "So Tom"s definitely of the male persuasion, judging by Flo"s determination to quarantine his raging Y chromosomes from our delicate lady parts."
I couldn"t help but snort. That"s the thing about Nina. You forgive her stuff that other people would never get away with.
"I think he"s probably gay don"t you? I mean, why would he be on a hen night otherwise?"
"Um, contrary to what you seem to believe, batting for the other team doesn"t actually change your gender. I think. No, wait-" She peered down her top. "No, we"re all good. Double-Ds all present and correct."
"That"s not what I meant, and you know it." I banged my own case down on the bed, and then remembered my washbag, and unzipped it more gingerly. My trainers were on top, and I set them down neatly by the door, a rea.s.suring little "emergency exit" sign. "Hen nights are partly about an appreciation of the male form. That"s what women have in common with gay men."
"Christ, now you tell me. Perfect excuse lined up and you never trotted it out until now. Could you Reply-all to my next hen-night invitation saying "Sorry, Nina can"t come as she doesn"t appreciate the male form"?"
"Oh for G.o.d"s sake. I said partly an appreciation."
"It"s all right." She turned back to the window, peering out into the forest, the tree trunks dark streaks in the green gloaming. There was a tragic crack in her voice. "I"m used to being excluded from heteronormative society."
"f.u.c.k off," I said grumpily, and when she turned around she was laughing.
"Why are we here, anyway?" she asked, throwing herself backwards onto one of the twin beds and kicking off her shoes. "I don"t know about you, but I haven"t seen Clare in about three years."
I said nothing. I didn"t know what to say.
Why had I come? Why had Clare invited me?
"Nina," I started. There was a lump in my throat, and I felt my heart quicken. "Nina, who-?"
But before I could finish, the sound of pounding filled the room, echoing up through the open hallway.
There was someone at the door.
Suddenly I wasn"t at all sure I was ready to get the answers to my questions.
3.
NINA AND I looked at each other. My heart was thudding like a stray echo of the door knocker, but I tried to keep my face calm.
Ten years. Had she changed? Had I changed?
I swallowed.
There was the sound of Flo"s feet echoing in the high atrium of the hallway, then metal shrieking on metal as she opened the heavy door, followed by the murmur of voices as whoever it was came into the house.
I listened carefully. It didn"t sound like Clare. In fact beneath Flo"s laugh I could hear something that sounded distinctly ... male?
Nina rolled over and raised herself up on one elbow. "Well, well, well ... sounds like the fully Y-chromosomed Tom has arrived."
"Nina ..."
"What? What are you looking at me like that for? Shall we go downstairs and meet the c.o.c.k in the hen house?"
"Nina! Don"t."
"Don"t what?" She swung her feet to the floor and stood up.
"Don"t embarra.s.s us. Him."
"If we"re hens, naturally that makes him a c.o.c.k. I"m using the term in its purely zoological sense."
"Nina!"
But she was gone, loping down the gla.s.s stairs in her stockinged feet, and I heard her voice floating up the stairwell. "h.e.l.lo, don"t think we"ve met ..."
Don"t think we"ve met. Well, it definitely wasn"t Clare then. I took a deep breath and followed her down into the hallway.
I saw the little group from above first. By the front door was a girl with smooth shiny black hair tied in a knot at the base of her skull presumably Melanie. She was smiling and nodding at something Flo was saying, but she had a mobile in her hand and was poking distractedly at the screen even while Flo talked. On the opposite side was a bloke, Burberry case in hand. He had smooth chestnut hair and was immaculately dressed in a white shirt that must have been professionally laundered no normal person could produce creased sleeves like that and a pair of grey wool trousers that screamed Paul Smith. He looked up as he heard my feet on the stairs and smiled.
"Hi, I"m Tom."
"Hi, I"m Nora." I forced myself down the last few stand, and then held out my hand. There was something incredibly familiar about his face, and I tried to figure out what it was while we shook, but I couldn"t place it. Instead I turned to the dark-haired girl. "And you must be ... Melanie?"
"Um, hi, yeah." She looked up and gave a fl.u.s.tered smile. "Sorry, I just ... I left my six-month-old at home with my partner. First time I"ve done it. I really wanted to call home and check in. Isn"t there any reception here?"
"Not really," Flo said apologetically. Her face was flushed with nerves or excitement, I wasn"t sure which. "Sorry. You can sometimes get a bit from the top end of the garden or the balconies, depending on what network you"re on. But there"s a landline in the living room. Let me show you."
She led the way through and I turned back to Tom. I still had an odd feeling I"d seen him somewhere before.
"So, how do you know Clare" I asked awkwardly.
"Oh, you know. Theatre connections. Everyone knows everyone! It was actually through my husband originally he"s a director."
Nina gave me a theatrical wink behind Tom"s back. I frowned furiously and then rearranged my face as I saw Tom looking puzzled.
"Sorry, go on," Nina said seriously.
"Anyway, I met Clare at a fundraiser for the Royal Theatre Company. Bruce was directing something there, we just got talking shop."
"You"re an actor?" Nina asked.
"No, playwright."
It"s always strange meeting another writer. A little feeling of camaraderie, a masonic bond. I wonder if plumbers feel like this meeting other plumbers, or if accountants give each other secret nods. Maybe it"s because we meet comparatively rarely; writers tend to spend the bulk of their working life alone.
"Nora"s a writer," Nina said. She eyed us both as if unleashing two bantam-weights into the ring to sc.r.a.p it out.
"Oh really?" Tom looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. "What do you write?"
Ugh. The question I hate. I"ve never got comfortable talking about my writing never got over that feeling of people riffling through my private thoughts.
"Um ... fiction," I said vaguely. Crime fiction was the truth, but if you say that people want to suggest plots and motives for murder.
"Really? What name do you write under?"
Nice way of saying "Have I heard of you?" Most people phrase it less gracefully.
"L.N. Shaw," I said. "The N doesn"t stand for anything, I don"t have a middle name. I just put that in because L. Shaw sounded odd, whereas L.N. is more p.r.o.nounceable, if you know what I mean. So you write plays?"
"Yes. I"m always rather jealous of novelists the way you get to control everything. You don"t have to deal with actors ma.s.sacring your best lines." He flashed a smile, showing unnaturally perfect white teeth. I wondered if he"d had porcelain veneers fitted.
"But it must be nice working with other people?" I ventured. "Sharing the responsibility, I mean. A play"s a big thing, right?"
"Yes, I suppose so. You have to share the glory but at least when the s.h.i.t hits the fan it"s a collective splattering, I guess."
I was about to say something else when there was a "ching" from the living room as Melanie put down the phone. Tom turned to look towards the sound, and something about the angle of his head, or his expression, made me suddenly realise where I"d seen him before.
That picture. Clare"s profile picture from Facebook. It was him. So the person in her photo wasn"t her new partner at all.
I was still processing this when Melanie came out smiling. "Phew, got through to Bill. All absolutely fine on the home front. Sorry I was a bit distracted I"ve never been away for the night before and it"s a bit of a leap of faith. Not that Bill won"t manage, I"m sure he will but ... oh anyway, I should stop rabbiting on. You"re Nora, is that right?"
"Go through into the living room!" Flo called from the kitchen. "I"m making tea."
Obediently we trooped through and I watched Tom and Melanie as they took in the huge room, with its long gla.s.s wall.
"That view of the forest is quite something, isn"t it?" Tom said at last.
"Yes." I stared out into the woods. It was growing dark and somehow the shadows made it feel as if all the trees had taken a collective step towards the house, edging in to shut out the sky. "It makes you feel a bit exposed somehow, doesn"t it? I think it"s the lack of curtains."
"Bit like having your skirt tucked into your knickers at the back!" Melanie said unexpectedly, and then laughed.
"I like it," Tom said. "It feels like a stage."
"And we"re the audience?" Melanie asked. "This production seems a bit boring. The actors are rather wooden!" She pointed out to the trees, in case we hadn"t got the pun. "Geddit? Trees, wood ..."
"We got it," Nina said sourly. "But I don"t think that"s what Tim meant, was it?"
"Tom," Tom said. There was a slight edge to his voice. "But no, I was thinking of it the other way around. We"re the actors." He turned to face the gla.s.s wall. "The audience ... the audience is out there."
For some reason his words made me shiver. Perhaps it was the tree trunks, like silent watchers in the growing dark. Or perhaps it was the lingering chill that Tom and Melanie had brought with them from the outside. Either way, leaving London the weather had felt like autumn; suddenly, so much further north, it felt like winter had come overnight. It wasn"t just the close-growing pines shutting out the light with their dense needles, nor the cold, crisp air with its promise of frost to come. The night was drawing in, and the house felt more and more like a gla.s.s cage, blasting its light blindly out into the dusk, like a lantern in the dark. I imagined a thousand moths circling and shivering, drawn inexorably to its glow, only to perish against the cold, inhospitable gla.s.s.
"I"m cold," I said to change the subject.
"Me too." Nina rubbed her arms. "Think we can get that stove-thing working? Is it gas?"
Melanie knelt in front of it. "It"s wood." She struggled with a handle and then a door in the front popped open. "I"ve got one a bit similar at home. Flo!" she shouted through to the kitchen, "Is it OK if we light the stove?"
"Yep!" Flo yelled back. "There"s firelighters on the mantelpiece. Inside a pot. I"ll be through in a tick if you can"t work it out."
Tom moved across to the mantelpiece and started peering into the handful of minimalist pots but then he stopped, his eyes arrested by the same sight that had stopped me in my tracks earlier.
"Ker-rist." It was the shotgun, perched on its wooden pegs, just above eye-level. "Haven"t they heard of Chekhov round here?"
"Chekhov?" said a voice from the hall. It was Flo, edging through the door with a tray on her hip. "The Russian guy? Don"t worry, it"s loaded with blanks. My aunt keeps it for scaring off rabbits. They eat the bulbs and dig up the garden. She shoots at them out of the French windows."
"It"s a bit ... Texan, isn"t it?" Tom said. He hurried forward to help Flo with the tray. "You know, not that I don"t enjoy the red-neck vibe, but having it right there, in your face ... it"s a bit disconcerting for those of us who tend to keep morbid thoughts further at bay."