Then Clare turned to me, her face lit by the golden light streaming from the house. "Lee-" she said, at the same time as I said, "Look-"
"What?" she asked.
I shook my head. "No, you go first."
"No you, honestly. It wasn"t important."
My heart was beating painfully in my chest, and suddenly I couldn"t ask it any more, the question on the tip of my tongue. Instead I forced out, "I"m not Lee any more. I"m Nora."
"What?"
"My name. I don"t go by Lee any more. I never liked it."
"Oh." She was silent, digesting this. "OK. So it"s Nora now, huh?"
"Yes."
"Well, I"ll do my best to remember. It"s going to be hard though after, what, twenty-one years of knowing you as Lee."
But you never knew me, I thought involuntarily, and then frowned. Of course Clare had known me. She"d known me since I was five. That was exactly the problem she knew me too well. She saw through the thin, adult veneer to the scrawny, frightened child beneath.
"Why, Clare?" I said suddenly, and she looked up, her face blank and pale in the darkness.
"Why what?"
"Why am I here?"
"Oh G.o.d." She looked down at her hands. "I knew you"d ask that. I suppose you wouldn"t believe me if I said auld lang syne and all that?"
I shook my head. "It"s not that, is it? You had ten years to make contact if you wanted to. Why now?"
"Because ..." She took a deep breath, and I was astonished to realise that she was nervous. It was hard to process. I"d never seen her anything less than totally self-possessed; even aged five, she"d had a stare that could make the most hardened teacher melt, or wilt, whichever she chose. It was, I suppose, why we"d been friends, in a strange way. She had what I craved: that all-encompa.s.sing self-possession. Even standing in her shadow I"d felt stronger. But not any more.
"Because ..." she said again, and I saw her chipped, lacquered nails glint, red as blood, as her fingers twisted together and her nails caught the light from the house and reflected it back into the car. "Because I thought you deserved to know. Deserved to be told face to face. I promised ... I promised myself I"d do it to your face."
"What?" I leaned forward. I wasn"t frightened, only puzzled. I"d forgotten my stained wet shoes, and the stench of sweat on my clothes. I"d forgotten everything apart from this: Clare"s worried face, filled with an edgy vulnerability I"d never seen before.
"It"s about the wedding," she said. She looked down at her hands. "It"s about ... it"s about who I"m marrying."
"Who?" I said. And then, to make her laugh, to try to break the tension that was filling the car and infecting me, I said, "It"s not Rick, is it? I always knew-"
"No," she broke in, meeting my eyes at last, and there was not a shred of laughter there, only a kind of steely determination, as if she were about to do something unpleasant but utterly necessary. "No. It"s James."
7.
FOR A MOMENT I stared at her, willing myself to have misheard.
"What?"
"It ... it"s James. I"m marrying James."
I said nothing. I sat, staring out at the sentinel trees, hearing the blood in my ears hiss and pound. Something was building inside me like a scream. But I said nothing. I pushed it back down.
James?
Clare and James?
"That"s why I asked you." She was speaking fast now, as though she knew she didn"t have much time, that I might get up and bolt from the car at any moment. "I didn"t want- I thought I shouldn"t invite you to the wedding. I thought it would be too hard. But I couldn"t bear for you to hear it from somewhere else."
"But ... then who the h.e.l.l is William Pilgrim?" It burst out of me like an accusation. For a second Clare looked at me blankly. Then she realised, and her face changed, and at the same second I knew where I"d heard that name before, and realised how stupid I"d been. Billy Pilgrim. Slaughterhouse-Five. James"s favourite book.
"It"s his Facebook name," I said dully. "For privacy so fans don"t find his personal profile when they search. That"s why he doesn"t have a profile picture. Right?"
Clare nodded wretchedly. "I never meant to mislead you," she said pleadingly. She reached her warm hand out towards my numb, mud-spattered one. "And James thought you should know before-"
"Wait a minute." I pulled my hand away abruptly. "You talked to him about this?"
She nodded and put her hands to her face. "Lee I"m so ..." She stopped and took a deep breath, and I got the feeling she was marshalling herself, working out what to say next. When she spoke again it was with a trace of defiance, a flicker of the Clare I remembered, who would have attacked, who would have died fighting rather than lie down under an accusation. "Look, I won"t apologise. Neither of us have done anything wrong. But please, won"t you give us your blessing?"
"If you haven"t done anything wrong," my voice was hard, "why do you need it?"
"Because you were my friend! My best friend!"
Were.
We both registered the past tense at the same time, and I saw my own reaction reflected in Clare"s face.
I bit my lip, so hard that it hurt, crushing the soft skin between my teeth.
You have my blessing. Say it. Say it!
"I-"
There was a sound from the house. The door opened, and there was Flo standing in the rectangle of light, shading her eyes as she looked out into the darkness. She was standing on the tips of her toes, almost toppling as she craned to see, and there was an air of suppressed excitement about her, like a child before a birthday party who might tip over into hysteria at any moment.
"h.e.l.looo?" she called, her voice shockingly loud in the still night air. "Clare? Is that you?"
Clare let out a trembling breath, and opened the car door. "Flopsie!" Her voice shook, but almost imperceptibly. I thought, not for the first time, what an amazing actress she was. It was not surprising she"d ended up in theatre. The only surprise was that she wasn"t on stage herself.
"Clare-Bear!" Flo shrieked, and catapulted down the steps onto the gravel. "Oh my G.o.d, it is you! I heard a noise and thought ... but then no one came." She was stumbling hastily down the path in front of the house, her bunny slippers shushing in the grit. "What are you doing out here in the dark all by yourself, you silly moo?"
"I was talking to Lee. I mean, Nora." Clare waved a hand at my side of the car. "I ran into her on the way up the drive."
"Not literally, I hope! Oops!" There was a crunch as Flo tripped over something in the dark and fetched up on her knees in front of the car with a rush. She jumped up, brushing herself down. "I"m fine! I"m fine!"
"Calm down!" Clare laughed, and hugged Flo. She whispered something into her hair that I didn"t hear, and Flo nodded. I pulled at the door handle and got stiffly out of the car. It had been a mistake not to walk those last few yards up to the house going from running to sitting so abruptly, my muscles had seized up. Now it was an effort to straighten.
"You all right, Lee?" Clare said, turning back at the sound of me getting out. "You look like you"re hobbling a bit."
"I"m fine." I tried to match her in keeping my voice light. James. James. "Want a hand with your bags?"
"Thanks, but I"ve not got much." She popped the boot and picked up a shoulder bag. "Come on then Flops, show us my room."
Nina was nowhere to be seen when I climbed the last, painful step up to our room, holding my muddy trainers by the laces. I peeled off my spattered leggings and sweaty top, and crawled under the duvet in my bra and knickers. Then I lay, staring into the pool of light cast by the bedside lamp.
This had been a mistake. What had I been thinking of?
I"d spent ten years trying to forget James, trying to build a chrysalis of a.s.surance and self-sufficiency around myself. And I"d thought I was succeeding. I had a good life. No, I had a great life. I had a job I loved, I had my own flat, I had some lovely friends, none of whom knew James or Clare or anyone else from my former life in Reading.
I was beholden to no one emotionally, financially or in any other way. And that made me feel fine. Absolutely f.u.c.king fine, thanks very much.
And now this.
The worst of it was, I couldn"t blame Clare. She was right: she and James had done nothing wrong. They didn"t owe me anything, either of them. James and I had broken up over a decade ago, for Christ"s sake. No. The only person I could blame was myself. For not moving on. For not being able to move on.
I hated James for his hold over me. I hated that every time I met a man, I was comparing them in my head. The last time I slept with someone two years ago he had woken me in the night, his hand on my chest. "You were having a dream," he"d said. "Who"s James?" And when he saw my stricken face, he"d swung his legs out of bed, got up, got dressed and walked out of my life. And I never even bothered to phone him back.
I hated James and I hated myself. And yes, I am fully aware that this makes me sound like the biggest loser in existence: the girl who meets a boy aged sixteen and obsesses over him for the next ten b.l.o.o.d.y years. Believe me, no one is more aware of that than me. If I met myself in a bar and got talking, I would despise myself too.
I could hear the others downstairs, talking and laughing, and caught the smell of pizza floating up the stairs.
I was going to have go down there and talk and laugh too. Instead, I curled myself into a ball, my knees to my chest, my eyes tight shut, and I screamed a silent scream inside my head.
Then I straightened, feeling my tired muscles protest, got out of bed, and picked up the top-most towel off the pile Flo had stacked carefully on the foot of each bed.
The bathroom was on the landing, and I locked the door and let the towel drop to the floor. Over the bath was another uncurtained plate-gla.s.s window, looking out over the forest in an incredibly unnerving way. It was angled so that, in practice, you wouldn"t be able to see inside the room unless you were perched on top of a fifty-foot pine, but as I took off my bra and knickers I had to fight the urge to cross my hands over my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, covering my nakedness from the watchful darkness.
For a minute I considered getting straight into my change of clothes, but I was tired and mud-spattered and I knew I"d feel better if I had a hot shower, so I climbed carefully into the walk-in enclosure and turned the lever, stretching gratefully as the huge shower head coughed twice, and then flooded me with an enormous, forceful gush of hot water.
Standing like this, I could look out of the window, though it was too dark to see much. The bright bathroom light turned the gla.s.s into a sort of mirror, and aside from a pale, ghostly moon, all I could see was my own body reflected in the fast-steaming gla.s.s as I soaped and shaved my legs. What kind of person was Flo"s aunt anyway? This was a house for voyeurs. No, that was people who liked to watch. What was the opposite? Exhibitionists.
People who liked to be seen.
Perhaps it was different in summer, when the light came flooding in until late into the evening. Perhaps then it was a house for looking out of, across the forest. But now, in the dark, it felt like the opposite. It felt like a gla.s.s display case, full of curiosities to be peered at. Or a cage in a zoo. A tiger"s enclosure, with nowhere to hide. I thought of those caged animals pacing slowly backwards and forwards, day after day, week after week, going slowly crazy.
When I was finished, I climbed carefully out and peered at myself in the steam-misted mirror, swiping away the condensation with my hand.
The face that looked back at me startled me. It looked like someone ready for a fight. It was partly my short hair; after my shower and a rough dry with the towel, it looked aggressively spiky and defiant, like a boxer"s between rounds. My face was white and stark under the bright lights, my eyes dark and accusing and surrounded by shadows, like I"d taken a beating.
I sighed and got out my washbag. I don"t wear much makeup, but I had lip gloss and mascara; the basics. No blusher, but I rubbed a bit of lip gloss into my cheekbones in an effort to brighten the pallor, then yanked on clean skinny jeans and a grey top.
From somewhere far below, music started up. Billy Idol, by the sounds of it: "White Wedding". Someone"s idea of a joke?
"Le- I mean, Nora!" Flo"s voice floated up the stairs, above the sound of Billy Idol telling us to start again. "Are you ready for something to eat?"
"Coming!" I shouted back, and with a sigh, I bundled my dirty underwear into my towel, picked up my washbag, and opened the door.
8.
WHILE I HAD been in the shower, the hen night had started in earnest.
In the living room, Tom and Clare had plugged in someone"s iPhone and were dancing round the living room to Billy Idol, while Melanie laughed at them from the sofa.
In the kitchen, which was hot as h.e.l.l from the overworked oven, I could see someone shovelling industrial quant.i.ties of pizza onto boards and dumping various tubs of dip into bowls. For a disorienting minute I thought it was Clare they were wearing the same grey jeans and silver vest that Clare had been wearing next door. Then she stood up and wiped the hair off her forehead and I saw it was Flo. She was wearing exactly the same clothes as Clare.
Before I could pick that apart any further, my thoughts were interrupted by a strong smell of charring. "Is something burning?" I asked.
"Oh my G.o.d! The pittas!" Flo shrieked. "Lee, can you rescue them before they set the alarm off?"
I ran across the rapidly smoke-filling kitchen and grabbed the pitta breads from the toaster, before dumping them in the sink. Then I set about wrestling with the door at the far end of the kitchen. It was locked, and there was a trick to the handle, but finally I managed to fling it wide open. Freezing air gusted in, and I saw to my surprise that the puddles on the lawn were frosting over.
"I"ve looked in the wine rack and I can"t find any tequila." Nina"s voice came from the doorway, and then, "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, it"s freezing! Shut the door, you mentalist!"
"The pittas were burning," I said mildly, but I swung the door shut. At least the temperature in the room was closer to normal now.
"It"s not in the cellar?" Flo straightened up, brushing sweaty hair out of her eyes. Her face was scarlet from the heat. "Blast. Where on earth could it be?"
"You tried the fridge?" Nina asked. Flo nodded.
"Freezer?" I asked. She clapped a hand to her forehead.
"Freezer! Of course I remember now, thinking it"d be better if we wanted frozen margaritas. Ugh, I"m such an idiot."
"Amen!" Nina mouthed at me, as she bent and opened the freezer under the counter. "Here it is." Her voice came slightly m.u.f.fled by the whirr of the freezer fan. She straightened up, a frosted bottle in her hand, and scooped up two limes from the fruit bowl. "Nora, grab a board and a knife. Oh, and the salt shaker. Flo, did you say there were shot gla.s.ses through there?"
"Yup, behind that mirrored door at the end of the living room. But do you think we should start with shots? Wouldn"t it be more sensible to start with a cooler first like mojitos maybe?"
"Screw sensible," Nina said as she left the kitchen, and then, under her breath to me as we crossed the hall, "I need something as strong as possible to get me through this."
As we entered the living room, Clare and Tom turned, and Clare gave a whoop and danced over to take the bottle from Nina"s hand, and the knife from mine. She shimmied back to the coffee table, her top scattering motes of light around the dimly-lit room as she banged them both down on the gla.s.s with a crack.
"Tequila slammers! I haven"t done these since my twenty-first. I think it"s taken this long for the hangover to wear off."
Nina let the limes bounce onto the table alongside the rest, and then turned to hunt in the cupboard for gla.s.ses while Clare knelt on the rug and started slicing.
"Hen first!" Melanie said, and Clare grinned. We all watched as she shook a pinch of salt into the hollow of her wrist, and picked up a chunk of lime. Nina filled a shot gla.s.s to the teetering brim, and pushed it into her hand. Clare licked her wrist, gulped the shot, and bit hard into the lime, her eyes squeezed shut. Then she spat it out onto the rug and slammed the shot gla.s.s down on the table top, shuddering and laughing at the same time.