In a Dark, Dark Wood (3 page)

As we entered the forest itself, the sat-nav coverage dropped off, and then died.

‘Hang on.’ I scrabbled in my handbag. ‘I’ve got those print-outs that Flo emailed.’

‘Well, aren’t you the girl scout of the year,’ Nina said, but I could hear the relief in her voice. ‘What’s wrong with an iPhone anyway?’

‘This is what’s wrong with them.’ I held up my mobile, which was endlessly buffering and failing to load Google Maps. ‘They disappear unpredictably.’ I looked at the print-outs. ‘The Glass House’, the search-header read, ‘Stanebridge Road’. ‘OK, there’s a right coming up. A bend and then a right, it must be any time—’ The turning whizzed past and I said – mildly, I thought – ‘That was it. We missed it.’

‘Fine bloody navigator you are!’

‘What?’

‘You’re supposed to tell me about the turning
before
we get to it, you know.’ She imitated the robotic voice of the sat-nav: ‘Make a left in – fifty – metres. Make a left in – thirty – metres. Turn around when safe to do so, you have missed your turning.’

‘Well, turn around when safe to do so, lady. You have missed your turning.’

‘Screw safe.’ Nina stamped on the brakes and did a fast, bad-tempered three-point turn just at another bend in the forest road. I shut my eyes.

‘What was that you were saying about karaoke?’

‘Oh it’s a dead end, no one was coming.’

‘Apart from the other half dozen people invited to this hen-do.’

I opened my eyes cautiously to find we were round and picking up speed in the opposite direction. ‘OK, it’s here. It looks like a footpath on the map but Flo’s definitely marked it.’

‘It
is
a footpath!’

She swung the wheel, we bumped through the opening, and the little car began jolting and bumping up a rutted, muddy track.

‘I believe the technical term is “unpaved road”,’ I said rather breathlessly, as Nina skirted a huge mud-filled trench that looked more like a watering hole for hippos, and wound round yet another bend. ‘Is this their drive? There must be half a mile of track here.’

We were on the last print-out, the one so big it was practically an aerial photograph, and I couldn’t see any other houses marked.

‘If it’s their drive,’ Nina said jerkily as the car bounced over another rut, ‘they should bloody well maintain it. If I break the chassis on this hire car I’m suing someone. I don’t care who, but I’m buggered if I’m paying for it.’

But as we rounded the next bend, we were suddenly there. Nina drove the car through a narrow gate, parked up and killed the engine, and we both got out, staring up at the house in front of us.

I don’t know what I’d expected, but not this. Some thatched cottage, perhaps, with beams and low ceilings. What actually stood in the forest clearing was an extraordinary collection of glass and steel, looking as if it had been thrown down carelessly by a child tired of playing with some very minimalist bricks. It looked so incredibly out of place that both Nina and I just stood, open-mouthed.

As the door opened I saw a flash of bright blondehair, and I had a moment of complete panic. This was a mistake. I should never have come, but it was too late to turn back.

Standing in the doorway was Clare.

Only – she was … different.

It
was
ten years, I tried to remind myself. People change, they put on weight. The people we are at 16 are not the people we are at 26 – I should know that, more than anyone.

But Clare – it was like something had broken, some light inside her had gone out.

Then she spoke and the illusion was broken. Her voice was the only thing that bore no resemblance to Clare whatsoever. It was quite deep, where Clare’s was high and girlish, and it was very, very posh.

‘Hi!!!’ she said, and somehow her tone gave the word three exclamation marks, and I knew, before she spoke again, who it was. ‘I’m Flo!’

You know when you see the brother or sister of someone famous, and it’s like looking at them, but in one of those fairground mirrors? Only one that distorts so subtly it’s hard to put your finger on what’s different, only that it
is
different. Some essence has been lost, a false note in the song.

That was the girl at the front door.

‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘It’s so great to see you! You must be—’ She looked from me to Nina and picked the easy option. Nina is six-foot-one and Brazilian. Well, her dad’s from Brazil. She was born in Reading and her mum’s from Dalston. She has the profile of a hawk and the hair of Eva Longoria.

‘Nina, right?’

‘Yup.’ Nina stuck out a hand. ‘And you’re Flo, I take it?’

‘Yah!’

Nina shot me a look that
dared
me to laugh. I never thought people really said
Yah
, or if they did, they got it punched out of them at school or sniggered out of them at university Maybe Flo was made of tougher stuff.

Flo shook Nina’s hand enthusiastically and then turned to me with a beaming smile. ‘In that case you’re … Lee, right?’

‘Nora,’ I said reflexively.

‘Nora?’ She frowned, puzzled.

‘My name’s Leonora,’ I said. ‘At school I was Lee, but now I prefer Nora. I did mention in the email.’

I’d always hated being Lee. It was a boy’s name, a name that lent itself to teasing and rhyme.
Lee Lee needs a wee. Lee Lee smells of pee
. And then with my surname, Shaw:
We saw Lee Shaw on the sea shore.

Lee was dead and gone now. At least I hoped so.

‘Oh, right! I’ve got a cousin called Leonora! We call her Leo.’

I tried to hide the flinch. Not Leo.
Never
Leo. Only one person ever called me that.

The silence stretched, until Flo broke it with a slightly brittle laugh. ‘Ha! Right. OK. Well, this is going to be so much fun! Clare’s not here yet – but as maid of honour I felt I should do my duty and get here first!’

‘What hideous tortures have you got lined up for us then?’ Nina asked as she yanked her case across the threshold. ‘Feather boas? Chocolate penises? I warn you, I’m allergic to them – I have an anaphylactic reaction. Don’t make me get my Epipen out.’

Flo laughed nervously. She looked at me and then back at Nina, trying to gauge whether Nina was joking. Nina’s delivery is hard to read if you don’t know her. Nina stared back seriously, and I could tell she was wondering whether to dangle the bait a bit closer.

‘Lovely, um … house,’ I said, to try to head her off, although in truth lovely wasn’t the word I was thinking of. In spite of the trees to either side, the place looked painfully exposed, baring its great glass facade to the eyes of the whole valley.

‘Isn’t it!’ Flo beamed, looking relieved to be back on safe ground. ‘It’s actually my aunt’s holiday house, but she doesn’t come here much in the winter – too isolated. Sitting room’s through here …’ She led us through an echoing hallway the full height of the house, and into a long, low room with the entire opposite wall made of glass, facing the forest. There was something strangely naked about it, like we were in a stage set, playing our parts to an audience of eyes out there in the wood. I shivered, and turned my back to the bare glass, looking round the room. In spite of the long squashy sofas, the place felt oddly bare – and after a second I realised why. It wasn’t just the lack of clutter and the minimalist decor – two pots on the mantelpiece, a single Mark Rothko painting on the wall – but the fact that there wasn’t a single book in the whole place. It didn’t even feel like a holiday cottage – every place I’ve ever stayed in has had a shelf of curling Dan Browns and Agatha Christies. It felt more like a show home.

‘Landline is in here.’ Flo pointed to a vintage dial-and-cord phone that looked strangely lost in this modernist environment. ‘Mobile reception is very glitchy so feel free to use it.’

But I wasn’t looking at the phone. Above the stark modern fireplace was something even more out of place: a polished shotgun, perched on wooden pegs drilled into the wall. It looked like it had been transplanted from a country pub. Was it real?

I tried to tear my eyes away as I realised Flo was still talking.

‘… and upstairs are the bedrooms,’ she finished. ‘Want a hand with those cases?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ I said, at the same time Nina said, ‘Well, if you’re offering …’

Flo looked taken aback, but gamely took Nina’s huge, wheeled case and began to lug it up the flight of frosted-glass 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 assumed I’d have my own space 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 glass, 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 glass.

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 glass 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 reassuring 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 God’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.’

‘Fuck 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.’