In a Dark, Dark Wood (4 page)

‘Nina …’

‘What? What are you looking at me like that for? Shall we go downstairs and meet the cock in the hen house?’

‘Nina! Don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’ She swung her feet to the floor and stood up.

‘Don’t embarrass us.
Him
.’

‘If we’re hens, naturally that makes him a cock. I’m using the term in its purely zoological sense.’

‘Nina!’

But she was gone, loping down the glass stairs in her stockinged feet, and I heard her voice floating up the stairwell. ‘Hello, 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 flustered 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 scrap 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 pronounceable, 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 massacring 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 shit 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 glass 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 glass 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 glass 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 glass.

‘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.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Flo said. ‘She probably should have a gun cabinet or something. But it was my grandfather’s so it’s sort of a family heirloom. And the veg patch is right outside these doors – well, in the summer anyway – so it’s just more practical having it to hand.’

Melanie got the fire going, Flo began to pour out tea and dish out biscuits and the conversation moved on – to hire-car charges, the cost of rent, whether to put the milk in first. I was silent, thinking.

‘Tea?’

For a moment I didn’t move, didn’t answer. Then Flo tapped me on the shoulder, making me jump.

‘Tea, Lee?’

‘Nora,’ I said. I tried to force a smile. ‘I’m … I’m sorry. Do you have coffee? I should have said, I’m not that keen on tea.’

Flo’s face fell. ‘I’m so sorry, I should have … No, we don’t. It’s probably too late to get anything now – the nearest village is forty minutes away and the shop’ll be shut. I’m so sorry, I was thinking about Clare when I was doing the food shop, and she does love her tea – I never thought—’

‘It’s fine,’ I cut her off with a smile. ‘Honestly.’ I took the cup she held out and sipped at it. It was scalding and it tasted utterly, revoltingly like tea – hot milk and gravy browning.

‘She should be here soon.’ Flo looked at her watch. ‘Shall I run through proceedings so we all know what’s happening?’

We all nodded and Flo got out a list. I felt, rather than heard, Nina’s gusting sigh.

‘So Clare should be here at six, then I thought we’d have a little drinky – I’ve got some champers in the fridge, and I picked up the bits for mojitos and margaritas and stuff – and I thought we wouldn’t bother with a proper sit-down supper—’ Nina’s face fell ‘—I’ve just got some pizzas and dips and stuff and we can stick it all out on the coffee table in here and dig in. And I thought while we did that we could play a few getting-to-know-you games. You all know Clare, obvs, but I don’t think many of us know each other … is that right? In fact, we should probably do a quick round-the-table introduction before Clare gets here, maybe?’

We all looked at each other, sizing each other up, wondering who was going to have the chutzpah to begin. For the first time I tried to fit Tom, Melanie and Flo in with the Clare I knew, and it wasn’t entirely easy.

Tom was obvious – with his expensive clothes and theatre background it wasn’t hard to see what they had in common. Clare had always loved good-looking people, women as well as men, and she took an uncomplicated, generous pride in the attractiveness of friends. There was nothing snide about her admiration – she was beautiful enough herself to be unthreatened by beauty in others – and she loved helping people make the best of themselves, even the less promising candidates like me. I remembered being dragged around to shop after shop before a big night out, with Clare holding up dresses against my skinny bust-less frame and pursing her lips in appraisal until she found the one that was perfect for me. She had an eye for what flattered. She was the one who had told me I should get my hair cropped. I had never listened to her back then. Now, ten years later, I wore it short and I knew she’d been right.

Melanie and Flo were more mysterious. Something Melanie had said during the early emails had made me think she worked as a lawyer, or possibly an accountant, and she did have the faint air of someone who would be more comfortable in a suit. Her handbag and shoes were expensive but the jeans she was wearing were what Clare, ten years ago, would have called ‘mum jeans’ – generic blue, unflatteringly cut to bunch at the top.

Flo’s jeans on the other hand were pure designer, but there was something oddly uncomfortable about the way she wore them. The entire outfit looked like it had been picked wholesale off a display in All Saints with no regard for whether it fitted or flattered her frame, and as I watched she pulled awkwardly at the top, trying to tug it down over the soft chubby bulge where the waist of her jeans cut into her hip. It looked like the kind of outfit Clare might have picked out for herself, but only someone cruel would have suggested it to Flo.

Flo and Melanie together made a strange contrast with Tom. It was hard to imagine the Clare I’d known with either of them. Was it just that they had been friends at university and had stayed in touch? I knew that kind of friendship, the one you make in Freshers’ Week and realise as time goes on that you’ve nothing in common besides staying in the same halls, but somehow you keep sending birthday cards and Facebook likes. But then, it was ten years since I had known Clare. Maybe the Melanie-and-Flo Clare was the real one now.

As I looked round the circle, I realised that the others were doing the same thing; sizing up the guests they didn’t know, trying to fit the strangers in with their mental image of Clare. I caught Tom’s eye as he stared at me with a frank curiosity that bordered almost on hostility, and dropped my own gaze to the floor. No one wanted to go first. The silence stretched until it threatened to become awkward.

‘I’ll begin,’ Melanie said. She pushed her hair back off her face and fiddled with something at her neckline. I saw that it was a tiny silver cross on a chain, the kind you get as at christenings present. ‘I’m Melanie Cho, well Melanie Blaine-Cho now I guess, but it’s a bit of a mouthful and I’ve kept my own name for work. I shared a house at university with Flo and Clare, but I took two years out before uni so I’m a bit older than the rest of you guys … at least I don’t know about you, Tom? I’m twenty-eight.’

‘Twenty-seven,’ Tom said.

‘So I’m the group granny. I’ve just had a baby, well, six months ago. And I’m breast-feeding so please excuse me if you see me running out of the room with giant wet patches on my boobs.’