The Reunion (18 page)

‘That’s right. There’s a ladder you can pull down. The boxes should be just to the left-hand side I think. There’s not much up there, so they shouldn’t be too hard to find.’

‘It’s OK, Dan,’ Zac said as Dan got up to go upstairs, ‘you stay here with the girls. I’ll manage.’

Dan clenched his fists and his jaw.
Stay with the girls?
Condescending wanker. ‘No, I know where I’m going. I’ll do it.’ He took his phone out of his pocket, checked one more time for a signal and then held it out in front of him, lighting his way into the hallway and up the stairs. He was pathetically, shamefully grateful that Zac did not allow him to go alone.

It took them a little while to get the trapdoor open and pull the ladder down. Dan went first but managed to trap his finger in the mechanism, so Zac took over. Dan was constantly fighting the urge to tell Zac to bugger off, although he hadn’t quite had time to analyse why he found him so irritating. It wasn’t just that he didn’t run out after Lilah when she left, and it wasn’t the fact that Zac was so good-looking, although he realised that no doubt everyone would assume that was the reason. Watching him clamber fearlessly up the ladder, into an attic that might contain any number of deeply unpleasant things (rats, dead birds, the evil spirit of some long-dead former inhabitant of the house), he decided that it wasn’t even his seeming imperviousness to peril. It was the ease with which he’d slipped into the group. He’d known everyone less than twenty-four hours and, already, Dan sensed people looking to him for leadership. Well, the girls, downstairs, they clearly thought of him as the one who could fend off danger or get them out of trouble. Dan was an afterthought. Andrew, yes, Conor, yes. They were alpha, he was beta, the lost boy, Jen called him. That’s just how it was back then. But now he was second fiddle to Zac? It was insulting. Terrified or not, he wasn’t going to stand here in the hallway, holding a ladder, waiting for Action Man to save the day. He summoned up all the courage he could and climbed up.

‘It’s all right, mate, I can manage,’ Zac said as Dan popped his head up into the attic. Dan ignored him and kept climbing. There was an ominous creaking sound from above, the rafters straining as the wind battered the roof.

‘Let’s just get on with this,’ Dan muttered.

Jen’s information had been misleading; there were actually a number of boxes up there. They opened a couple, found them filled with books and papers, all in French. Finally they found one containing some kitchen utensils and one particularly manky-looking candle. They were about to go back down the ladder with their disappointing haul when Dan noticed another box, stuck underneath one of the rafters. It took him a while, but he managed to dislodge it and opened it up.

‘Score,’ he said, ridiculously pleased with himself, pulling out a box of twelve candles. He threw them to Zac, who was standing on the top of the ladder. Instead of following him straight down, Dan decided to take a quick look through the rest of the box’s contents, his curiosity getting the better of him and his fear. There were letters, postcards, all in French, presumably belonging to the tenant. An old bank card, a picture of a very tanned blonde in a bikini, standing outside this very house, grinning from ear to ear. At the very bottom of the box there was a yellowing piece of paper, lined, folded in two. Dan picked it up and unfolded it, turned it over and felt a shiver travel all the way up his spine. It was a list. Written in his handwriting.

23 August 1995

Villefranche, Alpes Maritimes, France

Where will we be in the year 2010?

Conor will be married to Jen. He will design furniture which will sell for extortionate prices. Jen will translate great works of modern literature from French to English. They will live here, in this house, with their two adorable children, Ronan and Isabelle. They will throw wild parties in the summer and at New Year, which we shall all attend.

Andrew will be an internationally renowned human rights lawyer, lauded the world over for work in fighting for the rights of political prisoners and confronting injustice wherever he may find it.

Lilah will be very rich. She will have married a billionaire and subsequently divorced well. She will have houses in the south of France, Vale, perhaps a small castle in the Scottish Highlands. She will have several lovers, one of which will be Andrew.

Natalie will be a Booker Prize-winning author. She will be married to an American war correspondent who divides his time between the UK, New York and Beirut. This will suit Natalie perfectly. She will live in a rambling farmhouse in Yorkshire, but will spend a great deal of her time hanging out in Lilah’s villa in Cap Ferrat.

Dan’s film will win a prize at Sundance. He will live in LA with Winona Ryder.

THE WIND HAD
become a scream. Looking out of the living-room window, Natalie could no longer see anything further than a few feet away, just endless sheets of driving snow. She wondered how many storms this house had seen, how many more it could endure before the roof was ripped off altogether, before the house was once more left open to the elements. She could hear Dan and Zac moving around upstairs, climbing up the ladder into the attic. And that banging sound, that relentless bloody banging sound, ominous, like a drumbeat, heralding disaster. Andrew had been gone for two hours.

Jen had rung the B&B in the village. They weren’t there. Give it another hour, she’d said, and then we’d better call the police. Not that they would be likely to do much, not that there was a great deal they could do. There was a part of Natalie that didn’t want to ring the police anyway, because she couldn’t bring herself to even begin to prepare for bad news. She sipped her whisky, but it didn’t help; there was a bitter taste in her mouth, bile or despair, and no amount of Scotch was going to take it away.

The things she’d said, all those things she’d said. She couldn’t get the words out of her head now, they kept repeating over and over. ‘He would have been a QC by now, not just a teacher in some fucking sink school.’ She’d stood there in the living room and called her husband a failure, in front of everyone. She rang his mobile for the hundredth time.

‘Please, please, please,’ she whispered to herself, biting her lip with frustration and disappointment when, yet again, she got that insolent, repetitive beep. She longed to tell him she hadn’t meant it. She’d just got lost in her anger. She longed to talk to her children. She wanted so much to hear their lovely voices, their pealing laughter, to listen to them prattle on about the skinny jeans they absolutely had to have. Christ, she’d give anything to listen to them nag her to let them get their ears pierced. But she couldn’t call them. They’d want to talk to Dad (they always wanted to talk to Dad) and what could she say? Could she lie, convincingly, without bursting into tears, could she say he was in the shower? That he’d gone out for a drive? He went out into a blizzard, chasing after his ex-girlfriend, and he never came back.

She put her drink down, walked to the window and pressed her forehead against the glass. She thought perhaps that the screaming of the wind was fainter now, and was the snow easing off? Or was that just wishful thinking? She tried to imagine them, Andrew and Lilah, sitting in Jen’s car, the heating on full blast, windows steamed up. Laughing about old times, perhaps? Or maybe they were cursing her, for what she’d said, for what she’d wrought. Maybe they were making up. Kissing and making up, making up for lost time. Natalie tried to picture her husband with his hands on Lilah’s still youthful body; she concentrated on trying to conjure up that image, because it was infinitely preferable to the other one, the one that kept forcing its way into her brain, the one in which Jen’s car was lying at the bottom of a ravine, a tangled mess of metal, the windscreen smashed out.

When she closed her eyes she could see just that, the windscreen smashed out. No snow drifting in though: it was warm, the car sat motionless in dappled sunshine. Andrew was there, and then he was gone. She could hear someone shouting, someone sobbing, a terrible, desperate sound, and then silence. Then black, and later, Andrew was back at her side, holding her hand. He told her that she was going to be all right, everything was going to be all right. He told her that he loved her. She’d waited so long to hear him say that, hear those words, spoken to her, from his lips. She should have been happy to hear them, but it was all wrong, it sounded wrong. Andrew had blood on his face, he was crying. Someone else was crying, too, a plaintive, keening wail. Natalie could smell burning. Could she smell burning? She was terrified, she wanted to get out of the car but she couldn’t move, the door wouldn’t open, her legs wouldn’t move. The pain was consuming, paralysing, unlike anything she’d ever felt. Andrew kept holding her hand, speaking softly, telling her that it was all going to be all right. It wasn’t, though, she knew it wasn’t. She knew that Conor was dead, but she couldn’t think about that, all she could think about was the pain and the smell of burning and the terrible certainty that she was going to burn alive.

She could smell burning.

‘Zac found candles!’ She turned around. Jen was standing there, a lit candle in either hand, Zac just behind her. ‘Nat! Jesus. You’re shaking. Oh, Nat, it’s going to be all right. She handed the candles to Zac and hurried to Natalie’s side to give her a hug. ‘He’ll be OK. It’ll be OK.’

Natalie smiled and nodded. She was distracted by the appearance of Dan in the doorway behind them, holding a piece of paper in his hand. He looked pale, shocked. As though he’d seen a ghost.

The phone started ringing and everyone jumped.

31 August 2002

Dear Jen,

Congratulations! Of course I don’t feel strange about it, you deserve to be happy, I wish you the greatest happiness possible. Can’t wait to meet him. And I’m not put out at all – elopement sounds like a fine idea to me. I wish more people did it…

We’re good. The girls had their second birthday party last week – fourteen under-fives running around in our back yard – it was absolute bloody chaos, I can tell you. I’ve never been so exhausted in all my life. It was a fantastic day, though, they were spoiled rotten and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I will get Nat to send over some pics for you.

Nat has decided to leave Murray Books – she’s decided she would rather stick to full-time motherhood after all. I hope it’s the right thing for her. I suggested that she may find time to write if she’s not working full time, but that didn’t go down very well – I got a short, sharp lecture on how being a mother to twins
is
working full time. But I’m sad for her, because I know that she has been trying to write recently and it’s just not coming. She has had terrible problems with her back lately, so she’s on some quite strong painkillers and finds they affect her concentration. Plus she can’t sit at a desk for any length of time otherwise it seizes up. It breaks my heart, Jen – she’s so strong, she pretty much never complains about it, even when I can tell it’s really bad. And she’s amazing with the girls, she never lets them see that she’s tired or suffering. She’s always ready to run around the garden with them – no matter how hard it is for her.

I only wish I could make it better somehow.

Sorry. Rambling on. Otherwise, things are good for me. I’ve finished my teacher training now and will be starting at Greystone Comp in September. Really looking forward to it, actually, although I am vaguely terrified. I’m sure teenage boys are bigger than they used to be. And I know the girls are certainly more formidable.

How do you feel about coming for a visit? Bring Monsieur Jean-Luc! We don’t have to stay in Reading, I know it’s not terribly exciting. We could spend a few days in London, or go to the Cotswolds or something. I would love to see you, Jen. I do miss you.

With love,

Andrew

P.S. Almost forgot to say – Ronan came over for Charlotte and Grace’s party – he was on fine form. Asked lots of questions about you, he was saying how much he and his mum would love to see you. It was great seeing him: whenever I see him I feel as though I get a tiny glimpse of Conor again. It’s good for my soul.