The Reunion (4 page)

Natalie was furious and even to her own ears Jen’s apologies sounded trite and mealy-mouthed.

‘I just wanted you all to be here,’ she heard herself simper, ‘and I knew, Nat, I knew you wouldn’t want to come if…’

‘If what?’ Lilah snapped, wasting no time to jump into the fray. ‘They wouldn’t come if they knew
I
was coming?’ She lit a cigarette, her cheeks sunken as she dragged on it furiously. ‘Bloody cheek.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jen said. ‘I really am. This was a mistake.’

‘I think it probably was,’ Andrew said quietly. He was reaching for his wife’s hand, eyes dipped, unable to meet Jen’s eye; he looked crestfallen. Jen felt as though she might burst into tears. ‘Perhaps it would be better,’ Andrew said, ‘if Nat and I went down to the village for the night.’

‘No!’ Natalie’s refusal was loud and vehement. ‘I’m not driving anywhere else tonight, Andrew. Absolutely not. We’ll stay here tonight and leave in the morning.’

Feeling silly and sheepish, Jen took the couples to their rooms. Lilah, determined to outdo Natalie in the huffiness stakes, stomped off with her man and slammed the door behind them; Jen was left to accompany a silent Andrew and Natalie. She opened the door and beamed at them, feeling rather like a hotel porter angling for a tip. Natalie bustled past her and disappeared straight into the bathroom, muttering something about needing a bath. Andrew stood in the doorway, his hand resting on the frame. He rapped it once with his knuckle.

‘Held up all right, didn’t they?’ he said; there was a small smile on his lips, pride, or remembrance. That summer, way back when, the summer of the renovation, Andrew and Conor had repaired most of the door frames up here on the first floor. They’d fixed sagging joists and repaired the roof, shored up the vast oak beams, rescued the place from collapse.

‘They held up great,’ Jen said. She was perched on the edge of the bed, watching him, waiting for him to look at her; to
really
look at her.

But Andrew was admiring his old handiwork, running his hands over the walls and testing the floorboards as though he were looking for subsidence or dry rot. He took a good look at the beams in the ceiling, inspected the window frames and finally, his survey complete, he turned towards her. He stood tall, hands on hips, looking her directly in the eye for the first time since he’d arrived.

‘The place looks great,’ he said, and before she could reply he went on: ‘I can’t believe you’re selling it.’

Jen sighed, got to her feet, and stood in front of him. She’d known he’d be upset, but looking at him now, seeing the satisfaction it gave him to see the house again, to stand here in the place they’d worked so hard, she realised that it was going to be harder than she’d imagined.

‘I never use it. Obviously I’m here now, but this is the first time in ages. And now, Dad’s gone and Mum certainly doesn’t want to come here…’ She shrugged. They smiled at each other awkwardly for a second. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, she could hardly believe that he was actually here, standing in front of her. It didn’t seem real.

‘Andrew!’ Natalie called him from the bathroom. ‘Can you come in here for a second?’

Andrew shrugged, holding his hands out, palms up.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jen said, voice little more than a whisper, ‘about the thing with Lilah.’

Andrew shook his head, waving the apology away. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’ He smiled at her and for a second he looked like his old self, or at least he looked to her as though his old self might be in there, somewhere, behind the mask of an old man.

Jen paused, halfway down the stairs, resting her hand against the cold stone wall. She felt breathless, her heart beating a little too fast. As she steadied herself she looked down and realised she’d missed another drop of blood.

‘Out, damned spot,’ she muttered as she continued downstairs and into the kitchen. Dan was waiting for her, leaning against the counter, drinking a beer and checking his phone. He looked at once at home and completely out of place, the dissonance made her head spin. She couldn’t allow herself to dwell on it too much. Not yet, things to do.

‘Sorry,’ she said to him, ‘I thought it would be best to get the others settled in first.’

He looked up and smiled, then went back to his phone.

‘Would you like to go through and see your room now?’

She took him through the back door, across the yard to what was once the barn, now a low-slung modernist apartment with sliding glass doors, a bedroom on the mezzanine level and a wet room.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘This is an improvement.’

‘Well,’ she said, giving him a smile. ‘It’s not every day I have a famous film director to stay.’

He shot her a look, there was a flicker of defensiveness in his eyes as though he thought she might be taking the piss.

‘I’m joking,’ she said quickly. ‘It was the tenant. This writer from Paris, quite famous actually, long tomes of rather awful pop philosophy.’ She was babbling, sentences running into one another. ‘Anyway, he rented the place for ages, years and years. He used to come here for half the year, use it to write, you know, and to entertain women. This was his writing studio.’

‘So you haven’t been using the house?’ Dan looked surprised.

‘No. It was supposed to be Mum and Dad’s bolthole, but that never happened because they never actually wanted to go anywhere together. Then they got divorced, and after that Dad got ill. I didn’t really want to come back here. Not all alone. So Dad decided to rent it out and Delacourt – that’s the writer – just kept taking it, year after year. He eventually bought a place of his own a couple of years ago, so it’s been empty since then. Well, until I got here.’

‘And now your dad wants to sell it?’

‘It’s mine now, actually. Dad died last year.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

The words were spoken completely without emotion. The diffident, lost boy who’d appeared on the doorstep just a few minutes ago was gone, now, replaced by a different Dan, rather controlled, curiously blank, disconnected. He seemed to be trying not to meet her eye. Jen waited for a second, for him to say something.

‘I’ll leave you to it then, shall I? Come through and have some dinner when you’re ready. OK?’

‘Great. Thanks, Jen.’ He was looking at his phone again.

Jen went back to the kitchen, laid the table and opened a bottle of red to let it breathe. She took a moment to breathe herself. You couldn’t say it was a disaster, not yet. Everyone just needed a moment or two to adjust. She heard a creak of floorboards in the hallway and looked up. Andrew was standing in the doorway, watching her.

‘Drink?’ she asked.

‘Ah, Jen. Nat’s really not feeling so well, she’s lying down, so… Sorry, we’re going to give dinner a miss.’

Jen smiled through gritted teeth.

‘Shall I bring something up to you?’

‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘We’re fine.’ He was embarrassed, eager to get away. Jen let it go, this was all her fault anyway. So maybe this weekend was going to be a disaster after all.

7 September 1999

Email, from Dan to Lilah, Andrew, Natalie

Dear all

I’m sorry things turned out the way they did the other night. I didn’t set out to hurt or offend anyone, you must know that. I wish you’d given me some time to explain.

First, the film is fiction. I know there are places and people and events that look familiar, but it’s not supposed to be an accurate reflection of those places or people or events. They were my inspiration. You were my inspiration. But that’s all. I wasn’t making a film about you or about the accident.

Second, and I know this sounds like a lame excuse, but the final edit was not done by me. There were some scenes, particularly at the end, that I objected to. I fought to have some scenes included and others left out, and I lost.

I’d like to see you, all of you, to talk to you face to face and to explain exactly what I intended and what I did not intend. Please allow me that.

Most of all, please know that I never wanted to hurt any of you. You are my family, you know that.

Dan

DAN HAD THE
feeling that this weekend was going to turn into a total disaster. Dinner was painful, no two ways about it. It was the kind of scene which would have been difficult to watch if it had been in a movie, the kind that made you cringe, slide down in your seat and close your eyes; living through it was excruciating. Minute upon minute of insufferable silence as they chewed their food (a good rack of lamb, actually, along with the wine, the only positive point about the evening), Lilah sulking, her Action Man boyfriend uttering the occasional platitude, Jen looking pale and tense.

It fell to Dan to attempt to rescue the evening. He did his best. He told them about Claudia, the beautiful German actress, the new Audi he’d driven all the way from London to Nice, the holiday home he was thinking of buying; finally he talked about his plans for Christmas, the suite he’d booked at the Ritz, where he planned to meet up with Claudia (once she’d broken the bad news to her husband).

He might as well have been talking to himself. Oh, Jen nodded and smiled and actively listened, but he could tell she wasn’t really engaging with what he was saying. It was frustrating. It was disappointing. If he was perfectly honest he expected everyone to be rather impressed. His girlfriend was a
film star
, for God’s sake.

Lilah didn’t appear to have listened to him at all, because the second he stopped talking, she changed the subject, launching into an attack on Jen for setting up this weird reunion in the first place.

‘You should at least have told
me
that you weren’t telling
them
,’ she said to Jen, arranging her face into a perfect pout. ‘That was really awkward. And in any case, I don’t get why she gets to be pissed off.
She
ran off with
my
boyfriend.
I
should be the one throwing hissy fits.’

‘You used to go out with
him
?’ the boyfriend asked, an amused expression on his face. ‘That bloke upstairs?’

‘Yes, she used to go out with
him
,’ Dan snapped, instantly feeling defensive of Andrew, who he felt was being insulted in some way. ‘What of it?’

‘Leave Zac alone,’ Lilah said, reaching out to stroke her boyfriend’s neck. ‘He was only asking.’ Lilah leaned forward, interlocking her fingers in front of her face and cocking her head to one side. She flashed him her killer smile and he felt his bowels contract. He shouldn’t have said anything; now he’d only gone and drawn her fire.

‘Mr Parker,’ she said, taking a slurp of her wine. ‘The great film director. I haven’t seen you for… ooh, I don’t know. How long has it been, Dan?’

Dan swallowed. ‘You know very well how long it’s been, Lilah. Thirteen years.’

‘Lucky for some,’ she said. She picked up the wine bottle and poured the last few drops into her glass. She turned to Zac and said: ‘The last time I saw Dan was for the première of his first film.
One Day in June
. It was quite successful, wasn’t it, Dan? You must have made quite a bit of money.’

Dan nodded. He kept his eyes on Lilah’s face because he couldn’t bear to look at Jen’s. Of course, he’d known this was coming. He’d prepared himself for a discussion about that film at some point. He’d just hoped there would be a gentler run-in, not Lilah with daggers drawn, on the offensive. He’d hoped to be able to talk to Jen about it alone.

‘What was the film about?’ Zac asked politely, and Dan wanted dearly at that moment to punch him in the face.

He took a deep breath. ‘Well, it was…’

‘It was supposed to be about Dan’s miserable childhood,’ Lilah cut in loudly. She picked up the wine bottle and then put it down again. Jen got to her feet to fetch another one. ‘But in fact, it wasn’t really about him at all. It was about us, about some things that happened to us, and about what terrible people we all were and how wonderful Dan was…’

‘That is
not
true, Lilah.’

Jen came back to the table with another bottle.

‘Am I being unfair, Jen? What did you think of it?’

Dan could hardly bear to look up at her, but when he did, he didn’t see anger or sadness, he saw embarrassment.

‘Well, I thought…’

She hadn’t seen it. It had never occurred to him before that she wouldn’t have watched it, but right then, he knew. ‘Well, the thing is…’ she tried again.

‘You haven’t seen it, have you?’ Dan asked her.

She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t shown in the cinema in France,’ she said with an apologetic smile. It was, actually, but he didn’t bother to correct her, he just smiled and let her pour him another glass of wine.

He ought to feel relieved. He wasn’t sure how she’d have reacted to it, she might have hated it. The others did, after all. But he wasn’t relieved, he was disappointed. He wanted to know what she felt when she watched it, if she recognised the scenes that she’d influenced, all that time ago, when they’d spent all those nights talking about it. Lilah was right that he’d made a lot of money from the film; it had opened doors for him, it had set his career in motion. It cost him though, he’d paid a price. And if she hadn’t seen it, never even wanted to see it, well. Perhaps the price looked a little high.