In a Dark, Dark Wood (14 page)

Tom and Nina were conferring over the top of my head.

‘We think it was as an understudy in
The History Boys
,’ Nina said at last. Flo sucked in her breath.

‘Ooooh! Close. I’m sorry – that was his
second
role. Over to Clare?’

‘
Vincent in Brixton
,’ Clare said. ‘One point to me.’

‘Never heard of it,’ Nina said. Tom leaned across me and punched her.

‘It won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play!
And
a Tony Award.’

‘Never heard of that either. Who’s Tony?’

‘Jesus!’ Tom threw up his hands. ‘I’m in a car with a bleeding philistine.’

‘OK,’ Flo said loudly, talking over them. ‘Fifth and final question before we hand over to Clare for her round. When and where did James propose to Clare?’

I shut my eyes again, listening to the chorus of protest from Tom and Nina.

‘That’s not fair!’

‘They should at least be things that Clare has a
chance
of not knowing.’

‘He proposed on her birthday,’ Tom said, ‘I know that. Because they came to lunch with me and Bruce the next day and Clare was flashing that ring. Where is it, Clare?’

‘Oh, I—’ I heard Clare shift in the driving seat and fumble the gear change as we took a junction too fast. ‘I left it at home. To tell you the truth I’ve not got used to wearing it yet and I keep panicking I’m going to lose it.’

‘As for where …’ I could hear the frown in Tom’s voice. ‘I’m going to go for a pure punt and say, J. Sheekey?’

‘Ooh, so close!’ Flo sucked in her breath. ‘Birthday was right but it was in the bar at the Southbank. Sorry, half a point there. So that’s … three and a half points, and a point and a half to Clare.’

‘Some of those were fixes,’ Tom grumbled. ‘But we’ll get our revenge.’

‘Right, round two, question one to Clare. What was James’s first pet called?’

‘Blimey.’ Clare sounded stumped. ‘I think it was a hamster but I honestly don’t know.’

‘Backseat team?’

‘No idea,’ Nina said. ‘Nora?’

She had the grace to sound awkward, as if she knew how painful this all was. I did know. But I was damned if I was telling them. I only shook my head.

‘A guinea pig called Mindy. Nul points. Question two. Who is James’s ideal celebrity woman?’

Clare burst out laughing. ‘OK, for self-respect I’m going to say the person who looks most like me. Which is … God, who do I look like? Christ. You always sound delusional whatever you say. OK, he likes strong women, funny women. I’m going to say … Billie Piper.’

‘You don’t look anything like Billie Piper!’ Nina objected. ‘Well, except that you’re both blonde.’

‘Well it’s not Billie Piper,’ Flo said. ‘It’s—’ she consulted her piece of paper. ‘Jees, I have no idea who this is: Jean, how do you say that? Morrow? Clare?’

‘Never heard of her either. Is she a stage actress, Tom?’

‘Right here,’ Flo interjected and we rounded the corner with a sickening swing.

‘Jeanne Moreau,’ Tom said. ‘She’s a French actress. She was in that Truffaut film.
Jules et Jim
, I think it was. But I didn’t know she was James’ favourite actress.’

‘Well, I’d hardly call her a celebrity,’ Clare grumbled as we lurched over a humpback bridge and picked up speed. The sick feeling rose again. ‘Next question.’

‘What is James’s favourite designer clothes label?’

Favourite designer clothes label? The James I’d known would have laughed at the very suggestion. I wondered if it was a trick question and Clare was about to say Oxfam.

Clare tapped her fingers on the wheel, thinking. ‘I’m stuck between Alexander McQueen,’ she said at last, ‘and Comme des Garçons. But I’m going to go for … McQueen. Mainly because he actually wears McQueen.’

Jesus wept.

‘Correct!’ Flo said. ‘Well, it actually says “If we’re talking people I think are cool, then probably Vivienne Westwood, but if you mean designers I actually wear, then McQueen.” So I think that counts. Question four, which body part—’ she began to laugh ‘—did James accidentally slice off aged ten in a woodwork lesson?’

‘He took a chunk off his knuckle,’ Clare said instantly. ‘The scar’s still there.’

I squeezed my eyes tighter shut. I remembered that scar so well, a white circle on the knuckle of his little finger, and a long silver line tracing up the outside of his wrist, pale against his tan. I remembered kissing my way along that line, up his forearm, to the soft crook of his elbow, and James lying there, stiff and shaking, trying not to laugh as my lips brushed the ticklish soft skin of his inner arm.

‘Correct!’ Flo said. ‘You’re doing well. Levelled up. It’s three and a half all round. So this final one is the decider. If Clare gets this, she wins and you lot wear the pants. So, drum roll please. At what age did James lose his virginity?’

Nausea rose up in my throat and I opened my eyes.

‘Stop the c-car.’

‘What?’ Clare glanced at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘Jesus, Lee, you’re green.’

‘Stop the car,’ I put a hand over my mouth. ‘I’m going …’ I couldn’t say any more. I pressed my lips together, breathing through my nose as Clare bumped to a hasty halt, and then I scrambled out across Nina’s lap and stood on the snowy verge, hands on knees, shivering with the strange aftermath of nausea.

‘Are you OK?’ I heard Flo’s anxious voice behind me. ‘Want me to do anything?’

I couldn’t speak. I just shook my head vehemently, wishing she’d go away. Wishing they’d
all
go away.

‘Are you all right, Lee?’ Clare’s voice floated out of the window.

Nora
, I thought, viciously,
you stupid bitch
. But I said nothing. Just waited for my shuddering breathing to go back to normal, and the sickness to subside.

‘Are you OK, Nora?’ It was Nina, beside me, her hand on my shoulder. I nodded, and then slowly straightened up, taking a long, shaky breath. The cold air stung the inside of my lungs, but it was a clear, cleansing cold, a relief after the hot stuffiness of the car.

‘Yeah. Sorry. I just went a bit … I think it was sitting in the back seat.’

‘I think it was Flo’s fucking nauseating quiz,’ Nina said. She didn’t bother to lower her voice and I winced on Flo’s behalf and glanced behind me apologetically, but either she didn’t hear, or she didn’t care. She was chatting away to Clare unconcernedly. ‘Flo,’ Nina said, turning back to the car, ‘I think Nora should sit in the front, is that OK?’

‘Oh yeah! Totally, totally fine. Totally. Nora, you poor thing! You should have said if you were feeling rubbish.’

‘I’m OK,’ I said stiffly, but I took the front seat that Flo had vacated and slid in beside Clare. She flashed me a sympathetic look and when Flo said enthusiastically from the back seat, ‘Right! Back to the quiz!’ Clare interjected.

‘I think we’ll just call it a draw, yeah, Flops? Maybe we’ve all had enough quiz for the moment.’

‘Oh.’ Flo’s face fell, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. Whoever’s fault this whole mess was, it wasn’t hers. Her only crime was trying to be a good friend to Clare.

15

‘
LEONORA
!’
THERE IS
a hand shaking me, pulling me awake. ‘Leonora, I’m going to need you to wake up, duckie. Leonora.’

I feel fingers pulling at my eyelids and a light, blindingly bright, shining in.

‘Ow!’ I blink and pull back, and a hand lets go of my chin.

‘Sorry, ducks, are you awake now?’

The face is disconcertingly close, her eyes staring into mine. I blink again, and then nod.

‘Yes. Yes, I’m awake.’

I don’t know when I dozed off. It felt like I was awake half the night, watching the silhouettes of the police through the glass, running through things in my head, trying to remember. The clay-pigeon shoot. That was the recoil bruise. I must remember to tell the police … if only I can keep things straight in my head.

But the closer things get to – to whatever happened, the hazier they get. What did happen? Why am I here?

I must have spoken the last words aloud for the nurse gives a sympathetic smile.

‘You had a bit of a car accident my love.’

‘Am I OK?’

‘Yes, nothing broken.’ She has a pleasant Northumberland burr. ‘But you’ve knocked your poor face something awful. You’ve got a couple of beautiful black eyes – but no fractures. But that’s why I had to wake you. We have to do observations every few hours, just to make sure you’ve not had a funny turn in the night.’

‘I was asleep,’ I say stupidly, and then rub my face. It hurts as if I’ve headbutted a window.

‘Careful now,’ the nurse says. ‘You’ve got a few cuts and bruises.’

I rub my feet, feeling the grime and grit and blood. I feel disgusting. I need a pee.

‘Can I have a shower?’ I ask. My head feels bleary.

There is an ensuite in the corner of the room, I can see. The nurse looks down at the chart at the foot of the bed. ‘Let me ask the doctor. I’m not telling you no, but I’d like to just make sure.’

She turns to go, and I catch sight of the silhouette outside the door, and it comes back to me: the conversation I heard last night. It has a nightmarish quality. Was it really true? Did I really hear what I thought I heard, or did I dream it?

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Wait, last night I heard the people outside—’

But she’s gone already, the door flapping back behind her with a gust of food smells and sounds from the corridor. As she walks out the policewoman outside catches at her arm and I hear a burst of conversation, and see the nurse shaking her head emphatically. ‘Not yet,’ I hear, ‘… permission from the doctor … have to wait.’

‘I don’t think you appreciate,’ the policewoman’s voice is low but her tones are clipped and clear as a newsreader’s, and her words filter through the glass much more distinctly than the nurse’s northern burr. ‘That this is now a homicide investigation.’

‘Och, no!’ The nurse is shocked. ‘The poor love didn’t make it, then?’

‘No.’

So it’s true. I didn’t imagine it. It wasn’t some product of too much morphine and my battered head.

It’s true.

I struggle up against the pillows, my heart pounding in my throat, and on the monitor to my left I see the little green line leaping with panicked jerks against the flatline.

Someone is definitely dead.

Someone is
dead
.

But who?

16

‘
WELCOME TO TUCKETT
’
S
wood,’ the man said in a slightly bored Australian accent. He was tanned and chiselled and reminded me slightly of Tom Cruise – and from the way Flo was gazing at him, her green eyes wide and her mouth slightly open, I could tell that I wasn’t the only one seeing the resemblance. ‘My name’s Grig, and I’ll be your instructor here today.’

He stopped, seeming to count heads and then said, ‘Hang about, I’ve got six here on my booking. Someone gone AWOL?’

‘Yes,’ Flo said tightly. ‘Someone certainly has. No prizes for guessing who
I’ll
be imagining when I open fire.’

‘So we’re five then today?’ the instructor said easily, not seeming to notice Flo’s tense annoyance. ‘Fair dos. Right, first off I have to tell you about our safety precautions …’

He began a long speech about ear defenders, alcohol, the responsibilities of gun ownership and so on.

Once we’d established that, yes, we were all complete beginners, no, none of us held a shotgun licence, and yes, we were all aged over eighteen and sober, we signed a long waiver form and trooped through into the back half of the outward-bound centre, where the instructor sized us up.

‘All I can say is, thank God you’re none of you wearing pink feather boas and all that malarky. You wouldn’t believe the trouble we have with hen parties. You,’ he pointed at Flo, ‘Flo, was it? Your jacket’s a bit thin. You probably want something a bit thicker against the recoil.’ He dug around in a chest behind him and fished out a padded Barbour. Flo made a face but put it on.

‘Sorry, I have to ask,’ she said as she zipped it up. ‘Is your name really Grig? Is that a nickname?’

‘Nah, Grig. Short for Grigory.’

‘Oh,
Greg
,’ Flo said, and laughed a little too loudly. Greg gave her a slightly odd look.

‘Yeah, Grig. That’s what I said. Now the thing to remember,’ he continued, getting out a broken shotgun and laying it on a trestle table, ‘is that a gun is a wippon designed to kill. Never forget that. Treat it with respect, and it’ll treat you with respect. Mess around with it, and like as not, you’ll be the one that ends up messed up. And most important of all, never, never point a gun at anyone, loaded or unloaded. And if you get a misfire, don’t go looking down the barrel to see what happened. All this sounds simple, but you’d be amazed how often people don’t obey simple safety precautions.

‘Right. Now we’re gonna run through a few basics about loading, closing and breaking the gun, and then we’ll head out into the wood and try a few clays. Any questions, just shout. Now the first cartridges we’ll be shooting with today …’

We all listened in silence as he talked through the technicalities, the silliness of the car journey quite gone. I was glad to have something to concentrate on, glad to stop thinking about Clare and James, and I got the impression that the others felt the same, or at least most of them. Nina and Clare had both changed the subject when Flo had tried to start discussing the honeymoon plans. Tom had said nothing, and had spent most of the remaining car journey tapping away on his Blackberry, but I saw his quick glance up at me and Clare, and I knew that he was filing all this away.

If you write about this
, I thought,
I will fucking kill you
, but I said nothing, just nodded as Greg said something about automatic traps.

At last the talk was done and we all followed Greg and trooped out of the hut into the sparse pine wood, our guns broken and hooked over our arms.

‘Hey, if you enjoy this, maybe you should put a shotgun on the wedding list!’ Flo said to Clare, and gave her loud braying laugh. ‘Shotgun wedding in the most literal sense, huh?’