In a Dark, Dark Wood (7 page)

Clare put the car back into gear and hushed ‘Single Ladies’ with a click of the mute button. The silence was suddenly deafening.

‘So …’ She looked at me sideways in the mirror. She was just as beautiful as ever. I’d been crazy to think ten years could have made a difference to Clare. Her beauty was bone-deep. Even in the dim light of the car, muffled up in an old hoodie and a giant snood-like scarf, she looked startling. Her hair was piled on top of her head in an adorably messy knot that spilled down over her shoulders. Her nails were painted scarlet, but chipped – not try-hard, no one could accuse Clare of that. Pitch-perfect, more like.

‘So,’ I echoed back. I had always felt like the poor relation in comparison to Clare. Ten years had changed nothing, I realised.

‘Long time no see.’ She was shaking her head, her fingertips tapping on the wheel. ‘But God, I mean … it’s good to see you, Lee, you know?’

I said nothing.

I wanted to tell her I was not that person any more – I was Nora now, not Lee.

I wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault, the reason I hadn’t kept in touch was nothing to do with her – that it was
me
. Only … that wasn’t completely true.

Most of all, I wanted to ask her why I was here.

But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. I just sat, staring up at the house as we wound closer.

‘It’s
really
good to see you,’ she said again. ‘So, you’re a writer now – is that right?’

‘Yes,’ I said. The words seemed strange and false in my mouth, as if I were lying, or telling stories about someone else, a distant relative perhaps. ‘Yes, I’m a writer. I write crime fiction.’

‘I heard. I saw a piece in the paper. I’m so— I’m really pleased for you. That’s amazing, you know? You should be very proud.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s just a job.’ The words came out stiff and bitter – I didn’t mean them like that. I know I’m lucky. And I worked hard to get here. I should be proud. I
am
proud.

‘What about you?’ I managed.

‘I’m in PR. I work for the Royal Theatre Company.’

PR. That figured, and I smiled, a genuine smile this time. Clare was always amazing at spinning a story, even at twelve. Even at
five
.

‘I’m … I’m very happy,’ she said softly. ‘And listen, I’m sorry we lost touch – seeing you … we had some good times, didn’t we?’ She glanced at me in the ghostly green light from the dashboard. ‘Remember having our first fag together?’ She gave a laugh. ‘First kiss … first joint … first time sneaking into an eighteen film …’

‘First time getting chucked out,’ I retorted, and then wished I hadn’t sounded so snide. Why? Why was being I so defensive?

But Clare only laughed. ‘Ha, what a humiliation! We thought we were being so clever – getting Rick to buy the tickets and sneaking through to the loos. I didn’t think they’d check at the screen door as well.’

‘Rick! I’d forgotten him. What’s he up to these days?’

‘God knows! Probably in prison. For underage sex, if there’s any justice.’

Rick had been Clare’s boyfriend for a year when we were fourteen or fifteen, a greasy long-haired twenty-two-year-old with a motorbike and a gold tooth. I’d never liked him – even at fourteen I’d found it bizarre and disgusting that Clare would want to sleep with a bloke that age, despite the fact that he could get into clubs and buy alcohol.

‘Ugh, he was such a creep,’ I said, before I thought better of it. I bit my tongue, but Clare only laughed.

‘Totally! I can’t believe I couldn’t see it at the time. I thought I was so sophisticated having sex with an older guy! Now it seems like … like one step away from paedophilia.’ She gave a snort and then an exclamation as the car bounced off a pothole. ‘Oops! Sorry.’

There was silence for a while as she negotiated the last and most rutted part of the drive, and then we swung onto the gravelled space at the front of the house, tucking in neatly between Nina’s hire car and Flo’s Landrover.

Clare turned off the engine and for a minute we just sat in the dark car, contemplating the house, with the players inside ranged like actors on a stage, just as Tom had said. There was Flo, beavering away in the kitchen, bending over the oven. Melanie was hunched over the phone in the living room, Tom sprawled across a sofa directly opposite the plate-glass window, flicking through a magazine. Nina was nowhere to be seen – out having a fag on the balcony, most likely.

Why am I here?
I thought again, with a kind of agony this time.
Why did I come?

Then Clare turned to me, her face lit by the golden light streaming from the house. ‘Lee—’ she said, at the same time as I said, ‘Look—’

‘What?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘No, you go first.’

‘No you, honestly. It wasn’t important.’

My heart was beating painfully in my chest, and suddenly I couldn’t ask it any more, the question on the tip of my tongue. Instead I forced out, ‘I’m not Lee any more. I’m Nora.’

‘What?’

‘My name. I don’t go by Lee any more. I never liked it.’

‘Oh.’ She was silent, digesting this. ‘OK. So it’s Nora now, huh?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’ll do my best to remember. It’s going to be hard though – after, what, twenty-one years of knowing you as Lee.’

But you never knew me
, I thought involuntarily, and then frowned. Of course Clare had known me. She’d known me since I was five. That was exactly the problem – she knew me too well. She saw through the thin, adult veneer to the scrawny, frightened child beneath.

‘Why, Clare?’ I said suddenly, and she looked up, her face blank and pale in the darkness.

‘Why what?’

‘Why am I here?’

‘Oh God.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘I knew you’d ask that. I suppose you wouldn’t believe me if I said auld lang syne and all that?’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not that, is it? You had ten years to make contact if you wanted to. Why now?’

‘Because …’ She took a deep breath, and I was astonished to realise that she was nervous. It was hard to process. I’d never seen her anything less than totally self-possessed; even aged five, she’d had a stare that could make the most hardened teacher melt, or wilt, whichever she chose. It was, I suppose, why we’d been friends, in a strange way. She had what I craved: that all-encompassing self-possession. Even standing in her shadow I’d felt stronger. But not any more.

‘Because …’ she said again, and I saw her chipped, lacquered nails glint, red as blood, as her fingers twisted together and her nails caught the light from the house and reflected it back into the car. ‘Because I thought you deserved to know. Deserved to be told – face to face. I promised … I promised
myself
I’d do it to your face.’

‘What?’ I leaned forward. I wasn’t frightened, only puzzled. I’d forgotten my stained wet shoes, and the stench of sweat on my clothes. I’d forgotten everything apart from this: Clare’s worried face, filled with an edgy vulnerability I’d never seen before.

‘It’s about the wedding,’ she said. She looked down at her hands. ‘It’s about … it’s about who I’m marrying.’

‘Who?’ I said. And then, to make her laugh, to try to break the tension that was filling the car and infecting me, I said, ‘It’s not Rick, is it? I always knew—’

‘No,’ she broke in, meeting my eyes at last, and there was not a shred of laughter there, only a kind of steely determination, as if she were about to do something unpleasant but utterly necessary. ‘No. It’s James.’

7

FOR A MOMENT
I stared at her, willing myself to have misheard.

‘What?’

‘It … it’s James. I’m marrying James.’

I said nothing. I sat, staring out at the sentinel trees, hearing the blood in my ears hiss and pound. Something was building inside me like a scream. But I said nothing. I pushed it back down.

James
?

Clare and
James
?

‘That’s why I asked you.’ She was speaking fast now, as though she knew she didn’t have much time, that I might get up and bolt from the car at any moment. ‘I didn’t want— I thought I shouldn’t invite you to the wedding. I thought it would be too hard. But I couldn’t bear for you to hear it from somewhere else.’

‘But … then who the hell is William Pilgrim?’ It burst out of me like an accusation. For a second Clare looked at me blankly. Then she realised, and her face changed, and at the same second I knew where I’d heard that name before, and realised how stupid I’d been. Billy Pilgrim.
Slaughterhouse-Five
. James’s favourite book.

‘It’s his Facebook name,’ I said dully. ‘For privacy – so fans don’t find his personal profile when they search. That’s why he doesn’t have a profile picture. Right?’

Clare nodded wretchedly. ‘I never meant to mislead you,’ she said pleadingly. She reached her warm hand out towards my numb, mud-spattered one. ‘And James thought you should know before—’

‘Wait a minute.’ I pulled my hand away abruptly. ‘You talked to
him
about this?’

She nodded and put her hands to her face. ‘Lee – I’m so …’ She stopped and took a deep breath, and I got the feeling she was marshalling herself, working out what to say next. When she spoke again it was with a trace of defiance, a flicker of the Clare I remembered, who would have attacked, who would have died fighting rather than lie down under an accusation. ‘Look, I won’t apologise. Neither of us have done anything wrong. But please, won’t you give us your blessing?’

‘If you haven’t done anything wrong,’ my voice was hard, ‘why do you need it?’

‘Because you were my friend! My best friend!’

Were
.

We both registered the past tense at the same time, and I saw my own reaction reflected in Clare’s face.

I bit my lip, so hard that it hurt, crushing the soft skin between my teeth.

You have my blessing. Say it. Say it!

‘I—’

There was a sound from the house. The door opened, and there was Flo standing in the rectangle of light, shading her eyes as she looked out into the darkness. She was standing on the tips of her toes, almost toppling as she craned to see, and there was an air of suppressed excitement about her, like a child before a birthday party who might tip over into hysteria at any moment.

‘Hellooo?’ she called, her voice shockingly loud in the still night air. ‘Clare? Is that you?’

Clare let out a trembling breath, and opened the car door. ‘Flopsie!’ Her voice shook, but almost imperceptibly. I thought, not for the first time, what an amazing actress she was. It was not surprising she’d ended up in theatre. The only surprise was that she wasn’t on stage herself.

‘Clare-Bear!’ Flo shrieked, and catapulted down the steps onto the gravel. ‘Oh my God, it
is
you! I heard a noise and thought … but then no one came.’ She was stumbling hastily down the path in front of the house, her bunny slippers shushing in the grit. ‘What are you doing out here in the dark all by yourself, you silly moo?’

‘I was talking to Lee. I mean, Nora.’ Clare waved a hand at my side of the car. ‘I ran into her on the way up the drive.’

‘Not literally, I hope! Oops!’ There was a crunch as Flo tripped over something in the dark and fetched up on her knees in front of the car with a rush. She jumped up, brushing herself down. ‘I’m fine! I’m fine!’

‘Calm down!’ Clare laughed, and hugged Flo. She whispered something into her hair that I didn’t hear, and Flo nodded. I pulled at the door handle and got stiffly out of the car. It had been a mistake not to walk those last few yards up to the house – going from running to sitting so abruptly, my muscles had seized up. Now it was an effort to straighten.

‘You all right, Lee?’ Clare said, turning back at the sound of me getting out. ‘You look like you’re hobbling a bit.’

‘I’m fine.’ I tried to match her in keeping my voice light. James.
James
. ‘Want a hand with your bags?’

‘Thanks, but I’ve not got much.’ She popped the boot and picked up a shoulder bag. ‘Come on then Flops, show us my room.’

Nina was nowhere to be seen when I climbed the last, painful step up to our room, holding my muddy trainers by the laces. I peeled off my spattered leggings and sweaty top, and crawled under the duvet in my bra and knickers. Then I lay, staring into the pool of light cast by the bedside lamp.

This had been a mistake. What had I been thinking of?

I’d spent ten years trying to forget James, trying to build a chrysalis of assurance and self-sufficiency around myself. And I’d thought I was succeeding. I had a good life. No, I had a
great
life. I had a job I loved, I had my own flat, I had some lovely friends, none of whom knew James or Clare or anyone else from my former life in Reading.

I was beholden to no one – emotionally, financially or in any other way. And that made me feel fine. Absolutely fucking fine, thanks very much.

And now this.

The worst of it was, I couldn’t blame Clare. She was right: she and James had done nothing wrong. They didn’t owe me anything, either of them. James and I had broken up over a
decade
ago, for Christ’s sake. No. The only person I could blame was myself. For not moving on. For not being
able
to move on.

I hated James for his hold over me. I hated that every time I met a man, I was comparing them in my head. The last time I slept with someone – two years ago – he had woken me in the night, his hand on my chest. ‘You were having a dream,’ he’d said. ‘Who’s James?’ And when he saw my stricken face, he’d swung his legs out of bed, got up, got dressed and walked out of my life. And I never even bothered to phone him back.

I
hated
James and I hated myself. And yes, I am fully aware that this makes me sound like the biggest loser in existence: the girl who meets a boy aged sixteen and obsesses over him for the next ten bloody
years
. Believe me, no one is more aware of that than me. If I met myself in a bar and got talking, I would despise myself too.

I could hear the others downstairs, talking and laughing, and caught the smell of pizza floating up the stairs.