The Reunion (17 page)

‘That doesn’t seem fair,’ Andrew said.

‘Maybe not, but as a woman you’re brought up expecting men to betray you. You don’t expect it of your best friend.’

‘Lilah, it wasn’t like that, Natalie never meant…’

‘Look,’ Lilah cut him off. ‘That’s between me and her,’ she said. After the way he was in the house, the way he supported her, defended her, after the way he came out into the storm to find her, she really couldn’t bear to hear him make excuses for Natalie right now. Not after what had just happened. ‘The important thing is that I’ve forgiven you,’ she said.

‘Well,’ he sighed. ‘I haven’t.’ His face was stern, so very serious. ‘I haven’t forgiven myself.’

‘Ah, but you never will,’ Lilah said. ‘For anything.’

It had been January, a biting cold Sunday night. Lilah had driven all the way to Basingstoke to pick Andrew up from the station. He’d got the train back from Shepton, but there were engineering works on the line, and she knew how tired he was, and how tedious it was to have to take the bus replacement service, so she’d offered to come and get him. At first he’d said no. He’d asked her whether she’d had a drink that afternoon, which infuriated her. Particularly under the circumstances. They’d made up on the phone, but she wanted to do it for real. In the flesh. So she drove all the way there to pick him up.

He was in an odd mood. He was always a little edgy after his visits to Natalie, but that Sunday he seemed different. He seemed agitated, cagey. Usually, after a visit to Natalie’s he’d talk non-stop, about how she was, how much progress she’d made in her recovery, how far she had to go. Not this time. He didn’t want to talk, not just about the weekend, but about anything. Lilah prattled away, talking about the party she’d been to on Friday night, about shopping with her mother on Saturday. She was aware that she was talking to herself, but she didn’t seem to be able to stop, and somewhere deep down inside of her, panic was rising.

She thought it must be the argument they’d had earlier. He was still annoyed by that, and he was probably also tired. He certainly looked exhausted, the circles under his eyes deeper and darker than they had been even of late. She wanted to make things better, for him, for both of them, and so she fell back on what she seemed always to fall back on these days. Placing her hand lightly on his thigh, she said:

‘Why don’t we stop somewhere? We can stay in a nasty Travelodge and pretend we’re travelling salespeople having a torrid affair.’ She turned to give him her cheekiest, most enticing little smile, but he wasn’t looking at her, he was staring out of the window. She gave his leg a squeeze. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’ll be fun.’

‘Eyes on the road, Lilah,’ he said wearily, still not looking at her.

‘Andrew…’

‘I just want to go home.’

They drove on in silence. Lilah could feel the tears rising in her throat, there with the panic, and she wasn’t sure why she felt like this, but she thought that if Andrew kept drumming his fingers on the dashboard like that she was going to smack him.

‘What is it? Please, Drew, just tell me what’s going on. Was it a bad weekend with Nat? Was she worse?’

Silence.

‘Andrew…’

‘Lilah, just drive, OK? And watch your speed, yeah, you’re doing ninety.’

Lilah pressed her foot down harder on the accelerator. She watched the speedo go to ninety-five, one hundred, one ten, and she could feel a wobble in the steering wheel, and she pressed her foot down harder still.

‘Please, Lilah.’ No more than a whisper. His face was grey. She relaxed her foot off the pedal, changed lanes, into the middle and then the slow lane, then pulled off the motorway at the next exit. Fleet Services.

In Lilah’s mind, Fleet Services on the M3 would forever live in infamy. They parked in an almost deserted car park and sat for a moment, staring at the dispiritingly cheerful yellow of the McDonald’s arches, the bright, buzzing strip light emanating from the food court.

‘I’ll get us some coffee,’ Lilah said. She had her hand on the door handle, but she didn’t actually move. Andrew reached out, and slowly took her other hand in his, squeezing it tight. She squeezed back, and in that moment she knew, not exactly what was coming, but that she and Andrew were finished.

‘Do you think,’ she asked very softly, her voice husky with tears, ‘that you’ll ever forgive me, Drew?’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said. It meant nothing, when he said it. They’d all got so tired of hearing those words over the past six months.

‘But will you forgive me?’

That’s when he did it. Andrew, the martyr, falling on his sword and letting her turn her guilt to rage.

‘I don’t love you any more, Lilah,’ he said, blunt as a hammer, his voice low and steady. He listened to her start to cry. Then he said: ‘I’ve fallen in love with Natalie.’

He listened to the catch in her breath, the little gasp of pain. ‘You knew that. Don’t pretend you didn’t know.’

‘You feel sorry for her,’ Lilah sobbed. ‘That isn’t love.’

Andrew waited a long time before replying. Finally, he said: ‘It is love. And the thing I’ve only just realised is that it’s always been her. For me. I’m sorry. I really am.’

Lilah turned to him. She’d stopped crying; the expression on her face was genuine bewilderment, disbelief. ‘Always? You don’t mean that, Andrew, you can’t. We’ve been together four years, you can’t mean that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, and he got out of the car, and walked into the service station. Lilah sat there for a few minutes, waiting for him to come back, to tell her it was a mistake, he didn’t mean it, it wasn’t true. Then she drove home alone.

There were lights up ahead, a cluster of lights. They’d reached the village. Andrew spread his fingers out wide on the wheel, stretching and flexing his hands to release the tension.

‘Thank God for that,’ he said.

‘You never told me,’ Lilah said, ‘how you got home that night? From Fleet.’

He smiled. ‘Does it matter?’ he asked, and as he did they heard a noise from behind, the car was flooded with light, there was a thump, not vicious, but hard enough to jolt them both forward against their seatbelts. The car shunted forward suddenly, veering to the right, towards the edge of the mountain. Andrew put his foot on the brake and Lilah felt the back wheels start to slide, propelling the car towards the precipice.

‘Don’t brake,’ she said helplessly, grabbing at the dashboard and at the door handle. ‘Andrew, take your foot off the brake.’

He did, but it was too late. Lilah closed her eyes as the car slid from the road.

24 January 1997

Email, from Dan to Andrew

Hey man.

God, when did things get so fucked up? I hope you’re OK, you sounded in bits on the phone.

Listen, she’s here with me, she’ll be OK. I’ll take care of her, don’t worry. She’s drinking like a fish of course, but I’m keeping an eye on her. I’ve persuaded her to stay at least until her mum gets back from holiday, then I think she’s going to move back in with her, so she’ll be all right.

She’s gutted, obviously. But you know what she’s like: one minute she’s banging on about how you’ve broken her heart and she’ll never recover, the next she’s saying that she knew things were over months ago but she didn’t want to end it with you because she felt sorry for you.

The thing with Nat, though. That’s going to be harder. I assume you’re seeing/speaking to Nat regularly – if you are, tell her to stop calling. Lilah is not going to be ready to speak to her any time soon. Maybe she should write or something, I don’t know. Honestly, I think she should just leave it, for a few months at least. Wait until Lilah’s found herself a new guy (don’t want to be harsh, but you know it’s not going to be that long), wait until she’s on a bit more of an even keel.

As I say, I’m not going to let anything bad happen to her. I’ve been trying, as best I can, to persuade her to just stay in and get trashed with me rather than going out on the town where she could get herself into trouble. We’ve had some good long chats, actually, about you and Conor, Jen, everything. It’s been all right. She’ll be all right.

Best of luck, mate. I’ll come to Reading and see you as soon as I can (not now though, because Lilah will take that as me siding with you and she’ll scratch my eyes out). Love to Nat. I think it’s a good thing, you and her. I really do. It’s been a long time coming, hasn’t it?

Dan

SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE, IN
the darkness, something was making a noise. A banging sound, eerily rhythmic, bang, bang, bang. Like someone hammering on a door, begging to be let in from the storm. Or someone breaking a door down. Jack Nicholson with an axe and a manic grin. Honey, I’m home. The hairs were standing up on the back of Dan’s neck.

‘What
is
that noise?’ he asked.

The four of them were in the kitchen, scrabbling around in the half-light generated by the wood burner, searching through every drawer and every cupboard for some candles.

‘No idea,’ Jen muttered. ‘Where the hell did I put them? I know I bought candles yesterday. I know I did.’

The banging stopped. Then it started again, louder this time.

‘Seriously, what is that?’ Dan glanced over at Natalie; she was looking nervous, too.

‘I think there might be someone out there,’ Dan said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Zac said. ‘There’s no one out there.’

‘I thought I saw a light, actually,’ Natalie said. ‘A little while ago.’

‘Where?’ Dan could feel his heart racing. It was ridiculous, but he was starting to feel really creeped out.

‘Out back, towards the woods.’

Bang, bang, bang.

It was the perfect horror movie set-up. A group of people go to a house in the middle of nowhere, an idyllic location by day, lonely and menacing by night. A storm blows up. Some members of the group are separated. The lights go out. There are strange noises outside. Jesus Christ, all they were missing was a maniac in a hockey mask with a butcher’s knife.

Dan was really starting to freak himself out now. ‘Perhaps we should just sit tight for a bit,’ he said, glancing around behind him, trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling that there was someone else there, someone standing in the darkened hallway, watching them. ‘Let’s just sit by the fire for a bit, have a drink. The lights are bound to come back on in a minute.’

Jen snorted. ‘After the last storm the power was off for nearly thirty-six hours,’ she said. ‘We need to find those bloody candles.’

‘Where else could you have put them?’ Natalie asked her. ‘Is there another cupboard maybe, somewhere in the living room?’

‘Oh fuck,’ Jen said quietly.

‘What?’ everyone asked in unison.

‘I didn’t buy them.’

‘What?’ Dan yelped, louder than he’d intended.

‘I just remembered, I was on my way to get them from the alimentation generale in Draguignan, and then I saw that rug in the window of that design shop… Oh, bloody hell. I don’t believe I did that. I never got any candles.’

‘Do you have a torch?’ Zac asked her.

‘There was one somewhere…’ she said, casting around in the darkness.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Dan said, hoping that exasperation might cover fear.

Jen couldn’t find a torch, so they lit their way with mobile phones.

‘At least they can be used for something,’ Zac pointed out cheerfully. ‘Since there’s no signal, I mean.’ Dan had had just about enough of Zac, his bravado, his optimism, his sunny fucking disposition. They moved back into the living room and sat around the fire. Dan had brought a bottle of whisky with him from the kitchen; he poured himself a glass, offered one to Natalie who seized it gratefully. Her hands were shaking, her breathing a little ragged. During the whole candle crisis she’d been holding things together, but he could see now that with nothing to do, no way to contact her husband, the storm still raging outside, she was starting to unravel.

Bang, bang, bang.

‘Jesus,’ Dan breathed, gulping down a mouthful of Scotch. ‘That really is starting to set me on edge.’

‘Relax,’ Zac said, smiling at him encouragingly. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing.’

‘What do you mean, it’s nothing? How could it be nothing? It’s obviously
something
. Something is making a banging noise.’

‘The attic,’ Jen said.

‘You think there’s something in the attic?’ Dan asked, his stomach curling itself into a small, hard ball. ‘It’s not coming from the attic. It’s coming from outside, surely?’

‘No, not the noise. There were a couple of boxes of stuff, left here by the old tenant. Some kitchen utensils and things. I put them up in the attic. I think there might have been some candles in there. Those thin, churchy ones. I didn’t bother to take them out because I had plenty of my own.’

‘Right you are,’ Zac said, leaping to his feet. ‘I’ll go up and get them then. How do you get into the attic?’

‘I’ll show you,’ Jen said, getting up.

‘No, I remember,’ Dan said reluctantly. ‘There’s a trapdoor in the ceiling just outside your bedroom, isn’t there?’