Elizabeth leant forward and rested her chin in her hand. Her slim gold watch slid down her arm a little. ‘You’ve found the cine films? God, how incredible – I had no idea they were here.’ She tossed her head, showing her clean jaw and smooth neck.
Friday lunch had been the only time she was free as she was going to Edinburgh for a week on Saturday morning. I’d thought I should be there when Lucas asked her about his mother so I’d taken the day off work. I wished I could claim that my motivation was just to support him; in fact, that impulse was diluted by a less commendable one which would not let Danny be the only one either to hear what Elizabeth said or to comfort Lucas if need be. It felt strange to be sitting in the kitchen at the house, just the four of us, while the others were in their offices in London.
‘They were in the cupboard in his study,’ said Danny, reaching across the table to refill her glass. ‘There’s a whole box of them.’
‘Dear Patrick. He never could throw anything out.’
‘Why would he throw them out?’ asked Lucas.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She turned her head slightly to blow away the smoke from her cigarette. ‘I suppose they must have been special to him in a funny sort of way, a record of that summer here.’
‘So what was the idea behind them? Who took them?’ Danny, sitting opposite her, leant forward in his seat and put his elbow on the table, mirroring her posture.
‘Richard Appleton, the painter. Do you know his work?’
I hadn’t heard of him but Lucas nodded.
‘The Richard Appleton?’ said Danny, surprising me. ‘I saw some of his pictures when I was in New York last year.’
She nodded. ‘He was much bigger over there. I think he was the one person who wasn’t made here by his connection with Patrick. Anyway, he was always experimenting with new things. In a way, that was his problem. He was talented but he never stuck at anything, never really committed himself. He developed a big thing about the cine camera that summer and then just abandoned it. Not that it was work as such. He used to drive us mad, pointing it at things all the time. God alone knows how many sunsets he recorded. Have you found one of those yet?’
‘One or two.’ Lucas smiled. ‘I’m more interested in the ones with my mother in, though, Elizabeth. How many of those did he take?’
Almost imperceptibly, her face clouded, then cleared. ‘Oh, hardly any at all. It was mostly nature he was into.’
‘Really? I’ve seen quite a few with her in already.’
Elizabeth was stroking the shiny petals of one of the blood-coloured tulips that Lucas had cut for the lunch table. Standing naked at the window that morning, I had been startled to see a man wheeling a barrow across the lawn and had ducked down below the sill before he could see me. I’d forgotten about the gardener, having never seen him at weekends. Tulips don’t plant themselves, of course, though.
‘Elizabeth, were my mother and Patrick ever together?’
‘God, darling, it was so long ago.’ She turned the vase round and subjected another of the flowers to her scrutiny.
‘It can’t be a hard thing to remember.’
She looked up, struck by the uncharacteristic irritation in his tone. ‘Well, yes, I suppose they were.’
Lucas sat back under the weight of his confirmed suspicion. ‘Was it serious?’
‘Serious? No, not at all, not at all.’ She laughed lightly and tossed her head again. Today her hair was in a neat chignon but I wondered if the gesture was a hangover from the days when she swung it back over her shoulder, as I had seen her do on the cines. ‘Patrick met Claire first and they were together for a while but then she met your father and that was that.’ She smiled and put her hand over his. ‘They were so lovely together, Lucas.’
‘Didn’t Patrick mind?’
‘Mind? Oh, not really. I don’t think he and Claire were very involved. He was a little upset initially but that was bruised pride. And you know what he was like – he had such a generous spirit. He saw that Claire and Justin made each other happy and bowed out gracefully. And anyway, he and I got together then and that was a whole different ball game.’ She smiled. ‘It worked out for the best. For all of us.’
‘I’d hate it if a sister or even a friend stole a boyfriend from me. I’m not sure I’d just accept it,’ I said.
‘Your generation can be so bourgeois at times.’
‘But it was definitely before my parents were married?’ Lucas said.
‘Absolutely, darling.’
‘I think Lucas has been worrying that he’s the wrong brother’s son,’ said Danny.
‘For God’s sake, Danny,’ he said.
‘Oh Lucas, you poor thing. No, your parents were very much in love. There’s no way your mother would even have considered anyone else after she and your father got together.’
‘Did my mother paint?’
‘Paint?’
‘On a bit of film we’ve just watched, she and Patrick were decorating his study. It looked as if they were making it into a studio of some sort.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t for your mother. The study was painted for Patrick.’
‘He painted? I didn’t know that.’
‘Well, he stopped by the time you were old enough to be aware of it, I suppose. But yes, he liked to paint then.’
‘Was he any good?’
‘He wasn’t bad, for an amateur. But of course he was surrounded by all his artists so I think he felt a bit outclassed. It was fun, though, he enjoyed it.’
‘Why did he stop?’
‘I think he just got too busy, darling. His commitments at the gallery were huge, as you know.’ She drained her glass. ‘Danny, would you mind …’ He was on hand with the bottle even before she’d finished.
‘Is that one empty?’ said Lucas. ‘I’ll go and get another.’ He stood up from the table and took down the key for the cellar door.
‘I’m in the process of getting a camera myself,’ said Danny, as Lucas’s footsteps faded.
‘Are you? How interesting.’
I wondered for about two seconds where he was going to get the money for it. From the same place he got it for the new trainers he was wearing, I realised, and the lunch he’d bought for Elizabeth the previous weekend. ‘I rather like the cines,’ I said. ‘They definitely add a historical flavour, like sepia photos.’
Danny rolled his eyes. ‘You’re such a Luddite, Joanna. This is just for fun,’ he said to Elizabeth. ‘Quite separate from the project I was telling you about.’ That was news, too: he hadn’t mentioned anything remotely like work to the rest of us.
She nodded, watching his face all the time. I had to hand it to her: she certainly knew how to make a man feel he had her full attention.
‘Elizabeth, can I ask you something?’ I kept my voice low, in case Lucas was within hearing.
She turned back to me, the smile she had given Danny now fading.
‘The tapes. Is there anything on them that could hurt Lucas?’
‘It’s always painful to think about the past, don’t you think?’ she said. ‘To realise that the older generation were people themselves before they were your parents.’
‘You’re next, Martha.’ Danny, lying on his back in his usual place in front of the fire, reached over his head and handed her the joint. He opened his mouth and let the thick smoke rise out of it, as if he wasn’t breathing at all but surrendering himself to the laws of physics, letting it move out of him by osmosis. Martha had a quick toke and then passed it to me. It was a highly professional rolling job. Normally I didn’t but this evening I felt I needed it. The wine wasn’t doing the trick, despite the fact that we’d been drinking since lunchtime. I couldn’t seem to tip myself over into happy drunkenness but was stuck in an unpleasant limbo where I just felt tired and woolly-headed. Elizabeth had gone shortly after four o’clock but Lucas, Danny and I had carried on without a break. The others had some serious catching up to do when they finally arrived.
I took a drag, closing my eyes on the in-breath. When I opened them again Greg was watching me; I quickly looked away. The hit from the dope was almost instantaneous, a sudden heaviness in my arms and head, slight accompanying nausea. Other people always seemed to have a better time with it than I did.
‘Hurry up,’ said Lucas. ‘You’re wasting it. Smoke it or pass it on.’
‘Mate, we’ve got plenty,’ said Danny.
‘Roll another one then.’
‘You do it.’ Danny picked the bag of weed from his stomach and threw it across to him.
‘No, you do it. I paid for it.’ Lucas tossed it back. Reluctantly Danny pulled himself upright and reached for his rolling-board, a hardback edition of Bonfire of the Vanities.
More to annoy Lucas than because I really wanted it, I took another drag, then passed the last inch to Martha next to me. Lucas had been wired since lunch and, as far as I could see, the weed was doing little to relax him. He had had a lot to drink and there was an edge to him tonight that I didn’t like. Danny passed him the new joint, which he took without a word. He lit it, waited for the twist of paper at the end to burn away and took a huge lungful, closing his eyes and leaning back against the studded arm of the chesterfield. He smoked almost half of it before he opened his eyes again and gave it to Rachel.
‘I’m fine, actually,’ she said, taking it but passing it to Greg straightaway.
‘Loosen up for once, Rachel, can’t you?’ Lucas said. She looked at me and raised her eyebrows. He saw the bemused look I gave her in response.
‘What?’ he said to me, becoming more alert.
‘Nothing.’
‘If you’ve got something to say, say it.’
I hesitated, trying to find the best way to put it. ‘I just think you should relax a bit. Now you know there wasn’t anything going on between your mother and Patrick after she and your father were married.’
‘You know what? Why don’t you mind your own business for a change?’ He sat up.
‘No, I don’t mean …’
‘Tell me what you know about difficult families, why don’t you? You haven’t got a clue. Everything’s been easy for you, even though you play the outsider card when it suits you. I don’t know why you feel qualified to comment on my situation, with your happily married parents and your brothers and your family home.’ He pronounced the last two words with bitter disdain. ‘Why don’t you just fuck off? Go on, fuck off.’
In the silence that followed no one said anything. I stood up, feeling a spin from the dope, and walked out of the room. In the hall, the strange beating in my ears started up but I was beyond caring. I wanted to be away from Lucas. I wanted to be outside the house and its unbreathable atmosphere. I fumbled at the bolts on the outside door with shaking hands, annoying myself with the delay. As soon as the door opened and I hit fresh air, I felt better. I took hard breaths in, wishing I had my inhaler. My lungs were tight with tension. I couldn’t believe he’d spoken to me like that. Maybe he needed to be angry, to burn off some of the fear he must have had about what Elizabeth would tell him. I didn’t mind that. But what he had said about my family shocked me. It sounded like something he had been festering over for some time, nursing resentment.
All of a sudden I realised that I was battling insuperable odds. It wasn’t going to work out between us. There was too much in the way, too many differences. I couldn’t have a relationship in which I was made to feel bad about having a happy family background or to worry that I would have to sacrifice my career.
We had stepped over the boundary, only to find that what lay beyond wasn’t the great relationship we’d imagined. In my heart, I knew, I had suspected it from the start but I had ignored my instinct, hoping to prove it – and then Danny – wrong. The chemistry, that indefinable thing that makes great sex and cements a new relationship, wasn’t there. We were struggling, even so early on, and the effort of the struggle was taking its toll. I wished I could think straight. The beating in my ears had stopped but was replaced by the beginnings of a hangover, a low drone in the temples.
There was little cloud cover and the night air was chilly. The moon, though, was bright and cast the garden in a strange penumbrous light. I sat down at the place on the balustrade where Lucas and I had sat together on other evenings, blinked and felt the first tears tip down my cheeks. I gave in to them. I cried with self-pity for the break-up that was now imminent and with pity for Lucas because I knew it would hurt him badly. I cried for our friendship. I also cried for my parents, who suddenly I wanted very much. I had not seen them since Christmas and I couldn’t now think why I had let so much time pass. I was surrounded by the Manor’s garden and the huge elegant house itself and felt out of my depth. I wanted the comfort of my parents’ little house and my old bedroom.
Behind me the flower-lobby door opened and closed.
Without turning round, I tried to work out which member of the party had been dispatched to make sure I was all right or whether it was Lucas, come either to apologise or to elaborate on my failings. The footsteps were male. I surreptitiously wiped the tears off my face and made an effort to blink back those still in my eyes. It was unlikely that I would be able to hide the fact that I’d been crying but I could perhaps disguise how much. The footsteps came closer.
‘Jo.’ To my surprise, the voice was Greg’s.
I looked up at him. He registered my tears even in the darkness and sat down next to me, keeping his legs on the terrace side so that we were almost back to back. I stayed where I was, facing out from the house, my legs swinging over the drop.
‘I’m sorry he spoke to you like that.’
‘I shouldn’t have said anything to him. I should have just let him drink and smoke himself to sleep. He’d have woken up in a better mood tomorrow.’
‘If it’s any comfort, Martha’s just given him a pasting.’
‘It’s not like him. You know that, don’t you?’ I said.
‘Of course. He’s a good bloke.’
‘Yes,’ I said. Poor Lucas. He was right: I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be him, to find myself at the end of my twenties without a single member of family, no parents, no siblings. Even divorce was alien to me, something which as a child I’d regarded as a faintly glamorous thing that other people’s parents did. The tears started to fall again but at least they did so silently. I appreciated that Greg had faced away so that he couldn’t see, giving me support but privacy at the same time. It was easier to talk this way, as if to an unseen and unseeing confessor.
‘Are you going to be all right?’ he asked.
‘I think Lucas and I are going to split up. Although I know tonight wasn’t really about him being angry with me. Please don’t tell anyone this.’ I put my hand on his arm and he shook his head. ‘If I’m honest with myself, I know it’s not right and it hasn’t ever really been. I just wanted it to be. So much. Lucas has been my best friend for years, since right at the beginning of university. But it doesn’t translate. I’m trying to force something that isn’t there. I’m worried that if I talk to him about it he’ll hate me, too. He’s paranoid about people leaving him – his father, his mother and Patrick. How can I leave him? I’m the closest thing he’s got to family.’
‘But you’re not going anywhere. Not really. You still want to be around, to be friends. It might take a while to find a way to do it but if you both want it – and Lucas won’t want to lose you even if you do split up – you’ll work it out.’ He continued to look away from me, talking as if he were addressing someone else on the terrace. He moved his feet and I heard the grit between his shoes and the flagstones.
‘I’m useless at relationships,’ I said.
‘That’s not true. You’ve got loads of friends and you and Lucas are a far better couple than a lot I know, even if it doesn’t work out. You have fun, you’re supportive of each other …’
‘It doesn’t feel like that tonight.’
At last he turned round. ‘Please don’t cry, Jo.’ He put his hand on my cheek and turned my face towards him. He looked at me without saying anything. Though I knew my eyes were swollen and my face puffy, I felt suddenly unselfconscious. With his thumb, he brushed away the tears from each cheek in turn, still not breaking eye contact. The gesture felt protective.
He leant in and kissed me, his lips firm and warm on mine. When I didn’t immediately move away, he kissed me again and this time I responded. I couldn’t quite believe it. Even as it was happening, I was shocked by it. A picture of Rachel flashed into my head. We pulled apart.
‘My God, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to do that.’
Despite everything, I registered a feeling of sharp disappointment.
‘No, no, I didn’t mean that,’ he said quickly. ‘Of course I wanted to kiss you. But not like this. Not when we’re with other people, not when you’re upset. I don’t want to take advantage of you.’ He turned away from me and started to address the darkness again. ‘I really like you, Jo. I think you’re funny and kind and – well, I just like you. Since that weekend when you saw Rachel and me, I’ve found it quite difficult to be around you, especially when I see you and Lucas together. And I don’t have any right. Apart from anything else, you two have all this history. You’ve done so much together. All of you have, of course, but particularly you and him. How could I compete with that?’
‘I don’t think the history is helping us much at the moment,’ I said, trying to leaven things.
‘Maybe not. But there’s also the fact that I’m going out with one of your best friends. I care about her, I really do. For a while, I thought I was falling in love with her but I realise now that it isn’t going to work. There’s not enough common ground. I don’t share her thing about fashion.’ He sighed. ‘I actually find it quite frustrating, even though she’s great at it. And I need to sort it out because she wants to get married and have children and I’m wasting her time. But – and this is so callous – if Rachel and I split up, my line to you is lost. I’ve no other way of seeing you.’
‘What a mess,’ I said. ‘What a complete bloody mess.’ None of us had ever tangled with one of the others’ partners before, not even fleetingly and not even when we were much younger, when relationships were less serious. I saw now just how important that had been to us as a group rule, unspoken as it was.
‘Have I made a fool of myself?’ he said.
I didn’t have to think about it. ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘You know, it’s this place, the house. Ever since we started coming here, everything’s gone outside normal bounds. Lucas and I getting together after however many years, Danny and …’ I stopped myself just in time. ‘Maybe it’s because we feel like we’re on a bigger stage here. But sometimes I feel as if there’s something in the house that’s kind of egging us on towards catastrophe. Does that sound ridiculous?’
He took my hand and began rubbing up and down my fingers with the pad of his thumb. ‘No, but I think the first seems more likely – that something about the scale of the place makes people act up – I’m thinking of Danny in particular, of course.’
I smiled and we looked at each other again. This time it was me who put my hand around the back of his head, where the soft skin of his neck met the line of his close-cut hair. I pulled him towards me and kissed him. Our mouths became the hot focus of everything. All the desire I had felt in the library and the bath was there, undiminished. But also there was my growing sense of his all-round rightness and how much I liked him. I wanted to get lost in the kiss, absorb him and be absorbed by him. With as little break as possible, he shifted position, swinging one leg over the drop, and in that second I realised that this exact spot was where I had first kissed Lucas. I pulled back.
‘We should go inside. We need to sort things out. Not tonight, though. Just kiss me once more and we’ll go in.’
He pulled me towards him again, twisting his hands in my hair.
I think we both became aware at the same time that we were no longer on our own. We broke apart to find a figure standing just outside the flower-lobby door. Rachel.
‘Tell me this isn’t what it looks like,’ she said, her voice carrying over the flagstones in the stillness of the night.
Greg closed his eyes and lowered his head. ‘Shit,’ he said, just audibly. He looked up at her again. ‘Rachel, I’m sorry.’
She came closer, as if approaching an animal she knew could hurt her very badly and yet by which she was nonetheless fascinated. ‘Sorry?’
‘This is the first time,’ he said.
‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ she said. Even in the half-light her face was a screen for the emotions flashing across it in quick succession: genuine disbelief, bewilderment, anger. ‘Tell me I’m asleep and this is a nightmare.’
Greg swung his leg back over the balustrade and stood. He made to walk towards her. She took a corresponding couple of steps back. ‘Rachel.’
She made a dry sound that was somewhere between a choke and an ironic laugh. ‘Is this where you tell me you can explain?’
‘Please don’t. It’s a mess but please let me talk to you.’
‘I don’t want to talk to you, now or ever again. You’ve ruined it. I thought we had something really good. How wrong can you be? A friend of mine, too. Jo, you fucking selfish cow.’ She turned and ran back into the house, slamming the door behind her. Greg and I looked at each other in horror.
‘I’ll go after her,’ he said.
‘Shit. Shit. Lucas.’
* * *
I expected the house to be mayhem when we got inside but it was strangely quiet. As when I’d left it, the only light came from the two table lamps on the chest in the hall and the bright strip under the drawing-room door. I thought of the eye of a storm, the deadly stillness, the inevitability. I imagined a tornado sitting over the house, the first half of the damage already done, the second coming any minute. It filled me with a sickening dread; at that moment I wished I had walked in to find it all breaking over my head rather than suffer the anticipation. I took a deep breath and opened the door, indicating to Greg to stay back so the others didn’t see us together, just in case there was any chance, however remote, that the situation was salvageable. Inside, Michael, Martha and Danny were in the same positions they’d been in when I’d walked out. It was like a flashback. Although it was less than half an hour ago, that scene already belonged to a different era.
‘Jo, are you OK?’ said Martha, looking up with concern. ‘I was going to come find you but Greg said he would go.’
‘It’s fine, it’s fine,’ I said, having almost forgotten that, as far as she knew, the major event had been Lucas swearing at me. I felt about as unworthy of anyone’s sympathy as it was possible to be. ‘Where’s Rachel? Where’s Lucas?’
‘Don’t know about Rachel but Lucas is throwing up,’ she said.
‘Calling God on the great white telephone,’ said Danny without opening his eyes.
‘He completely overdid it,’ Martha said. ‘Well, you saw him. He was on a total mission even before he screamed at you.’
‘I’ll go and talk to him. Where is he?’
‘In the downstairs loo but he won’t want to talk. I tried,’ said Michael.
I closed the door behind me and faced Greg. ‘Do you think she’s with him?’
Upstairs there was the sound of a door closing and quick footsteps. Rachel appeared at the top of the steps, holding her weekend bag. I felt, more than heard, the first opening pulses of the house’s secret rhythm. There was something sly in it now, knowing, taunting. I shook my head to rid myself of it but it only gathered pace, as if trying to match the beat of my heart. I looked up, wanting to see the picture on the ceiling. It was hidden in the darkness, too high to be touched by the light from the lamps, but I had the sense that the people up there were craning down to see what drama the house was cradling now. I could almost hear the creak of the couch as Zeus leaned forward, waiting. I said a silent prayer. Please don’t let it come out like this. Please let me tell Lucas myself, decently.
‘Haven’t you had enough of sneaking around?’ said Rachel, descending towards us. Guilt made it impossible for me to look at her.
‘Where are you going?’ said Greg.
‘Home.’
‘Have you called a cab?’
‘My car’s here. I’ll drive. I just want to go. Leave me alone.’ She struggled as he tried to take her bag.
‘Rachel, however much you despise me at the moment, I’m not going to let you drive tonight. You’ve been drinking.’
‘The time where you had any influence on my decisions has gone.’ Her composure deserted her at last and she burst into tears. ‘You idiot,’ she said, ‘I really loved you.’ My heart filled with pity for her and then, a fraction of a second later, with shame that I, supposedly her friend, was the cause of her misery. She shook her bag out of his grip and turned to me, hostile again. ‘I just can’t believe you’ve done this. Bad enough what you’ve done to me but I can’t believe you’d cheat on Lucas. How could you? After everything else that he’s been through.’ Her words caused me a visceral pain that sliced up through my stomach like a cutlass. ‘I hope you can live with yourself, Joanna, because I don’t think I could. It’s taken me ten years to realise what you are but I know now. I just want to forget I ever knew you.’ She spun away as if the sight of me was repulsive.
The drawing-room door opened and Martha came out. ‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘I heard shouting.’
‘Nothing,’ I said automatically.
Rachel snorted. ‘Why don’t you tell her, Joanna? Tell Martha what a lovely friend you are.’
‘What’s she talking about, Jo?’ Martha looked at me and the thought that she was about to discover what I’d done made me want to cry. Guilt was roiling in my stomach. I could feel it burning my cheeks, too, and I couldn’t get my eyes to meet hers for more than a second. The pulsing in my ears put in a couple of extra beats as if in a merry little flourish.
‘We’re all drunk and overtired,’ said Greg. ‘Why don’t we call it a day?’
There were footsteps from the direction of the cloakroom and Lucas appeared in the mouth of the corridor. Even in the dim glow of the table lamps I could see that he was as pale as wax. He was unsteady on his feet and braced himself against the wall. ‘What’s happening?’ he said. ‘Why are you all out here?’
‘Something’s going on,’ said Martha.
I stood there, looking at Lucas. My anger with him for his hurtful remarks was forgotten; all I could think of was the pain that I was going to inflict on him, surely inevitable now. I couldn’t understand how the evening had suddenly turned my life on its head, how I could go from trying so hard to make a go of things with him to kissing Greg outside and now this, the revelation in front of everyone of what I’d done. I was trapped – no way backwards and no way forwards without pain, for me and people I cared about. There was no undoing it. I was going to leave Lucas just as surely as his mother and father and Patrick had done but having hurt him first.
Michael and Danny had come to the drawing-room door now, drawn like Martha by the raised voices. Everyone’s attention was on me.
‘If you won’t tell them, then I will.’ Rachel turned to him. The air seemed to shimmer with the potential energy of the chaos she was about to unleash. ‘Lucas, just now I went to see if Greg had found Jo and if she was OK. I found them out on the terrace – and they were kissing.’
Lucas looked at me. His face showed no change of expression apart from a slight widening of the eyes.
‘Lucas …’ I said.
‘Is it true?’ He looked only quizzical. I didn’t think I could bear it, watching him absorb the news.
‘No. Yes … I don’t know. It’s not like you think. It’s …’
‘Oh come on, Joanna,’ Danny piped up from the doorway. ‘It’s been obvious for weeks that there’s something going on between you two. Every time you’re in a room together you’re either staring at each other like zombies or pretending the other one doesn’t exist.’
I turned to look at him in disbelief. He knew that nothing had ever happened. He had been watching me minutely for weeks, letting me feel the pressure of his surveillance. If anything had happened, he would have known almost before I did. In his eyes now, there was a light like glee. It was the moment he had been waiting for, when I was exposed as the cheat and the liar and he revealed as Lucas’s one true friend. My hatred for him burned with a new intensity. I wanted so much to ask about his secret involvement, to see how he liked his affairs broadcast in public, but I could see Michael’s stricken face behind him. And completely inappropriately my heart had leapt at the thought that Greg had been watching me, too.
‘So, while we’ve been here, you and he have been meeting in London? You’ve been sleeping together?’ The pain was there in Lucas’s voice now, as unmistakable as a knife wound.
‘No.’ My voice was loud and it echoed up through the house. ‘No, Lucas. Tonight was the only time. We only kissed. It wasn’t meant to happen.’
‘It wasn’t meant to happen? You mean you wanted it to.’
‘No, of course not. I …’
‘Look,’ said Greg. ‘This isn’t doing anyone any good. We need to talk about this properly, not like this.’ His voice, somehow, was calm and the composure of it seemed to incense Lucas.
‘How dare you? How fucking dare you tell me what to do in my house?’ He was moving now. He stepped out of the shadows at the end of the corridor and crossed the floor towards Greg. He looked wild. He had clearly been sick repeatedly and the hair along his brow was damp. His eyes were moving fast, flicking between Greg and me as if trying to catch us in some secret communication. He was glowing with anger, a pale rage that altered the air around him.
‘Lucas, that’s not what I mean. I just think it would be better if we talk about this privately.’
Lucas stepped forward and swung at him with his full might. His fist made contact with Greg’s cheekbone and Greg spun round with the unexpected weight of it, putting his hand to his face. Rachel gave a sharp cry. Lucas stood, trembling with anger and with disbelief at what he had done, his fist still clenched in front of him.
Greg was feeling his jaw. There was blood in his mouth, making a red film over his teeth. He swallowed it away. The lack of retaliation seemed to inflame Lucas still further and he swung again. This time Greg turned and so the blow glanced across his ear. Nonetheless, it was enough to make him wince with pain.
‘Come on then, you bastard. Come on – hit me.’
‘Lucas, stop it.’ Danny crossed the hall and grabbed his arm. ‘This isn’t the way.’
Lucas turned on Danny and I thought for a moment he was going to hit him as well but instead he started to cry. ‘He’s taking Jo, Danny,’ he said. ‘He’s sleeping with Jo.’ He put his head in his hands and sobbed, his shoulders shaking with the force of it. I saw that he was still very drunk.
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘We haven’t. You’ve got this all wrong. Danny’s twisting it. It was just a kiss. It’s never happened before.’
‘Rachel saw you, Joanna. That’s not my evidence.’ Danny stepped forward and pulled Lucas towards him, putting his arms around him and holding him. Over his shoulder he looked at me. His expression was unambiguous; he might as well have said it aloud: he’s mine now.
‘Lucas,’ said Greg, swallowing again. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen. And I promise you that tonight was the first time.’
‘Fuck off. Just fuck off.’ Lucas’s words were muffled on Danny’s shoulder.
At that moment I caught Martha’s eye. She was staring at me with sheer disbelief, as if unable to understand what was happening.
Greg moved first. ‘Rachel …’
‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’
‘Please. I need to talk to you.’ I watched the resistance in her face melt and saw again how much he had meant to her. She let him guide her upstairs to their room. He walked slowly behind her, his hand feeling tenderly around his jaw. I waited for him to turn and glance at me as he climbed the stairs, for confirmation of some sort, but he didn’t look back.
Danny took Lucas and led him into the drawing room, closing the door behind them. Martha looked at me in disgust, turned on her heel and walked away. ‘Come on, Michael,’ she said, her voice icy.
‘Martha,’ I tried but she ignored me. Michael shot me an ambivalent look and followed her down the corridor to the kitchen.
As quickly as everyone had gathered they were gone. Suddenly I was left alone in the hall and the atmosphere of the place rushed in, all focused on me. I felt as if I were the object of the exclusive scrutiny of a thousand pairs of invisible eyes. My head went light and the place started to shut in around me, the floor moving up in all directions and the walls moving in, coming to brick me up. My chest constricted further and then came the crash of blood in my ears, my heartbeat or the house’s, I wasn’t sure, just that it was getting louder and louder. My legs felt dissociated from the rest of my body and I didn’t know whether I would have any mastery over them but I knew I had to move from that place.
The first few steps felt like dragging through thick mud, as if there were resistance to my going. The pounding in my head grew louder still. I reached the stairs and started to climb. The landings seemed to go on for an eternity and I stumbled on the steps as I went. All I wanted was to put a door between me and that terrible pulsing energy, whatever it was.
When I reached my room, I slammed the door shut and braced myself against it, as if there were something outside pushing to get in. I waited until the feeling had passed and the pounding had retreated a little. There was a spare inhaler on the bedside table and I took hit after hit on it until my hands were shaking from the overdose. Then I pulled my suitcase out of the bottom of the wardrobe and started packing. There was no method to it, just speed. I grabbed at things indiscriminately, snatching handfuls of the underwear I had started keeping in the chest of drawers, throwing my hairdryer and shoes into the bottom of the case.
There were heavy footsteps along the landing outside and the door cranked open. My stomach turned over. It was Lucas. We looked at each other as if across a great stretch of unfamiliar terrain. His eyes moved off me and took in my suitcase on the bed and the tangle of tights and T-shirts beside it. ‘What can I do?’ he said. For a stupid moment I thought he meant with the packing. His face was raw. With the strain first of being sick and then crying, his eyelids were puffed and pink, his eyes shot through with blood. The discoloration was made more striking by the graveyard pallor of the rest of his skin.
He closed the door behind him. ‘It’s my fault,’ he said. ‘I screwed it up.’
‘Please, Lucas. Don’t.’ I turned away, unable to look at him.
‘I didn’t do enough things right. Tell me what I should have done differently. Tell me. I should have stayed in London, shouldn’t I? Jo, if I could go back now … I’ll try,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ll get another flat in London; we’ll just come back here at weekends. That would change things, wouldn’t it?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘What if I asked for my job back? I know you don’t approve of me living on Patrick’s money. What if I told Danny to move out?’ He came round to the end of the bed, forcing himself into my line of sight. ‘Tell me what I can do. Please. For God’s sake.’
‘Nothing.’ Saying the word was so difficult. It felt like cutting a mooring line, setting myself adrift from him, or him from me, and from everything we’d shared, all those years of the best friendship I’d ever had. I felt as though I were floating, my head a whirl of sorrow and regret and the desire to be free.
His eyes filled with tears again. ‘Nothing?’
I shook my head as gently as I could.
‘Jo, I’m begging you. I’m telling you I’ll do whatever you want me to do as long as you’ll stay with me,’ he said, his voice getting louder.
I wanted so much to be able to give him an answer, the one simple thing he could change so that everything would come right again. But I couldn’t. ‘That’s not what I loved you for,’ I said. ‘I loved the old Lucas, the self-determining, independent Lucas. I needed you to be you, not changing.’
‘I can do that. I can. Jo, listen to me. I can go back.’ He moved now so that he was in front of me and took me by the shoulders. He was gripping me hard; even through my jumper the pressure of his fingers was hurting my collar bone. The air around him was rancid, undercut with the smell of vomit. Careful not to anger him further, I stepped away until he was forced to let go of me.
He started to cry again. ‘I love you,’ he said but the words that once would have made my heart swell now filled me with despair. And, although I could barely admit it, I was frightened. I’d never seen him hit anyone before tonight. Alcohol and shock had vanquished the usual moderate Lucas. ‘I love you,’ he wept. ‘And I need you to stay with me. I need you.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You’re one of the only people I have left. You can’t leave me. Don’t you understand? Don’t you see that?’
I forced the lid down on the case and dragged the zip round, catching a pair of tights that had come free. I tore them out of the zip and shoved them back inside. There were possessions of mine scattered all over the house but I couldn’t stop for them now. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, moving back.
‘You can’t.’ Suddenly Lucas dropped to his knees. A low crooning sound came from his throat. He snatched at my trouser leg and when I looked down at him I saw that his reddened eyes were full of a terrible anger. ‘If you go now, you can never come back,’ he said.
I said nothing and pulled away. I didn’t recognise this possessive, frightening man. Grabbing my suitcase from the bed, I turned to open the door and, as I did so, he stood and grabbed at my jumper. ‘You bitch. You won’t even give me a chance.’ His face was crazy with grief.
‘Lucas, please, let me go.’ I was in tears but they were tears of desperation and fear. I could feel them running down my cheeks and into my mouth. Every fibre of me was straining to go. The key to my car was in my pocket and my hand felt for it, checking it was there.
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t let you. I can’t let you leave me.’
He lunged for me, grabbing at my bag, my shoulders, shaking me, hurting me. His hand caught a clump of my hair and pulled it so hard I thought it would be torn from my scalp. Even though he was thin, his body was strong. I don’t know what would have happened if Danny hadn’t appeared in the doorway and pulled him off me. In Danny’s arms again, Lucas stopped fighting and let me go.
I remember the journey home to London only as a series of snapshots, a sequence of disordered images that deliver themselves to my brain now with the quality of hallucinations. I know I was still drunk and to this day I don’t understand how I didn’t have an accident. I cried all the way back down the motorway but it wasn’t the sort of crying that I had been used to in the past. This was new, a weeping that hurt me and stretched my mouth into a great silent circle of misery from which no noise would come. When I left Stoneborough it was still dark but the horizon was lightening to the east, the intimations of dawn a virulent orange seeping up the sky. By the time I reached London I was driving through the pallid pink-and-blue light of the first hour of a new day. At traffic lights I looked straight ahead for fear that one of the few other drivers on the road at that hour would see my ravaged face.