‘Fine,’ he says, looking genuinely astonished, all the bluster gone out of him. He steps back. ‘If that’s really what you want.’
I stumble on unsteady legs back into the dining room, sure that someone will notice the expression on my face and ask me what the matter is – I’m not sure whether I want their attention right now, or not.
No one sees me at first. There’s another game of Twister going on, and they’re all cackling with laughter as Giles tries to straddle Bo. The atmosphere is exactly the same as it was before – everyone joyful, riding the high of booze and pills. But suddenly I’m on the outside looking in, and it all seems ridiculous … false even, like they’re all trying too hard to show what a good time they’re having.
Emma turns and sees me standing in the doorway. ‘Are you OK, Manda?’ she asks.
‘We thought you’d got stuck in there,’ Giles says, with a stupid, goofy grin. ‘So Mark went to check you were all right.’
‘Oh God,’ Emma says, ‘Manda – do remember that time someone had a house party and you got stuck in the loo?’
‘No,’ I say. But even as I do I realise that I do remember it, vaguely. The feeling of humiliation when someone had to crowbar me out. God – mortifying. I could swear it happened at least a decade ago. But if Emma remembers it, it must have been much more recently. ‘When was that?’
‘Hmm,’ Emma says, ‘it must have been in London at some point. The days when everyone actually had house parties – when we were fun, you remember? So recent, and yet it feels like centuries ago.’
I nod, but something about the mention of it has given me an odd, uneasy feeling. But I cannot work out why.
‘Are you all right?’ Emma asks again.
Her tone’s so maternal, so caring … so fucking patronising. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘why wouldn’t I be?’
Perhaps it comes out as sharply as I meant it: she looks stung.
I sit it out for an hour or so. I’ve done better than Katie – she must have gone back to her cabin while I was in the bathroom. And yet she’s the one I want to talk to about what just happened – more so than my own husband, somehow. I could go and find her … she might still be awake. But if I leave I might show Mark that he has me rattled, and I don’t want that. The effects of the pill have completely worn off for me, and I look enviously at the others, blissed out, beaming at each other.
Finally, when I decide I’ve stuck it out long enough, I turn to Julien. ‘I’m tired,’ I say. He nods, vaguely, but I think he has barely registered the fact that I’ve spoken. Pills have always affected him strongly. I’d half meant it as an invitation to walk me back to the cabin, but I’m not going to embarrass myself in front of the others by making that clear now.
When I step outside, the moon shines full and the loch is lit up silver. It’s a clear night, except for a band of cloud on the horizon where the light of the stars disappears, as though a shroud has been pulled over them.
I think about Mark, and what just happened. The top of my arm still aches where he grabbed me. I’m sure there will be bruises in the morning: the reminders of his fingers.
I fish the iPhone from my pocket and turn on the torch. It casts a weak stream of light in front of me; a small comfort, a lantern against the dark. Several times I have to turn around and look behind me to check that no one is following. It’s silly, probably – but I’m on edge, and the silence out here feels watchful, somehow. I am reminded of dark, drunken walks home in London in the early clubbing days, keys between my knuckles. Just in case. But here I’m in the middle of nowhere, with no one except my closest friends. The silence here, the expanses, seem suddenly hostile. That’s a ridiculous thought, isn’t it? In the morning, it will all seem different, I tell myself.
Or we could leave in the morning. I could tell Julien, and we could leave. He wouldn’t like it – I’m sure he’s been looking forward to this trip. We both have, actually – perhaps me even more so. I think he would agree, if I explained everything. We could go back to the house and have champagne and maybe order something in and watch the Westminster fireworks over the rooftops. I realise that when I think of this I’m not imagining our current home: the grown-up, stuccoed house. I’m actually thinking of our first flat in London: before I failed to do anything interesting with my life, became an also-ran. Before Julien got so busy with making money.
It might be fun.
But it would also be giving up. It should be Mark who is ashamed, who has to leave. Not me. The thought fills me with rage. Then I think of that moment, looking at myself in the mirror – seeing more than I wanted to, beyond the effects of the pill. Even before that, even before Mark groped me during Twister, I’d been feeling like I wasn’t enjoying myself quite as much as I should have done. There was Samira, talking my ear off about sleep schedules and breast pumps, showing me the stains on her baggy old T-shirt. This, from the girl whose nickname at Oxford was Princess Samira, because she was always so perfectly coiffed, glamorously tailored, even at nineteen. I loved what a stir we’d cause going into a pub or bar together, or even just the Junior Common Room; the two of us roughly the same height, one dark, one blonde, dressed in the best clothes. Birds of a feather.
Then there’s Katie – so distant since we got here, probably thinking of something much more important, something at work. Acting like she is better than all of us: the successful lawyer. I’d had this sudden, rushing sense of being left behind. That was why I’d got everyone dancing. It was why I’d brought the pills out when I did. I’d been saving them for tomorrow, in fact, for New Year’s Eve. But suddenly I needed to be the one in control again, dictating the order of things.
As I round the corner I see in the distance three rectangles of bright light, blazing out into the dark. It’s the gamekeeper’s cottage, of course. When I walked there earlier I didn’t realise quite how far away it is from the other buildings, almost at the foot of the mountain. As I continue to look, a dark figure appears in the central window, haloed in light. It must be the gamekeeper, Doug, still up. But from this distance he is featureless and spectral. I take a step back, which is ridiculous: even if he can see the tiny pinprick of light from my phone, he can’t see me. But it feels as though he is looking straight at me. And it’s nothing like earlier, when I went and knocked on his door. Right now, with what just happened, I feel vulnerable, displaced, the landscape so vast and alien and silent around me. I long for the noise and lights and bustle of the city.
I half run the rest of the way along the path. Inside the cabin I feel safe for a moment. But only briefly, because when I go to bolt the door I realise that there is no lock.
I get ready for bed, and when I next look out of the windows I can see that lights have gone on now in the other cabins. Everyone must have chosen to go to bed shortly after me. So where is Julien? Presumably on his way back along the path – but he’s taking his time about it.
Half an hour passes, then an hour. My arm aches where Mark grabbed it. I pull on a jumper, some big silly fluffy slippers that Julien hates because they make me look ‘like a suburban sixties housewife’ and yet I have never got rid of because they’re too bloody comfortable. My teeth are chattering, I realise – even though I’m not really cold.