When I finally look up, I realise Miranda has turned in her seat to look directly at me, her head on one side. I see rather than feel the piece of toast tremble in my hand. Those X-ray eyes of hers. ‘You’ve got a new man, haven’t you?’ she asks. She’s grinning at me … but it occurs to me that it’s more a grimace than a smile. I know her too well not to guess when something is off. If I were a good friend I’d ask her about it … but I can’t quite bring myself to. Besides, I reason, it’s too public a forum here, with everyone around us. ‘What makes you say that?’ I ask.
‘I can tell. You look different. The hair, the clothes.’ I move an inch or so away; her breath is a little stale, which is unlike her. She once told me that she brushes before and after breakfast in accordance with some fascist rule of her mother’s. She must have forgotten. ‘And,’ she says, ‘you’ve been so elusive recently. Even more so than normal. You’ve always done this when there’s a new guy on the scene. Ever since I’ve known you.’ Everyone else suddenly seems to be listening. I feel the eyes of the room upon me. Nick’s eyebrows are raised. Because if I am seeing someone, I know he’s thinking, I would have told him, wouldn’t I?
I take a bite of toast, but it sticks in my gullet and it takes several attempts to swallow it. My throat feels raw, wounded.
‘No,’ I say, hoarsely. ‘I don’t have time at the moment – I’m far too busy with work.’
‘God,’ she says. ‘All work and no play, Katie – have you ever heard that one? You’re completely obsessed. I don’t understand it.’
But then she wouldn’t. Miranda has tried and failed to make a go at several different careers, with no real success. She crashed out of Oxford with a Third, in the end. She didn’t care, she told me. But I know better. She had been arrogant enough to think that she could just breeze through as she had always done. The thing is, Miranda is clever, but she isn’t necessarily Oxford clever. Her mum hired a tutor to help her get those four As at A level, and I’m sure she dazzled them in the interview. But still. Once in, she was in a different league entirely. She somehow managed to blag the first and second years of university, and she ignored the warning signs in our third year that she wasn’t on the right track, even though I tried to point them out. I swear I wasn’t pleased when she opened that envelope and saw her result. But I must confess that perhaps I did feel a little – a tiny tiny bit – as though justice had been done.
That Third was an insult. It smarted. It stung her pride. If you look at all of us, now, she’s the odd one out. All of us have good jobs. Samira’s a management consultant, I’m a lawyer, Julien works for the hedge fund, Nick’s an architect, Giles is a doctor, Bo works for the BBC, Mark for an advertising firm. Emma works for a literary agency – I remember when Miranda learned that one. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How did you get that job in the first place? I thought that agency only picked from redbrick, and usually Oxbridge.’
Emma was unfazed. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, with a shrug. ‘I suppose I must just give good interview.’
Miranda herself had had a crack at getting into the publishing industry. Then a go at advertising. Mark gave her a much bigger leg up than he probably should have done, persuading one of his colleagues to interview her for an assistant position. She got it, but left after only two months. She was bored of it, she said. But I met a girl who used to work there at a wedding and she told me that it was a little more complicated.
‘They let her go,’ she told me. ‘She was unbelievably lazy. She seemed to think she was above things. Once, stuffing envelopes, she actually refused to lick them to seal them shut. She said she hated the taste and it was below her pay grade to do it. Said she hadn’t been to Oxford just to do that. Can you imagine?’
Yes, bad friend that I am, of course I could.
Giles and Samira have arrived now. They look several degrees more shattered than everyone else. Samira flops into a chair and puts her head in her hands with a groan, as Giles tries to lift Priya into the highchair. She grizzles, fighting this restraint. As the pitch rises to a shrill whine I see Nick sneak his fingers into his ears. ‘Oh God,’ Samira groans. ‘Priya woke us up at five, and then again at six.’
‘I can’t even imagine,’ Bo says. ‘I couldn’t dress myself this morning, let alone a little person. Nick had to point out my T-shirt was on backwards, didn’t you?’ Nick smiles, wanly.
‘Well I suppose it’s a life choice, isn’t it?’ Miranda says, breezily, pouring herself an orange juice. ‘It’s not like you’re forced to have kids, is it?’
Even for Miranda – who miraculously often manages to get away with such comments – this is a cattiness too far. But then there’s definitely something about her this morning. Her brightness has a brittle edge.
I haven’t seen Samira angry for a long time, but now I remember that it’s a terrifying spectacle. There’s a proper temper hidden under that calm, groomed exterior. She has gone absolutely rigid in her chair. We all watch her, silently, waiting to see what she will do next. Then she seems to give a sort of shiver, and reaches for the cafetière. Her hand shakes only a little as she pours. She does not look at Miranda once. For the sake of group harmony, perhaps, she has evidently decided to rise above it.
With a bit of a stutter, the conversation around the table moves on. We’re going stalking today, because apparently this is a ‘must-do’ if you’re staying on an estate in Scotland.
‘I suppose you two won’t be coming stalking, will you?’ Mark asks, indicating Nick and Bo.
‘Why not?’ Nick asks.
‘Well,’ Mark’s mouth curls a little at the corner. ‘Because – you know.’
‘No. I don’t know.’
‘Just didn’t think you’d be into that sort of thing.’
‘Hang on a sec, Mark,’ Nick says. ‘If I’ve got this correct, it sounds as though you’ve decided we won’t be coming because we’re gay. Is that really what you’re saying?’
Spoken aloud it sounds so ridiculous that even Mark must be able to see it.
‘It’s not a disability, Mark. Just want to make that clear.’
Mark makes a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat. Nick’s knuckles are white about his coffee mug. For all Mark’s muscle, I’m not sure that I would back him in a fight between the two.
‘It’s true,’ Nick goes on, ‘that like most sensible people, I don’t particularly like the idea of killing animals for pure sport’ – Mark assumes an aha! expression – ‘but, from what I hear, the deer numbers get out of control if they aren’t managed. So I’m at peace with the idea. I’m also a pretty good shot: the last time I went to shoot clays I hit eighteen out of twenty. Thanks, though, for your concern.’
After this, no one, not even Miranda, seems to be able to think of anything to say.
NOW
2nd January 2019
HEATHER
I have made endless cups of tea, so much so that I have begun to feel like an extension of the kettle. No one seems to actually be drinking them, but every time I ask, they all nod, vaguely, and then sit holding the cups as the hot tea slowly cools, untasted. Beyond the windows the snow shows no sign of stopping. It is difficult to imagine a time when it was not there, this moving curtain of white.
Normally, after a body has been found, I am sure it is all flashing lights, men in white hazmat suits, and commotion. But this is no ordinary place. And in this case the landscape has had its own ideas. The weather has forced us to bend to its own whims. I realise, for one of the first times since I moved here, quite how alien this place is, how little I really know of it. It might as well be another planet. I am certain that there are secrets here beyond the whisky bothies, beyond the monster pike deep in the loch. Those are just the small things the landscape chooses to reveal.