Finally, the page blinks into life.
I can see immediately that there are a lot of hits. For a normal person, someone who isn’t a celebrity or notorious in some other way, you’d expect to get, what? Three hits, at most? A few social media profiles, including those of anyone sharing the same name, perhaps the odd mention of a sporting achievement or a part in the college play. But Doug’s unusual name takes up the entire first page of hits. And none of it is very nice. In fact, it’s all pretty horrible.
I wish I hadn’t looked. I wish I had never seen any of this.
Two days earlier
New Year’s Eve 2018
MIRANDA
We traipse after Doug to the yard behind the Lodge, where his Land Rover sits parked next to a big old red truck – maybe that’s what Heather gets around in. The thought of her, all five-foot-nothing, behind the wheel of that big old vehicle makes me laugh.
Doug opens the barn for us with a state-of-the-art keypad that looks completely bizarre against the old wood. I suppose they need it, if there are guns in here. As he yanks the heavy wooden door back I enjoy watching his muscles move beneath the old shirt he wears (just a shirt – in this weather!). He would make, I think, an excellent candidate for Lady Chatterley’s lover, so tall and broad and tousled. Bit of an unflattering contrast for Julien, I can’t help thinking, whose various ointments and tinctures jostle for space on the bathroom shelf beside my own.
He kits us up in the barn: over-trousers and jackets, even walking boots for Katie, who has failed to bring anything remotely sensible. Mark asks for one of the hats, which are ridiculous Sherlock-Holmes affairs.
‘If you want one, mate,’ Doug says, with something that might be mistaken for a sneer.
Beside the jackets and the trousers hang ten rifles. There is something lethal-looking about just the shape of the weapons, as though they could somehow kill you without ever being fired.
Then there’s a long talk on safety, and on where we’re going today: up the steep hillside past the Old Lodge, because apparently that’s where the deer have been congregating lately: though we’re only looking for the hinds, the females, because it’s the wrong time of year for shooting stags. At the end, I say, ‘So, let me get this right. We might well not actually get a deer today. And even if we do shoot a deer it won’t have antlers, because it’s not the right season. But we’re paying hundreds of pounds for the privilege.’
‘Yep,’ Doug nods. ‘That’s pretty much the size of it.’ His tone is direct, but I notice he can’t quite make eye-contact. I feel a little thrill of triumph. I recognise that particular symptom, you see. I have always been faithful to Julien – well, with that one exception, right at the beginning. But it would be a lie to say I do not enjoy flexing my power, dropping a lure. My own sort of hunting, I suppose. Much more fun than freezing wet heather and hideous waterproof over-trousers.
Doug locks the door behind him with a seamless click of metal. Now he has us lie on the ground to shoot at a box with a target. Julien, Giles, Bo and Mark are terrible, laughably so. With the exception of Bo, who is always so light-hearted (though surely, with that druggie past, he can’t always have been?) they aren’t finding it at all funny. Mark – I can just about bring myself to watch him – wears his mouth in a snarl as he shoots. When Julien has his sixth attempt, I see that muscle in the side of his jaw draw tight in the way that it does when he’s angry about something, and with each report his eye twitches. He cares, I realise. They all care. Even mild-mannered Giles seems to have undergone a personality transplant. Perhaps they’re imagining themselves in some action film or video game. I’m sure that’s it: men reverting to little boys. All the same, it’s a bit weird.
Katie is awful too, but I’m not sure she’s even bothering to try – just as she seems to have stopped bothering to pretend she’s having a good time. Samira – who, after much persuading left Priya with the manager, Heather, for a couple of hours – is not great, but she makes up for it with lots of intensity. I’m reminded of her rowing blue past. Give her a week with this and she’d probably be Olympian standard. It’s a glimmer of the old Samira, the girl I knew before, and I’m glad of it. This, after all, is the woman who once set fire to the dining table in our house, in imitation of a bar in Ibiza, and had a formal reprimand from the college dean for her behaviour.
I’m not bad, but I’m not quite as good as I had thought I would be: I’ve always had a knack for sports. Doug tells me I’m being too ‘vigorous’ with the trigger. ‘You just need to coax it with your finger,’ he says. He’s straight-faced – but … is it just me, or does that sound a bit filthy?
Nick is pretty good, as he’d told us he would be. No surprise there, funnily enough. He was always good at sport, and he’s so precise about things, so intense, sometimes. But it’s Emma, of all people, who excels. Doug says she is a ‘natural’, and she smiles and shakes her head, typically modest. ‘Women are often better,’ he says. ‘They’re more accurate, more deadly. This sport isn’t about testosterone or brute strength.’
I wish I didn’t mind so much that it’s not me earning his praise.
We begin our ascent up the hillside. We’re walking towards the Old Lodge, the building Heather pointed out to us yesterday afternoon. I hate walking. It’s so boring, and purposeless. Give me a run any day, something that burns double the number of calories in half the time. Mark, Julien and Nick jostle for position at the front, as though each is determined that they will be the one to take the shot. Katie, meanwhile, is a few feet ahead of me, talking to Bo. I feel slighted that she hasn’t chosen to walk with me. I could go and join them, but I’m not going to grovel for her to pay me attention. It seems like I offended her at breakfast, asking if she had a new man. Fine, I could have been a little more subtle about it – she’s intensely private about that sort of thing – but I was only trying to show an interest. And, frankly, after all this time apart it wouldn’t fucking kill her to ask me about my life. That’s not like her: in the past she’s always been such a good listener. Julien once – not too kindly – joked it was a lucky thing that I’d found a friend who likes to listen as much as I like to talk. But he wasn’t totally wrong. I’ve always thought of her as my opposite, my complementary part.
The path has melted away now, so we’re just trekking upwards through the heather, and it’s hard, hard work. Every so often it tangles around an ankle, yanking me back as though reminding me who’s in charge. Because this landscape is definitely in charge. It’s brutal. The temperature has dropped even more, and the air is raw, stinging any exposed flesh. Even my teeth hurt when I open my mouth to speak. It feels like the cold has got inside the jacket I’ve been lent, and the beautiful – and I’d thought very warm – cashmere jumper I’m wearing under it, and is pressing against my skin.
The ground is boggy in places too, there must be streams under the soil. Every so often I step into a particularly soft patch, and freezing water comes up over my boots, soaking my socks. They’ll be ruined. They’re cashmere too – a present in the autumn from Julien. There was a period when every week he seemed to come home with some sort of gift – guilt over what he’d made me a part of, I’m sure, though he claimed he just wanted to spoil me.