I don’t spend the time before supper getting ready, however. I spend it in my bathroom, crouched over a little plastic stick, and then pacing the length of my cabin, wondering what I am going to do. I want to scream. But this place is so bloody quiet they’d all hear me.
Maybe, I tell myself, trying to breathe, the test was faulty somehow. I wish I had got a spare. I was too flustered in the Boots at King’s Cross, though, too afraid that one of the others would see me buying it. Besides, the little sheet of instructions suggests that while it’s possible for the test not to pick up on a positive result, the reverse pretty much never happens.
It’s eight o’clock before I know it, and I pull on a black dress I just remembered to throw in the case, an old office-to-cocktails affair, and pull a brush through my hair, so hard I hurt myself.
I am not sure whether it is my imagination or not, but the dress feels tighter than it was at the office Christmas party, and when I study my reflection sideways in the mirror, I am certain that I can see a tiny protuberance where I have had nothing before. Oh God. I turn, this way and that. It’s definitely there. Dread rises in me.
Now that I have noticed it, it seems unmistakable; I’m amazed that Miranda hasn’t commented on it. Add this to the fact that I’ve noticed a little more tenderness in my breasts – and that my appetite has been up and down. And yet: how the hell did this happen? I thought I’d been so careful. Clearly not careful enough. And I don’t know what I am going to do about it.
I sit back on the bed. I don’t want to go. I can’t do this – I can’t go out there and face them all. I sit for maybe half an hour. Wondering … hoping … maybe they’ve forgotten all about me?
There’s a knock on the door. For a moment I can almost pretend I imagined it.
‘Katie? What are you doing in there? I can see you sitting on the bed!’
I go to the door and open it – what choice do I have? I feel like an animal, routed in its den. Miranda stands there, a hand on one hip. She looks incredible, of course: she’s gone for a skin-tight gold sheath dress; the sort of thing you can only get away with if you look like Miranda, and even then probably only on New Year’s Eve.
‘Well,’ she looks me up and down. Can she see it? I’m standing front on, so probably not. ‘Not very festive,’ she says. Then she opens the little evening bag she has slung over one arm. ‘Here, this will help.’ In a kind of daze I feel her press the lipstick onto my lips; the waxy scent of it almost overpowering.
She stands back. ‘There. That’s better. Come on, then.’ She grasps my wrist, her nails grazing my skin – half drags me through the open doorway, forces my arm through hers.
I can’t take this close contact right now. I extract my arm from hers. ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ I say – it comes out sharper than I had intended. ‘I think I can just about manage to walk there on my own.’
Miranda stares at me, as shocked as if I’d just yelled at her. You see, I never answer back. She likes to tell people that, as friends, ‘we just don’t fight’. But that’s not down to her, for God’s sake. It’s because I’ve never, in the past, put up any resistance.
‘Look,’ she says, her voice low, dangerous, ‘I don’t know what’s up with you, Katie. You’ve been a total misery ever since we got here. It’s like you’re too good for us suddenly. Like you can’t be bothered to take part. But, well, tonight you’re going to. You’re bloody well going to have a good time.’ She turns on her heel. And I find myself following her as meekly as if she had a rope around my neck, as I have done so many times before. What other choice do I have?
There’s different feeling this evening. Last night it was high spirits, a sense of camaraderie, togetherness. Tonight, the atmosphere carries a dangerous edge. It’s as though that time out there, in all that wilderness, has put us on our guard. I wonder if the others can still see the deer, like me: buckling to her knees. It has become a dark thing between us, with the freighted quality of a guilty secret. We killed something together. We were all complicit, even if Emma was the one who took the shot. We did it for ‘fun’.
Everyone – apart from me – seems to have fractured into their proper pairs, drawing back into their primary allegiances: Nick and Bo, Emma and Mark, Miranda snaking an arm around Julien’s waist. At a little remove, Giles and Samira stand talking to each other in a low murmur. Miranda has persuaded them to leave Priya in the cabin tonight so we could ‘all be grown-ups’ this evening, but judging by Samira’s mutinous expression she isn’t exactly happy about it.
There’s some enforced jollity as Julien carries a bottle of champagne around, pouring liberally, but everyone seems to be gulping it down, hardly tasting it, as though they are trying to drink themselves into the spirit of things. Of course, perhaps I’m imagining this: projecting onto them a tension that really exists only in my own mind. But I’m not so sure. Because I see the quick, animal, darting looks they are all giving one another – I am not alone in that. We are looking for something in each other’s faces. But what is it? Familiarity? A reassuring reminder of all that holds us close? Or are we fearfully searching for some new element, glimpsed out there on that bleak mountainside? Something new and strange and violent.
‘Dinner is served!’ Emma calls from the kitchen. It’s a relief to have a new focus, not to have to stand around making small talk – that suddenly feels as strained and difficult as it might with complete strangers.
It’s venison Wellington: although not made with the deer from earlier, I’m relieved to hear. Emma is a wonderful cook. It goes hand in hand with her incredible organisation, I suppose. She has planned this whole trip, down to the very last detail. And she at least seems unchanged by whatever strange spirit has possessed everyone else: brisk and energetic as she carries the dish to the table with a flourish.
‘God,’ Miranda says, ‘I’m in awe of you, Emma. Half the time, if you look in our fridge, you’ll just find a bottle of champagne and half a jar of olives. It’s like you’re a proper adult.’
Emma flushes with pleasure. Except … I don’t think it was a compliment. It makes her look homey, sort of dull. Whereas Miranda comes out of it looking glamorous, in an unpredictable, rock ’n’ roll way.
It’s not even true. Yes, she’s not a good cook, but she does do it. But she’ll never let an opportunity slip to look superior to Emma in some way.
What a bitch. I catch myself, stifle the thought. What has got into me? And, after all, I am a fine one to talk.
We all applaud and exclaim over the venison: the golden sheen of the pastry, the neatness of the compact parcel of meat.
I cut a morsel. It’s perfectly cooked: the pastry flaky, the venison miraculously pink in the middle. But, as I prod it with my fork, a little bloody stream seeps out. I think of that deer today, staggering to her knees, the terrible groan that seemed to echo from the surrounding peaks as she went down, and I feel my stomach turn over. I take a bite, anyway, and sit there struggling to swallow. For a brief, panicked moment the food seems to catch at the back of my throat, and I think I might really choke. It takes a big gulp of my water to send it on its way, and I find myself coughing hoarsely in the aftermath.
Samira, next to me, gives me a nudge. ‘Are you all right?’
I nod. Emma, I see, has turned to look at me. ‘I hope it’s OK?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, my throat raw, ‘it’s absolutely delicious.’