‘Oh come on,’ Miranda says, ‘some of us here like to consider ourselves as young.’
‘And it could be fun?’ Emma says. She’s the only one whose mood doesn’t seem to have changed from yesterday morning: she’s all enthusiasm, flushed with pleasure from the meal’s success. She’s made a proper effort this evening – she can’t match Miranda’s glamour, but her off-the-shoulder gunmetal dress has a bit of a shimmer to it, and she’s coloured her lips in bright red. It’s almost a perfect match for the tiny smear of blood that she’s missed, up above her ear next to the hairline, a leftover from this afternoon’s hunt.
In the absence of another suggestion, everyone seems to accept that this is what we are doing now: playing Truth or Dare. There’s a palpable relief, in fact, that we have a structure for the next part of our evening, something to keep us occupied.
We sit down around the table. Emma grabs an empty wine bottle and spins it. It lands on Bo. ‘Dare,’ he says.
‘Kiss Mark,’ Miranda says.
Bo wrinkles his nose. ‘Do I have to?’
Mark looks, frankly, terrified. But Bo leans over, matter-of-factly, and plants his mouth on Mark’s. And for a moment – blink-and-you’d-miss-it – I think Mark responds, his mouth moving sensually under Bo’s. It’s kind of hot. I see Nick frown. He’s noticed it too.
Everyone’s laughing. But there is a new tension in the air, now, a frisson of sex.
Bo spins the bottle. It lands on Miranda. ‘Truth,’ she says, with a slightly vacant smile. Between this, and the lazy, sleepy look of her eyes, I can tell she’s already had quite a lot to drink.
‘OK,’ Nick says, ‘I’ve got one. Have you ever slept with anyone else around this table?’
Miranda giggles. ‘Have I ever slept with anyone else?’ she says – and there’s a slight slur on the ‘slept’. ‘I suppose you mean apart from my husband?’
‘Yes,’ Nick says. There’s an intensity in the way he’s looking at her: it reminds me of a cat watching a bird.
‘Um,’ she puts a finger up to her lips – though the first time she misses and catches her chin – in a pantomime of thought. ‘I suppose in that case I would have to say … yes.’
There’s a stunned silence. That can’t be true, can it? If so, I’ve never heard anything about it. How do I not know? I glance at Julien, but he doesn’t look particularly surprised. Does he know? Who can it have been? I study all the faces around the table, but no one’s expression seems to give anything away. Mark? He’s the most likely, I suppose, but I feel that would have come out, somehow, before now. Still, I think of him spending all that time hanging around college, waiting to give Miranda some message from Julien. There would have been opportunity.
Miranda shrugs at us all. ‘I’m not going to tell you anything else, so you might as well spin again.’
‘Come on,’ Samira says, ‘you have to tell us.’
‘Yes,’ Bo says, ‘you can’t tell us that and not say any more.’
‘Yes I can,’ Miranda says, with a sly smile. ‘I’ve answered the question. I’ve told my Truth.’
Giles hands Miranda the bottle. ‘Right. Next.’
The gleam in Miranda’s eye has grown brighter. After her revelation, the stakes feel higher, the air charged. She spins, and it lands on Mark.
‘Dare,’ he says, almost before it has even fully stopped.
‘OK,’ Miranda thinks for a moment. ‘Drink this.’ She holds out a bottle of Dom Pérignon.
‘The whole thing?’ Emma stares. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘It used to be my party trick,’ Mark says. ‘Have I never told you? A whole bottle in ten minutes.’
I remember. I also remember the mess afterwards. Mark is one of those people who shouldn’t drink. It makes some people emotional, some belligerent, others angry – you can guess which group Mark falls into.
‘I’ll do it,’ Miranda says, getting to her feet. She pops the cork with an air of ceremony, making sure to do it carefully so that none spills. Then she walks towards Mark. ‘Kneel down,’ she says, half seductress, half sergeant major. ‘Open wide.’ He does what she says, and she upends the bottle, with no warning and very little gentleness, shoving the neck between his parted lips. He makes a kind of gagging sound, but she doesn’t relent. If anything, I think I see her give the base a further thrust with one manicured hand.
Mark gulps the liquid, his throat working hard and his eyes streaming, red, almost bloodied looking. Julien and Giles are egging him on: ‘Get it down you!’ and ‘Chug, chug, chug …’ – remnants of chants from rugby socials, no doubt. The rest of us just watch.
His nose is running with snot, like a crying child’s. He makes more of those gagging sounds, and beneath them there is a kind of low, animal whine that makes the hairs on my arms stand to attention. For all that, most of the booze is frothing over his chin and soaking into his smart shirt, the crotch of his suit trousers.
‘Oh God,’ Samira says, ‘he’s probably had enough.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Miranda barks, completely ignoring her. ‘Drink it. You’re not drinking it.’
I think of how dense the bubbles are in champagne, how painful it is to down even a glass of the stuff.
It’s horrible to watch, a grotesque imitation of a sexual act. But for some reason it is both impossible to look away and to do anything to stop it. The guys have stopped cheering him on now, their chants dwindling to an uneasy silence. Even Emma doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound to help her boyfriend. We sit watching as though stunned, mesmerised by this obscene spectacle.
Finally, it’s drained. Slowly, almost reluctantly, Miranda withdraws the bottle. She gives it a slap with the flat of one hand, and a few more drops fall out, one of them splashing into Mark’s eye in a final indignity, the punctuation to the insult.
Mark is wheezing, retching, doubled over, his hands on his knees for support. For a horrible moment it looks as if he’s going to vomit. Samira, nearest to him, puts a reassuring hand on his back. He shrugs her off with a violent jerk of his shoulders. We wait, silent, no one saying a word, to see how this will play out. Finally, after what feels like a long time, Mark raises his head. He gives us a weak, unconvincing grin, and puts one hand into the air like a victor. He must know, surely, that whatever we just witnessed was in no way his victory. Still, there’s a collective sigh of relief. The others cheer. It was a game! Ha, ha – Miranda, you’re so brutal. Mark – well done, chap!
When Mark goes to spin the bottle, his hand shakes.
It lands, as I had somehow known it would, on me.
‘Dare,’ I say. I don’t want to do one: Miranda’s dares have always been notoriously horrible. But I’d take pretty much any dare over a truth right now.
‘Mark?’ Samira asks, turning to him. ‘Got any ideas?’
Mark puts a hand to his throat, and tries to speak, but only a hoarse kind of wheeze comes out. He shakes his head, and defers his choice.
‘Fine,’ Miranda says, matter-of-fact, apparently unconcerned by the fact that she’s the cause of this indignity. She steeples her fingers, then goes to Emma, whispers in her ear. Jesus Christ, it’s like something from school. How can Emma be so friendly with Miranda, after what she just inflicted on her boyfriend? But perhaps we really are pretending it was just fun and games, no harm meant or done.
Emma is nodding. ‘Or,’ she says, and whispers something in Miranda’s ear in return.
Bo laughs. ‘Going to share with us?’
Emma shakes her head at him, playfully. Miranda doesn’t even bother glancing in his direction. She is looking straight at me. I feel a chill go through me.
‘Into the loch,’ she says. ‘Ten seconds, fully submerged. Then out.’
I stare at her. She can’t be serious. ‘Miranda, it’s below freezing out there. There’s ice on the surface.’
‘Yes,’ Nick cuts in. ‘Miranda – she’ll freeze to death.’