I glance in the mirror hanging above the dressing table. I thought I looked amazing in the gold dress. No, I knew I looked amazing. But it’s like I’ve woken up in a parallel universe. Now the fabric is rumpled and stained, and my make-up (I was wearing quite a lot of it – I need to wear more of it these days) has sunk into the creases of skin about my eyes and mouth that I could swear weren’t as deep yesterday. I move away from the light, thinking of Blanche DuBois, cringing away from lamps. Is that what I’m going to become? Is there anything sadder than a once-beautiful woman who has lost her looks?
For some reason there’s a song going around and around in my head. Candi Staton’s ‘You’ve Got the Love’. And there’s something about it that niggles at me, though I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like last night, when someone said that disconcerting thing. Who was it? And what did they say?
At least I’m feeling a bit less drunk now. I must have got rid of most of the booze from my system. I have no idea what time it is. But Julien isn’t back yet – so the party must be continuing. I feel a sudden sense of FOMO, at the idea of them carrying on without me. I can’t believe I managed to pass out. I’ve got to rally myself, get back out there. This is what is expected of me, after all. I stagger into the bathroom, drag a comb through my hair, splash some water on my face, and attempt to tidy the make-up smeared around my eyes, with little effect. I brush my teeth: that’s something, at least. What time is it? I check the clock. Four in the morning. Wow, the others have really made a night of it, then. I feel that sting again, at the knowledge of the fun I must’ve missed. I have always been – prided myself on being – the life and soul of the party. That was what Julien said at our wedding: ‘I love you’, looking at me, looking into my eyes, ‘because you are the life and soul of the party.’ ‘And a few other reasons, I hope,’ I had laughed. He had grinned. ‘Of course.’ But it has stuck with me, that phrase. I remember the way he looked at me as he said it, and I can never let it go, that aspect of myself. Well, I’m going to show him now.
I open the door of the cabin. The cold hits me like a slap. I steel myself against it. There are lights on, coming not from the Lodge building, as I had first thought, but from the sauna. I feel a little sting of resentment – they could have come and got me, asked if I wanted to join them. I’ve been wanting to try out the sauna.
I slip and slide my way there along the frozen path, past the Lodge. All the lights in there are off bar a single lamp in the living room. I can just make out Mark, sleeping on one of the sofas. Another casualty of this evening, then. I feel a little better for knowing that I’m not the only one.
There is a smell in the air that I recognise from skiing trips: a freshness, almost metallic. I remember Doug’s warning. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were all sitting in the sauna, looking out towards the loch, and it started to snow? So picturesque. Give us a good memory of tonight, one that would erase my messiness.
As I get nearer, I hear a strange sound that literally stops me in my tracks. Something animal. Somewhere between a cry and a groan. It sounded as though it came from the direction of the sauna, the woods behind. I feel my skin wash with goosebumps as I hurry towards the sauna: it represents a haven now from the great, wild outdoors.
Only a couple of feet from the door I hear the sound again, and this time I hesitate. Because now I’m almost certain it came not from the trees behind the sauna, but from inside the sauna itself.
NOW
2nd January 2019
HEATHER
I go to the little toilet next to my office to splash some cold water on my face, in an attempt to try to clear my mind after everything I’ve just discovered about Doug.
I’m just drying my face when I hear something, a murmuring of voices. A man and a woman. It’s two of the guests, I’m certain, but I can’t work out which ones. Part of the problem is that they all have the same voices to my ear: Southern, middle-class, entitled.
The man, first: ‘If they find out – I’m screwed.’
‘Why would they find out?’ The woman, answering.
‘There’s a note.’
I freeze, and move closer to the wall, as quietly as I can. Of course – the corridor to the back door wraps around beside my office. Someone could go there wanting to have a private conversation and never know that there’s a room here, because the loo is only accessible through the office.
‘The note?’ the woman says, with a tremor of incredulity, ‘You didn’t destroy it?’
‘No – I didn’t think. I was too panicked, with everything else. I don’t even know where it is now …’
There is a long silence, during which I am fairly sure the woman is trying to think of ways not to berate him. What sort of note? I wonder. A suicide note? That seems unlikely, the last time I checked it was pretty difficult to strangle yourself.
‘The important thing,’ the woman says, calmly, at last, ‘is that you didn’t have anything to do with her death. That’s what counts. They’ll be able to see that.’
‘But will they, though?’ he says. His voice rises to a shrill, panicked pitch. Then it sinks to a murmur again, quieter than before: I think she’s shushed him. I press my head closer to the wall.
‘When the other stuff comes out about me – when they decide what sort of person they think I am …’
There’s a sudden crash. I jump back, confused, and realise that in my eagerness to hear I’ve managed to dislodge the little hunting scene on the wall next to me. It has fallen to the ground with an impressive explosion of broken glass.
The voices, of course, have gone quiet. I can almost feel them, standing there rigid with shock, on the other side of the wall – hardly breathing. As quietly as I can, I creep my way back into the office.
One day earlier
New Year’s Day 2019
MIRANDA
The sight confronting me inside the sauna is absurd. I am so stunned that I feel a strange urge to laugh. I remember when our cat got run over when we were children, how when my mum told us, my brother’s first reaction was, ‘Ha!’ I was so shocked I slapped him. But my mum explained that it was a simple reaction to the trauma. The brain short-circuiting, unable to make sense of something.
This is what I see: my husband, crouched on the floor of the sauna. Above him I see Katie. My best friend, my oldest friend. Completely nude. Her legs open, his head buried between them. My plain, flat-chested, thick-thighed friend. Her head thrown back in ecstasy. He grips her calves. She has her feet locked around his back. And as I watch, he reaches up and takes the nipple of one of her fried egg breasts in one hand. This, finally, is too much. It’s torn out of me. ‘Ugh.’
They freeze. Then both, slowly, turn to look at me. Julien – oh Christ – wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Their expressions are blank at first, as they make sense of what they are seeing. I feel a tide of horror flooding through me, like a poison entering the bloodstream. I glance over at the scuttle of hot coals, and for a second I am tempted – really tempted – to pick up the shovel and chuck a load of the burning rocks at them.
It is all completely absurd. My husband and my best friend. It can’t be possible. I almost expect them to both suddenly crack grins and congratulate themselves on pranking me, as they did at the surprise party for my thirtieth birthday. This would be rather difficult to explain away as a prank, though.
‘Oh,’ Katie says. ‘Oh, God.’
‘I thought you were asleep,’ Julien says. ‘I left you at the cabin. You were passed out …’ And then, apparently, realising the ridiculousness of accusing his wife of not being where he thought she was while he cheated on her, he says, ‘Oh God, Miranda. Oh fuck. I’m so sorry. It’s not – it’s not what it seems.’
And now I do laugh, a mad-witch cackle that only makes them look more afraid. Good. I want them to be afraid.
‘Don’t you dare come back to the cabin,’ I say to Julien. ‘I don’t care where you stay, frankly. You can be with her, for all it matters to me now. But I don’t want to see your face. So don’t come anywhere near me.’ I’m rather amazed by how calm I sound: at the contrast between my internal and external selves.