Why? Why did they still have this power over me, Clare in particular? Why did I let them?
I sighed, shoved the toothbrush and toothpaste back into my washbag, pushed open the door and padded up the hallway to the bedroom. It was cool and quiet, quite different from the overheated, over-populated living room. I could hear Jarvis Cocker in the background, his voice floating up the open hallway, but the sound muted to just a muffled bassline when I shut the bedroom door and flopped down on the bed. The relief was indescribable. If I shut my eyes I could almost imagine myself back in my little flat in Hackney; only the sound of traffic and honking horns outside was missing.
I wished myself back there, so powerfully that I could almost feel the worn softness of my flowered duvet cover beneath my palm, see the rattan blind that flapped softly at the window on summer nights.
But then there was a knock at the door, and when I opened my eyes, the blank blackness of the forest reflected back at me from the glass wall. I sighed, gearing myself up to answer it, and then the knock came again.
‘Lee?’
I got up and opened the door. It was Flo standing outside, her hands on her hips.
‘Lee! I can’t believe you’re doing this to Clare!’
‘What?’ I felt immensely tired all of a sudden. ‘Doing what? Going to bed?’
‘I’ve gone to loads of effort to make this a perfect weekend for Clare – I’ll kill you if you ruin it on the very first night!’
‘I’m not ruining anything, Flo. You’re the one making this into a big deal, not me. I just want to go to bed. All right?’
‘No, it’s not all right. I won’t have you sabotaging everything I’ve worked for!’
‘I just want to go to bed,’ I repeated, like a mantra.
‘Well, I think you’re being a … a selfish bitch,’ Flo burst out. Her face was red, and she looked as if she was on the verge of tears. ‘Clare’s … Clare’s the best, OK? And she deserves … she deserves—’ Her chin wobbled.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ I said, and before I could think better of it, I shut the door in her face.
For a minute I heard her outside, breathing heavily, and I thought, if she sobs, I’m going to have to go out there and apologise. I can’t sit here and listen to her breaking down outside my door.
But she didn’t. By some huge effort, she got herself together, and went downstairs, leaving me very close to crying myself.
I don’t know when Nina came up, but it was late, very late. I wasn’t asleep, but I was pretending to be, huddled under the duvet with my pillow over my head, as she padded heavily around the room, knocking over tubes of lotion and kicking her suitcase.
‘Are you awake?’ she whispered as she slid into the twin bed next to mine.
I considered ignoring her, but then I sighed and turned over. ‘No. Probably because you’ve knocked over every bottle in the place.’
‘Sorry.’ She huddled down under the sheets, and I saw the glint of her eye as she yawned and blinked tiredly. ‘Look, I’m sorry about earlier. I honestly didn’t …’
‘It’s all right,’ I said wearily. ‘I’m sorry too. I overreacted. I was just tired, and drunk.’ I’d already made up my mind to apologise to Flo in the morning. Whoever was at fault here, it certainly wasn’t her.
‘No, it was me,’ Nina said. She flung onto her back and put her hand over her eyes. ‘I was being my usual shit-stirring self. But, you know, it’s been ten years. I think I could be forgiven for assuming …’ She trailed off. But I knew what she meant. You could be forgiven for thinking a normal person would have got over whatever happened, moved on.
‘I know,’ I said wearily. ‘D’you think I don’t? It’s pathetic.’
‘Nora, what happened? Clearly something did. You don’t act like this over a normal break-up.’
‘Nothing happened. He dumped me. End of.’
‘That’s not what I heard.’ She rolled onto her side again, and I felt her gaze on my face in the darkness. ‘I heard you dumped him.’
‘Well, you heard wrong. He dumped me. By text, if you must know.’
I got rid of the phone soon after. The cheerfully insouciant ‘cheep-cheep’ alert never stopped stinging.
‘OK … but still. Look, I never asked, but did he—’
She stopped. I could hear the cogs in her brain turning, trying to work out how to phrase something tricky. I kept silent. Whatever it was she was thinking, I wasn’t going to help her.
‘Oh fuck it, there’s no way to say this without prying, but I have to say it. He didn’t … he didn’t hit you, did he?’
‘What?’
I wasn’t expecting that.
‘OK, clearly not, sorry.’ Nina turned onto her back. ‘I’m sorry. But honestly, Lee—’
‘Nora.’
‘Sorry! Sorry, Clare’s got me doing it. And you’re right. It doesn’t make any sense. But honestly, though, the way you reacted after you guys split up – you can’t blame people for wondering—’
‘People?’
‘Look, we were sixteen – you leaving town and James falling apart was pretty dramatic. There was talk, all right?’
‘Jesus wept.’ I stared up at the ceiling. There was utter silence but for a strange soft patter outside, like rain, but softer. ‘Is that really what people thought?’
‘Yup,’ Nina said laconically. ‘I’d say that was the most popular of the theories. That or gave you an STD.’
God. Poor James. In spite of what he’d done, he didn’t deserve that.
‘No,’ I said at last. ‘No, James Cooper did not beat me up. Or give me an STD. And you’re very welcome to tell anyone that who “wonders” about it in your hearing. Now, good night, I’m going to sleep.’
‘What then? If it wasn’t that? What happened?’
‘Good night.’
I turned on my side, listening to the silence, the sound of Nina’s exasperated breathing, and the soft patter outside.
And then at last I slept.
10
VOICES. IN THE corridor outside. They filter into my dream, through the morphine haze, and for a moment I think I’m back at the Glass House, and Clare and Flo are whispering outside my door, their shaking hands holding the gun.
We should have checked the house …
Then I open my eyes, and I remember where I am.
The hospital. The people outside my door are nurses, night orderlies … maybe even the police officer I saw earlier.
I lie there blinking, and trying to make my tired, drug-addled brain work. What time is it? The hospital lights are dimmed for night, but I have no sense of whether it’s 9 p.m. or 4 a.m.
I twist my head to look for my phone. Always when I wake, I check the time on my phone. It’s the first thing I do. But the locker beside my bed is empty. My phone is not there.
There are no clothes hanging on the chair by the window, no pockets in the hospital gown I’m wearing. My phone is gone.
I lie there, looking around the small, dimly-lit room. It’s a private room, which seems odd – but maybe the main ward was full. Or perhaps that’s just how they do things up here. There are no other patients to ask, and no clock on the wall. If the softly blinking green monitor by my head has a time display, I can’t see it.
For a minute I think about calling out, asking the policewoman outside my door what the time is, where I am, what’s happened to me.
But then I realise; she’s talking to someone else, it was their low voices that woke me. I swallow, dry and sticky, and pull my head painfully off the pillow, ready to croak out an appeal. But before I can speak, one sentence filters through the thick glass of the door and glues my dry tongue to the roof of my mouth.
‘Oh Jesus,’ I hear, ‘so now we’re looking at murder?’
11
I WOKE TO a clear, bright silence, broken only by Nina’s soft snoring in the bed next to mine. But as I lay there, stretching my muscles and wishing I’d refilled my water glass, I began to disentangle the sounds of the forest: birdsong, a snap of twigs, and a soft ‘flump’ that I didn’t recognise, followed by a flurry of gentle sounds like sheets of paper falling to the floor.