‘Don’t tell anyone’ I whispered as we tucked the new sheets in, and I hid my wet pyjama bottoms in my case. She shook her head.
‘Of course not.’
And she never did.
I was still sitting there when my computer gave a faint ping, and another email popped up. It was from Nina. What’s the plan then? Flo is chasing. Yes to the pact? Nx I got up and paced to the door, feeling my fingers prickle with the stupidity of what I was about to do. Then I paced back and before I could change my mind, I typed out, Ok. Deal. xx.
Nina’s reply came back an hour later. Wow! Don’t take this the wrong way but gotta say, I’m surprised. In a good way I mean. Deal it is. Don’t even think about letting me down. Remember, I’m a doctor. I know at least 3 ways to kill you without leaving a trace. Nx
I took a deep breath, pulled up the original email from Flo, and began to type.
Dear Florence (Flo?)
I would love to come. Please thank Clare for thinking of me. I look forward to meeting up with you all in Northumberland and catching up with Clare.
Warm wishes, Nora (but Clare will know me as Lee). PS best to use this email address for any updates. The other one is not checked as regularly.
After that the emails came thick and fast. There was a flurry of regretful reply-all ‘nos’ – all citing the short notice. Away that weekend … So sorry, I’ve got to work … Family memorial service … (Nina: It’ll be a funeral for the next person who abuses the ‘reply all’ button.) I’m afraid I’ll be snorkelling in Cornwall! (Nina: Snorkelling? In November? She couldn’t think up a better excuse? Man, if I’d known the bar was that low I’d have said I was stuck down a mine in Chile or something.)
More work. More pre-engagements. And in between, a few acceptances.
At last the list was set. Clare Flo Melanie Tom (Nina’s reply back to me:??? Nina Me.
Just six people. It didn’t seem many for someone as popular as Clare. At least, as popular as she’d been at school. But it was short notice.
Was that why she’d invited me? To make up numbers, on what she knew would be a barrel-scraping do? But no, that wasn’t Clare, or not the Clare I once knew. The Clare I knew would have invited exactly who she wanted and spun it as soooo exclusive that only a handful of people were allowed to come.
I pushed the memories aside, burying them under a blanket of routine. But they kept surfacing – halfway through a run, in the middle of the night, whenever I was least expecting it.
Why, Clare? Why now?
2
NOVEMBER CAME ROUND frighteningly quickly. I did my best to push the whole thing to the back of my mind and concentrate on work, but it became harder and harder as the weekend approached. I ran longer routes, trying to make myself as tired as possible when I went to bed, but as soon as my head hit the pillow, the whispers started. Ten years. After everything that happened. Was this a huge mistake?
If it hadn’t been for Nina, I would have backed out but somehow, come the 14th, there I was: bag in hand, stepping off the train at Newcastle into a cold, sour morning, with Nina beside me, smoking a roll-up and grumbling for England as I bought coffee from the kiosk on the station platform. This was her third hen of the year (drag on cigarette), she’d spent the best part of five hundred quid on the last one (drag), and this one would be more like a grand once you took into account the wedding itself (exhale). Honestly, she’d rather write them a cheque for a ton and save herself the annual leave. And please, as she ground the butt out under her narrow heel, remind her again why she couldn’t bring Jess?
‘Because it’s a hen night,’ I said. I scooped up the coffee and followed Nina towards the car-park sign. ‘Because the whole point is to leave partners at home. Otherwise why not bring the fucking groom and have done with it?’
I never swear much, except with Nina. She brings it out of me somehow, like this sweary inner me is in there, waiting to be let out.
‘Do you still not drive?’ Nina asked as we swung our cases into the back of the hired Ford. I shrugged.
‘It’s one of the many basic skills of life I’ve never mastered. Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise to me.’ She folded her long legs into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and stuck the keys in the ignition. ‘I hate being driven. Driving is like karaoke – your own is epic, other people’s is just embarrassing or alarming.’
‘Well … it’s just, you know … living in London, a car seems like a luxury rather than a necessity. Don’t you think?’
‘I use Zipcar to visit Mum and Dad.’
‘Well.’ I looked out of the window as Nina let in the clutch. We did a brief bunny hop across the station car park before she sorted it out. ‘Australia’s a bit of a trek in a Volvo.’
‘Oh, God, I forgot your mum emigrated. With … what’s his name? Your stepdad?’
‘Philip,’ I said. Why do I always feel like a sulky teenager when I say his name? It’s a perfectly normal name.
Nina shot me a sharp look, and then jerked her head at the sat-nav.
‘Stick that on, would you, and put in the postcode Flo gave us. It’s our only hope of getting out of Newcastle town centre alive.’
Westerhope, Throckle, Stanegate, Haltwhistle, Wark … the signs flashed past like a sort of poetry, the road unfurling like an iron-grey ribbon flung across the sheep-cropped moors and low hills. The sky overhead was clouded and huge, but the small stone buildings that we passed at intervals sat huddled into the dips in the landscape, as if they were afraid of being seen. I didn’t have to navigate, and reading in a car makes me feel sick and strange, so I closed my eyes, shutting out Nina and the sound of the radio, alone in my own head with the questions that were nagging there.
Why me, Clare? Why now?
Was it just that she was getting married and wanted to rekindle an old friendship? But if so, why hadn’t she invited me to the wedding? She’d invited Nina, clearly, so it couldn’t be a family-only ceremony or anything like that.
She shook her head in my imagination, admonishing me to be patient, to wait. Clare always did like secrets. Her favourite passtime was finding out something about you and then hinting at it. Not spreading it around – just veiled references in conversation, references that only you and she understood. References that let you know.
We stopped in Hexham for lunch, and a cigarette break for Nina, and then pushed on towards Kielder Forest, out into country lanes, where the sky overhead became huge. But as the roads grew narrower the trees seemed to come closer, edging across the close-cropped peaty turf until they stood sentinel at the roadside, held back only by a thin drystone wall.
As we entered the forest itself, the sat-nav coverage dropped off, and then died.
‘Hang on.’ I scrabbled in my handbag. ‘I’ve got those print-outs that Flo emailed.’
‘Well, aren’t you the girl scout of the year,’ Nina said, but I could hear the relief in her voice. ‘What’s wrong with an iPhone anyway?’
‘This is what’s wrong with them.’ I held up my mobile, which was endlessly buffering and failing to load Google Maps. ‘They disappear unpredictably.’ I looked at the print-outs. ‘The Glass House’, the search-header read, ‘Stanebridge Road’. ‘OK, there’s a right coming up. A bend and then a right, it must be any time—’ The turning whizzed past and I said – mildly, I thought – ‘That was it. We missed it.’
‘Fine bloody navigator you are!’
‘What?’
‘You’re supposed to tell me about the turning before we get to it, you know.’ She imitated the robotic voice of the sat-nav: ‘Make a left in – fifty – metres. Make a left in – thirty – metres. Turn around when safe to do so, you have missed your turning.’
‘Well, turn around when safe to do so, lady. You have missed your turning.’
‘Screw safe.’ Nina stamped on the brakes and did a fast, bad-tempered three-point turn just at another bend in the forest road. I shut my eyes.
‘What was that you were saying about karaoke?’
‘Oh it’s a dead end, no one was coming.’