She stopped, breathing hard, on the landing and gestured to a blond wood door on the right-hand side. ‘There you go.’
Inside there were two neat white beds and a low dressing table, all as anonymous as a hotel room, and, facing the beds, the creepily obligatory wall of glass, looking north over the pine forest. Here it was harder to understand. The ground sloped up at the back of the house and so there was no spectacular view as there was from the front. Instead the effect was more claustrophobic than anything – a wall of dark green, already deepening into shadow with the setting sun. There were heavy cream curtains gathered in each corner, and I had to fight the urge to rip them across the enormous expanse of glass.
Behind me Flo let Nina’s case fall with a thud to the floor. I turned, and she smiled, a huge beam that made her suddenly look almost as pretty as Clare.
‘Any questions?’
‘Yes,’ Nina said. ‘Mind if I smoke in here?’
Flo’s face fell. ‘I’m afraid my aunt doesn’t like smoking indoors. But you’ve got a balcony.’ She wrestled with a folding door in the glass wall for a moment and then flung it open. ‘You can smoke out here if you like.’
‘Super,’ Nina said. ‘Thanks.’
Flo struggled with the door again, and then swung it shut. She straightened, her face pink with exertion, dusting her hands on her skirt. ‘Right! Well, I’ll let you get unpacked. See you downstairs, yah?’
‘Yah!’ Nina said enthusiastically, and I tried to cover it by saying ‘Thanks!’ unnecessarily loudly, in a way that only managed to make me sound weirdly aggressive.
‘Um, yeah! OK!’ Flo said, uncertainly, and then she backed out of the doorway and was gone.
‘Nina …’ I said warningly, as she made her way over to gaze out across the forest.
‘What?’ she said over her shoulder, absent-mindedly. And then, ‘So Tom’s definitely of the male persuasion, judging by Flo’s determination to quarantine his raging Y chromosomes from our delicate lady parts.’
I couldn’t help but snort. That’s the thing about Nina. You forgive her stuff that other people would never get away with.
‘I think he’s probably gay – don’t you? I mean, why would he be on a hen night otherwise?’
‘Um, contrary to what you seem to believe, batting for the other team doesn’t actually change your gender. I think. No, wait—’ She peered down her top. ‘No, we’re all good. Double-Ds all present and correct.’
‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’ I banged my own case down on the bed, and then remembered my washbag, and unzipped it more gingerly. My trainers were on top, and I set them down neatly by the door, a reassuring little ‘emergency exit’ sign. ‘Hen nights are partly about an appreciation of the male form. That’s what women have in common with gay men.’
‘Christ, now you tell me. Perfect excuse lined up and you never trotted it out until now. Could you Reply-all to my next hen-night invitation saying “Sorry, Nina can’t come as she doesn’t appreciate the male form”?’
‘Oh for God’s sake. I said partly an appreciation.’
‘It’s all right.’ She turned back to the window, peering out into the forest, the tree trunks dark streaks in the green gloaming. There was a tragic crack in her voice. ‘I’m used to being excluded from heteronormative society.’
‘Fuck off,’ I said grumpily, and when she turned around she was laughing.
‘Why are we here, anyway?’ she asked, throwing herself backwards onto one of the twin beds and kicking off her shoes. ‘I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen Clare in about three years.’
I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say.
Why had I come? Why had Clare invited me?
‘Nina,’ I started. There was a lump in my throat, and I felt my heart quicken. ‘Nina, who—?’
But before I could finish, the sound of pounding filled the room, echoing up through the open hallway.
There was someone at the door.
Suddenly I wasn’t at all sure I was ready to get the answers to my questions.
3
NINA AND I looked at each other. My heart was thudding like a stray echo of the door knocker, but I tried to keep my face calm.
Ten years. Had she changed? Had I changed?
I swallowed.
There was the sound of Flo’s feet echoing in the high atrium of the hallway, then metal shrieking on metal as she opened the heavy door, followed by the murmur of voices as whoever it was came into the house.
I listened carefully. It didn’t sound like Clare. In fact beneath Flo’s laugh I could hear something that sounded distinctly … male?
Nina rolled over and raised herself up on one elbow. ‘Well, well, well … sounds like the fully Y-chromosomed Tom has arrived.’
‘Nina …’
‘What? What are you looking at me like that for? Shall we go downstairs and meet the cock in the hen house?’
‘Nina! Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’ She swung her feet to the floor and stood up.
‘Don’t embarrass us. Him.’
‘If we’re hens, naturally that makes him a cock. I’m using the term in its purely zoological sense.’
‘Nina!’
But she was gone, loping down the glass stairs in her stockinged feet, and I heard her voice floating up the stairwell. ‘Hello, don’t think we’ve met …’
Don’t think we’ve met. Well, it definitely wasn’t Clare then. I took a deep breath and followed her down into the hallway.
I saw the little group from above first. By the front door was a girl with smooth shiny black hair tied in a knot at the base of her skull – presumably Melanie. She was smiling and nodding at something Flo was saying, but she had a mobile in her hand and was poking distractedly at the screen even while Flo talked. On the opposite side was a bloke, Burberry case in hand. He had smooth chestnut hair and was immaculately dressed in a white shirt that must have been professionally laundered – no normal person could produce creased sleeves like that – and a pair of grey wool trousers that screamed Paul Smith. He looked up as he heard my feet on the stairs and smiled.
‘Hi, I’m Tom.’
‘Hi, I’m Nora.’ I forced myself down the last few stand, and then held out my hand. There was something incredibly familiar about his face, and I tried to figure out what it was while we shook, but I couldn’t place it. Instead I turned to the dark-haired girl. ‘And you must be … Melanie?’
‘Um, hi, yeah.’ She looked up and gave a flustered smile. ‘Sorry, I just … I left my six-month-old at home with my partner. First time I’ve done it. I really wanted to call home and check in. Isn’t there any reception here?’
‘Not really,’ Flo said apologetically. Her face was flushed with nerves or excitement, I wasn’t sure which. ‘Sorry. You can sometimes get a bit from the top end of the garden or the balconies, depending on what network you’re on. But there’s a landline in the living room. Let me show you.’
She led the way through and I turned back to Tom. I still had an odd feeling I’d seen him somewhere before.
‘So, how do you know Clare’ I asked awkwardly.
‘Oh, you know. Theatre connections. Everyone knows everyone! It was actually through my husband originally – he’s a director.’
Nina gave me a theatrical wink behind Tom’s back. I frowned furiously and then rearranged my face as I saw Tom looking puzzled.
‘Sorry, go on,’ Nina said seriously.
‘Anyway, I met Clare at a fundraiser for the Royal Theatre Company. Bruce was directing something there, we just got talking shop.’
‘You’re an actor?’ Nina asked.
‘No, playwright.’
It’s always strange meeting another writer. A little feeling of camaraderie, a masonic bond. I wonder if plumbers feel like this meeting other plumbers, or if accountants give each other secret nods. Maybe it’s because we meet comparatively rarely; writers tend to spend the bulk of their working life alone.