Everyone told Peter not to be silly, he was too drunk to handle a gun, and what would they all do with a dead deer at this time of night anyway? He seemed to accept this, but still complained of being cold.
They had given him one of the torches and he had gone back to the house. They thought he’d gone to get a coat.
When they’d heard the shot, they’d just assumed he’d seen the deer and taken a pot shot at it nearer the house.
But it turns out, he’d been carrying the gun back outside and his stumbling foot must have caught on one of Morningstar’s uneven flagstones. His finger had been on the trigger and, unfortunately, the gun had come up and shot him. No one discovered him until I heard the shot, came down in my nightgown and found him lying there with half his face blown away, my bare feet puddled in his blood, my hands raddled with it as I’d tried, in my dazed, shocked state, to shake him awake.
My screaming had drawn the others back to the house.
A tragic, tragic accident.
It was as good a story as any. For all I knew it might have been true.
I’d hated and feared Peter. If I’d heard, for instance, that he’d been killed in a car crash during one of his many murky trips to London, my reaction would probably have been delirious relief. But here, like this, his death filled me with cold horror and a numbing dread.
I remembered next to nothing of that night – just bits and pieces. I remembered that there had been cold flagstones, and that I had laid down on them, naked, and that the crown of flowers on my hair had fallen away, but that was all of the ritual I could recall. The next fragment of memory had been on the stairs, when someone was shouting at me – male voices, very angry, warped and distorted, like a tape that was slowed down, but the note of rage and sheer panic had been unmistakeable.
Then that rolling boom, like thunder.
I had been terrified, and that’s when I’d run out and into the grounds.
That was all I could remember.
The others kept telling me it was an accident, a terrible accident. That Peter had been off his face; he’d freaked out, picked up the gun – we’d done nothing wrong, after all. It wasn’t as if we were lying to cover up a crime. It was just an accident.
We were simply protecting ourselves from a materialistic, judgmental outside world that wouldn’t understand us.
Most importantly, we were protecting Aaron, protecting his good name, protecting his nascent solo career, which would be launching any day now that the ritual had been completed.
It had been an accident.
But me?
I wasn’t so sure.
* * *
Throughout this long day, I didn’t see Aaron once; at least, not until the end of it.
I was passing by the windows in the long gallery when I glimpsed him stood on the drawbridge with the two policemen, shaking hands with them one by one. They were leaving.
My heart began to pound and my mouth was dry. I needed to see him. I needed his embrace, for him to tell me that it was all right, that I had performed as required, both in the story for the police and in the ritual, which now seemed a mere dream.
As I waited restlessly for the police to go, I brushed my wild miasma of hair, which had dried into strange twists and crimps, changed into tighter jeans and applied a little slick of lipstick to offset my white face, which was still wan after last night’s adventures.
Whatever Aaron and the police were talking about, it seemed to go on for a long time.
But eventually they turned on their heels and left, their cheap shoes thudding against the drawbridge planks. I smoothed down my clothes and headed off down the stairs to find Aaron.
I emerged on to the landing just in time to see him climb the stairs and enter the long gallery opposite.
‘Aaron!’ I shouted out.
The most peculiar thing happened. It was as if I was invisible, or a ghost. He did not turn round or acknowledge me in any way. His angular face was as impassive as a marble angel’s. He must be lost in his own thoughts, I reasoned to myself, but there was something in the determined set of his shoulders that coldly told me yes, he was aware of me.
He just didn’t want to acknowledge me.
I leaned across the wooden balustrade, gripping the ancient handrail. ‘Aaron!’
He opened the door to the master bedroom and went in.
I stood for a few moments, breathless, wondering what this could mean. A cold shiver was moving up my spine, my throat was tightening.
I crossed the landing, skirting the handrail, the wooden floor creaking beneath my pounding feet as I raced down the long gallery, ignoring Wolf as he sat huddled in front of the fire, his face ashen.
‘Nina,’ he called after me.
I ignored him. I was outside Aaron’s door, but now I was here, I had no idea what to do.
I knocked, tentatively.
There was no reply.
‘Aaron?’
I tried the door.
It was locked.
I attempted to turn the handle a few times just to be sure. I had never known Aaron’s door to be locked. Usually, just the force of his personality was sufficient to repel the uninvited.
‘Aaron! Aaron! Let me in!’
I was aware that someone was at my shoulders, grabbing at me with hard hands, and they smelled of cigarette smoke and weed. I was wrapped against his chest as he pulled me backwards.
‘C’mon, Lucy, help me out!’
Both Wolf and Lucy were pulling me away from the door into the long gallery, and I didn’t understand what was going on, I tried to resist.
‘Let go of me! Let go! Aaron? AARON!’
They dragged me away, and in my weakened state, though I fought and wriggled, I was as helpless as a kitten.
I was borne back into the long gallery and forced down into one of the chairs in front of the fire.
‘He doesn’t want to see you,’ said Lucy. ‘He doesn’t want to see anyone.’ She folded her arms at me, not quite meeting my gaze.
I blinked at her, tears running down my face. What Lucy was saying didn’t make any sense. How were we supposed to know what to do now? Why was Aaron angry at me?
‘Why not?’ My teeth were bared at her, and I contemptuously shook off Wolf’s lingering hand. ‘What’s going on?’
Penelope had appeared in the doorway, as though drawn by the furore.
‘Now, now, Nina. It’s been a long day for everybody. Perhaps he’ll feel differently in the morning,’ she said smoothly.
I burst into heartbroken sobbing, and I was conscious of Wolf’s arms settling around me, him murmuring into my hair to ‘let it out, let it all out’. I hated it, and the smell of him, and I was about to shake him off when I realized how selfish I was being. Of course Aaron was distraught over the loss of Peter, and nobody had thought to comfort him. Aaron, who gave so generously to us all, when we gave him nothing back.
And now I was adding to his troubles.
‘He must be grieving,’ I said, wiping at my eyes. ‘He must miss Peter.’
Penelope and Lucy shared a look.
‘It’s been a very long day,’ repeated Penelope with a finality that brooked no riposte. Her usually perfect hair was messy, straying out of its braided crown. ‘Let’s get something to eat and have an early night.’
* * *
When I woke the next morning it was still dawn. I lay there, disoriented, conscious only that I wasn’t alone – there was movement in my room, rustling, the sound of drawers being stealthily opened.
‘She’s awake.’
I rubbed my crusted eyes and blinked. In the chilly semi-darkness Penelope and Lucy seemed everywhere.
It took me a couple of seconds to realize they were packing my few possessions into a pale blue knapsack.
‘What … what are you doing?’ I sat up in the bed, suddenly wholly conscious.
‘Nina,’ said Penelope firmly, as though addressing a recalcitrant child, ‘Aaron’s been thinking. With what h
appened to Peter, it’s best that we all think about what direction the order is headed in and take some time and space for ourselves. The driver’s here, and he’ll take you to wherever you need to go.’
‘What? I don’t have anywhere to go!’
‘It won’t be for long. Just while we sort this thing with Peter out,’ offered Lucy with a weak smile.
Penelope’s expression didn’t change – or perhaps it did, and that shadow of triumph was back, its lines accentuated by the way the pre-dawn light silhouetted the pair of them.
Good cop, bad cop.
Instantly I understood everything.
‘You’re throwing me out?’ My stomach bottomed out. I felt like I was falling. Penelope’s next words sounded as though they were coming from a very faint radio station playing faraway.
‘Nina, there is absolutely no point in making a fuss. Aaron has made his mind up.’ She brushed back her icy hair from her face, and from this gesture, with its languidness, its showy affect, I guessed how much she was enjoying this. ‘You need to leave with the others. Right now.’
‘I want to talk to Aaron first!’ I snapped, my jaw trembling.
‘Aaron isn’t here, sweetheart,’ said Lucy. ‘He went out this morning. He needs his space too.’ Her eyes looked huge in the gloom. She was already in full make-up.
‘But … but where will I go?’ I asked, bewildered. ‘I have nowhere left to go.’
‘Why don’t you just go back to college?’ drawled Penelope, as though the subject bored her.
I scrambled away from them over the bed, stunned. ‘I can’t, they’ll have expelled me by now – Aaron said …’
‘Then go back to your parents, but you can’t stay here. We’re shutting the house up. We’re all leaving.’
‘I can’t go back to my parents!’ I looked wildly between them both, as though they had lost their minds. ‘You know I can’t!’
‘The world doesn’t owe you a bed for the night,’ snapped Penelope, all control vanishing, her green eyes narrow with malice. ‘Get in that car with the others, or we’ll call the police and they can throw you out into the street like the little tramp you are.’
* * *
Tristan and Wolf were already in the car as I was led, sobbing, to it, as though it were my gallows. Tristan was pale and shaking, every blue vein in his face visible, but Wolf had a kind of morbid cheerfulness that seemed to want to burst out of him, a mood he also seemed to be working hard to restrain.
‘You all right, love?’ he asked as I climbed into the car. He moved next to me and put his arm around me. The smell of stale fags was overpowering, but this kindly human contact comforted me nevertheless. ‘Cheer up, darling. It’s for the best.’
This was too stupid to even reply to. The only reason I’d let the others pull me out here was because I was afraid of upsetting Aaron even more. I had persuaded myself, I think, that this wasn’t real – this was a test, and at the last moment he would appear, call me back in, and I would throw myself at his feet and wrap my arms around his knees. Together we would weather out this horrifying storm of death and fear.
I kept waiting for this deliverance.
It kept not appearing.
Our driver had reappeared, though. We no longer merited a uniform, it seemed, and he was in old-man slacks and a pale blue shirt. He still neither looked at nor spoke to us.
Even in the depths of my misery, I wondered how he had been contacted, considering there were supposed to be no phones in the house.
But these thoughts were interrupted by a sudden terrible, hideous wailing.
It was Tess.
‘NO! NO! NO! AARON! AARON! HELP!’
Penelope and Lucy were wrestling Tess out of the door, and she was still in her clothes from the night before. Her face was bright red and streaked with tears, her mouth a scarlet wet maw as she sagged in their arms and let out a high keening, which might have been words, or might simply have been random syllables, a lost language of grief.
Penelope was furious, and the more Tess resisted, the more savage she became, kicking out the skinny bare leg Tess put down to brace herself against her forward momentum, grabbing Tess by the hair as her head sank into her chest. Lucy just pushed, her face slightly turned away, as though despairing of trying to comfort Tess and just desperate to get her in the car.
This spectacle filled me with a pure throbbing sense of terror and loss. I was experiencing exactly what Tess was, only Tess was physically expressing it.
This was it. It was over.
I would never see Aaron again.
Wolf was unbuckling himself from the seatbelt with hard jittery movements, his face set like iron. The car door was flung open, the cold air hitting me as he jumped out.
‘Get your fucking hands off her!’ He shoved Penelope back with ruthless contempt. ‘She’s just a kid!’
He took Tess in his arms, Lucy releasing her. ‘Come here, love. Come here. It’s all right. It’s OK.’
Tess still wailed, striking out weakly at him. ‘I don’t want to go! I want to stay here …’
‘No, you don’t. No you don’t.’
‘I do! I want to stay!’ Tess’s face crumpled and her resistance collapsed. Her hands fell straight to her sides. ‘I want to stay with Aaron.’
‘That’s not going to be possible, baby. And he’s too much of a despicable coward to tell you that to your face.’
‘No, no, don’t say that …’ Her eyes were huge, as though she was hearing unbearable blasphemies, her hands knitting in her thick honey-coloured hair.
‘All right. Have it your way.’ He petted her head, as though she was a panicky young animal, smoothing her hands where they were gnarled against her scalp, and shhing her as she rocked on her feet, racked with sobs. ‘Come on. Come on now. Come with us.’
Tristan had got out of the car now and took Tess’s little suitcase from Lucy, as it was clear the driver wasn’t going to do this.
Tristan popped the boot and dropped it in, hiding them all from my view for a second. All I could hear was Tess, weeping, and the faraway calls of pheasants somewhere in the grounds.
‘Where you off to now, love?’
It took me a long moment to work out where the voice was coming from, and then I realized it was the driver. There was the flash of his attention in the rear-view mirror.
‘D’you have parents? Do you want to go there?’
His face turned over his shoulder – he had pockmarked skin and a large, bulbous nose lined in tiny purple blood vessels, but in his little grey eyes and locked jaw I saw two competing impulses existing in tandem – a reticent, stoic pity balanced against a desire to have absolutely nothing to do with me or any of us. We were trouble.
I shook my head.
‘I can’t go to my parents’.’
‘You sure?’ He turned his pockmarked face back to the front. ‘I think you should.’ His voice was even. ‘They’ll be worried.’
‘I doubt it,’ I muttered bitterly.
I had the sense he wanted to say more, but instead he just sighed, a tiny sound of breath. ‘Then where?’
‘Cambridge. Mill Road.’
‘You got family there?’
‘Friends,’ I said. ‘But I think you should take Tess back to where she needs to go first.’
His only reply was a single nod.
* * *
Our driver honoured my request and took Tess home first. She wept all the way to Reading, with such abandonment that I was sure she would make herself sick. I had the peculiar feeling of almost envying her the paroxysm of her utter despair.
I myself could feel nothing – it was as though the world was made of cotton wool. Or rather, it had ended, and I was living through the split second between the detonator sparking and the explosion, and this moment was going to last for the rest of my life.
Wolf was talking to Tristan.
‘Are you joking? He couldn’t go abroad if he wanted to. He just said that to get us out of the house.
Peter Clay was shot dead in his fucking hallway. There’ll be an inquest.’ Wolf scowled, resting his head on the rain-pattered window and letting out a sigh. ‘He’ll probably love the publicity, the prick.’
‘You think he’ll stay at Morningstar?’ Tristan rubbed his pink eyes. ‘With the girls?’
Wolf’s laughter was shocking, raucous. ‘Well, I think half of that’s right.’ He leaned forward and tapped on the driver’s seat. ‘Mate, can I smoke in here?’
‘Do what you like,’ came the gravelly response. ‘It ain’t my car.’
Tess continued to sob quietly, huddled against the window. Her top and jeans were soaked with it. I had the sudden morbid fear that Tess might cry herself to death; actually die of a broken heart.
I lied to the police.
It came to me like a sudden thunderclap, as the fuse burned down and the explosion finally came.
I lied to the police.
It had seemed bearable, in the floating world of Morningstar where we all had each other, but now, now that everything was ripped apart, the appalling magnitude of my sin towered above me, towered above all of us.
In my head I heard it again, that storm of furious, yelling male voices from the night of the ritual, cut off by that rolling boom.
I lied to the police, and I think I lied about a murder.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Wolf stayed in the car with me. Tess was gone and Tristan had been let out in Oxford, and parted from us with a sheepish little wave.
He’s going straight back to Morningstar to beg to be taken back, I thought with the insight or paranoia of a jealous lover, and suddenly a voracious desire grew within me to go with him, to try again. Perhaps Aaron had changed his mind in the intervening hours, realized that he’d been too hasty.
How could Aaron manage without us? He’d be so alone.
‘So what number do these friends of yours live at, love?’ asked our driver suddenly.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think it began with a one, though.’
He sighed, but I didn’t care. I was exhausted now – bone-deep tired – and if I had to knock on every door on the street to find Rosie, that’s what I’d do.
Everything Is Lies Page 30