by Ruth Ware
After a moment I followed his gaze. It looked different to last night: someone had switched on the external security lights, and you could see the blank white lawn stretched out, a perfect unbroken snowy carpet, and the sentinel trees, their trunks bare and prickly beneath the canopy. It should have made me feel better – that you could see the blank, unspoilt canvas, visual evidence that we were alone, that whoever had disturbed the snow before had not come back. But somehow it was not reassuring. It made it feel even more stage-like, like the floodlights that illuminate the stage, and cast the audience into a black morass beyond its golden pool, unseen watchers in the darkness.
For a moment I made myself shiver, imagining the myriad eyes of the night: foxes with their eyes glowing yellow in the lamplight, white-winged owls, frightened shrews. But the footsteps of this morning had not been animal. They had been very, very human.
‘It’s stopped snowing,’ Tom said unnecessarily. ‘I must admit, I’m quite glad. I didn’t really fancy being snowed in here for days on end.’
‘Snowed in?’ I said. ‘In November? Do you think that could really happen?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Flo’s voice came from behind us, making me jump. She was carrying a tray of crisps and nuts, and clamped her tongue rather sweetly between her teeth as she set it carefully down on the table. ‘Happens all the time in January. It’s one of the reasons my aunt doesn’t really live here in winter. The lane is impassable if you get a big dump. But it never snows as heavily in November, and I don’t think it’ll happen today. There’s no more forecast for tonight. And it looks pretty, doesn’t it?’
She straightened up, rubbing her back and we all stared out of the window at the black lowering trees and the white snow. It didn’t look pretty. It looked stark and unforgiving. But I didn’t say that. Instead I asked the question that had been nagging at me.
‘Flo, I meant to ask, the footprints going out to the garage this morning – was that you?’
‘Footprints?’ Flo looked puzzled. ‘What time?’
‘Early. They were there when I got back from my run at about eightish. Maybe before, I didn’t look going out.’
‘It wasn’t me. Where did you say they were?’
‘Between the garage and the side door of the house.’
Flo frowned.
‘No … it definitely wasn’t me. How odd.’ She bit her lip for a moment and then said, ‘Look, if you don’t mind, I might just lock up now – that way we won’t forget later.’
‘What do you mean? You think it could have been someone else? Someone from outside?’
Flo’s cheerful face looked suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Well, my aunt had a lot of trouble when she built this place – there were a lot of planning objections, local people didn’t like the fact that it was a second home for a start, and there were quite a few complaints about the style of the build and the site.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Tom drawled. ‘Native American ancient burial ground, right?’
Flo hit him with a paper towel and cracked a smile through her worry. ‘Nothing like that. The only thing buried round here are sheep as far as I know. But this is a protected area – I’m not sure if it’s actually in the national park, but it’s near as makes no odds. It got through because it was extending an existing building – an old croft-type place. But people said it wasn’t in the spirit of the original … Anyway, to cut a long story short it burnt down halfway through construction and I think it was pretty much accepted that it was arson, although nothing was ever proved.’
‘Jesus!’ Tom looked horrified. He glanced out of the window as though expecting to see flaming torches coming up the hill at any moment.
‘I mean it was fine!’ Flo reassured us. ‘It was mid-build so the place was empty, and actually it worked out really well for my aunt because the insurance was very good, so she ended up with a higher-spec build. And according to the original plans she had to keep a bit of the original croft in place, but that burnt to the ground so it meant she didn’t have to bother with that any more. Overall I’d say they did her a favour. But, you know, it kind of affected how she feels about the neighbours.’
‘Are there any neighbours?’ Tom wanted to know.
‘Oh yes. There’s a little cluster of houses about a mile through the forest that way.’ She pointed. ‘And a farm down the valley.’
‘You know—’ I was thinking aloud ‘—what really creeps me out isn’t the footprints – or not as such. It’s the fact that if it hadn’t have been for the snow, we’d never have known.’
We looked out, contemplating the unbroken white carpet across the path to the forest. My own steps from the run that morning had been filled in, and now you would never have known a human foot had passed. For a long moment we all stood in silence, thinking about that fact, thinking about all the times we could have been observed, completely unaware.
Flo walked to the window to try the latch. It was firmly locked.
‘Good!’ she said brightly. ‘I’m going to check the back door, and then I think we should stop all this gloomy talk and have another drink.’
‘Hear, hear,’ Tom said soberly. He picked up my empty glass and this time, when he poured me a double, I didn’t complain.
19
WHEN I WENT up to change for dinner, I found Nina sitting on the bed, her head in her hands. She looked up as I came in, and her face was grey and pinched, her expression so different from her usual wry sarcasm that I did a double-take.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah.’ She pushed her dark glossy hair back from her face and stood up. ‘I’m just … ugh, I’m so fed up of being here. It feels like we’re back in school and I’m remembering everything I hated about myself back then. It’s like we’ve slipped back ten years, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know.’ I sat down on my own bed and pondered her words. Although I’d had very similar thoughts last night, in the light of day they felt unfair. The Clare I remembered from school wouldn’t have put up with Flo for a second – or not unless she had some powerful motive. She would have nodded along with Flo’s dumber remarks, stringing her along into saying something painfully weird, at which point she would have stood back, pointed and laughed. I’d seen none of that cruelty this weekend. Instead I’d been impressed by her tolerance. It was clear that Flo was a damaged person in some way – and I admired Clare’s compassion in trying to help her. I didn’t know if I could have put up with Flo for ten days, let alone ten years. Clare was obviously a bigger and a better person than I’d given her credit for.
‘I think Clare’s changed a lot, actually,’ I said. ‘She seems more …’ I stopped, searching for the right word. Maybe there wasn’t one. ‘She just seems kinder, I guess.’
‘People don’t change,’ Nina said bitterly. ‘They just get more punctilious about hiding their true selves.’
I chewed my lip while I thought that over. Was it true? I had changed – at least, I told myself I had. I was far more confident, more self-sufficient. All through school I’d relied on my friends for self-esteem and support, wanting to be one of a pack, wanting to fit in. At last I had learned that wasn’t possible and I’d been happier – albeit more lonely – ever since.
But perhaps Nina was right. Perhaps it was simply that I’d learned to hide the awkward, desperate-to-fit-in child that I had been. Perhaps the me I’d become was just a thin veneer, ready to be peeled painfully back.
‘I don’t know,’ Nina said. ‘I just … Didn’t you think lunch was painful?’
Lunch had been painful. It had been exclusively wedding talk: where the reception was to be held, what Clare was wearing, what the bridesmaids were wearing, whether smoked salmon was overdone as a starter, and why the vegetarian option always contained goats’ cheese. It had been made worse by the realisation that I’d crossed an invisible line and gone past the point where I could have admitted I wasn’t invited. I should have said something straight away, fessed up, made a joke out of it on
the first night. Now it had gone too far to look like anything other than deception, and I was trapped in a lie by omission. Clare’s sympathetic glances hadn’t helped.
‘I’m not going to say “bridezilla”,’ Nina continued, ‘because actually here I think it’s more like a bridesmaidzilla. But if I have to hear one more time about wedding favours, or leg waxes, or best-man speeches … Can you imagine James in the middle of all this?’
I had been purposely avoiding thinking about James and the wedding, like a sore bit of skin you can’t bear to have touched. But now, as I tried, I realised that I couldn’t. The James I remembered, with his head shaved at the back and a scraped-up top-knot, his ripped school tie, the James who’d got drunk on his dad’s whisky and climbed on the school war memorial at midnight to shout Wilfred Owen poems to the night sky, the James who wrote Pink Floyd lyrics on the head teacher’s car in lipstick on the last day of the summer term … That James, I couldn’t imagine in a dinner jacket, kissing Clare’s mother and laughing dutifully at the best-man speech.
The whole thing had been painful to the point of nausea, made worse by covert looks from Nina. If there’s one thing I dislike more than being hurt, it’s being seen to be hurt. I’ve always preferred to creep away and lick my wounds in private. But Nina was right. It wasn’t a case of bridezillitis. In fact Clare had been uncharacteristically quiet all through lunch. The conversation had been driven by Flo, egged on by Tom. At one point Clare had even suggested they change the subject. It was not likely that she had lost her love of the limelight since leaving school. More likely, she was thinking of me.
‘If I had more balls, I’d have said no,’ Nina said glumly. ‘To the wedding, I mean. But Jess would’ve killed me. She loves weddings. It’s like some obsessive-compulsive disorder with her. She’s already bought a new fascinator for this one. I ask you. A fucking fascinator.’
‘She’d have forgiven you,’ I said lightly. ‘Though you might have had to propose to make it up to her.’
‘It may yet come to that. Would you come?’
‘Of course.’ I gave her a punch on the arm. ‘I’d even come to your hen. If you had one.’
‘Sod that,’ Nina said. ‘If – and I repeat if – I ever get married, I’m having a night out clubbing and that’s that. None of this prancing about in cottages in the arse-end of beyond.’ She sighed and dragged herself upright. ‘Do you know what Flo’s got sorted for us tonight?’
‘What?’
‘Only a fucking ouija board. I’m telling you, if she’s got one with “sexy” answers on the board I’m pulling that gun down off the mantelpiece and shoving it up somewhere painful – blanks or no blanks.’
‘OK, this,’ Flo said, spreading out sheets of paper on the coffee table, ‘should be fun.’
‘Magic eight ball says don’t count on it,’ Nina muttered. Clare shot her a look, but either Flo hadn’t heard, or chose to ignore the dig. She carried on busily setting up the table, dotting candles among the half-empty wine bottles.
‘Anyone got a lighter?’
Nina dug in the pocket of her denim mini-skirt and produced a Zippo, and Flo lit the candles with an air of ceremonial reverence. As each candle on the table caught, a corresponding flame kindled in the reflected view in the window. Flo had turned off the outside security lights, and the forest was dark apart from a little light from the moon. The room was dimly lit so that we could see the massing shapes of the trees, the pale snow, and the silhouette of the forest canopy against the slightly luminous sky. Now, it looked as if little will-o’-the-wisps were dancing in the trees, fragile ghostly flames, twice reflected in the double glazing.
I walked to the window, huffing on the glass and cupping my hands to see out into the night. It was perfectly still. But I thought again of the footprints, and the broken phone line, and I couldn’t stop myself from surreptitiously checking the latch of the French windows. It was fastened.
‘Mel would have hated this,’ Clare said thoughtfully as I rejoined the table and Flo lit the last candle. ‘I’m pretty sure she’s even more Christian than she was at uni.’
‘I really can’t see that communing with one imaginary friend is any different to communing with a bunch of them,’ Nina said spikily.
‘Look, it’s her faith, all right? There’s no need to be offensive.’
‘I’m not being offensive. You cannot, by definition, offend someone who’s not here. Offence has to be taken, not just given.’
‘If a tree falls in an empty forest, does it make a noise?’ Tom said, with a dry smile. He lay back on the sofa, and took a long gulp of wine. ‘Blimey, it’s years since I’ve done this. My aunt was very into all this communing with the spirits. I used to go round to her house after school and she’d make me do the traditional ouija board, you know, the one with the letters on it.’
I knew what he meant – those were the kind of ouija boards I’d seen in films. The one Flo was setting up was a bit different, more like a biro on wheels.
‘It’s easier this way,’ Flo said, her tongue between her teeth as she tried to fix the pen in the holder. ‘I’ve tried it before and the problem with the pointer is that unless you’re very quick, you can miss loads of letters. This way there’s a permanent record.’
‘Did you get anything?’ Clare asked. ‘When you tried it before, I mean?’
Flo nodded seriously. ‘Oh yes. I usually get some kind of message. My mum says I’ve got a natural resonance with the beyond.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Nina said. Her face was deadpan, but I could tell some kind of sarcastic remark was building up.
‘What did it say?’ I put in hastily, trying to head her off at the pass. ‘Last time, I mean?’
‘It was about my grandfather,’ Flo said. ‘He wanted to tell Granny that he was happy and that she should remarry if she wanted. Anyway, there, all set up. Are we ready?’
‘As ready as I’ll ever be,’ Clare said. She downed the rest of her wine and set down her glass. ‘Right. What do we do?’
Flo motioned to us all to come closer.
‘Right – put your fingers on the planchette. Just gently – you’re not trying to guide it, just be the conduit for any impulses you receive from the beyond.’
Nina rolled her eyes, but put her fingertips on the planchette. Tom and I followed suit. Clare was the last.
‘Ready?’ Flo asked.
‘Ready,’ Clare said.
Flo took a deep breath and shut her eyes. Her face in the candlelight was glowing, as if lit from within. I saw her eyes move beneath her lids, darting from side to side, seeking something she could not see.
‘Is there a spirit there who wants to speak to us?’ she intoned.
The planchette swirled uneasily in loops and spirals, not forming any shapes that made sense. No one was pushing it, I was pretty sure.
‘Is there a spirit here tonight?’ Flo repeated seriously. I saw Nina hide a smile. The planchette began to move in a more purposeful way.
Y.
‘Oh wow!’ Flo breathed. She looked up, her face alight. ‘Did you see that? It was like it was being pulled by a magnet. Did everyone feel that?’
I had felt something. It felt more like it was being pushed by someone else in the circle, but I said nothing.
‘What is the name of the spirit?’ Flo said eagerly.
The planchette began to move again:
te … qui … long pause … te … qui …
‘“Qui” means “who” in French,’ Flo breathed. ‘Maybe we’ve got a French spirit guide?’
… l … Both Tom and Nina began to laugh as the last a trailed out from beneath the planchette. Even Clare gave a smothered snort and the planchette veered off towards the edge of the paper and then clattered to the floor as we all began to giggle.
Flo looked at the page for a moment, frowning, not getting the joke. Then she saw it. She knelt back from the table, her arms crossed.
‘Right.’ She looked from Clare, to Tom, and then to me. I
tried to straighten my face. ‘Who did that? This is not a joke! I mean, yes, it’s a bit of fun, but we’re never going to find anything out if you keep playing around! Tom?’
‘It wasn’t me!’ Tom threw up his hands. Nina was wearing her most innocent expression and I strongly suspected it had been her.
‘Well, whoever it was,’ Flo’s face was pink and annoyed, ‘I’m not impressed. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble and you’re ruining—’
‘Hey, hey, Flops.’ Clare put out a hand. ‘Chill, OK? It was just a joke. They won’t do it again. Will you?’ She looked sternly round the circle of faces. We all put on our most contrite expressions.
‘All right,’ Flo said sulkily. ‘But last chance! If you mess around again, I’m putting this away and we’ll all play … we’ll all play Trivial Pursuit!’
‘What a threat,’ Tom said seriously, though the corner of his mouth was twitching. ‘I promise I for one will behave like an angel. Don’t threaten me with the pink Camembert.’
‘OK,’ Flo said. She drew a deep breath and waited as we all rested our fingers on the planchette again. It twitched, and I saw Nina’s shoulders were still shaking with suppressed giggles, but she bit her lip and subsided with an effort as Clare stared at her.
‘We are sorry for the levity of some of our circle,’ Flo said meaningfully. ‘Is there a spirit here who would like to speak to us?’
This time the planchette moved more slowly, more as if it were drifting of its own accord. But, unmistakeably, it was forming another Y, and then it stopped.
‘Are you a friend of someone here?’ Flo breathed.
? said the planchette.
This time I didn’t think anyone else was pushing – and I could see the others felt the same way. They had stopped laughing. Clare even looked slightly uneasy.
‘Do you know, Flops, I’m not sure …’ she said.
Tom patted her hand. ‘It’s fine, darling. It’s not really spirits – just the subconscious of the group making words. Sometimes the results are quite illuminating.’