by Lucy Foley
Duncan begins to drum slowly with a fist on the table. He looks around, encouraging the others to join him. They do. Gradually it gets louder and louder, the drumming faster, more frenzied.
‘Fac fortia et patere,’ Duncan chants, in what I guess must be Latin.
‘Fac fortia et patere,’ the others follow.
And then, in a kind of low, intent murmur:
‘Flectere si nequeo superos,
Acheronta movebo.
Flectere si nequeo superos,
Acheronta movebo!’
I watch the men, how their eyes seem to gleam in the flickering candlelight. Their faces are flushed – they’re excited, drunk. There’s a prickle up my spine. With the candles and the dark pressing in at the windows and the strange rhythm of the chanting, the drumming, I feel suddenly like I’m watching some satanic ritual being performed. There’s a menacing element to it, tribal. I put a hand to my chest and I can feel my heart beating too fast, like a frightened animal’s.
The drumming intensifies to a climax, until it’s so frenzied that the crockery and cutlery is leaping about all over the place. A glass hops its way off the corner of the table and smashes on the floor. No one apart from me pays it any attention.
‘Fac fortia et patere!
Flectere si nequeo superos,
Acheronta movebo!’
And then, finally, right when I feel I can’t bear it any longer, they all give a roar and stop. They stare at each other. Their foreheads glisten with sweat. Their pupils seem bigger, like they’ve taken a hit of something. Big hyena laughs now, teeth bared, slapping each other on the back, punching each other hard enough to hurt. I notice Johnno’s not laughing as hard as all the others. His grin doesn’t convince, somehow.
‘But what does it mean?’ Georgina asks.
‘Angus,’ Femi slurs, ‘you’re the Latin geek.’
‘The first part,’ Angus says, ‘is: “Do brave deeds and endure”, which was the school motto. The second part was added in by us boys: “If I can’t move heaven, then I shall raise hell.” It used to get chanted before rugby matches.’
‘And the rest,’ says Duncan, with a nasty smile.
‘It’s so menacing,’ Georgina says. But she’s staring up at her red, sweaty, wild-eyed husband as though she’s never found him so attractive.
‘That was kind of the point.’
‘Right, ladies,’ Johnno shouts. ‘Time to stop fannying around and get some drinking done!’
Another roar of approval from the others. Femi and Duncan mix the whisky with wine, with sauce left over from the meal, with salt and pepper, so it forms a disgusting brown soup. And then the game begins – all of them slamming down their hands on the table and yelling at the top of their voices.
Angus is the first to lose. As he drinks the mixture slops on to the immaculate white of his shirt, staining it brown. The others jeer him.
‘You idiot!’ Duncan shouts. ‘Most of it’s going down your neck.’
Angus swallows the last gulp, gags. His eyes bulge.
Will’s next. He puts it away expertly. I watch the muscles of his throat working. He turns the glass upside down above his head and grins.
Next to end up with all the cards is Charlie. He looks at his glass, takes a deep breath.
‘Come on, you pussy!’ Duncan shouts.
I can’t watch this. I don’t have to watch this. Sod Charlie, I think. This was meant to be our weekend away together. If he wants to take himself down it’s his bloody lookout. I’m his wife, not his mother. I stand up.
‘I’m going to bed,’ I say. ‘Night all.’
But no one answers, or even glances in my direction.
I push into the drawing room next door and as I walk through I stop short in shock. A figure’s sitting there on the sofa, in the gloom. After a moment I recognise it to be Olivia. ‘Oh, hey there,’ I say.
She looks up. Her long legs stick out in front of her, her feet bare. ‘Hey.’
‘Had enough in there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Me too,’ I say. ‘You staying up for a bit?’ I ask.
She shrugs. ‘No point in going to bed. My room’s right next to that.’
As if on cue from the dining room comes a burst of mocking laughter. Someone roars: ‘Drink it – drink it all down!’
And now a chant: Down it, down it, down it – switching suddenly into raise hell, raise hell, RAISE HELL! Sounds of the table being smashed with fists. Then of something else shattering – another glass? A slurred voice: ‘Johnno, you fucking idiot!’
Poor Olivia, unable to escape from all that. I hover in the doorway.
‘It’s fine,’ Olivia says. ‘I don’t need anyone to keep me company.’
But I feel I should stay. I feel bad for her. And actually, I realise I want to stay. I liked sitting with her in the cave earlier, smoking. There was something exciting about it, a strange thrill. Talking to her, with the taste of the tobacco on my tongue, I could almost imagine I was nineteen again, talking about the boys I’d slept with – not a mum of two and mortgaged up to the eyeballs. And there’s also the fact that Olivia reminds me of someone. But I can’t think who. It bothers me, like when you’re trying to think of a word and you know it’s there on the tip of your tongue, just out of reach.
‘Actually,’ I say, ‘I’m not all that tired. And I don’t have to get up early tomorrow morning to deal with two crazy kids. There’s some wine in our room – I could go and grab it.’
She gives a small smile at this, the first I’ve seen. And then she reaches behind the sofa cushion and pulls out an expensive-looking bottle of vodka. ‘I nicked it from the kitchen earlier,’ she says.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Well, even better.’ This really is like being nineteen again.
She passes me the bottle. I unscrew the cap, take a swig. It burns a freezing streak down my throat and I gasp. ‘Wow. Can’t think of the last time I did that.’ I pass the bottle to her and wipe my mouth. ‘We got cut off, earlier, didn’t we? You were telling me about that guy – Callum? The break-up.’
Olivia shuts her eyes, takes a deep breath. ‘I guess the break-up was only the beginning,’ she says.
Another big roar of laughter from the next room. More hands thumping the table. More drunken male voices shouting over each other. A crash against the door, then Angus falls through it, trousers about his ankles, his dick flopping out obscenely.
‘Sorry, ladies,’ he says, with a drunken leer. ‘Don’t mind me.’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ I explode, ‘just … just fuck off and leave us alone!’
Olivia looks at me, impressed, like she didn’t think I had it in me. I didn’t, either. I’m not quite sure where it came from. Maybe it’s the vodka.
‘You know what?’ I say. ‘This probably isn’t the best place to chat, is it?’
She shakes her head. ‘We could go to the cave?’
‘Er—’ I hadn’t planned on a night-time foray about the island. And I’m sure it’s dangerous to wander around at night, with the bog and things.
‘Forget it,’ Olivia says, quickly. ‘I get it. I just – it’s weird – I just felt it was easier talking in there.’
And suddenly I have the same feeling I did earlier. An odd thrill, the feeling of breaking the rules. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Let’s do it. And bring that bottle.’
We sneak out of the Folly via the rear entrance. It’s really creepy at night, this place. It’s so quiet, apart from the sound of the waves on the rocks in the near distance. Occasionally there comes a strange, guttural cackling that raises all the hairs on my arms. I finally realise that the noise must be made by some sort of bird. A pretty big one from the sound of it.
As we continue, the ruined houses loom up next to us in the beam of my torch. The dark, gaping windows are like empty eye sockets and it feels unnervingly as though someone might be in there, looking out, watching us pass. I can hear noises coming from inside, too: rustles and creaks and scratchings.
It’s probably rats – but then, that’s not a particularly reassuring thought either.
I’m aware of things moving around us as we walk – too fast to see properly, caught momentarily by the weak light of the moon. Something flies so near to my face that I feel it brush the sensitive skin of my cheek. I jump back, put a hand up to fend it off. A bat? It was definitely too big to be an insect.
As we climb down into the cave a dark figure appears on the rock wall in front of us, human shaped. I almost drop the bottle in shock until, after a beat, I realise it is my own shadow.
This place is enough to make you believe in ghosts.
NOW
The wedding night
The four ushers have formed a search party. They take a first-aid kit. They take the big paraffin torches from the brackets at the entrance for illumination.
‘Right boys,’ Femi says. ‘Everyone ready?’
There has been a strange, fervent energy about their preparations, bordering on an inappropriate excitement. They might be scouts preparing for a mission, the schoolboys they once were on some midnight dare.
The other guests gather around silently watching the preparations, relieved that the thing has been taken out of their hands, that they are permitted to stay here in the light and warmth.
To those inside the marquee who watch them go, they look like medieval villagers on a witch hunt: the lighted torches, the fervour. The wind and the blackout have added to the sense of the surreal. The macabre discovery that supposedly lies in wait out there has taken on a fantastical dimension: not quite real. Besides, it’s difficult to know what to believe, whether they can really trust the word of a hysterical teenager. Some of them are still hoping that it has all just been a terrible misunderstanding.
They watch, silently, as the small group marches through the thrashing flaps of the marquee entrance. Out into the loud ragged night, into the storm, holding their torches aloft.
The day before
OLIVIA
The Bridesmaid
In the cave the sea has come in, so it’s practically lapping at our feet, the water black as ink. It makes the space feel smaller, more claustrophobic. Hannah and I have to sit nearer to each other than we did before, our knees touching, a candle we nicked from the drawing room perched on the rock in front of us in its glass lantern.
Now I understand why it’s called the Whispering Cave. The high water has changed the acoustics in here so that this time everything we say is whispered back to us, as though someone’s standing there in the shadows, repeating every word. It’s hard to believe there isn’t. I find myself turning to check, every so often, to make certain we’re alone.
I can’t make Hannah out all that well in the soft light of the candle. But I can hear her breathing, smell her perfume.
We pass the bottle of vodka between us. I’m already a bit drunk, I think, from dinner. I couldn’t eat much and the booze went straight to my head. But I need to be drunker to tell her, drunk enough that my brain can’t stop the words. Which seems silly, as recently I have been needing to tell someone about it so badly that sometimes I feel like it’s going to erupt out of me, without any warning. But now it has actually come down to it, I feel tongue-tied.
Hannah speaks first. ‘Olivia.’
The cave replies in a whisper: Olivia, Olivia, Olivia.
‘God,’ Hannah says, ‘that echo. Did your ex … did he do anything to you? Someone I know—’ She stops, starts again, ‘my sister, Alice. She had this boyfriend when she was at university. And he reacted really badly to the break-up. I mean, really really badly—’
I wait for Hannah to say more, but she doesn’t. Instead she takes the bottle from me and has a very long drink, about four shots’ worth.
‘No, it wasn’t anything like that,’ I say. ‘Yeah, Callum was a bit of a shit. I mean, he wasn’t very subtle about hooking up with Ellie straight after. But he was the one who broke it off, so it wasn’t that.’ I grab the bottle from her, take a big gulp. I can taste her lipstick on the rim. ‘It was in the summer holidays after term had ended. I was staying at Jules’s place in Islington, while she was away for work for a few days.’
I speak into the darkness, the cave whispering my own words back to me. I find myself telling Hannah how lonely I felt. How I was in this great big city, which I’ve always found so exciting, but realised I had no one to share it with. How it was Friday night and I’d gone to the Sainsbury’s down the road from Jules’s flat and bought myself some crisps, milk and cereal for the morning, and how my walk home took me past all these people standing outside pubs, drinking, having a laugh in the sun. How I felt like such a fucking saddo, with my orange carrier bag and a night of Netflix to look forward to. How it was at times like that that I always thought of Callum, and what we might be doing together, which made me feel even more alone.
I still can’t quite believe I’m telling her all this, when I hardly know her. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe, of all the people here, she’s the one person I can tell, because she’s basically a stranger. The vodka definitely helps, too, and the fact that it’s so gloomy in here that I can hardly see her face. Even so, I don’t think I can tell her all of it. The thought of doing that makes me feel panicky. But maybe I can start at the beginning and see if, once I’ve told her most of it, I’m brave enough to tell her the whole thing.
‘I was on my phone,’ I say, ‘and I could see that Callum was with Ellie. She’d shared all these pics on Snapchat. There was one of her sitting on his lap. And then another one of her kissing him, while she held one middle finger up to the camera like she didn’t want anyone to take the picture … except then she went and shared it for the whole world to see, for fuck’s sake.’
Hannah takes a drink from the bottle, breathes out. ‘That must have made you feel pretty awful,’ she says. ‘Seeing that. Jeez, social media has a lot to answer for.’
‘Yeah.’ I shrug. ‘It did make me feel a bit … shit.’ In case I sound like a total stalker I don’t tell her how many times I looked at those photos, how I sat there clutching my Sainsbury’s bag and crying while I did it. ‘My mates had been saying I should have some fun,’ I say. ‘You know, like show Callum what he was missing. They kept telling me to get myself on some dating apps, but I didn’t want to do it at uni, where it was all so incestuous.’
‘What, apps like Tinder?’
I think she’s trying to show she’s down with the kids. ‘Yeah, but no one really uses Tinder any more.’
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m ancient, remember. What do I know?’ She says it a bit wistfully.
‘You’re not that old,’ I tell her.
‘Well … thanks.’ Her knee bumps against mine.
I take another swig of vodka. And remember how that night in Jules’s flat I drank some of her wine, which made me realise how all the stuff we drank at uni for £3 a glass in the local bars tasted like absolute piss. I remember how I felt quite sophisticated walking around in my pants and bra with one of her big glasses. I imagined it was my flat, that I was going to go out and find some man and bring him back here and screw him. And that would show Callum.
Obviously I didn’t actually plan to do that. I’d only had sex with one person before, with Callum. And even that had been pretty tame.
‘I set up a profile,’ I tell Hannah. ‘I decided in London it was different. In London I could go on a date and it wouldn’t be all over the whole of campus the next morning.’
‘I’m kind of impressed,’ Hannah says. ‘I’d never have been brave enough to do something like that. But weren’t you, you know … worried about safety?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m not an idiot. I didn’t use my real name. Or my age.’
‘Ah,’ Hannah nods. ‘Right.’ I get the impression she’s not convinced by that and is trying very hard not to say anything else.
I put my age as twenty-six, in fact. The profile photo I put up didn’t even look like me. I ransacked Jules’s closet, did my make-up perfe
ctly. But it was kind of the point not to look like me.
‘I called myself Bella,’ I say. ‘You know, as in Hadid?’
I tell Hannah how I sat there on the bed and scrolled through photos of all these guys until my eyes burned. ‘Most of them were rank,’ I say. ‘In the gym, like lifting up their shirts, or wearing sunglasses that they thought made them look cool.’ I almost gave up.
‘But I did match with this one guy,’ I tell Hannah. ‘He caught my eye. He was … different.’
I made the first move. So unlike me, but I was a bit pissed from Jules’s wine.
Free to meet up? I wrote.
Yes, his reply came. I’d like that, Bella. When suits you?
How about this evening?
There was a long pause. Then: You don’t hang about.
This is my only free evening for the next few weeks. I liked how that sounded. Like I had better places to be.
Fine, he messaged back. It’s a date.
‘What was he like?’ Hannah asks, her chin in her hand. She seems fascinated, watching me closely.
‘Hotter than his photo. And a bit older than me.’
‘How much older?’
‘Um … maybe fifteen years?’
‘OK.’ Is she trying not to sound shocked? ‘And what was he like? When you actually met up?’
I think back. It’s hard for me to see him as he appeared at the beginning. ‘I guess I thought he was hot. And … he seemed like more of a man. He made Callum look like a boy in comparison.’ He had broad shoulders, like he worked out a lot, and a tan. In comparison Callum was a scrawny little pretty boy. Proper men were my new thing, I decided. ‘But,’ I shrug, even though she can’t see me. ‘I don’t know. I suppose however hot he was, at first, a part of me would have preferred him to be Callum.’
Hannah nods. ‘Yeah,’ she says sympathetically. ‘I get that. When you’ve got your heart set on someone Brad Pitt could walk in and he wouldn’t be enough—’