Something has woken him. His body is alert, prickling with awareness – his mind struggling to catch up. He has been wrenched out of his whisky-soaked stupor agitated, his heart going double time. He looks about himself. He is surrounded by broken glass. But now he remembers … before he passed out he’d thrown his tumbler at the television, enjoyed the sound of it shattering the screen. Enjoyed how it briefly drowned out the sound of the guests partying over at the Lodge, the music turned up full blast. Making a mockery of his own ‘celebrations’ – a bottle of single malt and the depressing spectacle of others’ happiness on the screen. Then he had drained the last drops straight from the bottle and sunk finally, gratefully, into unconsciousness.
But now something has roused him. A knock on the door. Loud as a rifle shot.
He stills, listening like an animal.
It comes again.
He didn’t imagine it. He gropes for his watch. It’s four in the morning. Who could need him at four in the morning? Heather, he thinks, incoherently. She might need his help, somehow.
He opens the door, looks out with bleary eyes. It’s her, the guest, the beautiful one. Except she looks … terrible. Still beautiful, in a long golden gown, but with a wrecked quality to everything: the fabric of her dress ripped, her face stained with make-up. Her lipstick is a long smear across one cheek.
‘Hi,’ she says, swaying slightly on her feet. ‘Sorry, I hope it’s not an imposition.’ He is drunk, but she is drunker. The realisation sobers him.
She peers beyond him. ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘It’s really empty in here. Very … minimalist.’
‘You can’t come in here,’ he says. He tries to block her entry with his body; she wriggles past.
‘But I brought champagne!’ She holds up an open bottle. Dom Pérignon, the really posh stuff. ‘You wouldn’t let me drink the rest on my own, would you?’ As she steps nearer he realises that the now familiar smokiness of her perfume is tainted by something sour and rank.
He feels like an animal, routed out in its cave, its safe and private space. She takes a step forward and takes his head in her hands, and kisses him. Her mouth is a concentration of sourness, but also that perfumed smokiness, which seems to wrap itself around him. And her tongue is deft, and she has fitted her body to his. It has been so long. He feels desire rise up in him – mixing uncomfortably with the anger he still feels at the interruption. She is reaching for his fly, unzipping him, reaching her hand inside. Her fingers are tangling in his hair.
‘No,’ he says, his mind clearing.
She steps back from him. Her lip curls. ‘Pardon?’
‘No,’ he says again.
‘Fuck you! Don’t tell me you don’t want it. I can see that you do.’
‘I can … make you a cup of tea,’ he says, though he has no idea whether he currently has the wherewithal to complete this task.
She laughs, staggers on her glittery heels, and then scowls at him. ‘I don’t think so,’ she says. And then she points at him. ‘I know you want it. I’ve seen how you look at me. At that dinner … yesterday, on the shoot. You don’t fool me.’ She is furious, wrathful, her finger stabbing at his chest. ‘But you’re too scared. Do you know what you are? You’re a fucking coward.’
Those words. He feels the rage and grief rising inside him, like that other time. He feels the red flood of his anger come down over everything, and something inside himself loosen, loosen … and break.
NOW
2nd January 2019
HEATHER
‘That was the police,’ I tell Doug. ‘They’ve found the Highland Ripper. Miles away from here, so it doesn’t look like he’s anything to do with us. It must have been someone here.’
As I say it, I hear the truth of it for the first time. It becomes real. They are here. ‘And I just heard something, while I was in the bathroom—’ I stop, catching sight of the look on Doug’s face.
‘Doug?’ I stare at him. ‘Are you all right?’ He’s pacing in front of my desk, rubbing his jaw back and forth – so vigorously that the skin beneath his stubble is raw and red, though the rest of his face seems to have drained of all colour. His eyes are black and fathomless. It is as though he is taking all of this unusually personally. He has looked bad since the morning, I realise; I’ve noticed it, but I haven’t really had a chance to properly consider it. It seemed natural, what with him finding the body, and everything.
‘Doug?’
He turns towards me, but he hardly seems to have heard the question.
‘Doug!’ I snap my fingers in front of his face, force him to focus on me. ‘What is it? What now?’
He shakes his head, for several seconds. And then he says, in a rush, ‘There’s something more. I didn’t tell you all of it.’
Oh God. I brace myself. ‘What is it?’
‘That night, close to when you’d first got the job here,’ he says, ‘when you heard the scream … do you remember?’
‘Yes,’ I say. The sound is still imprinted upon my memory.
‘Well, that wasn’t a fox.’ He grimaces. ‘It was a scream. It was me.’
I think of my first impressions on hearing the noise – that it was a sound made by a person in profoundest agony. ‘Oh, Doug.’
‘I have these – episodes – I suppose, when I can’t remember what I have been doing. I find myself in strange places, without knowing how I have got there. That night, for example … I wasn’t aware of making any noise. I came round, in the trees beside the loch, and I realised it had to be me.’
I don’t want to hear any more. But there is more – he keeps going, unstoppable. ‘On New Year’s Eve …’ He runs his uninjured hand through his wild hair, in that nervous gesture I have seen him make so many times in the last few hours. ‘I’d been drinking a lot … I remember that. And …’ He blows out his cheeks. He doesn’t meet my eyes. ‘I was angry. So I drank some more. I think I passed out. And then there’s a whole period of time that’s just … a blank.’
A blank.
Finally, he meets my eyes. The expression in his is that of a drowning man.
One day earlier
New Year’s Day 2019
KATIE
I’ve got to go and speak to Miranda. No, this isn’t a late crisis of conscience. There’s no point in apologising now, it is far too late for that. If I was really sorry, I would have stopped a long time ago. It’s only now that I have seen Julien’s reaction to all of this – his cowardice in scuttling straight after Miranda, and, I’m sure, pleading with her, then coming back here and pretending he hadn’t – that I have properly regretted it for the first time. The scales, as they say, have fallen from my eyes.
But I want a chance to explain. I want her to understand that I didn’t plan any of it, that I didn’t do it on purpose, to hurt her … not consciously, at least. That the affair – because that’s what it became – swept me along with it, strong as an undertow. This is not to excuse myself, as I know there is no excuse. Not for doing something this terrible to one of your oldest friends. But it seems important to say these things.
I’m also slightly worried for her. She seemed so wild, so drunk, standing there in her stained and ripped gold dress, like some vengeful fallen Goddess. It’s so cold now – I hadn’t realised it could get any colder, and she was wearing nothing more than a thin layer of silk, and her feet were practically bare, except for those ridiculous heels. She wouldn’t do anything stupid, would she? No. I’m fairly certain that isn’t Miranda’s way. She would want to harm us, not herself.