Bitterhall, Helen McClory [red queen free ebook TXT] 📗

as needed to be made. Other guests danced. Mark and I whispered, Mark’s uncle drifted away. Órla came in for a drink, dragging Tom with her. He looked dazed, and hearty. Mark handed them both a punch with a knowing look, which was the look Mark strove to project whenever he was playing host in a house that did not belong to him, and wouldn’t until both his mother and his uncle died.

‘Maybe I could replicate the house for you,’ I said.

‘Maybe you could replicate my uncle and we could push the fake body off a bridge? Or the real one. The fake would be much preferable. We could prop him up in the corner, rewire him as a lampshade.’

‘What about your mum?’

‘Spanner in the works. I love her too much to fake her death.’

Decadent Loss

Later Órla, tired of dancing, came to the sofa and flopped down beside us. Tom had vanished.

‘You’ve known each other for a long time,’ she said.

‘Oh an absolute age now,’ said Mark.

Something was unsaid. Órla’s eyes were vivid and glassy.

We moved on to talk of Mark’s life, and of his last girlfriend, and of Órla’s last boyfriend, and, at Mrs MacAshfall’s insistence, the dooking for apples began while some terribly sad singer crooned across the years about meeting once again in Berkeley Square. Several of Mark’s mother and uncle’s friends got sloppy drunk, white-haired and young alike, and danced, and the room was loud. I felt myself begin to disappear. Smokers traipsed outside, Tom among them, just drunk enough to start begging for spares. Tom like a ghost all night, flitting about, never stopping to talk, not even to Órla, after that first dance. I had a glimpse of him from the hall, a strange sight of this appallingly handsome man in antique formal wear, standing talking earnestly with a slight, clever-looking hedge-fund type from London disguised as Fred Astaire about – something muffled – while the man lit his cigarette with the end of his own, and I jolted just a little at the way they almost touched. Cupped hands, breath steaming – Tom’s brilliant dark blond head in the spilled light pulling back, and his laughter. Stamping feet from the cold. The way a smoker blows upwards, hissing through his teeth, while he does a shuffle from the chill. With a sigh, I went to the kitchen and praised Mrs MacAshfall on her canapés, which were cheap pre-bought and heated sausage rolls – my favourite, and provided especially for me alongside the finer snacks she had for everybody else.

Thematic Continuity

It was later.

I perched on the great central wooden stairs, watching the drift of people around the features of the house I knew so well. By candlelight it was all different, by Hallowe’en graces it was too, the veil thinning, but not at its thinnest yet, too many people milling, too much braying and the smallest, most soothing small talk going about in the air as if they needed cushioning, as if they knew what was coming, soon. I had been drinking steadily but my mouth was always dry. I had vanished, I had let the night strip away the others and time in the way parties could, a little mournful before it had already ended. Órla caught sight of me and handed me something dark bronze in a glass, and sat on my step, arranging herself carefully, the staircase wide enough that there was a lot of space between us. Through the stairs, the floor below. It was dim, with slants of light.

‘Shh,’ she said, and so I was quiet.

Then she said, ‘How old are you?’

Startled, I said, ‘Tinder age, or real age?’

‘Tinder? Old school. You’ve never been on Tinder in your life.’

‘I have, you know. Once. It was intimidating.’

‘I’ll bet,’ she said, lying.

‘I’m thirty-six,’ I said, ‘same age as Mark.’

‘No way! You don’t look it,’ she said, ‘no grey at all, and you don’t have the kind of – the kind of look people have. Old and tired like. You look young.’

‘Wow,’ I said.

‘I’m twenty-eight. Sorry.’

‘My anxiety makes me look younger I think. Don’t apologise for not having existed as long as me.’ I looked down at my drink. I was holding it strangely, at an angle. The darkness on the stairs made my hand seem alien. I wondered if I might ever see Tom again. You will, I told myself, what a thing to think. Morbid. He’s probably in the kitchen, Mark’s probably clapping him on the back. Contacts everywhere. Or telling him – no, I wouldn’t believe Mark was telling Tom.

‘Can you tell me something else, about yourself?’ asked Órla.

I got myself more comfortably situated. I looked up at the ceiling.

‘I’ve been coming to this house for thirty years and I always love it. There’s always something new to find. Mr MacAshfall was a collector of antique books. When he died Mrs MacAshfall sold most of them off, but there are boxes in the attic that have treasure in them. Gilt-edged books, singular editions, personal memoirs, hand written, letterplates of extinct birds.’

‘I suppose that tells me something about you,’ said Órla. ‘I could tell you more personal things,’ I said, ‘but I’m not nearly drunk enough.’

‘Let’s sort that,’ she said, and pulled herself up, bringing back from the kitchen a whole bottle of bourbon, and sloshed out two glasses full.

‘Loose lips sink ships,’ I said.

‘They don’t tonight. Early nineteen-thirties, everything still to be lost.’ She said.

And sipped, and waited.

Open Books

‘How long have you and Tom been together?’ I asked.

‘It was about a month when he moved into yours, so . . . nearly two months?’

‘Going all right?’

‘Nosy! And also, I’d imagine you might notice if it is.’

‘What do you mean?’

Órla nudged me. ‘You know . . . I’m there a lot. You can probably read the room.’

‘All right, I can. And . . .’

‘And?’

‘I’ve asked already if you love him. Rudely early, I know. It’s just, the other day I felt you were going to tell me something. About him