The Other Side of the Door, Nicci French [new reading .TXT] 📗

‘What?’

‘Tired, maybe.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘You haven’t been under a sun-lamp, have you?’

‘Am I the kind of person who would go under a sun-lamp?’ I gave a high, hysterical squeal that was meant to be a laugh. ‘Coffee? Joakim, Amos? I’m making a pot. Or would you prefer something cool?’

‘Your flat’s amazing,’ said Joakim, enthusiastically, staring round it.

I saw it for a moment through his eyes. It wasn’t just a mess, it was almost surreal. ‘You mean a complete tip.’

‘My dad would never let me live like this.’

‘Quite right too.’

‘It’s like a statement.’

‘Bonnie taking her stand against the bourgeois world,’ said Amos. He winked at me. I tried to smile but my face felt stiff and swollen.

Everything was happening at a remove; everything was unreal. Not long ago Hayden had been leaning over me, hand around my throat and an ugly snarl transforming his face into a stranger’s, and now here I was, making conversation with people who were behaving as if they knew me.

I drank a cup of coffee, strong and bitter and without milk, then another. My hands were shaking. I wanted to be alone in a cool, shaded wood in autumn. I felt dirty and ashamed.

Neal and Guy arrived together. Guy was wearing a suit and when he took off the grey jacket his shirt was dark with sweat at the armpits and down the back. He rolled up his sleeves and mopped his forehead with a white handkerchief. I opened the windows in every room but it still felt claustrophobically hot.

‘There’s not really room for us all here,’ I said.

‘And Hayden hasn’t arrived yet.’

‘No,’ I said. My voice was like dry leaves scraping against each other, and I could feel a flush prickling across my face, under the camouflage. ‘Perhaps we should start without him. You know what he’s like.’ Did that sound natural? Didn’t anyone see? Couldn’t anyone tell?

‘Who the hell does he think he is?’ grumbled Amos, and Joakim gave him a dirty look.

‘Let’s assume he won’t be here,’ said Neal, in a quiet voice that sent a small shudder of dread through me. He was looking at me appraisingly. I felt his eyes on my face, my throat, and all at once I was sure he could see right through me—through the makeup and the scarf and the stupid, stupid frilly shirt, through all my futile pretence and all my transparent lies.

‘Shall we start by clearing the living room a bit?’ said Sonia. ‘We can pull everything back against the walls.’

Everyone started picking up chairs, moving boxes. I saw Sonia shifting pieces of china that seemed to have made their way in here from the kitchen. I was starting to feel sick, but if I could just get through the next couple of hours, it would be all right. Guy was talking about some terrible accident there had been in the early hours of the morning on the M6, a whole family killed. Sonia was issuing instructions to everyone and miraculously giving the room a kind of order. Amos kept bumping his shins and cursing. I thought of the note from Hayden, now lying in my underwear drawer. What was it he needed to say to me and why was I even thinking of going round to hear him out? If I went, I could tell him that I never wanted to see or hear from him again and he had to pull out of the group. But if I did, I’d see his face, ravaged with guilt, and he would speak words of passion and torment and I might—No, no, I wouldn’t. Of course I wouldn’t. Never again. Not ever. I hated him. A man who hit women, a man who left women without a backward glance. I hated him. I did.

‘Bonnie?’ It was Sonia. She put a hand on the small of my back, a light but comforting touch. ‘You look miles away.’

‘Sorry. I haven’t been much help.’

‘Shall I get you something for your throat before we start?’

‘My throat?’ Unwittingly, I put a hand to my neck, which felt sore to the touch. Was it showing? I imagined the colours staining through the makeup I had plastered over it, my mark of shame.

‘Milk and honey to soothe it or something?’

‘That’s nice of you, but I’m fine. It sounds worse than it is. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve got honey and I’ve just used up the last of the milk.’

‘Shall we start, then?’

We began with ‘Leaving On Your Mind’. My fingers knew what to do even though my mind was a jumble of thoughts and feelings. Sonia sang and sounded so powerfully sad that everyone in the room seemed taken over by the emotion, even Amos in his bright summer clothes. I saw him gazing at Sonia, her arms at her sides, palms facing forward, and head tipped slightly back.

‘We can’t,’ I said, as the last note faded. ‘We can’t play this at a wedding. It’s a lament.’

‘We’ve been through this before,’ said Amos.

‘But Sonia’s never sung it like that. It’s going to make everyone cry.’

‘That’s good,’ said Joakim.

‘What? Everyone crying at a wedding?’

‘People always cry at weddings, in films anyway. It’s not a proper success unless everyone’s bawling their eyes out.’

‘They don’t cry because they’re thinking of it coming to an end,’ said Guy. ‘They cry because they’re happy.’

‘No, they cry because they’re filled with strong emotion,’ Neal said. ‘You can’t call it happiness or sadness.’

‘It’s too late,’ said Sonia, with her usual practicality. ‘It’s virtually the only one we all know properly.’

‘You’re probably right,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what Danielle’s going to think, though.’

‘Who cares what she thinks?’ said Joakim, who had never met Danielle, of course, but seemed to have taken a dislike to her on principle.

‘It is her wedding,’ said Sonia, mildly. ‘What’s next?’

At that moment, the phone rang. Everyone looked at me.

‘Are you going to get it?’ Guy said eventually.

‘They’ll give up in a moment.’

It stopped and for a brief moment there was silence. Then