Auld Acquaintance E-Book

Sofia Slater

• Herausgeber: Swift Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 296

Beschreibung

Should auld acquaintance be forgot And never brought to mind? Millie Partridge desperately needs a party. So, when her (handsome and charming) ex-colleague Nick invites her to a Hebridean Island for New Year's Eve, she books her ticket North. But things go wrong the moment the ferry drops her off. The stately home is more down at heel than Downton Abbey. Nick hasn't arrived yet. And the other revellers? Politely, they aren't exactly who she would have pictured Nick would be friends with. Worse still, an old acquaintance from Millie's past has been invited, too. Penny Maybury. Millie and Nick's old colleague. Somebody Millie would rather have forgotten about. Somebody, in fact, that Millie has been trying very hard to forget. Waking up on New Year's Eve, Penny is missing. A tragic accident? Or something more sinister? With a storm washing in from the Atlantic, nobody will be able reach the group before they find out. One thing is for sure – they're going to see in the new year with a bang. Tense, moody and claustrophobic, Auld Acquaintance is the unputdownable debut by Sofia Slater.

Leseprobe

For Theo Saplund

Should auld acquaintance be forgot And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot And days of auld lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear For auld lang syne We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet For days of auld lang syne

Contents

30th DecemberChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4New Year’s EveChapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20New Year’s DayChapter 21Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24Chapter 25Acknowledgements

30th December

Chapter 1

There was an arm hanging out of the car window. You might have thought its owner was out for a summer drive, window rolled down to catch the breeze. But the ambulance came right up behind my taxi as we were passing. I craned my neck to see. Then I wished I hadn’t. There was blood all over the shattered glass, like syrup staining shaved ice.

It was a hard sight to put out of your mind, but then there wasn’t much to distract me once I got on the ferry. The sky and the sea threw off dull grey light, the same shade as the boat’s paintwork. The horizon was interrupted with little crenulations of coastline. Without the green of summer, or the dramatic shafts of sunlight, it looked nothing like the pictures that had so appealed to me weeks earlier, when I did an excited image search for ‘the Outer Hebrides’. I watched one of the ferrymen, his high-vis jacket a shocking splash of yellow in the otherwise grey scene, running a broom up and down an exterior wall. Maybe this was a vital task in the effort to keep things shipshape. Or maybe he was as bored as I was. I was really bored.

My mind kept jumping back to the accident. That, too, had been the only thing to look at in a sparse landscape, with dawn slowly revealing the wintry hills and scattered houses on my early ride from the hotel to the ferry port. I had clung to my cup of sad machine coffee, cadged from the bleary girl on the desk as I checked out, and wondered, How do you crash that badly into a little roadside ditch? It was an odd place for it, and that oddness, as much as the upsetting possibilities of injury and death, gave the six-hour journey ahead an ill-starred feeling.

I had to try and shake it off. Six hours is a long time to stare at a grey horizon, feeling doomy, but more than that, I had to enjoy this weekend. This party was my turning point, the beginning of a better year. New Year, new me. When Nick’s invitation came in November, it had been the first good thing to happen in ages. Can I tempt you? ran the subject line, which was intriguing enough, especially coming from someone I hadn’t spoken to in months. Someone I missed.

Hey Millie!

Long time no write. I know this is out of the blue, and it might not be your kind of thing anyway, but… I’m going to this New Year’s Eve bash with some friends, and one of them had to drop out. Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? In your case, no! There’s no one I’d rather take a cup o’ kindness with than you, so please come, if you can stomach the journey.

Nick x

And then, below his name, the invitation: neon tartan and a bunch of stag silhouettes, and the words ‘Party like it’s 1899’.

You are cordially invited to an exclusive Hogmanay celebration on the Isle of Osay, to be held in Fairweather House.You make the journey, we’ll do the rest. Whisky, bonfires, Scottish baronial vibes.

Hearing from Nick made a warm thrill travel up my spine. I looked up pictures of the island, which appeared luxuriously streaked with purple from the summer heather, and the house, a neo-Gothic Victorian pile. It was the only thing there, apparently: some old laird’s retreat, just a speck among the larger Hebrides.

Getting there was a nightmare. The ferry ride was long and the boat left before dawn, only on weekdays. That was after you had trekked the length of the country to reach the port. The house looked like it would be freezing in winter, too. But I wasn’t really debating whether to go – it was enough that Nick had thought of me, months after we stopped working together. Even if nothing was going to happen there, it would still be a laugh. And much better than what I had planned: binging on leftover Advent chocolates and Christmas specials until I fell asleep at ten o’clock. I replied that I’d be delighted, journey be damned.

And now here I was, on 30th December, shivering on the northern swell. I’d had a brutally early, undercaffeinated start, the weather was shit, and I’d just seen a car crash; none of this was cheering, certainly. But neither, I reminded myself, were these omens of anything. It was just bad luck. I went to the toilet to dab my face with a damp paper towel and give myself a talking-to in the mirror.

When I emerged, we were making the first of our two stops, at a bigger island on the way to Osay. A few people got off, and a small crowd of men and women in heavy jackets gathered on the quayside to pick up supplies. We’d been going for a couple of hours now. If I looked behind us, I couldn’t make out the mainland any more, not so much as a charcoal smear on the horizon.

As we chugged slowly on towards the next island, I got out my binoculars and notebook. I might as well try to spot some birds on the journey, though as I focused the lenses, the sea wind bit my hands, and I wasn’t sure how long they could stand the cold. But I was rewarded straight away. A barnacle goose was flying over the water towards the coast. Its elegant black-and-white face stood out glossy and fine against the grey sky. It wasn’t a rarity, but unless you travelled north frequently you might not see one that often, and I still got a buzz from spotting them. I was following its movement, mesmerised by the beauty of its curling wingtips, when something yellow crossed my lens and I lost sight of the bird.

Lowering my binoculars, annoyed, I saw the cause: the long blonde mane of a woman about my age – maybe a year closer to thirty, I reckoned – contorting against the handrail to get a selfie. There was something familiar about her. She tried a few different pouts and angles, then called out:

‘Ravi, babe, I need you!’

A man leaning against the wall of the passenger cabin, whose glossy black quiff was just as gallingly perfect as her beachy waves, looked up from his phone and crossed the deck.

‘Can you get some of the island? The weather is giving me nothing.’

I turned away, rolling my eyes. Not as privately as I thought, though. A man in a red anorak was leaning on the opposite rail, and he gave me a crooked smile, jerking his head at the well-coiffed couple.

I could feel myself blushing, and I moved off down the deck, hiding my embarrassment behind the binoculars, hoping the cold wind would be an adequate excuse for red cheeks if he was still looking.

I adjusted my lenses and thought about what my dad would have said. ‘Keep breathing, smoothly and quietly. If you aren’t calm, the birds won’t come.’ He died when I was thirteen, but I still reached for the things he’d taught me when we went birdwatching. Those times were so peaceful – just him and me, walking through woods or along the seaside, binoculars bouncing against our chests, companionably silent, reaching over to tap each other on the shoulder and point to a movement on the horizon.

After he was gone, and I was living with my mother, it was just me in the woods, scoping the sky, pretending he was around the next tree. I was tired of it being just me.

I didn’t spy any other birds of note – a seagull here, a tern there – and by the time we pulled away from the next stop, it was too dark to keep looking. It was intensely cold, too. I ducked into the passenger cabin and tried to rub my stiff fingers back to life.

Inside, the Well-Groomed Couple were tapping their screens, and the man who had smiled at me from the guardrail, hands tucked into his jacket, leaned his head against the wall, eyes closed. There was only Osay ahead of us now, so these people must be going to the party, too, and I felt even worse that I’d been caught out in my annoyance. It occurred to me that Nick should have been on the ferry too, but perhaps he’d gone a couple of days ahead. I didn’t recognise any of them as people I’d seen him with, though I was still trying to place the blonde’s features. She was definitely familiar. Perhaps it was only her style, though – the blonde waves, prayer beads and crystal pendants reminded me of my mother, also given to a certain Californian aesthetic that she hadn’t been born into.

I felt too awkward to start a conversation, even though I knew we were headed to the same place, so I sat gingerly at the end of a bench and started blowing on my fingers. Down the length of the wall, Red Anorak’s eyes flew open, and he flashed another crooked smile.

‘Hey.’

‘Hi.’ It emerged as a hoarse whisper. I cleared my throat, embarrassed, realising that, apart from muttering, ‘Checking out. Coffee?’ to the girl on reception at the hotel, I hadn’t spoken to anyone all day. Not that that was such a rare occurrence for me lately. I tried again. ‘Ahem. Hello.’

‘Scottish baronial vibes?’

‘How’d you guess?’

‘Not many left on the boat. I’m James.’ James was six feet or so, a bit past thirty, not particularly handsome, unlike the other two in the cabin, but with a face I wanted to keep looking at. He seemed cheerful and healthy, outdoorsy, though maybe that was just the anorak.

‘Millie. Nice to meet you.’ I reached out to shake his proffered hand and was embarrassed all over again when my own, reddened by the cold, refused to uncurl. But he took it anyway and started rubbing it between both of his.

‘You want to be careful with those things. Frostbite can be serious. Birding?’

The touch felt like a big move. It startled me, and made me wonder when the last time I’d touched anyone was. But I didn’t pull my hand back.

‘Uh… yeah,’ I stuttered.

‘Binoculars gave you away. Figured either birdwatcher, or peeping Tom. Seeing as there’s not a lot to peep at on the sea…’ He smiled at me, but the crooked corner of his mouth uncurled when he saw my face. ‘Only joking.’

‘No, it’s…’ I nodded to where his hands were still enclosing mine.

‘Oh! Sorry. Should have asked.’ He relinquished them. ‘I work at a hospital. You get sort of used to just focusing on the ailment. Not a lot of boundaries.’

‘That’s okay. They do feel better.’ I waggled my fingers to demonstrate. ‘So, you’re a doctor?’

‘No, nothing so impressive. Pharmacist.’ He gave a good-natured laugh, but it was a little rueful, too, as if he’d had to answer the question a few too many times, and it hadn’t stopped stinging. ‘I’ve dabbled in twitching, though, like you.’

I was more of a birder than a twitcher. I’d never really gone chasing after sightings – just kept an eye on the birds around me. Though I did have a life list; and probably knowing the difference in the first place made me a twitcher by default. I let it pass without correcting him.

‘Oh yeah?’

‘I’ve never really caught the bug, but I do a lot of outdoor sports, and you can’t help but start noticing the things around you.’

So, he was outdoorsy; I hadn’t just imagined it. Now I saw he had a slightly weatherbeaten look, in a good way: hazel eyes glinting out from the kind of embedded tan that lasts through the winter. I was about to ask what his most impressive sighting was, when someone else spoke.

‘So, you two are going to this party, yeah?’

It was Well-Groomed Male, calling out from across the cabin. He was leaning back on the bench, one loafered foot, bare at the ankle, crossed over the opposite knee. Well-Groomed Female was still on her phone, but she flicked her eyes up at us as James answered.

‘We are. Fellow revellers?’

‘Yes, mate. Should be epic. God, I wish they’d told me it’d be so fucking freezing, though.’

He pulled down the cuffs of his waxed jacket performatively. I wouldn’t have thought anyone needed to be told that socks are a good idea if you’re visiting Scotland in December.

‘I’m Ravi, and this is Bella.’

The blonde looked up while we introduced ourselves.

‘Do either of you know the owners? I’m setting up a post, but I don’t know what mentions to use.’

‘Sorry. I’m a plus one.’ I knew I sounded a bit too pleased from the look she gave me, but I couldn’t help it when I thought of Nick’s message.

‘Same here,’ said James.

‘Whatever, I can take the personal angle for now and leave partnerships out of it,’ she said. Then, after thinking a moment: ‘But Rav, we need to talk to someone about this when we get in.’ She turned back to the phone.

Of course. Now I knew who she was: Bella B, a rising influencer whose face had drifted across my various feeds a few times. She gave off a much more focused energy in person – that’s probably what had thrown me off. Her posts were all floaty hair and diaphanous garments, sage bundles and sunset beach yoga. The oversized puffer jacket she wore may have been in a tie-dye print, but she was fiddling with her phone like a harried office worker.

‘Do what you got to do, babe. I’m here to party,’ replied Ravi.

The tannoy crackled into life and a harsh, indistinct announcement was made.

‘Looks like it’s time,’ said James.

The boat bumped into something and came to a halt. I cupped my hands to the glass of the cabin window and looked out into the night. A lamp cast jaundiced light over a plank jetty, stretching off into the dark. The light was swinging in what seemed like a cold wind – it made the pier look seasick, and suddenly I didn’t want to get off the boat and trust myself to it, especially as I couldn’t see where it led. But then I spotted it – away above a blank blackness was a single illuminated pane. Not an extravagant beacon, but still a welcome sign of the waiting house. We had arrived.

Chapter 2

I was expecting some sort of greeting party on the jetty, a sign for the house, at least some lights along the path up the hill. Or Nick, ideally. But there was just that one lonely lamp, making a yellow pool on the half-rotted boards. The boat pulled away, too, taking its lights with it. A ferryman called back to us,

‘Next visit on the second of January. Happy New Year!’ And then he turned to coil a rope as the boat disappeared into the sea mist. It was just the four of us, the wind and the pier.

‘I bet you get an incredible view of the stars out here when it’s clear, away from all the lights,’ said Bella. ‘Perfect for a moonbathing session.’

I could imagine few things less appealing in the current temperature – or indeed in any temperature – than ‘a moonbathing session’, but I appreciated her attempt to take a glass-half-full approach.

‘Let’s get going up to the house,’ said Ravi. ‘It’s fucking Baltic.’

Unfortunately, it wasn’t so simple. For one thing, there was the luggage: Bella and Ravi had arrived with two giant hardcases apiece, as though they were moving abroad. James gallantly offered to steer one up the hill, but he had a bit of a hitch in his step and wasn’t the quickest on his feet. Surprising, given his athletic appearance. The wheels kept sticking on pebbles and grass, and we lost the path more than once, stumbling over tussocks and shining our phone lights at our feet to try to find the way. None of this was helped by the mist, which drifted in thin shreds along the rocks where the island met the water, constantly altering our range of vision; nor by the constant bitter wind, which made my hands stiffen up again and my ears ache. Ravi was right: it was fucking Baltic.

Up at the house, when we finally reached it, things were a little less bleak. There was a lamp over the door, and a few outbuildings lurked around the corner, their doorways topped with similar round lights. The mist hadn’t risen this far, either, and I felt better for being out of its clammy reach. I looked back at the pier, thinking how dark it had seemed up here when I was down there, with just the one glowing upstairs pane. But then I realised, following the line of sight down to the swaying dock light and back up to the building, that all the windows in the house were angled away from the landing place. That’s odd, I thought. You’d expect whoever built this would want to enjoy the view. I tried to shake off my unsettled feeling. I’d noticed my thoughts getting darker since work went pear-shaped, and I didn’t want to get in the way of my own enjoyment this weekend.

‘All right, seriously, where is everyone?’

My attention snapped back to the door, where Ravi was pressing the bell for what must have been the third time.

‘Probably already partying,’ said James. ‘I’ll check round the back.’

‘Cool.’ Ravi sat back on his suitcase. Bella, too, was resting on hers, tapping at a photo, trying different filters. She didn’t even look up. I could feel my annoyance at them welling up. How had they managed to put themselves in the position of being waited on by strangers? I didn’t fancy standing with them for ages while James hunted around for someone to open the door, so I jogged down the curving stone staircase after him, calling:

‘Wait, I’ll come with.’

‘Oh, good.’ He flashed a smile. ‘I didn’t want to say, but I’m afraid of the dark.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.’

Although we were both joking, the dark was a little frightening. It was pitch black apart from the lighted doorways. All of them standing around in the blank night somehow reminded me of a stage set, a series of entrances anyone might suddenly walk through. Our feet were silent as we crossed the grass, and in the distance you could hear the monotonous crash of water on the rocks. Wingbeats pulsed above our heads – an owl, roosting in one of the outbuildings? The silence seemed thick, a presence more than an absence. I started chattering over it.

‘So, what brought you here for New Year’s?’

‘Well, it seems like a pretty legendary party, doesn’t it? Not often you get a chance to go all out in style this far from civilisation.’

‘True. No neighbours to call the police. Speaking of, did you see that accident on the way to the ferry this morning?’

‘Oh God, yeah, the couple?’

I hadn’t realised there were two people in the car, but it must have been the same one. How many accidents could there have been between the hotel and the port?

He carried on, jerking his head back towards the front door where Ravi and Bella were waiting:

‘If only it had been those two, right?’

I gave a little snort of assent, though immediately felt it was harsh. Sure, they’d annoyed me before they’d even opened their mouths, and I was hardly the person to rush to their defence, but I didn’t want them dead. Still, if they came down with food poisoning for the rest of the trip…

‘You meeting someone here?’ I asked.

‘Uh… yeah, I was invited by – aha! Here we go.’

We had come most of the way around the main building, and there was a lit window on the ground floor in front of us. An old woman’s head was framed by the bright pane. Fluffy white hair caught the warm lamplight and turned it silvery. The face was hard, pinched, the mouth a red slash, compressed as she rocked back and forth, back and forth. I couldn’t tell what she was doing, but out here in the dark, with shreds of mist still laying cold fingers on my shoulders, my mind jumped to the worst. That violent red mouth, and her determined gestures – it was almost as if she were sawing at something.

We approached the window, but she didn’t look up until James reached out and tapped the glass. Then she screamed.

I gasped, too, and whipped my head round, expecting something to materialise out of the night. But there was nothing looming out of the dark. Then I realised: what she was frightened of was us.

Of course, I thought. This must be the kitchen, and she’s making dinner. I could imagine the way it looked from the other side, two faces suddenly popping up out of nowhere while you were busy soaping dishes. When I looked back, the woman was holding her hand to her chest, breathing heavily, though I couldn’t hear her through the glass. In the light cast by the window I could see James’s apologetic gestures, pointing towards the front door.

‘Go round,’ she mouthed, heading in the direction of the entrance, and we moved off too. As soon as we were out of sight, both James and I let go of our suppressed laughter.

‘Poor old biddy.’

‘You nearly gave her a heart attack.’

The woman was saying exactly the same thing, in a reproachful tone, to Ravi at the open front door when we rounded the corner. Her querulous, frightened manner was at odds with the knife handle poking out from her apron pocket. Or perhaps she’d brought it along for protection.

‘I don’t quite understand you,’ Ravi was objecting.

‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ James called out as he started up the stairs.

‘You could have rung the bell.’

‘What, this bell?’ said Bella, pressing a manicured finger to the button and waiting pointedly as the long chime echoed in the hall.

‘Well,’ sniffed the woman, ‘I’m afraid I didn’t hear you.’ But she yielded a little, stepping to one side so that we could come through.

In the large hall, she stood looking at us, still a little hostile, and we all stared back at her. Close up, I could see her mouth wasn’t as harsh a line as I had thought. It was soft, and turning slightly inward with age – she might have been around seventy. Her lipstick made it dramatic, though: bright red, crookedly applied. Vivid blue shadow was smudged over her eyelids. The same mix of sloppiness and theatre was visible in the clothes she wore under her stained apron, a fuchsia velvet dress marred by bald patches where it had rubbed, with a slip hanging too low and peeking out from the hem.

The hall, too, had seen better days. When I had imagined it – as I had many times, thinking what I would say when I at last saw Nick, picturing a dance, maybe a little more – the surroundings had been grand, glamorous, festive. Chandeliers, caterers armed with trays of champagne, women wearing sequins, music, confetti. This… not so much.

The scale of the place was grand, sure, but on every other count it was a mismatch with my imagination. The ceiling extended into darkness beyond the range of vision, and cold floor tiles, set in a diamond pattern and in need of a decent scrub, stretched out into equally shadowy corners. A curved staircase, a wooden twin to the stone one outside, rose to the next floor, with portraits of kilted gentlemen hung along the landing. A tiny fire wavered inadequately in a massive hearth. The convoluted design of its carved mantel was hard to make out in the low light.

There was, in fact, a chandelier, I noticed as I craned my eyes upward once more, but it wasn’t the gleaming crystal confection of my daydreams. Instead, a few sluggish yellow bulbs flickered, illuminating cobwebs draped over interlocking spears of horn: it was made of antlers, cracked and stained with age.

No Nick, either. No people at all, in fact. In all that great cobwebbed, gloomy space was just an elderly woman and the four of us from the boat. But it was only the 30th, I reminded myself. I’d arrived early. Surely it would all be transformed on the day of the party.

The woman had recovered slightly and was making an introduction.

‘I am Marjorie Flyte. Fairweather House is my place. I assume you’re here for the festivities?’

‘If that’s the word,’ I heard Ravi murmur into Bella’s ear, while she smirked at Mrs Flyte.

‘There are supposed to be more of you, were you the only ones to get off the ferry?’ she asked. The slightly querulous air she’d had when she opened the door was back again. ‘Well, perhaps they’re hiring a boat to come over in the morning. Some do, you know.’

I was relieved to hear we weren’t the only ones. It wasn’t going to be much of a party with just the five of us. But I was a little disappointed, too – I’d hoped to see Nick straight away. A clifftop walk after breakfast, though, would be nice.

‘I would show you to your rooms, but I’m afraid the ferry was a little behind, and I’m just doing dinner. Would you mind terribly waiting in the library for now? Leave your bags and we can take them up after.’ She gestured at a doorway opening off the hall. ‘The others are there already; I’ll call you for the meal.’

The others! My stomach flipped. So Nick was already here. We shed bags and coats and filed through into the other room. I tried to settle my face.

But I wasn’t prepared in the least. Because it wasn’t Nick sitting with a magazine on the shabby tartan sofa in the next room. My heart, which had been fluttering with expectation, began pounding with dread. I took a step back, hoping to get away, though I knew I couldn’t. Nestled innocently between the sofa cushions, gently illuminated by the firelight, was someone I didn’t want to see at all. Someone I’d been avoiding for a year. Someone I’d hoped never to see again.

Penny Maybury.

Chapter 3

‘Well, clearly the ferry ride hasn’t agreed with you.’

The comment didn’t come from Penny. She was silent, looking up at me from the sofa, her face locked in the same stiff, wide-eyed blandness I could feel my own assuming. I turned to look at the speaker, a black man in late middle age leaning against the mantelpiece. The warm, uneven light of the fire showed silver hair cropped short, a well-cut suit, impeccable shirtfront and pale silk tie. His eyes were sharp under the quirked brow.

‘Winston. Winston Harriot,’ he said, gesturing at his tailored extent, and then opening a broad fan of fingers towards me expectantly. Before I could reply, though, the eyebrow changed its angle to express surprise, as his attention turned to Ravi, who was entering behind me.

‘Ravi Gopal? I didn’t expect to see you here. In fact, I didn’t expect to see anyone, but at least there’s a familiar face among the strangers.’

It was difficult to read his expression well in the fire’s uncertain light, but I thought I saw a twinge of reluctance pass over Ravi’s handsome features. Still, he moved towards Winston with seeming eagerness, arms outstretched, meaning there was nothing left for me to do but acknowledge Penny.

She seemed unchanged since I had last seen her several months ago. No, not quite. She was thinner. But her blue eyes, softly curling carroty hair, moonish face and droopy garments were the same as ever.

‘Hello, Millie.’ She made room for me on the sofa, but pulled her long cardigan tighter around her when I sat down.

‘Hi.’ I looked around at the others, hoping one of them would approach for an introduction and spare me the tête-à-tête, but Ravi was introducing Winston to everyone, and they were all busy being jocular and loud, engrossed in their interaction. ‘So, did Nick invite you to this, too?’

‘Not Nick, but we have a mutual friend. I think they’re coming in the morning.’

‘Have you seen him since… um, recently?’

‘No.’

‘Right.’ A silence fell. I hunted for something to say, but it was Penny who filled the gap.

‘You look well.’

‘Not according to him.’ I nodded at Winston Harriot. ‘I guess my face lost the fight with the early start and the cold. But I’m good. Well, I haven’t found another job yet. But keeping busy! You?’

‘Keeping busy covers it.’ She gave a tight little smile. I racked my brain, but every polite question seemed laden with significance. ‘What have you been up to?’ Disastrous. ‘How have you been?’ Impossible.

If I’d known she was going to be here, I might have prepared somehow, thought of a way to smooth things over.

You wouldn’t, said a voice inside my head. You just wouldn’t have come. But here we were. I wished I knew a way to recapture the old ease. We had, after all, been friends once.

‘This place is…’ I gestured around the room, meaning to say something like ‘nice’ or ‘great’, but as my hand followed my gaze, I realised neither was accurate. The room, which had earned its title of ‘library’ with a couple of glass-fronted cases meagrely stocked, betrayed the same neglect as the hall. The furniture was old and imposing, but in a run-down way. A sofa with a missing foot rested one corner on a pile of books. It was a large room with several settees and armchairs dotting the space and portraits of long-dead lairds lining the walls. Its back reaches were invisible, but here, where the firelight lent a little help to the few weak lamps, it was bright enough to see that the flocked wallpaper was peeling where the ceiling met the walls.

The firelight picked out something else, too – the glint of an axe, large and rather sharp-looking, surprisingly so given the general state of the place, fixed at an angle above the mantelpiece. Presumably it was a ceremonial weapon, some highland accoutrement passed down with the kilted portraits. The axe was of a piece with everything else. The whole place had an ersatz feel, as if it had been decorated by a props department. Only the dirt and decay seemed wholly authentic.

A huge, resonant crash sounded outside the library, startling me, but also saving me from having to finish my sentence. I sat there, frozen by the sound, and then our hostess came into the room, moving at a pace that suggested no emergency. She was wobbling a little, and I felt another twinge of guilt; she must still be shaken by the scare we’d given her. Maybe her trembling hands had dropped a tray. Steadying herself on the doorframe, she announced, ‘Dinner is served.’

We filed back through the hall – where I noticed a big brass gong – and assembled around a long table in the room opposite the library. It was too large for the number of people. The places were set several feet apart, as if we were all hostiles in an armistice negotiation. Conversation was stilted, every comment spoken a little too loudly, to make it travel across the acres of napery. Mrs Flyte, seated at the head, sent a tureen down the line.

‘What’s on the menu?’ asked James, ladling something intensely brown into his bowl.

‘Oxtail soup.’ She reached for her wine glass.

‘Sorry, but I’m a vegetarian?’ Bella’s tone tilted up in disbelief.

‘Well, then, you shall have to skip the soup,’ Mrs Flyte replied, pronouncing the last three words with the kind of perfect emphasis that made me think she was worried about slurring them. I saw Ravi and Bella exchange a look just as I traded one with James. ‘And the main.’ She drained her glass.

‘Mrs Flyte,’ said Winston. ‘Tell us, how did you come to be mistress of this… charming establishment?’

‘I always lived in London. I love the buzz of the city, the parties, the nightlife…’ She trailed off, lost in memories for a moment, and then returned to herself. Clearing her throat and attempting a brisk tone that was a little too much for her level of inebriation, she continued: ‘But things change, don’t they, and when the chance came to take over this house cheaply, I thought, It’s such a striking location, I can make a go of it there. I’ve run it as a B&B ever since.’ She topped up her glass and raised it. ‘Chin-chin!’

‘Oh my God,’ murmured James, leaning closer to me so that he could speak low. ‘She’s completely pissed.’

I let out a snort of laughter in spite of myself and got a quizzical look from the other end of the table.

Looking around at the others, as our hostess circled, collecting soup plates, I was struck by the ill-assortment of the group. Tottering Mrs Flyte had been charged with throwing the kind of party I couldn’t imagine she’d ever attend. Winston Harriot, with his supercilious expression and good tailoring, seemed a bit old for this kind of thing, although the paunch his jacket didn’t quite disguise did imply a taste for good living. Ravi and Bella made more sense. Her online profile was an enviable and exhausting mixture of muscular attitudes struck against exotic backgrounds, artfully arranged brunch tables and laughing bunches of girls out at the kind of clubs where nobody is sick in the loo. From the conversation Ravi was having with Winston, I could tell the former worked in finance, so he probably took a ‘work hard, play hard’ line. His job seemed a strange pairing with Bella’s digital bohemian persona, but then he was very good-looking. Those three had obviously met before, or at least Winston and Ravi had. But the look on Ravi’s face when he first saw Winston came to me again – something weird there.