We all laugh, dutifully, but it strikes me that there’s something uneasy in the sound. The call of the owl, such an unusual noise for city dwellers like us, has just emphasised quite how unfamiliar this place is.
‘I didn’t even know there were places like this in the UK,’ Bo says, as if he can read my thoughts.
‘Ah Bo,’ Miranda says, ‘you’re such a Yank. It’s not all London and little chocolate box villages here.’
‘I didn’t realise you got outside the M25 much yourself, Miranda,’ Nick says.
‘Oi!’ She punches his arm. ‘I do, occasionally. We went to Soho Farmhouse before Christmas, didn’t we Julien?’ We all laugh – including Miranda. People think she can’t laugh at herself, but she can … just as long as she doesn’t come out of it looking too bad.
‘Come on, open that bottle, Manda,’ Bo says.
‘Yes … open it, open it—’ Giles begins to shout, and everyone joins in … it’s almost impossible not to. It becomes a chant, something oddly tribal in it. I’m put in mind of some pagan sect; the effect of the landscape, probably – mysterious and ancient.
Miranda stands up and fires the cork into the loch, where it makes its own series of ripples, widening out in shining rings across the water. We drink straight from the bottle, passing it around like Girl Guides, the cold, densely fizzing liquid stinging our throats.
‘It’s like Oxford,’ Mark says. ‘Sitting down by the river, getting pissed after finals at three p.m.’
‘Except then it was cava,’ Miranda says. ‘Christ – we drank gallons of that stuff. How did we not notice that it tastes like vomit?’
‘And there was that party you held down by the river,’ Mark says. ‘You two’ – he gestures to Miranda and me – ‘and Samira.’
‘Oh yes,’ Giles says. ‘What was the theme again?’
‘The Beautiful and Damned,’ I say. Everyone had to come in twenties’ gear, so we could all pretend we were Bright Young Things, like Evelyn Waugh and friends. God, we were pretentious. The thought of it is like reading an old diary entry, cringeworthy … but fond, too. Because it was a wonderful evening, even magical. We’d lit candles and put them in lanterns, all along the bank. Everyone had gone to so much effort with their costumes, and they were universally flattering: the girls in spangled flappers and the boys in black tie. Miranda looked the most stunning, of course, in a long metallic sheath. I remember a drunken moment of complete euphoria, looking about the party. How had little old me ended up at a place like this? With all these people as my friends? And most particularly with that girl – so glamorous, so radiant – as my best friend?
As we walk back towards the lights of the Lodge and the cabins, I spot another statue, a little way to our left, silhouetted in the light thrown from the sauna building. This one is facing away from the loch, towards us. It gives me the same uncanny little shock that the other did; I suppose this is exactly the effect they are meant to achieve.
The privacy of my cabin is a welcome respite. We’ve spent close to eight hours in each other’s company now. Mine is the furthest away from the Lodge on this side, just beyond the moss-roofed sauna. It’s also the smallest. Neither of these things particularly bothers me. I linger over my unpacking, though I’ve brought very little with me. The aftertaste of the champagne is sour on my tongue now, I can feel what little I drank listing in my stomach. I have a drink of water. Then I take a long, hot bath in the freestanding metal tub in the bathroom using the organic bath oil provided, which creates a thick aromatherapeutic fug of rosemary and geranium. There’s a high window facing towards the loch, though the view out is half-obscured by a wild growth of ivy, like something from a pre-Raphaelite painting. It’s also high enough that someone could look in and watch me in the bath for a while before I noticed them – if I ever did. I’m not sure why that has occurred to me – especially as there’s hardly anyone here to look – but once the thought is in my mind I can’t seem to get rid of it. I draw the little square of linen across the view. As I do I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror above the sink. The light isn’t good, but I think I look terrible: pale and ill, my eyes dark pits.
I’ll admit, I half-wondered about not coming this year. Just pretending I hadn’t seen the email from Emma in my inbox until it was ‘too late’ to do anything about it. A sudden, rebellious thought: Perhaps I’ve done my part? I could just stay hidden here for the three days, and the others would make enough noise and drama without actually noticing that I had disappeared. Nick and Bo and Samira are loud enough when they get going, but Miranda can make enough noise and drama for an entire party on her own.
Of course, it would help that I’m known as the quiet one. The observer, melting into the background. That was the dynamic when we lived together, Miranda, Samira and me. They were the performers, I their audience.
If you told all this to the people I work with I reckon they’d be surprised. I’m one of the more senior associates at the firm now. I’m hopefully not far off making partner. People listen to what I say. I give presentations, I’m pretty comfortable with the sound of my own voice, ringing out in a silent meeting room. I like the feeling, in fact … seeing the faces upturned towards me, listening carefully to what I have to say. I command respect. I run a whole team. And I have found that I like being in charge. I suppose we all carry around different versions of ourselves.
With this group I have always been an also-ran. People have often wondered, I’m sure, what someone like me is doing with a friend like Miranda. But in friendship, as in love, opposites often attract. Extrovert and introvert, yin and yang.
It would be very easy to dislike Miranda. She has been blessed by the Gods of beauty and fortune. She has the sort of absurd figure you see held up as a ‘bad, unrealistic example to young girls’ – as though she has been personally Photoshopped. It doesn’t really seem fair that someone so thin should have breasts that size; aren’t they made up largely of fat? And the thick, infuriatingly shiny blonde hair, and green eyes … no one in real life seems to have properly green eyes, except Miranda. She is the sort of person you would immediately assume was probably a bitch. Which she can be, absolutely.
The thing is, beneath her occasionally despotic ways, Miranda can be very kind. There was the time my parents’ marriage was falling apart, for example – when I had a standing invitation to stay at her house whenever I felt like it, to escape the shouting matches at home. Or when my sixth-form boyfriend, Matt, dumped me unceremoniously for the prettier, more popular Freya, and Miranda not only lent me a shoulder to cry on, but put about the rumour that he had chlamydia. Or when I couldn’t afford a dress for the college Summer Ball and, without making a thing of it at all, she gave me one of hers: a column of silver silk.
When I opened my eyes at one point on the train journey up here I caught Miranda watching me. Those green eyes of hers. So sharp, so assessing. A slight frown, as though she was trying to work something out. I pretended to sleep again, quickly. Sometimes I genuinely believe that Miranda has known me for so long that somewhere along the way she might have acquired the ability to read my mind, if she looks hard enough.
We go back even further than the rest of the group, she and I. All the way back to a little school in Sussex. The two new girls. One already golden, the sheen of money on her – she’d been moved from a private school nearby as her parents wanted her ‘to strive’ (and they thought a comprehensive education would help her chances of getting into Oxford). The other girl mousey-haired, too thin in her large uniform bought from the school’s second-hand collection. The golden girl (already popular, within the first morning) taking pity on her, insisting they sit next to each other at assembly. Making her her project, making her feel accepted, less alone.
I never knew why it was that she chose me to be her best friend. Because she did choose me: I had very little to do with it. But then she has always liked to do the unexpected thing, has Miranda, has always liked to challenge other people’s