‘Why?’ I ask. I can hear how it sounds: plaintive, squeamish.
‘Because,’ he draws a hand over his face; the gesture tugs his eye sockets down in a ghoulish mask. ‘Because … of the body. How it looks. I don’t think it was an accident.’
I feel my skin go cold in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the weather.
When we step outside, the snow is still coming down so thickly that you can only see a few feet from the door. The loch is almost invisible. I have shrugged on the clothes that are my de facto outdoor uniform in this place: the big, down Michelin-man jacket, my hiking boots, my red hat. I tramp after Doug, trying to keep up with his long stride, which isn’t easy, because he’s well over six foot, and I’m only a whisker over five. At one point I stumble; Doug shoots out a big, gloved hand to catch my arm, and hefts me back onto my feet as easily as if I were a child. Even through the down of my sleeve I can feel the strength of his fingers, like iron bands.
I’m thinking of the guests, stuck in their cabins. The inactivity must be horrible, the waiting. We had to forbid them from joining us in the search, or risk having another missing person on our hands. No one should be out in these conditions. It is the sort of weather that people die in: ‘danger to life’, the warnings say. But the problem is that to most of the guests, a place like this is as alien as another planet. These are people who live charmed existences. Life has helped them to feel untouchable. They’re so used to having that invisible safety net around them in their normal lives – connectivity, rapid emergency services, health and safety guidelines – that they assume they carry it around with them everywhere. They sign the waiver happily, because they don’t really think about it. They don’t believe in it. They do not expect the worst to happen to them. If they really stopped to consider it, to understand it, they probably wouldn’t stay here at all. They’d be too scared. When you learn how isolated an environment this really is, you realise that only freaks would choose to live in a place like this. People running from something, or with nothing left to lose. People like me.
Now Doug is leading me around to the left shore of the loch, towards the trees.
‘Doug?’ I realise that I am whispering. It’s the silence here, made more profound by the snow. It makes your voice very loud. It makes you feel as though you are under observation. That just behind that thick wall of trees, perhaps, or this pervasive curtain of white, there might be someone listening. ‘What makes you think it wasn’t an accident?’
‘You’ll see when we get there,’ he says. He does not bother turning back to look at me, nor does he break his stride. And then he says, over his shoulder, ‘I don’t “think”, Heather. I know.’
Of course, I didn’t bother looking at the email Emma sent, with that brochure attached. I can never get excited about a trip in advance – just seeing photos of turquoise seas or snow-capped mountains doesn’t interest me. I have to actually be there to feel anything, for it to be real. When Emma mentioned this place, the Lodge, I’d vaguely imagined something old-timey, wooden beams and flagstones. So the building itself comes as a bit of a surprise. Fucking hell. It’s all modernist glass and chrome, like something out of The Wizard of Oz. Light spills from it. It’s like a giant lantern against the darkness.
‘Christ!’ Julien says, when the blokes finally arrive in the Land Rover. ‘It’s a bit hideous, isn’t it?’ He would say that. For all his intelligence, Julien has zero artistic sensibility. He’s the sort of person who’ll walk around a Cy Twombly exhibition saying, ‘I could have drawn that when I was five,’ just a bit too loudly. He likes to claim it’s because he’s a ‘bit of rough’: his background too grim for anything like the development of aesthetic tastes. I used to find it charming. He was different: I liked that roughness, beside all those clean-behind-the-ears public schoolboys.
‘I like it,’ I say. I do. It’s like a spaceship has just touched down on the bank of the loch.
‘So do I,’ Emma says. She would say that – even if she really thinks it’s hideous. Sometimes I find myself testing her, saying the most outrageous things, almost goading her to challenge me. She never does – she’s so keen just to be accepted. All the same, she’s reliable – and Katie and Samira have been AWOL of late. Emma’s always up for going to the cinema, or a trip shopping, or drinks. I always suggest the venue, or the activity, she always agrees. To be honest, it’s quite refreshing: Katie’s so bloody busy with work it’s always been me going to her, to some lousy identikit city slicker bar, just to grab three minutes of her time.
With Emma it’s a bit what I imagine having a little sister would be like. I feel almost as though she is looking up to me. It gives me a rather delicious sense of power. Last time we went shopping I took her into Myla. ‘Let’s pick out something that will really make Mark’s jaw fall open,’ I told her. We found exactly the right set – a sweetly slutty bra, open knickers and suspender combo. I suddenly had an image of her telling Mark that it was me who helped to pick it out, and I felt an unexpected prickle of desire at the thought of him knowing that it was all my work. It’s not Mark, of course, never has been. I’ve always found his unspoken attraction nicely ego-stroking, yes. But never a turn-on.
With Katie absent and Samira busy all the time with Priya – she is a bit obsessed with that child, it can’t be healthy to share quite so many photos on social media – I have found myself falling back on Emma’s company instead. A definite third choice.
I have been looking forward to this, to catching up with everyone. There’s a security to it, how when we’re together we fall back into our old roles. We can have been apart for months, and then when we’re in each other’s company everything is back to how it always was, almost like it was when we were at Oxford, our glory days. The person I most want to catch up with is Katie, of course. Seeing her this morning at the train station with her new hair, in clothes I didn’t recognise, I realised quite how long it’s been since I last saw her … and how much I have missed her.
Inside the Lodge, it’s beautiful – but I’m glad we’re only going to be having meals in here, not sleeping. The glass emphasises the contrast between the bright space in here and the dark outside. I’m suddenly aware of how visible we would be from outside, lit up like insects in a jar … or actors on a stage, blinded by the floodlights to the watching audience. Anyone could be out there, hidden in the blackness, looking in without our knowing.
For a moment the old dark feeling threatens to surface, that sense of being watched. The feeling I have carried with me for a decade, now, since it all began. I remind myself that the whole point is that there is no one out there. That we are pretty much completely alone; save for the gamekeeper and the manager – Heather – who’s come in to welcome us.
Heather is early-thirties, short, prettyish – though a decent haircut and some make-up would make a vast improvement. I wonder what on earth someone like her is doing living alone in a place like this; because she does actually live here – she tells us that her cottage is ‘just over there, a little nearer to the trees’. To be here permanently must be pretty bloody lonely. I would go completely mental with only my thoughts for company. Sometimes, on days at home, I turn on the TV and the radio, just to drown out the silence.
‘And you,’ she says to us, ‘have all of the cabins nearest to the Lodge. The other guests are staying in the bunkhouse at the other end of the loch.’
‘The other guests?’ Emma asks. There is a taut silence. ‘What other guests?’