Peter didn’t answer straightaway. Outside, it had started snowing again. He would be in the front room, and from what he said next I knew the curtains were still open, and he was looking at the snow falling, on Patricia’s flowers beds and on the lawn and the yew hedge. “If you’re determined to, I suppose I will. It’ll be sort of funny. The manor, a weekend party, the snow. Just like that night Mortimer died.”
I can’t say I felt any presentiment though, no shiver of apprehension or warning, although it struck me that neither of us had said anything about David. I had the TV on and the remnants of a tin of Roses on my lap, my fingers searching out any hazelnut caramels Marcus might have overlooked. There was a game show on. It involved people competing to win mystery prizes and then trying to hide their disappointment at what the prizes were.
And I fell asleep there, and when I woke up it was the middle of the night, and Marcus must have decided to stay at his mum’s because the van wasn’t there, and the bed was empty, and apart from the TV I was alone.
* * *
“Get in the back! Get in the back with us!”
I pulled open the sliding side door to the van. Peter and Em were huddled on the cushions inside, their faces ghoulish in the blue light of a battery lantern. In one hand, Peter was clutching a bottle of sloe gin. He was wearing a tuxedo that was too big in the shoulders, and Em—underneath the blanket she had draped about her—was showing flashes of iridescent peacock green.
“We went to Sue Ryder. You should have come. We had our pick of golf-club Christmas-ball chic circa 1975. Peter wanted to wear his boring Oxford suit, but I forbade it.”
Snow was falling again and turning to slush on the road. As we took the corners, I felt the rear wheels slipping and Em clutched at my arm, her eyes wide.
“You missed your chance. There was an amazing dress, green, floor-length, with sort of baubles on it, like a Christmas tree. We nearly bought it for you. But it was a tenner.”
“A whole tenner.”
“If it had been five ninety-nine—”
“Or even seven pound fifty.”
“We love you seven pound fifty.”
“Just not a tenner.”
Em swung the bottle in my direction. “Have some of that.”
“Look!” Marcus had slowed right down, and as we crawled up to lean over the front seats and look through the windscreen, I could smell Em’s shampoo and the gin on Peter’s breath and Marcus’s aftershave over the van’s usual reek of cigarette ash and oil. We were at the gates to the manor: pressing in on either side were the firs, and then before us was the snowy drive, and along its length someone had been out and stuck candles in brown paper bags which flickered, casting shadows on the ground. Fat flakes were lazing downward as though in no particular hurry. The sight reminded me of something, that is to say, I had a sense of déjà vu, but then Em was taking my hand and putting something in it and I couldn’t locate it.
“I did bring you something.” She had her mouth to my ear. Her palm was warm against mine. It was the necklace, the one from our games. I’d forgotten she even had it.
“Put it on.”
I nodded and then I gave it back to her, turning so she could thread it round my neck. As we swayed up the drive, she struggled to fasten it, but as we ground to a halt the catch caught and at the same moment, my mind fastened on the connection I’d been trying to make: it was not a memory, but an imagining, that had struck me—because, of course, I had pictured the manor like this many times.
* * *
Zack’s dogs were the first to greet us, their breath steaming, pink tongues lolling as they circled us, drawing tracks in the snow. Priss and Alice came next, and then Zack and Rob, each carrying a bottle of champagne and a handful of glasses, and behind them David. We stood on the steps, above the frozen fountain. Icicles hung from its tiers like crystal teeth. Priss was saying over and over again, “It’s so warm, isn’t it? Somehow the snow makes it warm,” and Peter and Em were introduced to everyone and Marcus was asked about his wounds while Rob lined up nine champagne flutes on the stone balustrade.
David had bent down to fuss the dogs. They were working cockers, brown and white with ringlets curling from their ears. The little one, Goli, pressed her muzzle into his hands and he caressed her face with quick little strokes and she wagged not just her tail, but everything from the neck down while the other dog tried to nose her out of the way for a turn. I saw Peter watching and I wanted to give him a look, a look that said, And to imagine we were once like that over him, only I couldn’t catch his eye.
“To living to tell the tale!” Zack raised his glass.
“To being able to bloody shoot straight,” Rob added and scooped up a handful of snow and tossed it lightly at Marcus, only it missed and hit Peter. “Sorry, Peter. Nice to have another Balliol man here. How’s it going? Final year, isn’t it? Do people still not know what you’re capable of?”
Peter showed his teeth. Not a smile but a chimp thing, a fear thing.
On his rare trips home, he told me about his studies and the libraries, about odd traditions and a little toy train that brought port and Stilton round the dining table. It had sounded so like the Oxford of his dreams, I had never questioned whether he was happy there. But now that I thought of it, he hadn’t mentioned any friends and I felt an awful guilty pang at how blind I’d been. As though reading my mind, Priss raised her glass.
“To new friends,” she announced firmly.
David straightened and took the glass Alice handed him. “And old ones,” he said, and there was a moment’s silence in which he looked lost and uncertain, eyes velvety.
“Oh Dave’s being ever so humble,” Rob said, stooping over like Uriah Heep. “Why don’t you tell them where you were?”
“In prison,” David said.
“For about two seconds,” Alice said, then, “Let’s go inside. I, for one, don’t think it’s warm at all, Priss. David, you can tell them about your criminal past over supper.”
* * *
Darren had complained he’d lost the renovation work on the manor because the owners didn’t want to pay for the job to be done properly. That would have involved damp coursing and pulling up floorboards and new pipes and electric. Rob and Alice’s family had gone with an outfit from Devizes that he claimed would patch and plaster over the cracks on the cheap and Darren had been spitting blood. I couldn’t say I was sad about it, because inside it looked like it was meant to look: the furniture uncloaked and more of it, pictures and mirrors on the freshly painted walls, and carpets unrolled across the shined-up floorboards. But it was still our manor. Something of the same smell remained.
We took our glasses into the dining room. A fire was burning in the hearth and the table was set with candles.
“Tell them, then,” Priss said to David. “I’ve got to go check on the pheasants.” Then with a wink, “I’d still count the silver before he goes, Rob.”
“Well, it’s quite simple,” David said. “Someone called the police. I heard someone coming up the stairs and I thought it was one of you. Only it wasn’t. It was Constable Stevens and his friend Constable Turnip, Turney, something like that. And after collecting up my things, they took me down to the station in Swindon. It wasn’t any good denying who I was as they had my passport, and of course the headmaster of our school,” he shot a glance at Rob, “had been kind enough to report the credit card thing in Britain as well as Italy, so of course I was arrested. And while Rob and Alice’s parents were good enough to make sure I didn’t get in trouble for the trespassing or breaking and entering, the credit card theft, the fraud thing, was a bit trickier.”