The Club(75)

He had not been threatening Ned, when he had dropped that remark – was it only the previous afternoon? – about all he had done for the club, although he could see now how Ned had taken it that way. All Adam had been trying to do was point out how many risks he’d taken. How much he’d sacrificed. How much of himself he had allowed to be eroded, corroded.

Christ, he felt knackered. Adam checked his watch. Ten past midnight. Time to muster the energy to do a final round of discreet goodbyes – and then it would be back to his room to call Laura. To call her one last time while she still loved him and thought he was basically a kind and decent and worthwhile human being. Perhaps one of the only people in the world who actually thought that. For now.

Adam reached up and adjusted his mask back onto his face, not without effort. His arms felt like lead, his hands seemed to be hanging loose and heavy from his wrists. Jesus. It was as if not just one leg or one arm but his whole body had gone to sleep; his torso was tingling, his scalp felt stretched too tight over his skull. It was hard to tell whether the lights were fading and brightening or it was just his tired eyes playing up.

Somewhere behind him the door opened and closed and he was going to sit up and turn around and offer a greeting but for some reason his body refused to obey his instructions. He could feel himself sort of sliding down the armchair, and his head lolling back, and when he tried to speak it came out as some sort of weird moan.

And then he sensed someone behind him.

And then he felt something around his neck.

And he tried to speak again, tried to lift his hands up to tug at whatever was around his neck, tried to pull his mask off, tried to say something, but he couldn’t, and whatever was around his neck was tightening, and he could already feel his eyes on the verge of popping, and great flashes of light were going off in his brain.

And it dawned on him who they must think he was, this person behind him, smelling of cigarettes, twisting whatever was around his neck tighter and tighter and tighter.

And it occurred to him this must be what it felt like, dying.

And it was only then it dawned on him how often, especially over the past few years, it had been Ned who kept putting temptation in his way. How often, when Adam was drunk, it had been Ned ordering one more round. How often it had been Ned who insisted on inviting a beautiful woman over to sit with them, and then found some excuse to absent himself. And he knew that did not excuse the things he’d done or the people he had hurt. It didn’t even really change how he felt about his brother, in the end; the love he had, which had always been unconditional, which had persisted despite everything he knew about him, and there was actually a trace of genuine pity, in the anger he felt. To live your life as Ned did, like some weird game that no one else was playing.

And above all, in his head, Adam kept telling Laura over and over again how sorry he was, how sorry he was, even though he knew she could not hear him, even though she was miles away and he was here, and he was dying, and what a stupid fucking punchline, he found himself thinking, to the stupid fucking joke he had made of his life.





Annie

Someone was running in her direction, their breathing ragged, noisily stumbling over bushes, slipping on gravel. From just outside the walled orchard she heard them race around the corner, skidding, panting as they did so. The footsteps slowed, hesitated, then paced back and forth, clearly trying to remember from the tour on the first day where exactly the little wooden door, half covered by ivy, was located.

Annie checked her watch. It was ten, fifteen minutes maybe, since she’d handed Ned the drink – she’d slipped out immediately afterwards, making sure someone on her team saw her doing so, mouthing the word cigarette at them and making the universal smoking gesture. The finale of the performance was now in full swing – even from here she could hear the violins screech as the music grew shrill and insistent inside The Manor. She wondered which room they had managed to lead him out to, if anyone else had noticed.

A latch clicked.

She drew back into the shadows as a figure emerged through the ornamental apple trees.

‘Annie?’

Shut up, you fool, she thought.

‘An-nie!’

It was Freddie. Freddie Hunter, with his mask off, fresh from the scene of a murder, shouting her name. Annie took a step backwards, the heel of her boot colliding as she did so with something hard, something heavy – a lump of masonry, she discovered, when she stooped to investigate with her fingers, presumably abandoned by some builder at some point.

‘Shh,’ she hissed, sharply, in the direction of Freddie’s outline. ‘Keep your voice down. There are people smoking down by the fire pit on the other side of that wall – they might be able to hear us.’

‘Annie,’ he said again, turning in her direction.

Stop saying my name, she thought.

‘I’m not going to do it. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.’

Freddie spoke with the quivering defiance of a man who has just, belatedly, discovered his moral backbone.

Behind her back, with one hand, Annie hefted the weight of the broken cinder block. She was not going to use it unless it was necessary, she promised herself. Not unless it was absolutely necessary.

‘Where’s Keith?’ she asked.

He ignored this. Freddie was carrying his cloak and mask in the crook of one arm, his usually vertiginously waxed hair all out of place, the fingers of his free hand repeatedly combing through it, his face a fuzzy shape in the moonlight.