In a Dark, Dark Wood(8)

I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say.

Why had I come? Why had Clare invited me?

‘Nina,’ I started. There was a lump in my throat, and I felt my heart quicken. ‘Nina, who—?’

But before I could finish, the sound of pounding filled the room, echoing up through the open hallway.

There was someone at the door.

Suddenly I wasn’t at all sure I was ready to get the answers to my questions.





3


NINA AND I looked at each other. My heart was thudding like a stray echo of the door knocker, but I tried to keep my face calm.

Ten years. Had she changed? Had I changed?

I swallowed.

There was the sound of Flo’s feet echoing in the high atrium of the hallway, then metal shrieking on metal as she opened the heavy door, followed by the murmur of voices as whoever it was came into the house.

I listened carefully. It didn’t sound like Clare. In fact beneath Flo’s laugh I could hear something that sounded distinctly … male?

Nina rolled over and raised herself up on one elbow. ‘Well, well, well … sounds like the fully Y-chromosomed Tom has arrived.’

‘Nina …’

‘What? What are you looking at me like that for? Shall we go downstairs and meet the cock in the hen house?’

‘Nina! Don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’ She swung her feet to the floor and stood up.

‘Don’t embarrass us. Him.’

‘If we’re hens, naturally that makes him a cock. I’m using the term in its purely zoological sense.’

‘Nina!’

But she was gone, loping down the glass stairs in her stockinged feet, and I heard her voice floating up the stairwell. ‘Hello, don’t think we’ve met …’

Don’t think we’ve met. Well, it definitely wasn’t Clare then. I took a deep breath and followed her down into the hallway.

I saw the little group from above first. By the front door was a girl with smooth shiny black hair tied in a knot at the base of her skull – presumably Melanie. She was smiling and nodding at something Flo was saying, but she had a mobile in her hand and was poking distractedly at the screen even while Flo talked. On the opposite side was a bloke, Burberry case in hand. He had smooth chestnut hair and was immaculately dressed in a white shirt that must have been professionally laundered – no normal person could produce creased sleeves like that – and a pair of grey wool trousers that screamed Paul Smith. He looked up as he heard my feet on the stairs and smiled.

‘Hi, I’m Tom.’

‘Hi, I’m Nora.’ I forced myself down the last few stand, and then held out my hand. There was something incredibly familiar about his face, and I tried to figure out what it was while we shook, but I couldn’t place it. Instead I turned to the dark-haired girl. ‘And you must be … Melanie?’

‘Um, hi, yeah.’ She looked up and gave a flustered smile. ‘Sorry, I just … I left my six-month-old at home with my partner. First time I’ve done it. I really wanted to call home and check in. Isn’t there any reception here?’

‘Not really,’ Flo said apologetically. Her face was flushed with nerves or excitement, I wasn’t sure which. ‘Sorry. You can sometimes get a bit from the top end of the garden or the balconies, depending on what network you’re on. But there’s a landline in the living room. Let me show you.’

She led the way through and I turned back to Tom. I still had an odd feeling I’d seen him somewhere before.

‘So, how do you know Clare’ I asked awkwardly.

‘Oh, you know. Theatre connections. Everyone knows everyone! It was actually through my husband originally – he’s a director.’

Nina gave me a theatrical wink behind Tom’s back. I frowned furiously and then rearranged my face as I saw Tom looking puzzled.

‘Sorry, go on,’ Nina said seriously.

‘Anyway, I met Clare at a fundraiser for the Royal Theatre Company. Bruce was directing something there, we just got talking shop.’

‘You’re an actor?’ Nina asked.

‘No, playwright.’

It’s always strange meeting another writer. A little feeling of camaraderie, a masonic bond. I wonder if plumbers feel like this meeting other plumbers, or if accountants give each other secret nods. Maybe it’s because we meet comparatively rarely; writers tend to spend the bulk of their working life alone.

‘Nora’s a writer,’ Nina said. She eyed us both as if unleashing two bantam-weights into the ring to scrap it out.

‘Oh really?’ Tom looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. ‘What do you write?’

Ugh. The question I hate. I’ve never got comfortable talking about my writing – never got over that feeling of people riffling through my private thoughts.

‘Um … fiction,’ I said vaguely. Crime fiction was the truth, but if you say that people want to suggest plots and motives for murder.

‘Really? What name do you write under?’

Nice way of saying ‘Have I heard of you?’ Most people phrase it less gracefully.

‘L.N. Shaw,’ I said. ‘The N doesn’t stand for anything, I don’t have a middle name. I just put that in because L. Shaw sounded odd, whereas L.N. is more pronounceable, if you know what I mean. So you write plays?’