The Things We Do to Our Friends(36)

We hashed out the details. We’d get ready and start in the summer, limiting our activities to Scotland, which Tabitha assured me would be easy. I would keep up my bar job and, most importantly, no one would know. Absolute discretion always.

In my head, I tried to justify it—Tabitha knew about what had happened to me back in Périgueux, what I’d done, so surely I didn’t have much choice but to do what she wanted me to. I couldn’t let those events get out, not after all the time that had passed. Who knew what she’d do if I declined?

And even now, after so long, I remember just how good it was to have her convince me. She wooed me, and there was the sweet rumble of pleasure of being connected to them all in a way that felt unbreakable.





27


Years later, I went to Paris with my husband.

I think he planned the trip in the main so that he could talk about it with his colleagues and friends afterward. It wouldn’t have been my top choice—I do not like to speak French.

“I took her to Paris,” I imagined him saying, like I was a travel accessory, as if he’d stowed me away, unpacked me from bubble wrap to show me off, then taken me back in his hand luggage. All in a long weekend.

The trip was fine. We went in August when all the Parisians left the city for the countryside, so the streets were quiet, but it still smelled of bodies crammed together in the heat, the musk of people living and working and moving, of the smoke of engines and cars and restaurant grills late into the night. He spent a lot of time flicking between apps on his phone, unable to settle. I enjoyed long afternoon naps in the hotel and steak served blue.

Before we went to bed, we opened the window to air the room, and we could hear the roar of scooters speeding around the city, the sound of people laughing and probably enjoying their summer more than we were.

On the final day, we sat in an overpriced café by the Canal Saint-Martin. When we ordered, my language skills impressed my husband. Another thing I suspected he might have boasted about to his friends.

We drank expensive orange juice and picked at pastries, our suitcases piled up next to us getting under the waiter’s feet, as we tried to pass the time before we needed to get our flight. We were at that funny bit at the end of a holiday where you wish you could press fast forward and be back at home in your own bed. Using up the last of our euros and chatting about nothing much. Then he brought up Tabitha.

“She was your closest friend?” he asked mildly, out of the blue, interrupting the flow of discussion about when we should set off for the airport.

He didn’t know the full extent of what had happened, of course, but he knew that I visited Tabitha regularly. It was a ritual that he couldn’t or wouldn’t take part in. I wasn’t quite sure which, as we’d never discussed everything that had happened properly. He also knew I was the only person who went to see her where she was, locked away from us all forever.

I sipped my orange juice. It had cost an extortionate amount—ten euros—and it was sickly sweet. Concentrated, not fresh. Paris was a con.

I hadn’t thought of her for a while. It took a significant amount of energy to actually focus and properly think back to how Tabitha had been.

“More like family by the end,” I replied.

“Ah,” he said knowingly. “Like a sister?”

Funny how he thought he had some deep understanding of sisterhood.

I thought of the days when she’d nursed me. “More like a mother, I think.”

“A mother,” he repeated, long and slow, and he looked at me with pity. “I’m sorry,” he said. He reached out and wrapped his hand around mine. I dug my nails in, but not so much that he’d pull away. He liked it.

I tried to smile. “It’s fine. We should go.”





28


The building came into view slowly as we approached by car. Foliage had hidden it from the road, and then, as we moved closer, the leaves peeled away to reveal a single story.

To me, it was more sculpture than house, as I took in the slithers of red brick and delicate steel window frames with a tarnished patina, then floor-to-ceiling glass and the trickle of a manicured lawn that threw off green reflections, giving the bottom half of the house the look of a dank pond, shadowy even though it was a bright July day. Low and flat like an air hangar rising from underwater. I could smell the salt in the air from the sea, but it wasn’t fresh and bracing, it was too briny for that.

Just Ava, Tabitha, and me. We’d traveled in a taxi to the address, which was about an hour away from Edinburgh, playing Tabitha’s favorite game the whole way there. Oysters or caviar, steak or chicken? She liked us to plan our hypothetical deathbed meals for fun.

We were due at 2 p.m.—the right kind of time to meet someone for a proper appointment. A small sign obscured by trees and grasses pronounced our destination: “Storl House.” The taxi driver let out a low whistle.

“Fancy place, girls. I’ve picked up a few people here—apparently, it’s a real cracker.”

“Isn’t it just,” Ava said smoothly.

There’s much to say about the Landores and everything that happened with them, but it all started with Mrs. Landore when she greeted us at the door of her glass house.

The tight o her mouth made wasn’t good or bad, just surprised, I think, that we’d actually showed up. She could have been in her mid-forties, tall and boyish with hardly a pinch of fat on her, and she dressed in a way that I identified as discreetly expensive: a mesh of tasteful neutrals, beige layered on blush, finished with a light shawl of taupe, and a full face of understated makeup. A limp handshake, limper even than Tabitha’s, as if it was a great effort to move her fingers over mine, and then she gestured for us to follow her. She glided through her house, barely touching the floor and making me aware of my own heavy footsteps.