The Things We Do to Our Friends(52)
I didn’t know. I had never had a real sales job and, as far as I knew, neither had she. She smiled brightly, ironing out the issues like hands over creased sheets.
The weekend itself wasn’t like anything we’d done in the past few months. This was the information I obtained from them: we’d be going and staying there, sleeping there, becoming part of the group; there were security cameras around the whole place, apparently, so anything that happened would be captured; the house was in the Highlands—Ava was hazy about the actual address—and then there was the other part of the setup—we’d be hunting for pheasants.
It was a step up from anything we’d ever done before, and it was all very confusing from the beginning. I was unsure if we would actually attend the shoot. The guest list consisted of men who were traveling from all around the world. No wives invited.
From the beginning, Tabitha was obsessed with Jack the Pig and his acquisitions, which were beyond plentiful—we got a completely unnecessary amount of detail as she called out to us, Seven bedrooms! An in-home cinema! He had many properties and aircraft and help for everything. That seemed to be the root of Tabitha’s immediate fascination with The Pig—the services money could buy. She often talked about how, if you were that rich, everything would be done for you: a cleaner, a housekeeper, a gardener. The ability to outsource life. It was the ultimate privilege. Imagine if you could pay away your problems, your chores, all the things you’ve ever hated doing, leaving your day as a blank slate of free time for you to do exactly what you wanted with.
“It’s all arranged,” Ava assured me. “A friend of my cousin went to school with the daughter of the owner; they’re more than happy to have us as guests for the weekend so we can learn to shoot.”
“Oh, she’s so good at organizing, isn’t she?” Tabitha crowed to me, her hand knotted in Ava’s hair, twisting until Ava pulled away.
“Do you not think it’s odd that all three of us would go?” I asked.
“We all need to go,” Tabitha said. “Ava connects us to the group just enough, although she’ll use a fake name. Without her, none of the setup makes sense. We both go and we see who he chooses—me or you.”
“Are you sure? It just seems over the top for all three of us to be there.” It was bold for me to question her like that.
She gave me a long stare. Such a Tabitha stare in its intensity, like a steely nanny. It was almost as if she was about to tell me to finish my homework and send me to bed. “I’m sure. Let’s get ready—there’s a lot to do.”
Tabitha insisted we put even more effort in than usual, and Ava, normally the voice of reason, obliged. Maroon leggings and musty waxed coats for all of us. For Ava, a merino wool jumper in teal, and for Tabitha, a nude crêpe dress with a hint of shell-pink that rippled through the fabric. A gown with a demure front and then a back that dropped away to reveal each knobble of her spine.
Furs too. One thing we’d encountered early on, a minor stumbling block, was the women who couldn’t access the amount of money they’d need without their husbands’ attention. This had happened in a few cases, and the result had been bartering in all its forms: a tawny fur with so many undercoats it made you want to dig your fingers deep into the layers; a case of wine from a particularly excellent year in Bordeaux; clusters of fat pearls, strung long. These were things Ava and Tabitha hoarded away to sell, but in this case Tabitha was wrapped up in something quite old, that had apparently come from two hundred chinchillas. Dina and Adrienne would not have approved.
Tabitha was still chatting away. “It’s worth hedging our bets with who attracts his attention,” she explained. “He’s only in the UK for one or two weekends a year, so this may well be the one chance we get.”
I picked out dresses and leggings and boots alongside them. We moved as one, became well versed in things I’d never heard of, from macrobiotic diets to Yoga Nidra. A welcome distraction until we were ready.
43
First, we had something planned. A night that ended up spilling in many directions, and it came about because Tabitha said we deserved a Christmas treat. None of us would be leaving Edinburgh until much later that year.
“Maybe Finn would like to come?” she had suggested in the days before, so sweetly I could almost believe she genuinely wanted him there. Of course, I didn’t ask Finn. He felt very far away from what we were doing; whereas before I’d found him calming, it had reached the point where he just seemed colorless. Time spent with him was wasted.
Anyway, it was just bait for Samuel, who rolled his eyes. “Ugh, so dull. Really, Tabs. Finn?!”
She batted him away, and he stuck his tongue out and pretended to lick her arm.
Just another episode of the Samuel and Tabitha show, but it was the last time I’d see such an easiness between the two of them. At the time I just found it a little annoying.
The chosen destination was the private room in a large Chinese restaurant down a side street, and when we entered it was busy and hot in that pre-Christmas buzz. I had been worried Tabitha might wear a kimono to mark the occasion, because she loved doing that kind of thing, the type of thing that made people grimace—it didn’t matter if they scorned her inaccurate cultural appropriation, so long as they paid attention. She didn’t, though; she looked as lovely as ever in a dress the deep, bruised color of aubergines cooked in the oven for hours until the skin starts to peel away.