The Things We Do to Our Friends(57)

They were still a fair distance away from us and they watched on for a few more moments.

One of the men waved at us, and then the others followed. I peered at them, trying to work them out. Was The Pig in there? Surely he was? I couldn’t decide which one he was, though.

Then, just like that, they swerved and walked past us, round to the back of the house. I thought for a second that Tabitha might follow them, but she didn’t. She exhaled loudly and buzzed the doorbell long and hard.

A girl peeked out from the window, the curtains open only a fraction. She seemed to be waiting until she was sure that the men had left. A few more moments passed before she finally opened the door.

She was small and a similar age to us, maybe twenty or a little older. Her face was framed by a boyish crop; colorless lashes made her watery eyes look even paler. It must have seemed odd when we showed up—I was concerned that she may have thought we were wearing fancy-dress costumes, because we’d gone overboard with tweed and leather and tartan. I wondered how much she knew about what we were planning to do.

“Hello, I’m Sorcha,” she said, shifting her weight from one leg to the other.

A man emerged from behind her and she introduced him to us as her father; he shook each of our hands warmly. He was older than I would have expected when I saw him close up, and his skin was papery to the touch. The unconcealed delight as he greeted us made me think that we might have been the first friends Sorcha had invited to the house.

I noticed how she hovered around us more than him. It was as if she wanted to be in the group, maybe using us as much as we were using her, because basking in Tabitha’s glow was a lovely thing.

“Looks like everyone is just getting back from the hunt,” the man said. “Sorcha, you should ask Martha to pull together some tea for the girls.”

“Yes. Tea,” she replied shakily. She seemed…nervous.

Was she scared of us, I wondered? Perhaps.

We couldn’t really refuse tea, and without even glancing toward Ava or me, Tabitha nodded on behalf of the group.

Dragging her feet a little, Sorcha took us into a room that felt miles away, down a long corridor to the back of the house where there was a small, cheap-looking metal table and a clutter of chairs. We found ourselves crammed in tight as it was full of plants—hundreds of them.

I suspected that the initial idea had been to create a lush tropical paradise, but it was far from that. It smelled of dry dirt and something possibly fecal. The plants were dying or dead; they all looked brownish or yellow, and their leaves had crisped and hardened. Towering stalks blocked the glass of the windows, which were crusted with dirt. At one point this would have been a beautiful room, though, you could tell.

“It’s an orangery,” Sorcha said tonelessly.

“How nice!” said Tabitha with an admirable enthusiasm that I knew I’d struggle to match if she expected me to speak.

“My father likes to keep it like this,” Sorcha replied. I guess as a means to justify how depressing it was.

There was something small and scrappy running under the fronds of a desiccated fern; I could hear manic scuttling and I braced myself, then a small dog emerged, hoisting itself onto its hind legs with a loud grunt.

No, not a dog—a monkey in what looked like a nappy.

We all stared at the monkey, and it looked at us, aghast, with squinted eyes, scratching its head where great tufts of fur were missing and the skin was pink and scabby. Then it bared its pointy little teeth and hissed. When we didn’t respond, it ran back under a plant.

I could hear it slurping on something.

“A monkey,” Tabitha declared loudly, with zero judgment.

“My father likes to keep him here. It’s very old-fashioned, I know, to keep a monkey. Don’t go near him,” Sorcha said.

Ava and I exchanged a look. There was no chance at all of me going anywhere near the monkey.

Before we sat down, Tabitha embraced Sorcha in a hug for some reason, and the embrace looked very tight.

“Thank you so much for having us,” Tabitha said.

Sorcha extricated herself from the hug, her face red, and she shuffled back looking shell-shocked. “That’s okay,” she said.

“We’re so excited to learn to shoot tomorrow, if you’ll take us,” Tabitha said. “Honestly, it’s something we’ve wanted to do, well, forever really, so it means the world to us, you letting us come and learn, and in this truly stunning home. Do you live here all the time or are you just visiting? Are you studying nearby?”

Sorcha sat down. We all did. She looked taken aback at the onslaught, and I felt for her. Tabitha had a tendency to purposely pile on questions when she met strangers, so they found themselves twisted up in her interrogation.

“Just visiting from St. Andrews for Christmas.” Sorcha smiled wanly.

Ava gave Sorcha a look of solidarity that said, I know, I think this is as odd as you think it is. I remembered how Ava had calmed me at that first dinner party. She was good at it. Sorcha seemed reassured.

Limp clouds hung over the orangery outside. The same silver skies that I was used to in Edinburgh.

“The plants don’t last long here,” Sorcha said.

I wondered why you would have all these plants and then let them wilt away through lack of care, but I didn’t ask.

“They just die and no one really knows why,” she continued, staring out over them into the distance.