The Things We Do to Our Friends(58)

For some reason, her explanation made sense to me. The rules of normal life didn’t seem to apply.





48


Finally, after drinking our cups of weak tea, we were allowed out of the orangery and Sorcha took us upstairs to our rooms so we could get ready for the evening. On the first floor, there was a line of doors, like a hotel corridor. The house must have had at least a dozen bedrooms based on how big the place looked from the front. I was a little surprised, as I’d assumed we’d be sharing, put up on a sofa or an airbed.

We went to my room last, which was traditionally styled with a single bed and heavy wooden furniture. I put my bag down on the bed and rifled through to see what I’d change into. Tabitha disappeared, leaving Ava and me alone.

Ava hung about, unwilling to leave.

“That was weird, right?” she said. I wondered if she was talking about the interaction with the group of men, or the monkey. I decided on the latter.

“That monkey…” I said.

She grimaced and nodded in agreement. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” she asked me, her voice only slightly less level than usual.

“I’m fine. I mean, Sorcha seems a bit odd. And this whole thing, it’s much more than what we were doing before, more involved. But I still feel fine so far.”

“If I can be honest with you, I’m looking forward to this weekend being over,” she said, sighing.

I held up a red dress to the mirror, one of a few outfits I’d brought along. It was too much against my skin in the light. I’d opt for something darker, maybe.

“Hopefully Tabitha doesn’t go wild like she did before,” I said. Hardly even thinking before the words came out. I hadn’t meant to bring it up.

“What do you mean?” Ava asked sharply.

“Tabitha. She threw fake acid in a man’s face on one of the other jobs we did.”

For a second, I thought she might be surprised, but she wasn’t at all—of course she wasn’t, there was nothing Ava didn’t know. However, she did look slightly pained. She shrugged, and I guessed Tabitha had spun the story in her favor.

Tabitha had probably made it all sound like such fun.

“Yes, I did know about that,” Ava said. “Remember, it wasn’t acid, though, was it? It wasn’t that different to what you did.”

“What do you mean?”

“Périgueux.”

I felt my jaw clench. The way she said it annoyed me. Like it belonged to her too. Perhaps the two things were similar, but that wasn’t a good thing. I shook my head. “It was risky. She’s mixing in some kind of desire for justice,” I said.

A crease in Ava’s brow. I knew she was thinking about how best to manage me.

“You’re right,” she agreed. “I wasn’t too happy about it either. It was too far, probably. She didn’t need to do it. I’ll have a word with her. It won’t happen again, but don’t get upset over it. His wife was happy. He was fine—it was all…fine.”

“I’m not upset. It was just unexpected.”

It had been, and the more I’d thought about it, the more it seemed like Tabitha had taken me along with her because I was more disposable than the rest of them.

The whole conversation was feeling off. I’d expected us to be excited, to be ready to go and take on whatever the evening threw at us, but Ava was anxious, and I wanted to reassure her, which was a complete role reversal.

“We’ll be fine this weekend too,” I said. “It’ll fly by—I’m sure of it.”

“Just be careful?” she said, as a question.

She seemed to be giving me an opt-out, waiting for me to say something, but what could I possibly say? She turned and stared out of the window.

It was so very dark out there. Nothing around us for miles.





49


The ballroom was a dim and cavernous space, and Ava and Tabitha split away from me straightaway without explaining why, leaving me to absorb it all on my own.

There was a parquet floor warped with age. The walls were papered in red to suck out what little light there was, and it made you focus on the paintings with their thick, highly decorated frames. I took the time to steady myself and look at them, walking around the perimeter of the room. In the main, there was artwork that felt fitting—portraits of stern-faced mistresses and generals looking down on us haughtily, their names and dates engraved at the bottom—but there were also some large, modern abstracts that I recognized. A real Kandinsky, perhaps. A Picasso that looked to be genuine, although I knew you could get a Picasso sketch cheaply—it was something Tabitha talked about all the time.

Nerves steeled as I’d scoped the layout, I looked to the guests. There were various small groups of men and they were indistinguishable in similar types of suits. All the signifiers of wealth were there as expected, and I noticed the rings—heavy gold pinky rings, some with jewels. I’d always loved the term “dripping with diamonds.” It was one of the first idioms I learned when I moved to England, and the phrase doesn’t translate to French particularly nicely. In any case, this jewelry didn’t drip, it was lodged in place firmly. Flesh and gold.

Staff circled with platters of canapés and topped up our glasses. I took a sagging square of something greasy, not even looking down to see what it was. The first bite delivered a hit of fat and some kind of rich meat, like foie gras. It didn’t feel like a good sign, but I chose to push the thought to one side.