The Long Weekend, page 1
Dedication
In memory of Oscar Macmillan
A very good dog
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Friday John shouldn’t be driving
Saturday William Elliott drives up the valley
Sunday—One Year Later Jayne hesitates before opening the email
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Gilly Macmillan
Copyright
About the Publisher
Friday
John shouldn’t be driving
John shouldn’t be driving, they discussed it with the doctor yesterday, but Maggie sees the look in his eyes and puts the key into his outstretched hand. His fingers snap closed around it.
He gets into the Land Rover without loading the bags of clean linen and towels into the back, but Maggie doesn’t say anything; she hefts them in herself. The dog jumps in and lies down, bracing her back against the bags, tongue out, gaze taut. Maggie shuts the door.
The wind is cold this morning and cuts right through her. It’s only the start of September yet autumn has arrived abruptly. There’s the feeling of a storm coming. Clouds race to gather on the horizon, their shadows grazing the solid stone-and-slate farmhouse below where it’s nestled in a hollow in the side of the valley.
John starts the Land Rover and over its growl, Maggie thinks she hears the whine of another engine. She frowns. Their guests aren’t due to arrive until later this afternoon. The lane that winds up here doesn’t lead anywhere else. If you’re on it, you’re either on your way to the Elliott farm or you’re lost.
Drystone walls divide and organize the land around the farmhouse. Acres of unenclosed rough grazing surround it, steep, harsh terrain, only semi-useful. Beyond lies an unmanageable wilderness of exposed moor concealing boggy wetlands and cleft by isolated valleys and sheer-edged ravines, slippery with scree. Rocky outcrops disrupt the summits of distant peaks.
The boundaries of the farm are ill-defined. Elliott land encompasses some of this wilderness and has done for centuries. John and Maggie shepherd three thousand acres and eight hundred head of sheep. There’s good grass and bad; there are good years and bad. The sky is always huge and the stars at night brighter than anywhere else they’ve ever been. Guests who stay at the barn always remark on this.
Maggie waits for a moment, to see if she hears more, but picks up nothing over the noise of the Land Rover. She doesn’t linger. Up here, sound can play tricks on you. And she has work to do.
She fastens her seat belt. “I thought I heard someone driving up.”
John doesn’t react. His foot is down, the Land Rover moving already. She glances at him.
“Are you all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” He maneuvers the car out of the farm gate. It bounces as the wheels hit the potholed surface of the lane.
“Don’t be like that.”
“Sorry.”
He stares ahead and she watches his profile. His cheeks and nose are riddled with broken veins, his skin knitted thick onto his bones. He’s done a shoddy job shaving today, but his eyes are as full of soul as ever. This is a good man. She knew it the day she met him.
She looks harder at him, searching for outward signs of what’s invisible: the areas of his brain riddled with connections as broken as his veins. “We suspect dementia with Lewy bodies. I’m so sorry,” the consultant said. That appointment lost in a sea of others by now, but she’ll always remember hearing the diagnosis and that apology, and John flinching as if he’d been struck.
She’s so lost in staring at him that she doesn’t see the motorbike round the bend in the lane, tilting, black, and powerful. Coming right at them. Too fast.
John hits the brakes hard, bracing himself at the last instant. Maggie is thrown forward and back, the air punched out of her lungs.
“Sorry,” he says in the shocked silence afterward. “Are you okay?”
“I think so. You?” Her heart thumps and she winces at the sudden arrival of pain where the seat belt cut into her chest and her shoulder.
“Hurt?” he asks.
“It’s not too bad.”
John nods and looks behind to check on the dog. She shows him the whites of her eyes but seems fine, only a towel fallen onto her from one of the overstuffed bags.
“Good, Birdie,” he tells her.
The bike has skidded to a stop at an angle across the lane, frighteningly close to the front of the Land Rover. The biker’s a big man, dressed in plain black leathers and a black helmet. Even with his helmet on, they know he’s not one of their local couriers.
He dismounts. The surface of his visor reflects the dark trees gathered on each side of the lane. Maggie is suddenly afraid that he might be angry with them and try to blame them for the close shave. They’d be defenseless against a man like him. She’s breathing hard.
John winds down the window. “You need to watch where you’re going,” he shouts. A vein pulses in his temple.
“Don’t,” Maggie warns. She used to feel safe from everything except the elements up here. She loved the isolation and the sense of living on the very edge of civilization. But the change they’ve been through since John’s diagnosis is like today’s stiff wind. It has rattled everything, and Maggie is afraid that she and John have reached a stage in life where once something’s rattled, it stays loose.
Birdie growls and gets to her feet. Her head pokes between their shoulders. She shows her teeth.
“Birdie!” Maggie puts a hand on the dog’s shoulder. The growling stops but Birdie’s muscles are tense, her hackles are up, and she doesn’t take her eyes off the biker.
He lifts his visor as he moves nearer to the driver’s side of the Land Rover. His mouth is obscured by a bandanna and his eyes are buried in shadow. “I’m looking for the Elliotts.” His accent is southern. He’s come a long way north to be within a stone’s throw of the Scottish border.
“That’s us,” John says.
“I’ve got a package for you.”
“Parcels get left in the box by the farm gate. At the bottom of the hill.”
“I’m supposed to give it to you in person. Special instructions.”
They watch him fetch the package from the back of his bike, his movements unhurried. He hands a cardboard box to John, who passes it to Maggie. It’s unsealed, unmarked, and has some weight to it. Maggie opens the flaps to peer inside and sees another box, this one cuboid and beautifully wrapped in paper and ribbon. An envelope is tucked beside it. Maggie takes it out and retrieves her glasses from her shirt pocket so she can read the small, carefully printed words. “To Jayne, Ruth, and Emily.”
“This isn’t for us,” she says but as she speaks, she remembers. “The guest who booked the barn this weekend is called Jayne. It must be for her. For them.”
“There’s a note for you, too.” The driver hands over a sheet of paper with typed instructions on it. Maggie reads aloud.
“‘Please discard the cardboard box and place the wrapped present prominently on the kitchen table at Dark Fell Barn, facing the door, and lean the letter against it so it’ll be the first thing my friends see when they enter the room on arrival. It’s a very special surprise so I appreciate your attention to detail. Thank you.’”
It’s not signed. Maggie flips it but there’s nothing on the back.
“Aye, I suppose that’s fine,” she says. Her tension ebbs. Sometimes guests do the strangest things. “We’re on our way up to the barn now.” She still feels a little uneasy but also embarrassed for feeling so fearful earlier.
The biker nods. He closes his visor and is away as suddenly as he arrived, the bike spraying mud in its wake, leaving questions on Maggie’s lips, such as who and where he picked the box up from, and why all the effort to get it here in this way. Not her business, she supposes, but she’s curious about this “special surprise” and its “special instructions.”
“That’s a first,” she says. “How far do you think he came from?”
“We could have killed him.”
John speaks through gritted teeth. He’s angry because the near miss frightened him, Maggie thinks, and she wonders if she should take over the driving, after all, if he’s going to get himself in a state. She’s about to ask, but the words stick in her mouth. Every offer she makes to help him wounds his dignity and it hurts her to inflict pain on him.
Instead, she lifts the parcel and gives it a tentative shake. “The lengths people will go to,” she says. “I hope whatever’s in here is worth the bother.”
John glances over, shakes his head, and mutters something she can’t hear as he fixes his eyes back on the road. She notices him tighten his grip on the wheel, knuckles whitening beneath his thinning skin.
Those hands, she thinks, aware that since his diagnosis she’s been prone to moments of reflection and of nostalgia, but allowing herself the indulgence. What those hands have built and achieved. She loves the liver spots, the tendons like thick string, sees the happy years of her marriage and the challenges of their farming life in them.
But the tight grip on the wheel, the head shaking and the muttering; it’s not him. It’s more change that’s new and troubling. She’s still learning to read his symptoms, and to decipher what they might mean, and she gets a sinking feeling that today might be one of those days where he’s lost to a terrible pessimism.
“What are you shaking your head for?”
“It’s a bad thing. The parcel is.”
“What gives you that idea? How can you possibly know?”
He inclines his head. He knows, he’s saying. She tries to laugh it off, but the sound coming out of her mouth is hollow, and the truth is, she finds herself taking him semi-seriously. John might drown in pessimism or despair, he might exhibit agitation, forgetfulness, and sometimes she thinks he even sees things that aren’t there, all of which is deeply troubling, but she can’t deny that for as long as she’s known him, he’s been able to sense more than the average person.
She touches the back of her neck, seeking any soreness from whiplash. Her cold fingertips trigger a shudder that runs right through her. She thinks about the parcel, about whether it’s a good or a bad thing. After a few silent moments she puts it in the footwell.
The Land Rover lurches and bumps as it climbs the rutted track. Maggie steadies the parcel with her foot when the vehicle’s movement threatens to damage it. If whatever is inside it gets broken, her guests may leave a bad review, and that’s the last thing she and John can afford.
I wrote the letter and wrapped the package, taking my time over it, to make sure it looked beautiful. I thought carefully about the instructions for the owners of Dark Fell Barn. And I arranged the delivery meticulously so that it couldn’t be traced back to me.
And now I’ve just received confirmation on my burner phone that both letter and package have been handed over, along with my instructions.
Phew.
It really is a great feeling, mostly comprised of relief, but satisfaction, too, because I take pleasure in planning. You might, I suppose, call me a control freak.
What happens next is out of my hands, though, and my nerves are jangling at the thought. Directing a piece of theater long distance isn’t easy.
I have to hope the Elliotts do as I’ve asked, putting the props precisely in place so that the curtain can rise on Act 1.
Outside the car, rows of trees crowd the edges of the narrow road, densely packed, trunks straight and foliage overhanging low, absorbing the dying afternoon light. Emily takes out one of her earbuds. “It looks like a fairy tale,” she says.
She clears the hours of silence from her throat, tugs the sleeves of her sweater over her wrists, and wraps her arms tightly around herself. She should ask Jayne or Ruth to turn up the heat, but she’s too shy. They intimidate her with their closeness and the decade they have on her. Emily feels like an imposter.
Jayne, in the driver’s seat, raises her eyebrows. Finally! Emily speaks! she thinks. Emily has been either asleep or plugged in for most of the journey.
“Like a fairy tale in a good way?” Ruth asks, turning round. Emily is a mystery to Ruth and someone Ruth is determined to get to know better over the course of this weekend.
“Not really,” Emily says. The fairy tales that were read to her as a child were terrifying.
Ruth isn’t sure how to respond. Emily’s relative youth sometimes leaves Ruth at a loss for words. It shouldn’t, she knows, but somehow, the ten-year age gap is always there between them, making Ruth afraid that whatever she says will sound patronizing, even though that’s the last thing she means to be. She faces the front again and consults the sat nav.
“Not long until we’re out of the woods,” she says. “Literally. And around fifty minutes until we get there, according to this.”
They’ve been on the road for hours, heading north. Muscles are stiff, minds dull. Ruth insisted on packing lunch for them all, lackluster sandwiches which she apparently made at the crack of dawn. It adds to the school trip feel of the journey for Emily.
As the car breaks out of the forest, light floods the windscreen, and the landscape reveals itself. Jayne smiles for the first time since she woke this morning with Mark’s hand on her flank. She thought at first that he wanted to make love, but it was a more careful touch, an apology. Phone in his other hand, Mark was waking her with the news that he wouldn’t be able to join them on the drive up north today, meaning he would miss the first of their planned three nights away.
Jayne was cross. The news bruised her and so did the row they had over it. They bickered clumsily, both tired and both upset with how the other was taking it, both feeling like the injured party.
But Jayne’s sense of well-being has grown with every mile they’ve traveled north, the banality of the motorway soothing her, happy anticipation of the long weekend ahead reemerging, reframed.
Now the weekend will consist of a girls’ night followed by two nights when all six of them will be together. It’s not what she expected but it’s fine, and she will still be able to surprise Mark, the way she planned to. And as Mark pointed out, perhaps she needs to work on handling change better. And she will. There are always improvements to be made in life and she’s not afraid of putting in the graft.
She focuses on the positives. She’s been looking forward to this weekend for weeks. She needs a break. And it feels as if she’s hardly seen Ruth since Ruth had the baby. It’ll be nice to have time to catch up properly. That’s sometimes easier when the men aren’t with them, dominating the conversation with their in-jokes and reminiscences.
Alone in the back of the car, Emily has fallen quiet again. She blows on the window glass and traces her initials and Paul’s there, with a heart around them. Her nails are manicured and painted a pretty pale blue; the back of her hands tanned. A large emerald on her ring finger is a match for her eyes. Paul held it up beside them when he proposed, comparing the green of the jewel to that of her irises. The smile on his face was so broad and unfiltered that it touched her. He looked like the cat who’d got the cream, which is exactly how she felt.
The idea of being a wife is still thrilling to Emily. She never expected to be married at this age, only twenty-three, especially to a much older husband, but she fell in love, tumbled into it, and so far, it’s been amazing. She adores Paul and adores their life together. And as a bonus she gets to flash that big rock at the doubters, including her mother, who never managed to get a ring on her own finger. After Emily’s dad left them, her mum mostly collected toxic boyfriends, nasty bruises, and a deepening alcohol addiction.
Emily’s breath evaporates from the window, taking the initials and heart with it and the magical memories. Outside the countryside crawls by. Walls and gates, fields and hills. Many black-headed sheep. A horse, waiting for something. So much emptiness. Dull.
Ruth and Jayne are talking about a play that’s on the radio. The play and the conversation sound pretentious and worthy, confirming Emily’s impression that the two of them are boring. Though while she’s got no desire to join in their chat, she wishes that she’d accepted Ruth’s offer to take the passenger seat for the journey. Sitting in back makes her feel even more like a kid.
She wants Jayne to put her foot down and get them to the cottage quicker because she’s fed up with the drive, but the white lines have disappeared from the center of the road and it seems to be constantly narrowing and forcing the car to decelerate. It’s as if the road is taking control.
She puts her earbuds back in and shuts her eyes, thinking of the holiday in the south of France that she and Paul have just returned from. The business-class flights, the hotel, the spa, the sex. It was lush. Paul is perfect. He was a gentleman. She felt like a princess, even when the air hostess gave her that knowing face, as if to say, you’re not the only young thing I’ve seen in this cabin beside an older man, and you won’t be the last. Emily took pleasure in flashing her ring, then.
Marriage isn’t all fun, though. She’s annoyed with Paul today. She wishes he was here with her. If she’s honest it’s more than annoyance. She resents him for insisting he had to work today and for making her come on this long weekend ahead of him, with these other women, whom she barely knows.
“Come on, Em,” he said. “It’s just one night. Make the effort. It’s really important to me that you try to get to know my friends.” Emotional blackmail.
She’s been happy to avoid these women until now, shying away from group nights out or Sunday lunches, feeling acutely that she has nothing in common with them. But there it hung, the implication that Paul would be disappointed in her if she didn’t do what he wanted. So, she agreed. And now she wishes she hadn’t. Especially since the other husbands aren’t here either. Mark and Toby are more fun than their wives, but they couldn’t come either, also at the last minute, so now she faces twenty-four hours in the draining company of Jayne and Ruth. Already, Ruth has been fussy and patronizing, and Jayne has stared at Emily in that penetrating way that makes her feel vacuous and stupid.
