The Bridal Party, page 10
Elena shrugged. ‘I’d rather it was them than …’ she cast a glance up the stairs to see whether Clarisse was within earshot, but refrained from saying his name all the same, ‘that guy you saw in the woods.’
Nada was about to nod in agreement; anything was better than the idea of Noah being present outside her window. But then something struck her. ‘But if this person was here to deliver these, he was on the wrong side of the house. My window overlooks the back of the garden.’
‘I guess he was making his way round,’ replied Afreya. Her voice was unusually quiet: for once, she was not convincing anyone.
Nada bit her lip, not wanting to say anything more. But it still felt strange. The figure outside her window had not been on its way to the front door; it had been lurking, spying, lingering.
But what were the other options, if it wasn’t the murder mystery people? Could either Elena or Afreya have dropped the cuttings there on their way out?
Why would they do that?
Nada knew what Gaia would say. She would claim that it was still possible there was a liar within the group. Someone coordinating with the guys from the murder mystery company, or maybe even Tamsyn herself. It still made more sense that it was one of the bridal party who had swapped the costumes; after all, how could a business survive if it broke the law and went through people’s luggage? Would that not leave them open to being sued, or at the very least lambasted online?
And yet she could still not envisage any of them doing it. Which only left the possibility of Clarisse leaving the clippings – which made no sense at all – or there being someone else in the house, hidden. She’d thought all along that there were people poking and prodding them in their game of manipulation. Was it possible that the poking and prodding was coming from within the house? She looked about, imagining the labyrinthine corridors and thick walls. It was true that there were some rooms that were locked, rooms they had not been able to venture into.
What was it that she had thought when she’d first entered?
That the walls were thick enough to contain another set of rooms within them.
So many places to hide; to observe. That way, when there was an opportunity – like when they’d all rushed outside – there could have been someone at the ready to emerge from their hiding place to leave the pile of cuttings.
Nada shuddered. Calm down, she told herself. You’re getting paranoid.
‘What have you got there?’ Clarisse said from the top of the stairs.
Her sudden appearance gave Nada a startle; she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was the fact that they were hiding so much from her; her very presence made Nada’s insides tighten, afraid that something would go wrong, or that someone would say something to give the game away.
Clarisse walked down the stairs. Her nun’s habit gave her a shapeless form, hiding her curves, but she’d made up for it by touching up her hair and make-up upstairs. Her face peeked out from her white coif, the glamour jarring against a costume that denoted modesty and religion. If anything, her lipstick seemed to bring out the bloodstain , the dirty smear apparent around her midriff.
Everyone made appropriately impressed noises as she approached and twirled about for their benefit.
‘You look amazing,’ said Nada.
‘Really?’ said Clarisse, looking down at herself. ‘I feel like a right tit. Anyway, what’s with the newspapers?’
‘They were dropped off here; we just found them. Probably another bit of murder mystery literature for us to read before the game starts.’
‘Well then,’ smiled Clarisse. ‘Why don’t you guys finish getting ready like we agreed, and we can read them together?’
Before
He is here, Nada thinks. Why is he here?
She has just stepped out of the school gates, feeling the relief of shedding the responsibility of her work behind. She has torn off her lanyard to tuck into her bag.
And he is there, waiting, flowers in his hand. Staring right at Nada with that intimidating stare.
‘Nada,’ he says. He doesn’t say hello, or ask how she is. He just utters her name; that suffices.
‘Hi, Noah,’ says Nada. ‘Are you waiting for—’
‘Clarisse.’ He holds up the bunch of flowers. It is large, cumbersome, an assortment of colours in a perfectly arranged bouquet. It looks expensive. ‘Who else?’
Nada smiles; she thinks that this counts as a joke. Like all his jokes, though, he says it with a completely blank tone. ‘I’m sorry, Noah. I think Clarisse left a while back.’
‘Oh. My bad luck. I wanted to surprise her, say sorry. We had a bit of an argument last night, you see.’
‘Ah.’ Nada does not know what else to say. As usual, Noah is comfortable sharing far more information than anyone else would.
Don’t you realise, Noah, that I find most conversations awkward enough as it is? she thinks. But she knows the answer: he understands everything. That is why he gazes so intently, why he has that unshakeable focus. So he can comprehend; so he can control.
‘I guess I’ll have to go and surprise her at home, then. You take the same line as her, don’t you?’
Nada pauses for a moment; there is no way out of it. He knows that she often goes home on the same tube as Clarisse.
He smiles. ‘Let’s go together, then.’
Soon they are walking. Nada glances about; lessons ended a while back, but there are generally a few students hanging around outside, especially around the local kebab house and the bus stop. She doesn’t like the idea of them seeing her with a man, especially not one carrying flowers.
But she is lucky. The days are still short, and the sun is setting. Nobody is around.
Noah asks her how her day has been. She is relieved: a safe question. She talks absent-mindedly, killing time. She rambles on about her Year 9 class who are giving her trouble. She goes on and on, not allowing him the opportunity to ask her anything else. He nods politely. After the strangeness of seeing him waiting outside the school gates, this is, by his standards, an ordinary conversation.
By the time she has finished, they are underground, being swallowed into a tunnel. Around them there is an assortment of people reading free newspapers and swiping mindlessly at screens. Everyone has that London look: a studied avoidance of eye contact. It is one of the quirks of living here; everyone has chosen this sprawling, massive city, sharing their lives with millions of others. And yet the default attitude is solitude.
‘What about you?’ Nada finally asks. They are standing; she grabs a pole, while Noah lazily puts one hand on the ceiling, his elbow dangling forward.
‘Oh, you know. Same old. Saw the Russian client today; he seems to be progressing rather well.’
They stop at Baker Street; the doors open like floodgates, and suddenly every space around them is taken up by bodies. Nada is short enough to find herself swamped, faced with chests and armpits. She is used to it; is even slightly relieved, as it forms a barrier between her and Noah.
Ten minutes pass in this way. Nada imagines what Noah is thinking, just the other side of the suit in front of her. Wonders where that gaze is going. She feels like it is still on her, somehow. As if it can burn through people to get to her.
Finally, they arrive at King’s Cross. The doors clunk open, and Nada steps out, accompanied by a tide of others. She pauses, turning to give a polite wave to Noah, who still has a few stops to go.
But as she raises her hand, she finds him there, in front of her. Gazing down.
‘Uh, Clarisse lives—’
‘I know. But our conversation got cut short, didn’t it?’ He smiles a little.
‘I suppose it did.’ Nada looks furtively at the exit, where there is a mass of people filing out. She longs to go, to catch her Northern Line train home. But now that he has got off to talk to her, she cannot leave. She feels trapped.
The tube they were on beeps, and the doors slam shut. With a gush of air, it is gone, worming its way through the underworld. The platform starts to fill again almost immediately, commuters lining the platform, creating a human cord between one tunnel and the other.
‘I just wanted to ask,’ Noah says, ‘whether you’ve thought about what I said, that time in the pub.’
Nada shifts, glancing at the people around them. ‘What did you say?’ she asks, although she has thought of little else in the past few weeks.
‘We talked about you. About how you’re fascinating.’
‘I don’t … I don’t know what to think about that. I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. I think I might go, if that’s all right.’
‘You make me sad, you know.’ His voice drops, almost to a whisper, and he leans in close. That smell of his is there again. ‘Not in the way that others are sad about you. I don’t pity you, not one bit. You make me sad because you’ve got so much potential. You’re not like all the other girls Clari hangs out with. They talk and talk, when the only person I want to hear from is you.’
Nada glances again the exit; it is still bustling with people.
‘All you need,’ he drawls in that low whisper, ‘is for someone to take you out of your shell.’
She turns back to him, and finds him even closer than before. His eyes, his tanned skin; it’s all there, right up in her face.
And then his lips are on hers.
He lingers; his lips move, and hers move with them.
A part of her feels like she should run, or shout. A mad thought even darts through her telling her to push him. They haven’t moved; they are standing close to the platform’s edge, and if she were to shove him, he would fall onto the tracks and die, for intruding upon her life, for forcing himself on her.
And yet she doesn’t push him. She kisses him back.
She will think about this in years to come. She will wonder why she didn’t recoil, why she didn’t fight back. Perhaps it is because there are so many people about, and she does not wish to cause a scene. Perhaps it is because he is so good-looking, so intense. Perhaps it is just instinct, to kiss back when you are kissed.
But more than that, she does not feel the reality of it. It is like it isn’t happening; like it is a fantasy. Indeed, she has had daydreams about exactly this sort of situation. All of her relationships have been so cautious, so tentative; the drama of Noah and his kiss seems to belong to another world.
It lasts a few seconds, and then their lips unlock.
Almost immediately, Nada steps back, away. Her face is blank with shock. Shocked at him, but even more at herself.
What would her mother think?
‘What was that about?’ she demands. Her insides twist with emotion, but she stifles it; she even steps forward to speak quietly, getting closer to Noah again, which he seems to observe with amusement.
‘Well, what do you think?’ he asks.
Nada looks up at him, meeting his eyes with her own. She burns with resentment. ‘What are you playing at? You’re trying to get Clarisse to marry you, aren’t you?’
‘So?’
She glares. ‘There are rules, you know. You might be above it all, but other people live by them. You should respect that.’
Another train starts to whine into the station. ‘There it is,’ he smiles into her ear. ‘The fire. I knew it was inside you. I knew it would be a thing of beauty to watch you burn. Use that look with your Year 9s, and they’ll never misbehave again.’
The train whips by with a rush of air, ruffling their hair and clothes. It screeches to a halt, and a set of red doors appear behind Noah.
‘As for your rules … I don’t care one little bit. We’re better off without them around our necks. Clari will realise that in time; so should you.’
The doors open. Noah kisses her quickly on the lips, then turns and enters the train, and suddenly there is a mass of people around her, swilling about on the narrow platform.
The last thing she sees of him before the doors close and the train departs is his little smile – and that gaze again. It remains on her even through all the commuters flowing around between them. Even when the train is gone, sucked into that pool of darkness at the end of the platform, she feels like it is still on her. Like his eyes are locked on her across the underworld.
For a moment, she cannot move. She doesn’t know what to think, what to do. Every part of her is tingling; she feels hot, her skin somehow prickly.
She stands, full of horror and exhilaration, some new part of her ignited.
Now
Sixteen
Finally they were together, everyone in their costume. Exactly as Clarisse wanted it. They were gathered in the living room; Nada and Afreya brought drinks through, and they settled down on the couches. Someone suggested lighting the fire, and although no one was quite sure how to do it – that was clearly Tamsyn’s territory, the person in their group who was most enthusiastic about outdoor activities – Gaia and Elena found kindling and firewood stacked up at the side of the fireplace, and constructed a pyramid of sticks like they’d seen Tamsyn do on camping trips.
As they waited for the fire to flicker into life, everyone chatted and sipped at their drinks, trying to get into the mood. Mostly the conversation revolved around their costumes, and how ridiculous they looked. There was laughter here and there; a little forced, but Nada felt herself calming down nonetheless. With Clarisse happy, and everyone together, it was much easier to pretend that things were running smoothly; to forget the trip into the woods, the memory of Noah, the looming presence of whoever was planning their murder mystery.
She remembered how she’d felt when she’d first walked into the room; how perfect it had seemed for her vision of the weekend, gathered around a fire drinking wine. If you forget about our weird attire, she thought, then this is actually pretty close.
She closed her eyes, loosened her shoulders, and tried to enjoy the moment, letting the chatter fade into the background of her mind.
When she felt ready, she picked up the newspaper clippings from the coffee table. They’d decided that they should all read them in their own time, and then they’d discuss them when everyone had had a chance to look at them. Although no one had said as much, it had been almost been a statement to each other: that they were not going to be controlled by the murder mystery people. That this was their weekend, and they’d get round to the game in their own time.
As it was, they made a point of leaving the papers unread. Every once a while, one of them would have a glance at them, looking at the headlines a little nervously before sitting back and trying to re-engage in the conversation.
By the time Nada picked up the clippings, she had prepared herself for them and was in the right frame of mind to deal with whatever they might say. No one knew quite when the murder mystery was supposed to start, but they guessed that it would be within the next hour or so. It was hard not to constantly look out of the window to see if there was someone coming, but she forced herself not to think about it, and focused on the clippings instead.
She was again struck by how realistic the articles looked and felt. The ink and paper; even the language seemed appropriate. She was expecting something overblown and dramatic, but just a cursory glance at the articles showed that they were written in a matter-of-fact style that seemed wholly in keeping with a local newspaper.
She flicked through the headlines first. They all followed a theme:
Strange Cult Marks Found on Mutilated Cat
Witch Cult Strikes Again?
Messages from Jersey Witches Found Scrawled on Garage Wall in Blood
Head of Deer Discovered in Airport Luggage: is this the work of the Jersey Witches?
Pets of St Helier Under Attack Once More from the Jersey Witches
She frowned. She’d never heard of these so-called Jersey Witches. She presumed they were made up, but it was possible that the story just hadn’t made the mainland news.
She looked through the dates. These cuttings were supposedly reporting on events that had occurred in the past year. She found the earliest one chronologically and began to read.
Paul Durond spoke yesterday of his family’s heartache upon finding their pet cat mutilated on the doorstep of their home in St Aubin. Paul, who is a member of the security team at Jersey airport, says that he was visiting his mother only to find the cat’s body on his arrival.
‘My mum hadn’t got up yet; she told me that she had found it odd not to hear Toby meowing that morning, but had thought nothing of it, you know? I’m so glad I was the one to see the body first; I’m not sure my mum would have dealt with the shock that well.’
Toby had been a prominent member of the family for years. Paul reports, ‘He was good company for my mum. We’re definitely going to miss him.’
Strangely, the cat seems to have killed in a grotesque manner; a neighbour said that it had been ‘disembowelled’.
Terry Rutcliff, from St Helier Police, said in a statement to the public: ‘There are some marks cut into the body that seem to be related to satanism and pagan symbols. So we’re looking into that, and urge anyone with information about people on the island who might be into ritual killings to come forward.’
Paul and his family, however, seem completely baffled as to why anyone would attack their pet. ‘We’re just a quiet family on the island, just like everyone else. I don’t know why anyone would do such a thing, especially to something as innocent as our Toby.’
There was a picture that accompanied the article, of Paul and his mum standing in front of a Christmas tree, smiling and cradling their beloved cat.
Nada frowned. Everything else in the murder mystery had so far related to the past; to old legends and parties in the nineteenth century. This felt different; modern and real. Where everything else could have been folklore and legend, this seemed to imply that there was real violence happening on the island at this very moment.
She struggled to see the link to the other papers they’d been given earlier in the evening. To the myth of the Wild Hunt and Lockday’s parties. Was this cat-killing supposed to be because of witches? Was the idea that a sort of modern Wild Hunt was occurring? Perhaps she was reading too much into it. Perhaps there wasn’t supposed to be a thread; rather, it was more to do with unsettling them.
