Page 62

A while later, there was Nicola.

She was a thirty-year-old oncologist who’d come with a group of former student friends who she wasn’t sure she really liked all that much any more. It was an uncomfortable realisation.

While she felt as though her life had been thrown into stark relief by her work, her priorities winnowed down to the big ones, these former friends seemed impossibly frivolous and melodramatic.

They still talked about the same things they had as undergrads: about shagging and drinking and holidays, and when they weren’t doing that they’d make glancing, judgemental remarks on other women’s outfits or sex lives that were, frankly, just spiteful.

Nicola had escaped them all with the excuse of needing a soft drink and was now standing in the queue for the bar closest to the music tent. She’d decided she’d string the experience out for as long as she could stomach it and then maybe just feign an emergency and run away home.

It was a shame, though. The place was beautiful, and there were music acts she wanted to see. She’d hoped it would feel freeing, this night away from work and her small background worries about what her sister was doing with her life.

Maybe she’d just lose the friends. Try experiencing the ball on her own. It wouldn’t be the first thing she’d managed alone.

Turning to watch the Ferris wheel, she saw a tall girl in a black-and-silver dress escorting her clearly very drunk friend in her direction.

‘I don’t want to,’ the smaller, dark-haired girl was saying, pushing her friend away.

‘Well, we need to hydrate so we can keep going,’ the taller one was saying as she brought them both to a stop close to Nicola. They were clearly joining the queue.

Nicola gave the taller one a sympathetic grin. She’d always been the sober one at parties. Somehow always the mum.

In that strange way of very drunk people the other girl suddenly went from angry to affectionate, putting her arms up round her friend and pulling her close.

‘You need to stay here,’ she mumbled.

‘Of course I will,’ the tall one said. ‘Are you having fun?’

‘No,’ the smaller one replied, truculently. ‘Everyone I like turns out to be a fucking arsehole.’

She lurched away, almost colliding with a couple trying to join the queue behind her.

The tall one started to apologise to the other couple, but her friend hadn’t seemed to notice. She was readying herself for a tirade.

‘You’re not my friend, are you?’ she said, her eyes glittering in the fairground lights. ‘The others think you’re just lying about your rowing stuff, but it’s not that, is it? You’re a fake. A total fake.’

Nicola found herself staring at the two of them, realising it was socially unacceptable but absolutely unable to look away.

The tall one gave her a slightly panicked look before stepping towards her friend, and Nicola tried to grimace in a way that said she wasn’t believing any of it. All the while wanting the dark-haired girl to keep going, because this sounded a lot.

‘Esther… why would I lie about rowing?’ the tall one said, sounding confused.

‘Fuck knows,’ brunette Esther said, unsteadily. ‘I guess because it’s part of the act? Whoever you are, you aren’t Aria Lauder.’

‘Why…?’

‘Don’t side-step,’ Esther snapped. ‘Mummy decided to engineer a meeting with Aria’s brother, and his sister is in fucking Maine. In rehab. Not here, and not you.’

Jesus , Nicola thought.

It was like watching reality TV.

There was a pause, and then the tall woman said, ‘I’m sorry, you’re right. Have you… worked out why I’m here?’

The smaller one– Esther– laughed, and then faltered. ‘I… what are you…?’

‘I’m here because of Holly,’ the girl who wasn’t Aria said, quietly. ‘I came to try to work out what happened to her. Why you lost your friend.’

Esther gaped at her, and Nicola knew she was gaping, too.

‘What do you mean?’

‘There are reasons to think she was murdered,’ the tall one said, her face– when Nicola glanced at it– strangely calm in the colourful lights from the dodgems and the music tent. ‘If you know anything that could help…’

Esther looked as though someone had pulled all the supports away from her. She swayed and her hands reached out to try to find something to hold on to. Nicola instinctively lifted her hands, but Esther took a few steps to grab the edge of the bar and lean against it.

What is going on? Nicola thought. Fleetingly, she wondered if this was some kind of an immersive experience. But she knew– knew– that it wasn’t. That this was real.

The two of them were now talking in lower voices that were too quiet for her to make out, and Nicola took a small, subtle step towards them, then smiled at the couple behind her in the universally recognised sign of someone giving up their place in a queue.

God, this is pathetic , she thought.

But she couldn’t not hear the rest of this.

The next thing she heard was Esther shouting, ‘What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re just here to hurt all of us. When we– when I– when all we did was try to be your friend.’ Her voice was shaking with rage and she shoved herself upright, away from the bar.

‘Esther,’ the taller girl said, trying to calm her.

‘Don’t talk to me,’ Esther spat. ‘Don’t fucking talk to me. You’re a blood-sucking ghoul.’

And she rushed away, into the crowds on the bridge.

Nicola thought, fleetingly, about going after her. About offering her comfort. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to help, or whether she just couldn’t bear not to find out more.

But it would be hard to catch her, and she didn’t look in a mood to trust anyone. Whereas maybe the taller girl would tell her more.

She watched the expression on the blonde one’s face and then felt as though she was the ghoul here. The young woman just looked… lost. Stricken. Awful.

And Nicola felt her curiosity collapse under the weight of simple empathy. Because whatever that had been about, it had clearly left this girl feeling wretched.

She was on the verge of offering to get the girl a drink when a couple appeared and her expression shifted.

She knows them , Nicola thought.

They must have been in their forties or fifties: clearly well moneyed and well preserved. And there was an aura of warmth and comfort about them that made even independent Nicola feel a draw towards them.

The woman stepped past Nicola, leaving a scent of roses behind her, and wrapped the tall girl in a warm hug.

She’s got support , Nicola thought, nodding to herself. She doesn’t need you.

And she turned her back on them and began to queue once again for her mocktail.

At 10.21 a Trinity English fellow named Martin White extracted himself from the main music tent, where the Chemical Brothers were playing their headline set.

He’d rushed away from his slow-moving group of academic friends to make it to the front and raised his arms as they’d entered the stage, full of nostalgia for his teenage years.

It had taken him probably fifteen minutes to remember that he’d never actually liked jumping around to music, and after twenty-five minutes of gritting his teeth and trying not to swear when his feet got stamped on he’d decided it was time to leave it to the more energetic.

He was now clammy with sweat, his white shirt soaked through and his tux prickling at the neck. It was barely any cooler out here, but it was at least quiet. Most people were either in one of the tents or on the rides, or clustered at the various bars.

Martin pulled his phone out to message his little group. They would probably be up on the lawn already, waiting patiently for the start of the fireworks. They none of them liked to rush.

He glanced up as another figure emerged from the tent, this one hurrying, and he found himself watching her. There was something particularly frantic in the way she was walking, one arm across her body and her head lowered towards her phone screen.

He watched her lift the phone to her ear, her feet moving compulsively, and then saw an unmistakable drop in her expression. He heard her swear before she hurriedly scrolled on the phone again and made another call.

Lost her friends, maybe? he thought. Or something valuable?

She kept holding on, phone to her ear, clearly listening to it ring. He heard her say, quietly, ‘Come on, Reid.’ And then her face fell and she looked… bereft.

Hmm. Maybe an argument with a lover , he thought.

But then a baby-faced young man a little taller than she was appeared out of the tent and put a hand on her arm in what looked a very relationship-type move.

‘Hey,’ the boyfriend said. ‘What’s up?’

‘I… Nat isn’t answering,’ the girl with the phone said, turning to him. ‘My fucking coach is ghosting me. Why did he tell Ryan he doesn’t know me? He’s dropped me, hasn’t he? He’s fucking dropped me.’

‘I’m sure it doesn’t… Ryan probably got confused,’ the boyfriend said, soothing her.

‘I can’t do this again,’ the young woman said, her voice raw. ‘I can’t fail at all this again.’

Martin felt more than a little uncomfortable at how emotional she was, but curious, too. It felt like a puzzle he wanted an answer to, so he kept listening.

The young woman pulled away from her boyfriend and started scrolling on her phone once more.

‘Hey,’ the boyfriend said, gently, tugging on the arm that held the phone. ‘In the unlikely event that he’s been stupid enough to drop you, you’ll fight back. You’re Aria Lauder. You’re not going to let some guy tell you what you’re worth.’

And in spite of his former cool interest Martin felt an ache at that little speech. It reminded him immediately and powerfully of Fionnan, and how he’d once been there to comfort him. How he’d once been right by Martin’s side, against the world… before work opportunities became more important.

He found himself watching with a sense of nostalgic jealousy as the girl– Aria– looked up at her boyfriend, her eyes very wide and very trusting. The young man reached out and gently prised the phone off her.