The Hunting Party

by Lucy Foley

  In the absence of another suggestion, everyone seems to accept that this is what we are doing now: playing Truth or Dare. There’s a palpable relief, in fact, that we have a structure for the next part of our evening, something to keep us occupied.

  We sit down around the table. Emma grabs an empty wine bottle and spins it. It lands on Bo. ‘Dare,’ he says.

  ‘Kiss Mark,’ Miranda says.

  Bo wrinkles his nose. ‘Do I have to?’

  Mark looks, frankly, terrified. But Bo leans over, matter-of-factly, and plants his mouth on Mark’s. And for a moment – blink-and-you’d-miss-it – I think Mark responds, his mouth moving sensually under Bo’s. It’s kind of hot. I see Nick frown. He’s noticed it too.

  Everyone’s laughing. But there is a new tension in the air, now, a frisson of sex.

  Bo spins the bottle. It lands on Miranda. ‘Truth,’ she says, with a slightly vacant smile. Between this, and the lazy, sleepy look of her eyes, I can tell she’s already had quite a lot to drink.

  ‘OK,’ Nick says, ‘I’ve got one. Have you ever slept with anyone else around this table?’

  Miranda giggles. ‘Have I ever slept with anyone else?’ she says – and there’s a slight slur on the ‘slept’. ‘I suppose you mean apart from my husband?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nick says. There’s an intensity in the way he’s looking at her: it reminds me of a cat watching a bird.

  ‘Um,’ she puts a finger up to her lips – though the first time she misses and catches her chin – in a pantomime of thought. ‘I suppose in that case I would have to say … yes.’

  There’s a stunned silence. That can’t be true, can it? If so, I’ve never heard anything about it. How do I not know? I glance at Julien, but he doesn’t look particularly surprised. Does he know? Who can it have been? I study all the faces around the table, but no one’s expression seems to give anything away. Mark? He’s the most likely, I suppose, but I feel that would have come out, somehow, before now. Still, I think of him spending all that time hanging around college, waiting to give Miranda some message from Julien. There would have been opportunity.

  Miranda shrugs at us all. ‘I’m not going to tell you anything else, so you might as well spin again.’

  ‘Come on,’ Samira says, ‘you have to tell us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bo says, ‘you can’t tell us that and not say any more.’

  ‘Yes I can,’ Miranda says, with a sly smile. ‘I’ve answered the question. I’ve told my Truth.’

  Giles hands Miranda the bottle. ‘Right. Next.’

  The gleam in Miranda’s eye has grown brighter. After her revelation, the stakes feel higher, the air charged. She spins, and it lands on Mark.

  ‘Dare,’ he says, almost before it has even fully stopped.

  ‘OK,’ Miranda thinks for a moment. ‘Drink this.’ She holds out a bottle of Dom Pérignon.

  ‘The whole thing?’ Emma stares. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘It used to be my party trick,’ Mark says. ‘Have I never told you? A whole bottle in ten minutes.’

  I remember. I also remember the mess afterwards. Mark is one of those people who shouldn’t drink. It makes some people emotional, some belligerent, others angry – you can guess which group Mark falls into.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Miranda says, getting to her feet. She pops the cork with an air of ceremony, making sure to do it carefully so that none spills. Then she walks towards Mark. ‘Kneel down,’ she says, half seductress, half sergeant major. ‘Open wide.’ He does what she says, and she upends the bottle, with no warning and very little gentleness, shoving the neck between his parted lips. He makes a kind of gagging sound, but she doesn’t relent. If anything, I think I see her give the base a further thrust with one manicured hand.

  Mark gulps the liquid, his throat working hard and his eyes streaming, red, almost bloodied looking. Julien and Giles are egging him on: ‘Get it down you!’ and ‘Chug, chug, chug …’ – remnants of chants from rugby socials, no doubt. The rest of us just watch.

  His nose is running with snot, like a crying child’s. He makes more of those gagging sounds, and beneath them there is a kind of low, animal whine that makes the hairs on my arms stand to attention. For all that, most of the booze is frothing over his chin and soaking into his smart shirt, the crotch of his suit trousers.

  ‘Oh God,’ Samira says, ‘he’s probably had enough.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Miranda barks, completely ignoring her. ‘Drink it. You’re not drinking it.’

  I think of how dense the bubbles are in champagne, how painful it is to down even a glass of the stuff.

  It’s horrible to watch, a grotesque imitation of a sexual act. But for some reason it is both impossible to look away and to do anything to stop it. The guys have stopped cheering him on now, their chants dwindling to an uneasy silence. Even Emma doesn’t move, doesn’t make a sound to help her boyfriend. We sit watching as though stunned, mesmerised by this obscene spectacle.

  Finally, it’s drained. Slowly, almost reluctantly, Miranda withdraws the bottle. She gives it a slap with the flat of one hand, and a few more drops fall out, one of them splashing into Mark’s eye in a final indignity, the punctuation to the insult.

  Mark is wheezing, retching, doubled over, his hands on his knees for support. For a horrible moment it looks as if he’s going to vomit. Samira, nearest to him, puts a reassuring hand on his back. He shrugs her off with a violent jerk of his shoulders. We wait, silent, no one saying a word, to see how this will play out. Finally, after what feels like a long time, Mark raises his head. He gives us a weak, unconvincing grin, and puts one hand into the air like a victor. He must know, surely, that whatever we just witnessed was in no way his victory. Still, there’s a collective sigh of relief. The others cheer. It was a game! Ha, ha – Miranda, you’re so brutal. Mark – well done, chap!

  When Mark goes to spin the bottle, his hand shakes.

  It lands, as I had somehow known it would, on me.

  ‘Dare,’ I say. I don’t want to do one: Miranda’s dares have always been notoriously horrible. But I’d take pretty much any dare over a truth right now.

  ‘Mark?’ Samira asks, turning to him. ‘Got any ideas?’

  Mark puts a hand to his throat, and tries to speak, but only a hoarse kind of wheeze comes out. He shakes his head, and defers his choice.

  ‘Fine,’ Miranda says, matter-of-fact, apparently unconcerned by the fact that she’s the cause of this indignity. She steeples her fingers, then goes to Emma, whispers in her ear. Jesus Christ, it’s like something from school. How can Emma be so friendly with Miranda, after what she just inflicted on her boyfriend? But perhaps we really are pretending it was just fun and games, no harm meant or done.

  Emma is nodding. ‘Or,’ she says, and whispers something in Miranda’s ear in return.

  Bo laughs. ‘Going to share with us?’

  Emma shakes her head at him, playfully. Miranda doesn’t even bother glancing in his direction. She is looking straight at me. I feel a chill go through me.

  ‘Into the loch,’ she says. ‘Ten seconds, fully submerged. Then out.’

  I stare at her. She can’t be serious. ‘Miranda, it’s below freezing out there. There’s ice on the surface.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nick cuts in. ‘Miranda – she’ll freeze to death.’

  I expect Samira to have my back, too. But she’s frowning into space as though her mind is somewhere else completely.

  Miranda smiles, blithely, and shakes her head. ‘The manager told me she swims in there most days, even in winter. Besides, we’ll be ready for you with a towel. You’ll be fine, Katie.’

  I stare at her. I can’t believe she’s actually going to make me do this. But her eyes are blank, expressionless. ‘Go on,’ she says, with a little nod of encouragement. ‘Strip.’

  So often, at school, Miranda was my vanquisher: belittling the girls who tried to have a go at me. But there was another side, too. Miranda, the bully. When she wanted to be sh
e could be far crueller than any of the classroom bitches. It was rare, but it did happen. The flicking of a switch, the flexing of her muscles. Just to remind me who was in charge.

  I have one particular memory – one of those you just can’t shake, however much you try. Year 9. In the changing room before hockey. One of the girls – Sarah – was complaining about the fact that Miss wouldn’t let her sit it out, despite it being the first day of her period. ‘She says it’s supposedly “good for” me. Says it will make it better. But I know it won’t. It’s not fair.’ The others: nodding and murmuring in sympathy.

  I remembered the packet of paracetamol in my rucksack: dug it out and offered it to her. Sarah was one of the less terrible ones. Sometimes we sat together in class: the ones I didn’t have with Miranda, of course. She looked up at me and smiled as she took the pills. ‘Thanks, Katie.’ I felt a little warmth, spreading through my chest.

  And then Miranda’s voice, clear as a bell. ‘But I suppose Katie wouldn’t understand. Seeing as she hasn’t even got hers yet.’ All the other girls turned to me in shock, in fascination. Looking at me as though I were exactly what I felt: a freak show. It had been a sign, I was sure of it – that there was something definitely, definitively wrong with me. Fourteen and no period to speak of. I had confided in Miranda in the strictest confidence. At the time she had reassured me, said she was certain fourteen wasn’t that late, in the grand scheme of things.

  And then she had used it to humiliate me. As a way of keeping me in check.

  She’s doing this now.

  This is absurd. I’m thirty-three years old. I have people who respect and depend on me at work. I have responsibilities. I’m a brilliant lawyer, in fact – I know that – I never let the other side win. I will not allow myself to be humiliated like this.

  Fine, I think, looking at Miranda. I see you. I raise you. As though it is nothing at all in the world, I wriggle out of my dress, so I’m standing in front of them all in my underwear. I’ve somehow managed to wear good underwear, in fact: yellow silk, lace trimmed. New. I see Miranda’s eyebrows rise a fraction. She was expecting some greige over-washed horrors, I suspect, in order to compound my humiliation. I wonder if they have noticed my belly. Perhaps it can be explained away by post-dinner bloat. I hunch over, all the same, as I walk across the room without a single look at any of them, open the front door.

  Fuck. It is even colder than earlier, if that is possible. It’s so cold that it actually hurts. I can feel my skin shrinking. I can’t think about it, or I won’t be able to do it. I have to be steely, my best, strongest self. The water is only a few yards away, down the path. It looks black as ink. But I can see small pale fragments of ice, gossamer thin, on its surface. I walk towards it and simply keep going as the water covers my ankles, my calves, my stomach, then I plunge downwards, up to my neck. Unbelievable cold. It feels as if I’m drowning, though my head is above the surface. The cold is forcing all the air from my lungs; I’m breathing too quickly, but I can’t seem to draw any breath in. And then, finally, I get myself under control. I turn and look at them all, watching me now, from the bank. All of them cheering and whooping, except Miranda. She’s just watching me.

  I look straight back at her, as I tread water. I hate you, I think. I hate you. I don’t feel bad any more. You deserve everything that is coming to you.

  EMMA

  I find Katie a towel from the loo in the Lodge. She’s so cold that her teeth are chattering with a sound like someone shaking dice. In the light of the living room her lips are bluish. But it’s her eyes that are most disturbing. I know this look, it is that of someone on the edge. I’ve seen it in Mark. I saw it that day at the racecourse.

  ‘I hate her,’ she says, in a hiss. ‘I actually hate her. I can’t believe she just made me do that. You don’t know her properly, Emma – so perhaps you can’t understand. You don’t know what she’s capable of.’

  Actually, I think, I know her a lot better than you’re always trying to make out. Who has been there for her recently, when you’ve dropped off the planet? And I certainly know what you’re capable of, Katie Lewis.

  I don’t say this, of course. Instead I grit my teeth and say, ‘How about a glass of champagne? That will warm you up, won’t it?’

  ‘No. I don’t want a glass of champagne. Besides, hasn’t your boyfriend drunk it all?’ She’s spitting the words out. I stare at her. I’ve never seen her like this. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen Katie angry.

  ‘Look, Katie, I’m sure she didn’t mean it. She’s just had a lot to drink, and she thought it would be funny.’

  ‘It was fucking dangerous,’ she growls. ‘Do you have any idea how cold that water is?’

  ‘Come on, Katie. It’s about to be a new year. 2019. A whole new year. Try and forget about it? I’m sure we’ve all done things we aren’t proud of, recently.’ I fix her with a look, just enough to give her pause. She swallows, and then bows her head, as though she is conceding something.

  ‘I just really want everyone to have a good time,’ I say. ‘I’ve been planning this for so long.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, chastened. ‘I know. Sorry, Emma.’

  I usher her into the loo, persuade her to change back into her clothes. Suddenly, she is obedient as a child.

  I find a record at random and put it on the player, cranking it up to full volume. It’s Candi Staton, ‘You’ve Got the Love’. My favourite song. It’s like it was meant to be.

  And it has the required effect. Everyone starts dancing. Even Katie – albeit somewhat half-heartedly.

  Miranda is pretty drunk now. But she’s still a better dancer than anyone else here, swaying in the middle of the room, her gold dress incandescent with light. I stand up to dance with her, mirroring her moves, and she gives me a big grin. Then her smile wavers, falters.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Sho weird …’ (She’s slurring her words now, using Sean Connery ‘S’s.) She squints at me, ‘but I feel like this has all happened before. Do you ever get that? When you could swear that you remember this exact moment happening in the past?’

  Typical of Miranda, bless her, to think déjà vu is an experience unique to herself. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘sometimes.’

  ‘It’s this song …’ She frowns. ‘I really mean it. I know we’ve danced to it somewhere before. Don’t you feel like this has all already happened?’ She’s looking at me, questioningly. I don’t know what to say, so I laugh. If I’m honest, she’s scaring me a little bit. I’m relieved when she spots Julien over my shoulder.

  ‘Julien,’ she says. ‘Dance with me.’ She reaches for him, her hands groping at his shoulders.

  He humours her for a few minutes, swaying obediently to the music, his hands on her hips, but there is a curious lack of intimacy about the pose. He looks bored, if anything. But it all makes sense now, of course.

  Everyone suddenly seems very drunk. I feel like the only one still in control of my faculties – apart from Katie, perhaps. Mark has seized the deer’s head from the wall and is parading around with it, wearing it like a mask, pretending to charge at people. I can see how drunk he is after downing that bottle, his movements uncoordinated. Samira shrieks – something between laughter and real terror – and ducks away from him, falling back onto one of the sofas.

  ‘Mark,’ I shout, ‘put that back.’ But he doesn’t hear me – or he ignores me. There is no reasoning with him when he’s like this.

  Giles, meanwhile, is strolling around the room, drinking straight from an open bottle of champagne. As though struck by sudden inspiration, he puts his thumb in the end and begins to shake it, furiously – like a Formula One driver. Then he lets go, aiming for Julien. Julien cowers beneath the spray – a fountain of champagne – as it soaks the front of his shirt, his groin. A good deal of it missed him, though. I see it flooding onto the sheepskin rug, the rich fabric of the sofa …

  ‘Stop—’ I shout, running towards them. ‘Stop!’ But they’re completely
oblivious to me. In their drunkenness they seem somehow outsized, their actions bigger, more dramatic. Now Julien leaps at Giles, catching him by the front of his shirt and yanking down, the shirt ripping open, buttons spraying everywhere, landing with little pinging sounds. Mark turns and sees them. He drops the deer’s head, like a child who has caught sight of others playing with better toys. He cannons towards them as though not wanting to be left out, tackling both of them about the necks. The three of them lurch, struggle, and then topple. There’s a crash as they come down, straight into the glass coffee table in the middle of the room. The dancers – Miranda, Nick, Bo and Samira – stop what they’re doing and look over. I watch as the glass cracks down the middle, slowly, almost ponderously, and then shatters into fragments, which skid everywhere. The three of them surface, blearily.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ Giles says. Then he giggles.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Julien slurs. ‘Don’t worry Emma—’ he looks about for me, ‘I’ll pay for it.’ He stretches out both his arms. ‘I’ll pay for all of it.’ He puts out a hand to Mark, who has somehow managed to clamber to his feet. ‘Help me up, mate.’

  Mark takes it. He begins to pull Julien to his feet. Then, just as he’s almost lifted him to full height, he lets go, so that he crashes back to the floor. I wonder if I’m the only one who saw that it wasn’t an accident.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ he says.

  Julien is looking up at him, and he’s trying to laugh. But his eyes, I see, are intense, almost black.

  It’s all going horribly wrong. I look about me at the wreckage of the room, to the beautifully dressed dining table beyond – which seems to be mocking me. This is not anything like what I had planned. Then, on the wall clock, I see the time. I could weep with relief.

  ‘Hey,’ I shout, making a funnel of my hands over my mouth, knowing this might just catch their attention like nothing else, ‘it’s nearly midnight!’