The Hunting Party

by Lucy Foley

  ‘Don’t you dare come back to the cabin,’ I say to Julien. ‘I don’t care where you stay, frankly. You can be with her, for all it matters to me now. But I don’t want to see your face. So don’t come anywhere near me.’ I’m rather amazed by how calm I sound: at the contrast between my internal and external selves.

  ‘We need to talk—’

  ‘No, we don’t. I don’t want to speak or look at you for a long time. Perhaps never again.’ As I say it, I realise I mean it. I was furious at him for the insider trading – at first I thought, briefly, about walking away. But I never truly considered it. Now this, this is different.

  He nods, mutely. I can’t bring myself to look at Katie. ‘I can’t believe I wasted so much time on you. Either of you.’

  And then something occurs to me, something almost too horrible to vocalise. But I have to say it, have to know. I turn to Katie, still not looking at her, but in her vague direction. ‘You didn’t drink anything,’ I say. ‘On the train. I saw. You had a glass of wine, but you didn’t drink it. You haven’t been drinking at all, actually.’

  Silence. She’s going to make me say it out loud. I can see even now how she crouches over in her nakedness. Trying to hide it from me: what I saw earlier when she was in her underwear, but couldn’t understand at the time, because I was too drunk, because it made no sense. It’s no Christmas paunch. Katie isn’t the sort of person to get a Christmas paunch.

  ‘You’re pregnant.’ When she doesn’t respond, I say it again, louder. ‘You’re pregnant. Say it, for fuck’s sake. You’re pregnant; it’s his. Oh my God.’

  I see Julien’s mouth fall open. So he doesn’t know yet. It’s a small victory, at least, to see how appalled he looks.

  ‘Manda,’ Katie says, ‘It was an accident … I’m s—’

  I put up a hand to stop her. I will not cry in front of them. That’s all I can think. Miranda Adams never cries.

  ‘You’re welcome to each other,’ I say, while the grief and rage courses through me like acid. The pregnancy is so much worse than the affair, somehow. The sense of the theft is so much greater. It’s like Katie has stolen it directly from me. That thing inside her should be my baby.

  ‘I’m getting the early morning train back to London,’ I say, and I’m proud that there’s only the hint of a catch in my voice. ‘There are some things I need to do. Something I need to set right – a secret I’ve kept for far too long. Julien, I think you know what I’m talking about?’

  His eyes widen. ‘You wouldn’t, Miranda. You wouldn’t do that.’

  But I would. ‘Oh wouldn’t I?’ I smile – I know it will unnerve him even more. ‘You think you know me so well? Well, until just a few minutes ago I thought I knew you. But it would appear that I was wrong. What’s to say you know me so well, in return? Want to find out how little you understand me?’

  ‘It would destroy you, too.’

  I put a hand to my lips, a pantomime of deliberation. I am almost enjoying this, making him squirm. It is a very tiny compensation. ‘I don’t think it will, actually. I’ll explain it all to them, how you even tried to trick me, at first. It will be a bit embarrassing, yes, and I suppose there might be some small penalty for not doing it sooner. But I won’t be the one losing my job. I won’t be the one going to prison. That will be you, just in case you’re unclear. You will be the one going to prison.’

  His mouth is set, grim.

  ‘It’s a pretty big offence, isn’t it? Especially in this post credit-crunch world. You think any jury would hesitate to convict you? You’re a Fat Cat Wanker Banker. They’d take one glance at your smug face and tell the judge to throw away the key.’

  I’m not even sure insider trading cases have a jury, but it is enough to see the look on Julien’s face: the fear. Katie looks completely baffled. So this is one intimacy he has not shared with her. Lucky girl.

  He comes towards me again, and this time I put my hands up, to stop his words landing on me, affecting me. To show him that I will not be swayed.

  ‘It would ruin both of us, Manda.’

  The short, affectionate version of my name – as though he thinks it might soften me.

  ‘Don’t you ever call me that again,’ I say. ‘And yes, when I divorce you, I suppose there will be less coming my way, once they finish with you. If that’s what you’re referring to. But at least I’ll have a clear conscience.’

  And I’ll have got my revenge.

  KATIE

  So this is The Truth. The one I could never have told in that game.

  It had been a really long week. I’d had two nights of sleeping in the office. They actually have these little rooms called ‘sleeping pods’ where you can grab a couple of hours’ rest. No – in case you’re wondering – that’s not the company looking after its employees, it’s simply in order to keep them close, to wring as much work out of them as possible. My mind felt numb. The case was over, I was going home – except that nothing was waiting for me there beyond a fridge with some curdled milk in it, if I was lucky, and a prime but utterly uninspiring view of the very square mile I slaved away in daily. And silence. The silence of a single woman with nothing for company but a bottle, or two, of wine.

  It was ten o’clock. Too late to call anyone, scare up some plans. In my early twenties there would have been more of a chance of that. People might have been busy, but invariably it would have been something I could join at late notice. A house party – Samira was always throwing them – or a night out clubbing with Miranda, a big dinner with the gang. Now everyone had plans that took place in smaller numbers, usually twos or fours, and were arranged in advance, didn’t welcome a last-minute interloper. Maybe I could have called Miranda, but I wasn’t sure I had the energy for her. For all that perfection. For her to make me her project, as she always did – has always done – and tell me what was wrong with my life.

  So I could go home and sit with my bottle of wine in my empty flat, or I could do it in a bar, and perhaps pick someone up to bring home. This was my replacement strategy, you see, for the nights out and house parties and dinners of our twenties. I suppose in a way it was more efficient: at least you didn’t have to make conversation.

  Of the two options open to me, the second was infinitely more appealing. I could take someone home, and for a couple of hours the flat would have life and noise in it. So I walked into one of my regular spots in the shadow of St Paul’s. The barman knows me so well that he started pouring me a large glass of Pouilly-Fumé before I’d even sat down – which is either thoughtful or depressing, depending on which way you look at it.

  I sat down on the stool and waited for someone to approach me. It usually didn’t take too long. I’ll never be Miranda-beautiful, of course. This used to depress me. It’s not easy growing up in the shadow of a friend like her. But of late, perhaps only really since I turned thirty, I have learned that I have something that seems to intrigue men – my own particular attraction for them.

  There were a few people around the bar: groups of co-workers, probably, and a scattering of Tinder dates – but it wasn’t packed. Only Tuesday evening, so not a proper night out. Perhaps I had been overly confident about my chances. There was only one man sitting along the other bar, perpendicular to me. I’d vaguely noticed him as I sat down, though he hadn’t glanced up, and I hadn’t actually looked properly at him. I could tell even from the hazy outline in my peripheral vision that he was ‘youngish’ in the way that I am ‘youngish’, and attractive. I don’t know how I knew this without properly looking, it must have been some animal sense. And that same sense told me that there was something despondent about him, hunched-over.

  And then both of us looked up at the same time, to get the barman’s attention. I saw, with a shock, who it was.

  ‘Julien?’

  He looked surprised to see me, too. I suppose perhaps it shouldn’t have been all that shocking, considering we both work in the City. But there are still thousands of bars and thousands of people, and I w
ould have assumed Julien was at home with Miranda, anyway. This was one of the first things I mouthed to him. ‘Where’s Miranda?’

  We had never had that much to do with each other, that was the thing, unless it was through Miranda.

  ‘She’s at home,’ he mouthed back to me. And then he mimed: he was coming to sit next to me. I was half pleased, half put out. Now I definitely wouldn’t be going home with anyone; by the time Julien and I had had our conversation and he’d headed off to Miranda I’d be too tired to start up anything with someone new.

  He came to sit next to me. As he leaned down to pull the stool towards him I caught the scent of his aftershave, a gin-and-tonic freshness, and I remembered how twenty minutes ago, when I thought him a stranger, I’d had the sense that he was probably good-looking. And he was good-looking. I had known this – I’d realised it when he and Miranda first started dating, of course – but at some point I had stopped noticing. Now it was as if I was seeing him clearly again. It was an odd feeling.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘I might ask the same of you,’ he said. Which, of course, was not an answer.

  I told him about finishing the case. ‘So I suppose you could say I’m celebrating.’

  ‘Where are the others? Your colleagues? Are they here?’

  I couldn’t exactly say, They’ve gone to another bar, I never socialise with them if I can help it. So I said, ‘Home – all too knackered to think about going out.’

  ‘So you decided to celebrate all on your own?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit lonely?’

  There was a strange tension between us. I think it was the knowledge of having known each other for ten years and yet suddenly being aware that we did not know each other at all. We were really little more than friendly strangers. We needed Miranda there to make sense of the connection between us. Both of us were drinking quite fast, in an attempt to dissipate this awkwardness. I hadn’t even realised that I had finished my drink before he asked, ‘Have another?’

  ‘Oh, all right then.’ I was rather flattered. He was enjoying my company.

  ‘Where’s Miranda?’ I asked again.

  ‘You’ve already asked me that.’ The way he said it was a little teasing.

  ‘Yes, but then why are you here all on your lonesome?’ My reply was equally teasing. Oh my God, was I flirting with my best friend’s husband?

  ‘Just thought I’d have a quick one.’

  The alcohol dared me to say it: ‘So we’re here, drinking – her best friend and her husband? We’re like kids playing truant or something.’ It was meant to be silly, off-the-cuff, but it had the inevitable effect of making what we were doing into a conspiracy from which Miranda was excluded. I drank a big slug of my wine.

  ‘If she knew, she’d definitely be jealous,’ he said. And then quickly, ‘I know that she misses you.’ He smiled, but there was something sad and tired about his eyes; they didn’t participate in the smile. ‘Look,’ he said, more seriously, ‘if I’m honest, I needed a bit of time to myself.’

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked. I was worried – but with the very tiniest tinge of amusement that we sometimes get, hearing of our friends’ problems. Everything about Miranda and Julien’s life seemed flawless, golden.

  I said as much to him. ‘What could possibly be the problem? You guys are perfect.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, with a smile that somehow went down at the corners rather than up. ‘Perfect. That’s exactly what we are. So bloody perfect.’

  There was an awkward pause. I couldn’t think what to say. ‘You mean …’ I looked for a way to put it. ‘You mean – things aren’t great between you guys? Miranda hasn’t said anything.’

  That was true enough. She hadn’t said anything to me. But then we hadn’t seen each other for quite a while. We’d chatted briefly a couple of times, but I am hopeless on the phone: something that always made my teenage years rather difficult. Besides, I hardly had any free time with work – and even if I did it was late at night, or early morning, times when I doubt Miranda would have relished a phone call. I felt a twist of guilt. She had asked me several times in the last month if I was free, and we had made a date, but I had to blow her off at the last minute because of a sudden crisis with the case.

  ‘It isn’t problems with us exactly,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit more complicated. I suppose it would be more accurate to say it’s a problem with me. Something like that. I have done something bad.’ He saw my raised eyebrows. ‘No … Not like that. I haven’t cheated. I got myself involved in something bad. And now I can’t get out of it.’

  ‘And Miranda doesn’t know?’

  ‘No … She does know. I had to tell her, because it involved both of us. She’s been’ – he frowned – ‘I suppose she’s been quite good about it. Understanding. All things considered. Except sometimes I catch her looking at me, and she seems so disappointed. Like this isn’t what she signed up for. It’s just a bit of a mess.’

  He pronounced mess as ‘mesh’, and I wondered quite how much he had been drinking before we started chatting.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I mean – I’d like to, actually, but I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ I caught myself. ‘Sorry – I’ve had too much to drink. That was rude of me. Just tell me to shut up.’

  ‘Please don’t.’ He gave me that funny downward smile again, so different from the expansive, charming gleam of his usual expression. I preferred this one; it was more real. ‘I like talking to you,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it funny – we’ve known each other all these years. What is it, ten?’

  ‘Eleven,’ I said. June 2007. That was when I had run into him coming out of our bathroom.

  ‘And yet you and I have never really talked properly, have we?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Well, have another drink, and let’s talk. Properly.’

  ‘Well – I …’

  ‘Come on. Please. Otherwise I’m going to be here drinking on my own, and that’s perhaps the saddest thing ever.’ He caught himself, evidently remembering that was exactly what I had been doing. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. He was right. But drinking at home was worse. My empty flat, with the empty fridge, and the empty view: the sea of office blocks, the City – the place that ate all of my time, and meant that my life was empty, too.

  The thought of going back there suddenly made my skin crawl. I’d prefer to have another drink with him, I thought. But there was something strange about it, being here in a bar with Miranda’s husband, when she didn’t know. And … strangely enjoyable, too, which was perhaps the worst thing about it.

  ‘All right,’ I said. What the hell.

  ‘Good.’ He grinned at me, and I felt something inside me somersault. ‘What will you have?’ And then, before I could answer: ‘I know – let’s have whisky. Do you like whisky?’ Without waiting for my answer, he turned to the barman. ‘We’ll get the Hibiki.’ He smiled. ‘You’ll like it. It’s Japanese – twenty-one years old.’

  I never drink whisky. I hardly ever drink spirits, to be honest – I can sink a bottle of wine and hardly feel it, but spirits are another matter entirely.

  The whisky went straight to my head. That is no excuse for what happened next.

  Miranda was obviously a sore subject. So we ended up talking about everything else. I realised that Julien was a much better conversationalist than I had ever appreciated before. I had always thought of him as all charm, all surface, concealing some inner lack. We reminisced about Oxford, how easy life had been then, even though, back then, we thought we were working the hardest we would ever work in our lives.

  We talked about my work – he’d read a little about the case I had been working on. For once, I didn’t find myself second-guessing, assuming he was asking out of politeness, while he waited for Miranda to rescue him, or for someone more stim
ulating to come along. He was turned towards me on his stool, his knees pointing towards mine. A body language expert would have said that all the signs were very good. Or very bad, depending upon which way you looked at it. But I didn’t think anything of it, still. Or, if I did, I pushed those thoughts away. They were ridiculous, weren’t they?

  We talked about the first time we’d met (he didn’t remember the previous occasion, at the Summer Ball, and I was too proud to correct him), when he had come out of the bathroom clutching his towel.

  ‘There I was,’ he said, ‘half naked, and there you were, looking so elegant.’

  I was surprised by this; I had always just assumed he thought I was Miranda’s uglier, more boring friend. Elegant. I realised that I would be turning that word over in my mind for a while.

  ‘This is so nice,’ he said to me at one point. ‘Isn’t it nice? Just chatting, like this? How have we never done this before?’ His breath was laced with whisky, true, but I still felt his words warm me. And I realised he wasn’t quite as arrogant as I had always thought – and also, clearly, not so perfect. Perhaps the years had rubbed some of the shine off him, and I hadn’t stopped to notice. Or perhaps he had always been like this. Either way, he seemed much nicer, more humble, than I had ever appreciated. The sober me might have been able to point out that this was probably just Julien’s famous charisma at work. But the drunk me liked it very much.

  Because at some point I realised that we were both very drunk. ‘I should go home,’ I said. Though I realised that I didn’t want to, and not just because of the depressing thought of the sterile single-person flat that awaited me. It was because I was actually having fun. I was enjoying his company. But I made a big show of finishing my glass, and getting down from my seat. As I slid from my seat and wobbled on my heels, I discovered that I was even drunker than I had thought. He got down from his stool, and I saw him sway on his feet, too.

  ‘You can’t go home on your own,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk you back. It’s not safe.’