The Christmas Party

by Karen Swan

  Her mouth parted in surprise. ‘Oh.’

  ‘And someone said they’ve got fireworks planned for later. What next – hot-air balloon rides to watch the sun come up?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, Joe.’ She shrugged. ‘This isn’t my party.’

  ‘Your pad, though. What a party palace it is! You shoulda done this years ago!

  Her smile faltered. The thought of missing out on a single one of their memories as a family here . . . ‘Yeah. Listen, I’m just meeting someone. But I’ll catch up with you in a bit, okay?’

  ‘Sure thing. I’ll be in the mosh pit.’

  Willow stared at him. There was a mosh pit? Please god not in her grandmother’s rose garden.

  ‘Oh and your mam’s looking for ya!’ Joe called over his shoulder.

  She stopped. What? ‘Mam’s here?’ she called back.

  ‘Aye. And she’s desperate to find you. Tearing all about the place, she was.’

  She knew exactly why. Pip must have told her about the sale, presuming Willow would have told her by now.

  She stood for a moment in the hallway, staring at the library door. Her mother had come here to stop her, she knew. She wanted to delay, yet again, the moment her entire marriage had been heading towards. But it was too late. Even if Willow had wanted to change her mind, she couldn’t. Too much had changed already, surely she would see that now she was here? The stone was rolling down the hill.

  The library had a Private No Entry sign hanging from the doorknob and she turned it, but not before she automatically knocked – the habit of her lifetime.

  It was empty, Connor not yet here.

  She walked in, feeling a surge of emotion trammel through her at the sight of this room left almost untouched. The only one, bar the kitchen. Her father’s desk and chair had been moved to the Dower House, his rugs rolled up and taken to the Christie’s depository, but the shelving was still stacked with his books, his clock still ticked on the limestone mantel. A couple of sofas had been positioned there, possibly as a quiet space to retreat to?

  Her hand trailed lightly over the oak shelves, her eyes picking up the gleam of the gilt-edged spines. It had been a source of great pride that her father had read every book in here, methodically working his way through them over the years. He had always said to her and her sisters that there was no point in having them simply as decorations. They had to have a purpose. It had been something of a sore point for the three of them, the irony lost somewhat on him.

  She walked to the fireplace, staring down at the coal husks still in the grate from the last fire, a few paper twists pre-prepared in the kindling basket, a foible of Mrs Mac’s to ‘speed up’ setting the next fire.

  ‘. . . in here and calm down. You’ll make yourself ill.’ The voice – female, faint – came to her ear, making her stop in her tracks. It was Ottie’s, she knew that immediately.

  ‘Get your hands off me!’ Another woman’s. Willow frowned. She sounded hysterical, sobbing, wretched. And then a man’s voice, his words too quiet and indistinct to make out, simply the low timbre travelling down the listening tunnel.

  They were in the kitchen. Many was the time her father had hollered down it for another slice of fruit cake or to have a dog bring his slippers, a trick they’d all been taught as puppies.

  What exactly was happening in there?

  ‘No I don’t want to listen to you! I hate you! Did you think I wouldn’t find out?’

  The man’s voice again issuing urgent murmurings, platitudes, she supposed, falling on deaf ears.

  ‘You’ve made me look a fool! How could you do this to me? After everything I’ve given up for you?’

  Willow frowned. The voice was vaguely familiar and yet it was so hard to be specific – the tunnel distorting sound as well as transporting it.

  ‘Have some water.’ Ottie again. ‘It’ll help.’

  Silence. More murmurings, the man’s voice. And then the sound of glass shattering. It made Willow jump, even three rooms away.

  ‘Don’t you dare try to put this on me! . . . No, I won’t accept that!—’ There was an anguished cry. ‘Serena!’ Willow stiffened. Her mother was in there? ‘He brought her here! Here, right under my nose!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘His little whore!’ Immediately, Willow walked over to the wall and put her ear to the air block.

  ‘That is not—’ The male voice was firmer now. Distinct. Bertie! Willow stiffened like a rod, feeling her hatred rise. Was his secret out then? One of them anyway?

  The woman began screaming. Shula. ‘Stop lying to me! Stop lying! I won’t take it any more, do you understand?’

  The sound of hushing.

  ‘– best if she comes with me. This isn’t the time or place . . . much better once she’s had time to calm down.’ Her mother, cool, calm, serene, taking control.

  ‘You’re a lying, cheating bastard! . . . going to take you for everything you’ve . . . Do you hear me?’ Her voice was growing more distant. Quieter.

  A door slammed shut.

  There was a silence and then –

  ‘Fuck!’ The man’s voice again. Angry. Stressed. ‘Fuckfuckfuck! She’s fucking mental! Did you see how she just went for me? Look at that! She’s drawn blood! She’s a maniac!’

  There was another long silence. Then a loud, stinging slap.

  ‘Fuck!’ He hollered again. ‘What the hell was that for?’

  ‘You dare to ask me that?’ Ottie, her voice an ominous growl.

  Another long silence, the sound of . . . footsteps. Chairs scraping along the floor.

  ‘Stay away from me.’ Ottie again.

  ‘She meant nothing.’

  ‘She’s your wife!’

  What? Willow frowned, feeling confused, an unsettling feeling beginning to descend.

  ‘No, not Shula. I . . . I meant Lorna.’ There was panic in his voice.

  Disembodied voices, half-snatched conversation, an explanation that made no sense . . . couldn’t be . . . no . . .

  ‘How could you? You said you loved me!’ The floor dropped away. Willow stepped back, feeling her breath hitch.

  ‘I did! I do!’

  ‘I believed in you! I trusted you!’

  She felt her stomach drop, horror pooling, the full truth dawning, undeniable – and then her feet beginning to move, carrying her over the floor and back to the door, flinging it open and seeing Connor there, papers in his hand.

  ‘Willow . . .’ Shock on his face, a furrow in his brow. ‘What’s happened?’

  But her legs kept moving, carrying her down the hall towards the kitchen, her sister’s words alone reverberating through her head. I’ve got a marriage to break up.

  Chapter Thirty

  Pip sat on the bottom step of the stairs, not caring how incongruous she looked in her pyjamas and slippers. She’d have preferred to be wearing them to any of these dresses anyhow – boobs out, tummy in. No thanks.

  She watched as the revellers staggered, lurched and skittered past on their way to the bar, the loos, the bedrooms, the ballroom, but her eyes kept coming back to the inverted Christmas tree hanging from the ceiling. She couldn’t decide if it was insanely cool or ridiculously daft. It was as though her childhood home was on acid – bright pink on the outside, all the colours bleached out, inside, adults running around like kids, everything ‘back-to-front’ somehow.

  She was waiting for the happy scream, wondering if she’d hear it over all the noise. There’d been some sort of to-do in the ballroom a short while ago but someone had said it was just a lovers’ tiff. What would Willow do, she wondered? Or were they too late anyway, the scurry over here a wasted exercise?

  She coughed lightly into her fist, hoping to God not. She hadn’t dragged herself out of bed without good reason. The antibiotics were kicking in but she still felt utterly depleted, like a wrung-out rag and for once she wanted to get back into bed and do as she was told – follow doctors’ orders.

  Taigh. Was he here? She looked around
the great hall at all the convivial groups and heated couples. He hadn’t come by all day, nor to the hospital either. Was he finally doing as he was told, and following her advice to stay away? It didn’t bother her if he was – he’d been a nuisance, forever on her tail. It had just been a surprise, that was all; she supposed she’d become rather used to his pestering do-gooding.

  ‘Willow!’

  Pip’s head turned sharply at the sound of her sister’s name being shouted and she stood up in time to see her running from the library, a romantic heroine in green satin, her dark hair streaming behind her.

  ‘Willow, come back!’ the man yelled, and Pip caught sight of her very own anti-hero, the good-looking bloke from the party and the carols, the buyer, calling after her, looking alarmed.

  But it was nothing to the expression on Willow’s face. Pip felt her heart skip a beat. Jesus, what had happened? She hadn’t expected to see her react like that!

  ‘Will!’ she cried, rushing forward – or trying to – to catch up with her.

  Willow’s head turned as she ran, as though her brain was telling her one thing but her body was following another. ‘Pip!’ Willow faltered, looking confused to see her there. Confused and alarmed. She looked desperate. ‘Where’s Mam?’

  Now it was Pip’s turn to look bewildered. ‘You mean she wasn’t in with you?’

  ‘She just left with Shula. I need you to keep her out of the kitchen for me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I . . . I can’t explain.’ But she looked frantic, scanning the hall every which way, looking like a spy on the run.

  ‘Will, you have to tell me what’s going on here. Is the world coming to an end?’

  ‘Yes.’ Willow blinked, trying to get her breath back. ‘It’s Ottie. She’s in the kitchen with Bertie.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘They’re together.’

  Pip rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, you said. So what?’

  ‘No. I mean they’re together.’ She swallowed hard, as though the words were rocks to climb over.

  Pip’s own words wouldn’t come. Thoughts wouldn’t form. The statement – the fact – hung suspended, spinning and directionless, like a beach ball in space. No, it simply wasn’t possible. There was absolutely no way . . . But then she felt a tug on her sleeve, her feet propelled into forward motion as Will dragged her along and Pip found herself stumbling past the people, away from the bizarre hanging tree, down the corridor. They burst through the kitchen door, eyes meeting first with Mabel lying under the table, the cheery yellow Aga as reassuring as the sun in the sky. But there was no happiness here. No bright optimism.

  Ottie was alabaster-pale in the red dress, slumped on a chair and tears streaming down her cheeks, her gaze far beyond the perimeters of the room. Bertie was on one knee beside her, like a chivalrous suitor. A knight, even.

  He froze at the sight of the Lorne cavalry arriving, before rising slowly to his feet again. He didn’t dare speak and Pip knew he was stalling, wanting to see what they knew first; he wouldn’t incriminate himself, he was too skilled a manipulator for that.

  Willow rushed over to Ottie, throwing her arms around her shoulders and drawing her close. ‘Otts, you bloody idiot. What have you done?’

  ‘Whatever you think is going on here, you need to know this is not how it looks,’ Bertie said, daring to take a step closer, to take charge and direct the show.

  But Willow looked up at him with an expression Pip had never seen before. Contempt oozed from her, hard-baked hatred setting her to stone. ‘No, you’re quite right, Bertie,’ she said in a dangerously cold voice. ‘How this looks is entirely innocent – an old family friend comforting his best friend’s daughter. How it sounded on the other hand, from the listening hole in the library, was a disgusting, lecherous, deluded, conniving old man manipulating and seducing his best friend’s daughter!’

  There was a fragile silence, the air filled with pauses, hesitations, falters. Every word was crucial. Entire futures were now relying on them.

  ‘Okay. I realize it might have sounded bad—’

  ‘Oh, it sounded worse than bad,’ she snarled. ‘It sounded to me like a reputation being smashed, a business being discredited, a marriage destroyed . . . Bad doesn’t begin to cut it.’ The threats dripped like blood.

  He held his hands up and Pip saw that they were shaking. He was cornered. ‘I never intended for this to happen, you have to believe that.’

  ‘You were having it off with Lorna Delaney!’ Ottie screamed. ‘Of course you meant for it to happen. This is what you do! It’s who you are! How many others are there, huh?’ She motioned to the door. ‘Are there any more of them out there too? Right now?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

  ‘Me ridiculous? You were just standing in a ballroom with your wife and two mistresses!’

  Pip couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Bertie and Ottie – together? Her brain couldn’t accept it. Wouldn’t. How long had it been going on for? Why?

  ‘Ottie, you were special to me—’

  Were? Pip heard the past tense – they all did – and that specifically non-specific word: special. Could be avuncular, paternal . . .

  ‘– But at the end of the day, if this gets out, there’ll be no winners. I’ll deny everything. It’s your word against mine, darling.’

  His voice was cool, collected. Ottie – they all – looked back at him in shock.

  ‘But I’ve got photos,’ she stammered. ‘Gifts you gave me—’

  He shrugged. ‘I won’t deny the affair. But I’ll say you came on to me. You’re a beautiful young woman. How could I say no? What man would?’

  Ottie’s expression changed, her mouth falling open in disbelief.

  ‘You bastard . . .’ Willow whispered.

  But Bertie’s eyes never left Ottie. His body language was changing, becoming more powerful. Dominant. ‘This can’t go any further than this room, Ottie. It won’t,’ he said, never taking his eyes off her. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been hurt, but I won’t let my entire life be torn down by a silly little girl with a daddy complex. Shula can never know about this. No one can.’

  ‘Do you think I’d want anyone to know?’ Ottie screamed, standing up from the chair so quickly it fell backwards. ‘I feel sick just at the thought of it! I can’t believe . . . I can’t believe . . . Oh my God, what have I done?’ She began sobbing, her shoulders heaving as she hid her face in her hands.

  He stood watching her for a few moments, seeing how Willow positioned herself between them, like an attack dog. ‘Ottie, you may not believe it now, but you’ll move on from this, I assure you. You’ll forget about me.’

  She shook her head frantically. ‘Stop talking!’ she screamed, her face puce. ‘Just stop talking! I can’t even look at you.’

  ‘I want us to part as friends,’ he said, growing calmer in the face of her hysteria, taking his time. ‘There must be something I can do to make it up to you. Let me do that.’

  ‘There’s nothing! I want nothing from you apart from you to fuck off!’ she yelled, her voice hoarse from her screams.

  He stared at Ottie, at Willow, at Pip – a bemused look crossing his face as he processed the sight of her there in her father’s old pyjamas – and then shrugged. Lackadaisical. Bored even. ‘Okay then.’

  He crossed the kitchen, a smirk on his face that made Pip’s heart catch. She felt the breath swell in her lungs, puffing her up as he went to pass by.

  ‘Actually there is something—’ Pip said, stepping into his path. She saw the shock in his eyes as her fist connected with his face, his every reaction one second too late: eyes shut tight, his grimace of pain – when it was already done.

  He staggered backwards, tripping over Mabel, who had come out from her spot under the table, and sprawling heavily on the floor. ‘You broke my fucking nose!’ he yelled, one hand to his face as blood saturated his shirt.

  ‘And you broke my sister’s heart,’ she shrugged coolly, but she felt the white-he
at in her stare. A pyjama-clad assassin was still an assassin. ‘Not to mention my father’s trust. My mother’s trust. Your wife’s trust.’

  He scrabbled to get to standing but she kicked his feet away again before he could find purchase. ‘No. You can stay down there,’ she sneered. ‘We’re not done with you yet.’

  Her hand swirled over the table top, making shapes that she didn’t see, Mabel’s head heavy upon her foot. Outside the ancient door, the party whirled on like a tornado, the shrieks and laughs of strangers punctuated by silences as they kissed under extravagant mistletoe clouds.

  Willow was grateful the kitchen – like the library – had remained untouched; even with Connor’s small army on the ground, there hadn’t been enough time to strip out and remodel a room of this size in the time they’d had, so the caterers had set up a working kitchen in the old scullery instead, wheeling in hired stainless-steel work benches and steam ovens. It meant she could be alone in here with just her thoughts and the dogs, the revelations settling in her mind like a shipwreck to the sea bed.

  The truth was like a joker at every turn, laughing in her face, mocking her. How could her sister and . . . him . . .? Of all the people. Every single other person in the world – why him? Why always him?

  She looked down at her green silk lap, the yellow Aga, the slumbering dogs . . . The vignette seemed to encapsulate, somehow, both the soul of the castle and everything that was wrong in her life: there was a party pounding just metres away and she was in here, like Miss Havisham, locked away from it all. Always on the wrong side of the glass.

  The doorknob turned and she looked up, stiffening automatically as she saw her mother coming in. She looked drawn, the agonies of the evening etched into her face, she, for once, under-dressed in her jeans and cashmere jumper.

  ‘Where are the others?’ her mother asked, pulling out a chair as though it was made of lead.

  ‘They’ve gone home. Pip was tired,’ Willow replied obliquely, not wanting to reveal it was Ottie who had needed the chaperone – or why. ‘How’s Shula?’

  Her mother gave a heavy sigh and didn’t answer for a moment. ‘. . . Devastated.’