by Jagger, Kait
At five foot even, with short-cut shocking red hair, porcelain skin and full lips painted so purple they were almost black, Jem looked like a character out of a video game herself. She immediately launched herself toward Luna, hugging her around the waist before turning to Stefan.
‘I’m Jem, Rod’s managing director.’ Then Rod Okuyo himself emerged from the office. Not much taller than Jem, he had the build of a mini wrestler. His hair was braided in tiny, neat cornrows and a pair of thick-rimmed black glasses made his brown eyes look twice their normal size. Rod and Jem had met at a party at the University of Manchester, where Jem, having always been attracted to what she referred to disparagingly as ‘super geeks’, had gone out of her way to target the most exotic-looking man in the room, only to discover that Rod was the biggest super geek of them all, a programming and games design fanatic who, Kayla had joked, ‘came with joysticks attached.’ Of course, by the time Jem realised he wasn’t the rebel of her dreams, she’d fallen in love with him.
As, apparently, had Stefan, who was shaking Rod’s hand enthusiastically and saying, ‘I’m a big, big fan of your work.’
‘Really, man?’ Rod said, barely a trace of his Kenyan accent still audible in his Mancunian drawl. ‘That’s flattering to hear.’ Rod led Stefan into their offices – if they really could be called offices, for there were almost no desks set out around the large, somewhat industrial-looking space interspersed with rows of steel columns. Staff seemed to do most of their work on sofas or in a series of darkened studios along an interior wall. At any given time when Luna had visited in the past, a substantial portion of the staff were usually playing video games in the large games area at the far end of the office, where four hirsute men were currently glued to Xbox.
As Rod led Stefan to the conference room, Jem reached out to grip Luna’s hand excitedly. ‘He’s so cool! Can you believe he’s played Archangel? What are the chances?!’
Luna smiled and nodded enthusiastically, pleased to have been the catalyst for this meeting. It had been worth their trial by potpourri with Isabelle that morning after all.
In the conference room, kitted out with no less than four mammoth video screens, they were streaming a variety of clips from their forthcoming release, Remainers. One featured what Luna recognised as a main character in the game, known only as the Marquess, and the other three were of scenes in and around Arborage. Rod, Jem and their team had spent six whole months on the estate the previous year, using a combination of architectural surveying equipment and other electronic gizmos to create a series of 3D images of the house and grounds that formed the heart of the ‘world’ of Remainers.
Luna briefly explained to Stefan that Arborage’s involvement in the project began shortly after a deal Rod had been negotiating with the National Trust to use one of their properties fell through.
‘And I thought, well, Arborage is at least as impressive a property as that, so…’ Luna smiled.
‘Luna saved us,’ Rod cut in. ‘I had such a clear vision of what this game could be, and Arborage has made it better, if anything.’
Luna had to agree, based on some of the images she saw flitting across the screens in the room. She was amazed to see the level of detail in them, down to cracks in the sandstone bricks of the house’s façade and pits in the marble pillars in the main gallery. More than that, though, there was a dreamy quality to these images, a hyper reality that was gripping, unlike any other video game images she’d seen.
Not that she knew much about these things. And, truth be told, her mind started to wander a little when Rod talked Stefan through the premise for the game, an alternative universe where the Nazis had won the war and invaded England, and only small pockets of resistance fighters continued to fight the good fight, including the fictional Marquess, a sexy female spy, and a little boy from a fictional village near the estate.
‘And if that all sounds a bit dry,’ Rod concluded, ‘let me assure you these three – you get your pick of who you want to play as – get up to a lot of Nazi killing. It’s good fun. In fact…we have a short demo version you can play, if you’re interested.’
‘Absolute,’ Stefan said, and if he’d jumped up and down like a boy waiting to board a roller coaster Luna wouldn’t have been surprised, from the expression of delight on his face. She and Jem exchanged indulgent glances and Jem said to her, ‘Fancy a coffee?’
Two minutes later they were out on the street, laughing at the sheer implausibility of Rod meeting his biggest fan.
‘And he is so completely lovely,’ Jem said, taking Luna’s arm just as she had done that first week at uni in Manchester, when the two of them had walked from their student digs in Fallowfield along Oxford Road to the main campus together. Luna could still remember her surprise, shock almost, at the physical contact. But Jem had thought nothing of it, a girl whose mum had hugged her every day of her life until she left to go to uni, and who Jem still phoned religiously up to five times per day. Thought nothing of the simple act of taking another girl’s arm…
‘…and I can tell he fancies you,’ Jem was saying, dragging Luna back into the present.
‘Oh, come on,’ Luna laughed. ‘You saw that programme he was on, he’s a ladies’ man. He fancies anything in a skirt.’
‘No,’ Jem said solemnly. ‘It’s different with you, you can tell. He was watching you, when you were looking at the screen in the conference room. You were smiling at something.’
‘Those images you’ve created, Jem, they’re incredible. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.’
Jem refused to be distracted, continuing, ‘You were smiling and he was just…looking at you.’
‘Well.’ Luna cleared her throat. And then they reached the coffee shop.
Sat at a table shortly thereafter with two cappuccinos and cake, Jem rattled on about preparations for the launch of Remainers while Luna happily sat and listened. It had been a real source of pleasure for her, all the time Jem and Rod had spent at Arborage the previous year. A couple of times they’d spent the night, the three of them staying up late into the night drinking red wine and talking, Luna basking in her friends’ collective brainpower as they argued and planned.
‘So, have you told him yet?’ Jem said, interrupting her thoughts.
‘Told him what?’ Luna asked, then realised what Jem meant. ‘Ah, no.’
‘I don’t understand. Why don’t you want him to know that you’ve met? I mean, it was only one weekend and it was years ago.’
Luna studied her coffee. ‘I don’t know. I guess…I guess I look back at that time and think I wasn’t really myself. I’m not particularly proud of the way I behaved back then.’
Jem stared at her in a funny way, then shook her head.
‘What?’
‘You’ll think I’m taking the piss.’
‘No, seriously, what?’ Luna reached out and poked a finger in Jem’s ribs, intoning, ‘Jemima Evangeline, what are you thinking?’ A name she rarely used, from their own shared past. Luna had sworn Jem to silence regarding Stefan, because she’d been there that weekend, long before she and Luna had rediscovered each other at uni and become friends. Jem, the one girl who had laughed when Luna told the Swedish boy where to go.
‘I’m thinking that you’re too hard on yourself,’ Jem said. ‘I remember when you made that crack about him, on that awful hike. You saying he should fuck off back to Sweden and me thinking to myself, thank God, someone’s finally said it. Like, finally said that Empress Isabelle has no clothes. You were just so…fierce. I remember thinking, I want to be like her. And I remember being ashamed that I didn’t back you up, when all the other girls turned on you and gave you the silent treatment the rest of the weekend.’
Luna blinked, truly taken back by Jem’s revelation.
‘Oh, Jem,’ she said sadly. ‘I was a total bitch back then. You didn’t really want to be like me.’
‘I did. And it stayed with me. Then I saw you that first week at university and I thought, here’s my
chance to be that girl’s friend.’ Jem took Luna’s hand and squeezed it earnestly. ‘And I thought, doesn’t she look better with hair.’
Two hours later, Luna and Stefan exited Rod Studios, Stefan clearly full of the joys.
‘You’ve got my email,’ he said to Rod, gripping his hand firmly, ‘so keep me abreast of plans for the launch.’
‘Will do, man,’ Rod grinned. ‘And thanks for the advice. It’s really got me thinking about the future of the business in a different way.’
Jem laughed and pointed at Stefan, jiggling up and down a little. ‘Oh, oh, was it, “Your people understand this business better than you do. Why is that?”’
Luna glanced from Stefan to Jem and back in confusion, but Stefan just looked slightly abashed. As the lift doors closed, Jem fired off one last line, stabbing her finger at them: ‘“That’s bullshit and you know it!”’ Luna could hear Jem laughing to Rod even after the doors closed and the lift started its descent.
She looked at Stefan enquiringly and he rolled his eyes.
‘Those were catchphrases of mine on—’
‘The Triad!’ Luna interrupted exultantly. ‘That’s it! I never watched it, but—’
‘That’s probably just as well,’ Stefan said, abruptly ending the conversation.
Later, when they’d boarded the train back to Newbury and were sitting opposite each other at a table seat, Luna summoned up her courage and asked, ‘Do you not like being asked about the programme?’
Stefan ran a hand through his hair and sighed. ‘No, no…though I admit I’m a little surprised I still get recognised. I was only on it for one series, and that was four years ago.’
‘Well, all I can tell you is you certainly made an impression on my friends. I was living in Miami at the time and they used to send me long, detailed emails about you. Of course, I found it a little hard to believe that someone could be as hot and smart as they said you were.’
‘But now that you’ve met me…’
‘Well, yes, now I believe.’ Luna grinned and started to say more, but then thought better of it.
Seeing the question in her eyes, Stefan said, ‘Go on, Miss Gregory. Believe me, you won’t ask me anything some drunk City boy hasn’t already asked at 3am in a pub gents.’
‘Is it true what the papers said, that you had to leave after the…’
‘Scandal?’ Stefan suggested. ‘The ill-advised dalliance with one of my protégés?’ He cocked an eyebrow at Luna. ‘Well, what do you think? One of the experts on a factual entertainment programme has a liaison with someone he’s offered business advice to – after, I would hasten to add, filming at her business was completed. And then the protégé goes to the tabloids with her version of events, complete with topless photos. Do you think the producers said to themselves, “Oh, this is just too scandalous. People will be watching this programme for all the wrong reasons!”’
Stefan adopted a slightly outraged Oxford lisp for this last bit that was surprisingly hilarious, and Luna exploded with laughter. She was still gasping and wiping a tear from her eye a few moments later, when he continued, ‘They begged me to stay. But it was only ever a one-series deal for me.’
‘Why?’
Stefan hesitated, then said, ‘My business was new, and it was struggling. Exposure on the programme helped to raise its profile. My profile. But after one series it had served its purpose. If I’d stayed on the show, I’d have become…something else.’
‘Well, it’s a source of ongoing sadness for my friends that you aren’t still on it. Jem particularly.’
‘So,’ Stefan shifted in his seat, tapping his fingers on the table. ‘You have known Jem and Rod since university?’
‘Yes. I lived across from Jem in the halls of residence. I was there the very night she first met Rod.’
‘And was she always so lively?’
Luna gave that some consideration. ‘No, her look is deceiving. Jem can be very shy. She must like you, to be so relaxed around you.’
Stefan smiled, and it pulled at Luna inside a little that he cared what her friends thought of him.
‘At uni we always said Jem was the kind one of our little group of friends,’ she went on. ‘She’s still that way.’
‘And you? What were you? The hot one?’
Luna gave him an are you mad? look. ‘No. That was my roommate Nancy. She was also the determined one. And the sometimes slightly scary one.’
‘So what were you, Luna?’
‘I was the quiet one.’
*
Later that night, having no particular plans for the evening, Luna decided to take a leisurely bath and read her copy of Grazia magazine. Annoyingly, her bedroom wasn’t en suite and the sole bathroom on her attic floor was located at the end of the hallway. The bathroom had been installed in the early twentieth century, the very ultimate in modern convenience at the time, but now, with its water tank and chain pull above the loo, ancient claw-foot bath and tiles that looked like they’d come directly from a Turkish bath, it slightly unnerved Luna. Living, as she did, on her own in the attic, she got into the habit of leaving the bathroom door open when she bathed – particularly at night, when something about the dim lighting in the bathroom spooked her.
Not that she believed in the abundant ghosts said to haunt Arborage, heavens no. Still, she thought as she poured a generous measure of bubble bath into the tub and hopped in while it filled, the open door was a comfort. If the door was open, there was no way an axe followed by a crazy man were going to come through it. (One time when Jem and Rod spent the night, Rod left Luna a little souvenir in the form of REDRUM, finger-drawn onto her bathroom mirror for her to discover the next time she took a shower. A prank she had yet to forgive.)
Settling into the bath, she lifted her hair from her nape and dropped it over the roll top edge of the bath. After the shaving incident in her teens, she’d regrown it with grim determination till it regained its previous length touching the base of her spine. Even if she did always wear it up, she knew how long it was and she liked the weight of it at that length.
She’d just opened her Grazia when she heard the sound of music from downstairs and remembered that Isabelle had guests, who were now clearly getting into party mode. Isabelle’s outings to Arborage were a source of slight tension between her and her mother. Her friends had a bad habit of thinking the entire house was at their disposal, and after they broke an expensive vase from a display in the east wing one weekend, the Marchioness firmly restricted future parties to the west wing. Fortunately, there were over twenty bedrooms in the west wing, and the Marchioness’s own suite was situated well away from the second-floor bedrooms where Isabelle would have placed her guests. Luna heard laughter on the stairs and wished her own rooms were similarly isolated, her irritation growing into alarm as the noise got louder and two drunken men stumbled into the hallway just outside her bathroom.
The first, a tall, toffish young man dressed entirely in Jack Wills and carrying a decanter of sherry, took one look through the bathroom door and drawled, ‘Hel-lo, what do we have here?’
His mate, a slightly dumpy man-boy with a pathetic patch of fluff on his chin, had the good grace to mumble a quick apology and quickly back his way back down the stairs, but Jack Wills stopped and put his head into the bathroom, eying Luna lasciviously.
‘It’s a veritable water nymph. A selkie sent to tempt me…’ he began, as Luna rolled her eyes and sank deeper into the tub. She was just preparing to deliver a stinging retort when a disembodied arm grabbed him.
To her combined amazement and amusement, she heard Stefan’s voice saying, ‘Sorry, but this part of the house is private,’ over the protests of his captive as they descended the stairs. Luna sat up in the bath and dropped her magazine on the floor, hand stretched out toward her robe on the towel rail in readiness for a quick escape. Hearing nothing more in the ensuing moments, however, she sunk back into the water and closed her eyes.
‘Everything alright here?’
/>
Luna jerked and sat bolt upright again. It was Stefan, leaning against the doorframe, casually taking in the view.
‘Oh for f—’ she fumed, before realising that the bubbles weren’t providing complete coverage to her assets. Lowering herself back into the bath, she said, ‘Yes, everything’s fine. Thanks for that.’
He, of course, looked his usual suave self in jeans and a dark blue shirt that served to complement the blond stubble on his cheeks. His eyes were sparkling, whether from drink or the tableau in front of him, Luna couldn’t tell.
‘Right, well…’ she began.
‘Would it be terribly inappropriate of me to say that you do look rather like a water nymph, lying there like that?’ Stefan enquired.
‘It would, really.’
‘Or that I like you very much with your hair down?’
‘You’re going to have to leave now.’
Stefan nodded, but seemed in no particular rush to comply. ‘How long is your hair, anyway? Very long, I think.’
At this Luna grabbed a bar of Pears from the soap dish and launched it at him. Stefan ducked just in time, laughing.
‘Goodnight, Luna,’ he said, making his way back down the stairs.
Chapter Eight
Luna bent her head close to the Marchioness’s ear and whispered, ‘That’s Joan. She works for Tours and she’s with her husband Allan. You’ve met him.’
Twenty-four hours after her surprise visitation in the bath, Luna was standing with Lady Wellstone in a receiving line outside the main gallery, where the volunteers evening was just getting underway. After a day of controlled frenzy orchestrating the final preparations, Luna was pleased to note that a lovely arrangement of Arborage-grown flowers and greenery awaited guests inside the gallery, along with champagne, hors d’oeuvres and a string quartet playing appropriately tasteful music. Apparently they’d hosted a less lavish, more relaxed thank-you barbecue four years earlier, only to be inundated with complaints; having few opportunities to get out their glad rags in their everyday lives, Arborage’s volunteer workforce valued its annual black-tie event. A chance to rub shoulders with the family, for Lady Wellstone insisted that Helen and Isabelle attend.
