'We put her in the boot. Then we go back to the party.'
Nathan put his head in his hands and began to groan.
'I'll say I found you,' said Bob, looking up now. 'I'll say I found you by the side of the road. You'd seen Sara dancing with what's his name, Mark. Flirting with him, whatever. You were drunk and pissed off. You were trying to walk into the village, to catch a minicab home. You didn't realize how far it was, or how cold. I'm on my way home. I see you, I pull over. We're parked at the side of the road, talking about Sara, love and the meaning of life. All right? I talk you into going back, saying sorry to her. So now we go back. We stay at the party for half an hour, and then you have to make sure absolutely make sure -- that you have an argument with Sara, because you're going to storm out and everyone is going to see you. I'll follow on. I'll say I'm driving you home. And then we'll drive back here.
And get rid of her.'
Nathan rode a swell of panic, a surge like surf, and he rode it down again.
'I can't do that.'
'You have to.'
'I can't.
'Do you have any better ideas?'
'I'm not thinking straight. I'm fucked. I've had too much coke.'
'You haven't got time to think straight. We have to get back to the party. We have to confuse the timeline.'
'What timeline?'
'What time we were at the party, and what time she was. Nobody saw you go in there together, nobody saw her leave with you. So we need to be back at that party. And we need to be seen at that party.
Everybody has to see us. Acting normal.'
Things were shifting in Nathan's peripheral vision. He was scared to look.
He couldn't remember a time before this hateful old Volvo, a time before Charlie Parker on the CD player, a time before Elise.
'I can't come back here.'
'We have to. Because only a local would know it.'
All this time, they hadn't made eye contact. Now Nathan swivelled in his seat.
'We're going to get caught.'
'No, we're not. We just have to get through the next few hours.
There will never be a time as bad as right now. I promise you that.
This is the worst of it.'
Bob opened the door and squeezed himself out into the cold night air. He stood there for a while, his breath steaming, looking at the stars.
Soon, Nathan had joined him.
8
Nathan expected Mark Derbyshire's house to have changed. It would be antiqued, as if an age had passed. The guests would be slumbering and ivy-wrapped, ready to stir when he located Sara and woke her with a chaste kiss.
But the house had not changed and time had not slipped. The same party was taking place, with the same people in it.
Bob parked the Volvo on the gravel drive and they walked to the front door. The same hired butler took their coats. Nathan felt soiled, as if his clothes and hair and eyes and ears were caked with mud and shit and blood and semen -- but he looked merely dishevelled and blank-eyed, as if he'd fallen asleep on the back seat.
Passing his car coat to the doorman, he caught a whiff of Elise's perfume; something young and clean, the smell of sleepy sunny afternoons, the smell of laughing on English seafronts.
Bob followed him to the ballroom, where Nathan expected the guests to form a slow, chanting ring around him. But no mob formed.
They were too busy dancing to 'Waterloo'.
He got himself a drink. He had to order it three times; his voice had gone. He drained the glass and asked for another. No tonic this time.
He followed the bleach stink to the swimming pool. Several girls were in there, all of them wearing swimming costumes and bikinis, having come prepared to be spontaneous. There were several men in there, too -- in Speedo trunks and board shorts, their underwater bellies pale and rippling, their tuber-pale legs diminishing to points.
There was some modest screaming and splashing.
Wearied by the din of the main room, many guests had retreated to gather round the edges of the pool; they stood in discreet, sedate clumps. In one of those clumps stood Sara. Her group was comprised of several women and a few men. Among the men were Mark Derbyshire and Howard.
Sara was as flawless as the retreating cliffs of Dover, her purity a trick of distance and light. Nathan joined the group, which grew quiet in a way that implied he'd been the topic of conversation.
Pretending not to look at him, everyone looked at him.
Sara said, 'And where have you been?'
He had no name for it.
'I'm sorry. I had too much to drink. I went for a walk. To clear my head.'
'You went for a walk where?'
'I don't know.'
'Because there's not really anywhere to go, is there?'
'Well, obviously I know that now.'
'I don't know what's wrong with you.'
This was quite enough for the other members of the group, each of whom had now found somewhere else to look. 'Waterloo' ended.
'Ant Music' came on. Screeching and splashing in the pool behind him. Perfume on his lapel. Semen in his underwear. And Bob behind him, casting a violet shadow.
Mark Derbyshire was grimacing, perhaps trying not to smirk.
Howard was staring into the depths of his drink, a grey lock fallen across his brow.
'Look,' said Nathan, 'I had too much to drink. I'm sorry.'
'You had too much of something.'
'Too much of you.'
He had a little time to wonder where that had come from --before Mark Derbyshire grabbed his elbow and said, 'Right, sunshine.'
Nathan
struggled, but Mark Derbyshire's hairy grip was absurdly powerful.
A flush rose from between Sara's breasts and spread over her sternum.
Nathan
pulled at Mark Derbyshire's hand, shouting, 'Fuck off!'
Mark Derbyshire was implacable. 'Mate, you had way too much of whatever you've had. Now let's all calm down a bit.'
Nathan tried to punch him. But he drew his fist back too far, too fast, and lost his balance. He fell. The ground slammed the wind from him. He struck his head on the wet edge of the swimming pool.
He lay there on his back, in the wet, trying to breathe. Mark Derbyshire and Sara and Howard and Bob were looking down on him.
Behind them, steam and accumulated human exhalation on the glass ceiling had erased the crisp night sky. There was only a shifting, grey obfuscation that seemed about to clear, but never did.
As Nathan got to his feet, he was aware of a great quiet. The guests in the pool stood like statues on a half- drowned island while he brushed the worst of the water from his sopping arse.
Sara's lip twisted, and soon the rest of her face followed. She spat, very slowly: 'Just piss off, Nathan.'
