The Christmas Party Read online

  She looked left as she raced past the church and the graveyard, where so many of her ancestors now slept in eternal peace. Her eye caught sight of the large mossed stone angel on the central tomb, head bowed and hands pressed together in prayer. But instead of reassuring her of God’s grace, as it was supposed to, its unseeing eyes had always given Willow nightmares as a girl and she could never pass it without a shiver. Perhaps she had just never believed enough. Perhaps she had always been a cynic.

  She bombed out of the village and along the narrow lane where the plane trees reached towards one another and touched fingers overhead. She had used to love cycling beneath them on the way home, her bike wheeling through the pools of golden evening light that somehow managed to penetrate the dense canopies, pigeons and chaffinches calling from the branches. Whenever she thought of home, which wasn’t often these days, this arched view through the tree tunnel was one of the most wistful – and certainly one of the better ones – that came to mind.

  Home.

  She could see it already now: the grand stone pillars topped with the flying eagles, the ornate black ironwork gates pinned back as though in readiness for her arrival, though in truth they were rarely closed. Her heart beat harder as she turned in sharply and felt the scale of the place mushroom – the drive grew wider than the road, sweeping down a gentle slope and planted on both sides with fastigiate hornbeams. The sky opened up like a thrown-out tablecloth, the parkland rising and falling with careless grace, acres of frost-stippled grass interrupted only by ancient yews with thick boughs so heavy they grew along the ground. In the distance, looping around the promontory of the sprawling estate, the dark ribbon of sleeping sea gleamed like an oil slick.

  A lone stag nibbling on a rowan tree lifted its head as her headlights grazed the ground, steadily bringing into view the colossal mass of honey limestone that had been quarried and first set in place here seven hundred years ago. Even as a very young girl, she had instinctively understood her home was special, extraordinary even, but seeing it again after a three-year absence . . . her heart contracted at the sight of it: the battlemented square towers on either flank, the canted bay in the centre, the ornamental doorway at the top of a flight of balustraded steps . . . Lorne Castle stood as proud and magnificent as ever.

  But this was no sentimental homecoming and unlike the dark sleeping village, the lights blazed from within as though there was a fire raging. Not a room was left unlit as though light itself was all that was needed to drive away the darkness that was threatening to claim her father.

  She parked with trembling hands, noticing how her sisters’ cars – Pip’s muddy Land Cruiser, Ottie’s old-school yellow Mini – were parked at odd angles at the bottom of the steps, suggesting haste, hurry. Panic.

  She felt her anxiety spike again. All the way here, as she had driven through the night and along the width of the country, she had told herself it was a false alarm, maybe even her family’s way of forcing a reunion, bringing her back into the fold when she had refused point-blank every request. But there was real crisis here, she could feel it, a metallic tang in the night air. She shot from the car, oblivious now to the owl hooting for its mate in a nearby tree as she ran up the limestone steps two at a time, feeling suddenly dislocated and anomalous in her hard-edged concert clothes.

  She ran through the giant arched door that was as thick as her forearm and into the great hall, stopping as suddenly as if she’d run into a wall. Her eyes scanned the double-height space, tripping over the ornate, dark – almost-black – wooden panelling and split staircase. Great bunches of holly and eucalyptus had been tied at intervals to the bannisters, urns filled with elegant flower arrangements on every surface, a silver banner that read ‘Happy Anniversary’ strung up along the gallery. Some ashtrays were filled with cigarette butts and an overlooked bottle of whiskey was tucked half out of sight at the bottom of the stairs. She knew it had been her parents’ thirtieth wedding anniversary today because she had worked very hard at making sure she didn’t think about it all. But it wasn’t the remnants of a party that she saw but instead the bloody-minded constancy of the place: nothing had changed in her absence, not a single thing. The harp was in its usual place on the half-landing, Rusty – her father’s prized suit of armour, belonging to the 1st Knight of Lorne – still standing stiffly between the dining room and yellow drawing room doors. The Qing vase was still set on the guéridon table in the middle of the space, the grandfather clock still four minutes behind time. In three years, she was the only thing to have stepped out of position here.

  A sound – muffled, alarming – came to her ear from upstairs and she ran again, feeling the panic course. Fists pumping, she tore up the stairs, resolving to say ‘sorry’ first. They were beyond recriminations now. She had let the past dictate the present for too long.

  She got to the landing but on the top step she tripped, her foot catching on one of the many threadbare rugs that criss-crossed over each other like patchwork. She staggered forwards, arms outstretched to break her fall just as a door opened and a pair of socked feet came into sight, a twig of straw caught in a trouser crease.

  ‘Willow,’ Pip gasped, catching her and staggering backwards.

  ‘I’m here,’ she panted. ‘I made it. Where is he?’

  ‘Willow.’

  ‘Pip, get out of the way,’ she said urgently. Because in that one word, she had heard a tone. ‘In there?’

  Pip’s fingers squeezed harder around her arms, forcing her to stop, to look up. To understand—

  ‘Willow,’ she whispered.

  Willow shook her head, feeling an icy hand clutch her heart. ‘No . . . No.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The world tipped onto its side, the ground falling away beneath her feet as she felt herself begin to slide. To fall. She couldn’t be too late. She couldn’t. She’d driven through the night, across the country. There had been no faster way to get here—

  ‘He passed a few minutes ago.’

  Her legs buckled beneath her, taking Pip down too as she fell. And kept falling.

  There had been no faster way to get here. Nothing she could have done to have seen her father one last time.

  Unless—

  The realization was devastating. Unless, of course, she had never left him at all.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Eat this.’ Ottie set down the bowls of porridge, the drizzle of honey a translucent vein swirled across the top, steam twisting up to the high ceilings.

  Nobody moved.

  ‘I said eat,’ she said in her best bossy Eldest’s voice. ‘You’re no good to anyone with low blood sugar and I for one did not pack my smelling salts today.’

  Still, nothing.

  Ottie sighed and sank down into the nearest empty chair at the long refectory table, looking down at her own bowl with a look of disdain. She wasn’t sure she could force it down either. ‘Look, we’ve got to try to hold it together. We’ve got to be strong. Mam’s not . . . well, this isn’t going to be an easy road. So, eat.’

  There was another long pause, as though she’d been talking behind a wall and no one could hear her, but after a moment, Pip picked up her spoon and did as she was told; the motion was mechanical, almost robotic, and Ottie knew she might just as well be eating dog food – she wasn’t tasting any of it. Willow lifted the spoon from the table too but it lay cradled in her hand, hovering across the bowl as she stared into space again, the fingers of her other hand automatically rubbing on the grooves inflicted by knives and knocks over tens of generations. Their father had grown up at this table and his father before him, and his . . .

  The clatter of Pip’s spoon on the bowl made them all startle. Pip was staring into the abyss of porridge, shoulders hunched. ‘I’m going to throw up,’ she whispered.

  Ottie reached over to her, rubbing her arm. ‘It’s the shock, Pip. Digestion is always the first thing to shut down.’

  Willow let her spoon drop too, as though Pip’s nausea r
eleased her from the obligation to eat.

  Ottie sighed, feeling defeated, feeling their despair. ‘I know it all feels impossible – eating, sleeping . . . going on without Dad . . .’ Her voice broke as she looked at her exhausted sisters. ‘But somehow we have to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and make the best of things.’

  Pip’s swollen eyes swivelled to meet hers. ‘How do we “make the best” of Dad being gone?’ There was no sarcasm in the question for once, only bleak despair.

  At her words, Willow dropped her head, elbows splayed wide on the table as she wound her fingers through her hair, as though trying to literally hold herself together. She was eerily quiet, having said barely a word since she’d arrived last night. The news that she was too late to say goodbye seemed to have knocked the breath from her body and her silent scream and mute sobs in the hall had been as heart-wrenching as anything Ottie had ever seen. Her little sister had seemed furious and devastated all at once, and whilst Ottie and Pip had spent the night in their mother’s room, Willow had fled to her old bedroom and bolted the door – present, and yet still absent.

  A knock at the back door made them all turn and they loosened in unison at the sight of Mrs Mac’s face peering through the glass. She was wearing her usual patched tweed overcoat and gloves, her grey hair pulled up in a bun, her reading glasses perched as ever on the end of her nose and magnifying her shrewd, kindly eyes.

  She came in without ceremony, pulling off her gloves and regarding them all with a ‘tut’ in her expression. Ottie knew that meant they all looked wretched, purplish crescent moons hanging below their eyes like bruises, complexions wan and drawn. Obviously they hadn’t slept, as they’d taken it in turns to sit beside their mother’s bed, helpless as she had howled and wailed like a wounded animal.

  ‘You poor, poor chicks,’ she said in her distinctive low voice. ‘Where’s your mam?’ she asked, setting down a basket and hugging them briskly but warmly in turn, lingering longest with Willow. They had always been close, Willow, the baby of the family, and Mrs Mac, wanting to hold on to her the longest. Willow’s sudden break from home three years earlier had hit Mrs Mac just as hard as the rest of them.

  ‘Upstairs,’ Ottie murmured. ‘Dr Fitz came back this morning and gave her a sedative.’

  Mrs Mac paused, then nodded. ‘Aye. Probably best.’

  They all stared at one another for a moment, the tragedy sitting between them like a lumpen mattress: unavoidable. Painful. This time yesterday they had been getting ready for the anniversary party in their respective homes, laying out clothes and taking long baths in readiness of an afternoon spent sipping champagne and telling lively stories; the anticipation in the village had been palpable – the Lornes’ parties were always extravagant, exuberant and drawn-out affairs, and Ottie had been flabbergasted to see their former housekeeper in make-up and a velvet dress; she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her out of a pinny before.

  ‘Tea?’ Ottie asked, moving to get up from the table. ‘I just made some. The water’s boiled.’

  Mrs Mac placed a hand on her shoulder, keeping her firmly in place. ‘I’ll see to myself. You sit there. You look like you need the rest.’

  She regarded them all critically again, but there was love in her eyes. Although she had stopped working for them five years ago, she had been part headmistress, part nanny, part spy, during her twenty-four-year tenure here, making sure the girls ate well and were ‘nourished’, keeping up with their homework, and providing an inside scoop on what all their crushes were up to in the village. Many was the time the Lorne girls had bemoaned their ‘bad luck’ at being effectively imprisoned in eight hundred acres of land, away from so much as a streetlamp, much less a pavement or bus stop. ‘You need to keep your strength up, for your mam’s sake. She’s not as strong as you lasses. She needs you to help her get through this.’

  ‘And we will,’ Ottie said, nodding and looking determinedly at her sisters. If they wouldn’t listen to her, at least Mrs Mac’s word was regarded as law.

  ‘Everyone sends their love. I’ve nigh-on thirty meals in the car for you. You’ll be eating pies till May, I should wager.’

  ‘That’s very kind of them,’ Pip murmured, still looking green about the gills.

  ‘Well, they see it as the very least they can do for you,’ Mrs Mac said, bringing her tea over to the large table and sitting down heavily in the rush chair, one hand falling idly to pet the lurchers Mabel and Dot, who were greeting her with a mournful head on each thigh. ‘What a shock it is for the whole village. Everyone’s numb. O’Malley closed the shop when he heard, even though he was due a delivery from the abattoir.’

  Shock. It was such a tangible thing. Ottie felt like she could reach out and bite down on it. She glanced across at Willow again – here but not here, staring into the grain of the wood as though there was something written there, just for her.

  ‘Do they know what it was that took him yet?’ Mrs Mac asked, her eyes full of concern.

  Ottie flinched, hating the very word, not wanting to give it shape or sound. ‘Aneurysm.’

  ‘Oh—’ Mrs Mac pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut as though the word itself had been a slap. ‘So then it was quick,’ she murmured, nodding over and over, almost as though soothing herself. ‘That’s a mercy at least.’

  ‘Actually no,’ Ottie said quietly, not wanting to think about it again, to remember those horrific dragging moments . . . ‘He survived for nearly four hours.’

  Mrs Mac frowned. ‘But . . . I thought they took you quick, like.’

  ‘Doctor Fitz said only forty per cent of people die immediately, three in five die within two weeks.’ She shrugged, hating that these statistics had stuck in her brain, facts she had never known she never wanted to know. ‘He said Dad had been diagnosed with it last Easter but because of where it was on the carotid artery, they couldn’t operate to remove it.’

  ‘He knew?’

  Ottie nodded, swallowing down her own shock. Anger. Sense of betrayal. ‘The consultant had told him that although it could go at any time, there was every reason to think he could live with it for years if he was careful. Most aneurysms don’t rupture. Only one in a hundred burst each year, so . . .’ She stopped herself, hearing the robotic note in her voice. Knowing the facts didn’t alter the outcome. Her father couldn’t be saved by statistics.

  ‘Jeesht, the poor man,’ Mrs Mac whispered. ‘And he never told anyone?’

  ‘Mam, but she said he didn’t want to worry us.’ She looked away. ‘Typical Dad, always looking on the bright side – he assumed he’d be the one who got away from it.’

  ‘Well, of course he would. He always had the best of luck, your dad.’

  Ottie’s eyes darted to her sisters, but for once, they didn’t react to the assertion. Whatever other privileges their father might have enjoyed, good luck had not been one of them.

  ‘So what happened? He was . . .’ Mrs Mac didn’t finish but Ottie knew what she’d been going to say: that he’d been fine when they’d left, hailing hearty cheerios from the castle steps, his cheeks flushed on wine and happiness.

  ‘He and Mam went upstairs to change when Mam says he suddenly complained of a blinding headache. She ran to ring for an ambulance but by the time she came back, he was already unconscious.’

  ‘Oh jeesht, the poor thing. What a shock it must have been for her.’

  Ottie was quiet for a moment. Part of her mother’s anguish – torment, even – was the fact that in his final conscious moments, he had been left alone. ‘Yes. Dr Fitz was here within minutes but . . .’ Ottie swallowed and shook her head. ‘He said there was nothing could be done. It was a severe subarachnoid haemorrhage. There was no hope.’

  The housekeeper’s fingers interlaced around the mug and Ottie noticed her hands had begun trembling. Their old housekeeper may not be given to scenes of high emotion but she had a tender heart. ‘’Tis a terrible thing, so it is . . . and so close to Ch
ristmas too,’ she murmured, lapsing into devastated silence with them.

  The flicker and pop of the flame from the old yellow Aga was the only sound in the room and Ottie knew that meant there was a northerly wind today. It felt oddly appropriate, as though it was Death’s chariot: biting and merciless, whipping around the stone walls and waiting for them in the bitter November chill. But in here . . . Ottie’s eyes skimmed the kitchen. Out of all the heavily buttressed rooms in the castle, this one had always felt the safest. It was her favourite, possibly because it always felt so cosy, the tall, narrow, leaded windows with stone sills allowing the sunlight to fall into the room in long shafts. The floor was terracotta-tiled, worn to a pale peach from generations of foot traffic; long free-standing preparation tables were pushed against the walls and laden with cookbooks and food processors, vases and Victorian banded creamware: giant milk jugs, butter dishes and cheese plates named with bold black lettering lest their purpose should be forgotten. Quantities of mismatched plates, many chipped, stood side-on to the room in racks and open shelves; copper pans dangled from the old rack in the ceiling. Nothing bad could ever happen in this room, much less Death stroll in.

  ‘Well, I should be getting on,’ Mrs Mac said finally into the silence, rising from the table with effort.

  ‘You’re not going already, are you?’ Pip pleaded, the desperation sounding in her voice. She was always so convincingly strong but there was no such bluff today; like her, her sister felt hollowed out and frightened now their father was gone. He had been the family’s anchor, its leader. Their mother, though beautiful, serene, loving and capable in various ways – if anyone wanted a colour scheme for the bedroom, she was the go-to expert – was fundamentally a fragile creature, spoilt by their father’s love as he sheltered her from the worst of the world’s betrayals and disappointments. Mrs Mac was the only functioning adult here.

  The housekeeper patted her hand warmly. ‘Of course I’m not going, child. I only just got here. I’m going to make a start on the bedrooms. The beds’ll need changing and none of you are in a fit state to see to it.’