Friday evening. Friday was party night for the retired hedonists at Valley Farm and usually at this time Annie would be getting ready to be social. She’d be lying in a deep bath and deciding what she was going to wear. She wasn’t usually competitive about how she looked, but Lorraine formed a kind of challenge. Annie had seen the way John O’Kane looked at Lorraine Lucas and wondered if Sam was attracted to the woman too.
This evening, though, she was in the spare room preparing it for Lizzie’s return. Lizzie had never spent very long in the house. She’d stayed a couple of days when they’d first moved in, but she’d made it clear that she was bored out of her skull and soon moved back to the town, to the flat they’d rented for her. And soon after Lizzie had been charged with assault and remanded in custody. Even when she’d got bail she’d preferred to keep away.
Annie opened the window to air the place. It was almost dark, but still unseasonably warm. No wind at all. She heard a car drive up the valley and watched as it pulled up outside the farmhouse. Nigel and Lorraine, obviously already in party mood. They could see the light in the bedroom and the open window, and Nigel shouted up to her.
‘See you soon! We just popped into The Lamb for a quick one, but we’ll be ready in half an hour or so.’
Now the last thing Annie wanted was to go into the big house, to drink too much wine. She knew exactly how it would be: John O’Kane, brooding but somehow predatory. Janet, who became girlish and giggly after a few drinks, so the age seemed to fall away from her and she was an irresponsible student again. Nigel full of good cheer, bad jokes and stories from his past. Lorraine dreamy and distant as if her mind was somewhere else altogether. Annie wondered sometimes if Lorraine had a lover. Not the professor – that would be too obvious – but a younger man outside the valley, to distract her when Nigel became too boring.
‘I’m not sure. We might give it a miss this evening. You know what Sam is like, and we’re not feeling very sociable.’ Annie was thinking of Lorraine’s chilly response to the news that Lizzie would be coming home. She wasn’t sure they’d really be welcome.
‘Come on! Don’t be a spoilsport.’ Lorraine was right under the window now, her eyes glittering like a cat’s in the light that spilled out from the bedroom. ‘Come out to play. It’s Friday night.’
Annie couldn’t say no. She’d never been very good at saying no, and Lorraine’s personality was so fierce and she seemed so used to getting her own way that Annie couldn’t stand up to her. ‘Give us half an hour. I need to jump into the shower, and Sam has been in the garden most of the day.’ It occurred to her that Lorraine was almost as manipulative as Lizzie.
In the end Sam didn’t take too much persuading. ‘We’ve all been a bit uptight,’ he said. ‘These murders on the doorstep. Lizzie coming home. Perhaps it’d do us good. And it is Friday night.’ He fetched a bottle of wine from the pantry and a flan that he’d made the day before. Annie went upstairs again to have a shower. The water on her body seemed to clear her mind, but later, sitting at her dressing table to do her make-up, she found her hand was shaking as she tried to apply the mascara. She saw that she was as tense and nervous as she’d been all day. Perhaps Sam was right and they needed an evening with their friends to unwind. Perhaps she needed a couple of drinks too.
They could hear the music from the farmhouse as soon as they went out of their door. The Who singing about their generation. Inside Lorraine was moving across the room with a glass in her hand. She’d thrown her shoes into a corner and was barefoot, dancing with an invisible partner. Nigel had pushed the table back against the wall and was setting out plates, a cheeseboard and glasses. It seemed to Annie now that he never dressed like someone from their generation, but as someone much older. He could be a character in a Noël Coward play in his blazer. All he needed was a cravat.
Sam stepped aside to let Annie in first. They’d tapped at the door and then gone straight in. Lorraine came up to greet them, hugging them and kissing them on both cheeks. Sam, who was usually very careful about his personal space, didn’t seem to mind the hug. And almost immediately Jan and John were there too, appearing through the back door as if by magic. Jan wore a white cotton tunic over wide linen trousers, long silver earrings and actually looked rather glamorous. John was in a collarless shirt over jeans. Today these details seemed very clear and sharp. The background music, the clothes, the food on the table were all branded into her mind. Tonight, Annie thought, they’d all become caricatures of themselves.
Nigel was pouring drinks. He’d made a jug of some sort of cocktail and insisted that they try that first. It was syrupy and very alcoholic. She drank it too quickly and already the room appeared to spin. Everyone seemed to be talking too quickly and laughing too loud. John O’Kane came up behind her and pulled her into a dance. The music was slower now. One of the soppier Beatles numbers. She found herself enjoying the touch of his hand on her back and realized she must be even drunker than she’d thought. There was something flattering about his attention. Usually he talked about himself, his book, his work. Today he asked about her, murmuring so that she could just catch his words over the music.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah.’
He moved his hand from her back to her neck. The sensation of bare skin on bare skin, even here, in front of all these people, thrilled her. She glanced at Sam, who sitting next to Jan on the sofa. They seemed to be engaged in an intense conversation. Annie wondered if it was about Lizzie or if there was a sexual attraction there too, if Sam felt so relaxed with Jan, who was competent and easy to speak to, that he wanted to pull her towards him and kiss her.
We’re all getting old and desperate. We can’t believe we’re no longer attractive.
She pulled away gently from John. ‘I need some food to soak up some of the booze.’ She walked over to the table and cut herself some French bread and cheese. John followed her.
‘Is Jan okay?’ Because, looking at Janet more closely, Annie thought she looked tired and tense. She was still listening to Sam and giving him her full attention, but she’d been holding the same drink for the past hour and the fingers clutching the glass were rigid. Annie thought they all took Jan for granted. They all went to her with their troubles. Perhaps she needed someone to listen to her.
The professor shrugged. ‘She’s been moody for the last few days. When I ask her, she says it’s the murders. Something about being aware of her own mortality.’
The music changed again and Nigel and Lorraine were on their feet doing some elaborate jive, twisting and swinging, until Lorraine stumbled and they ended up in a giggling heap on the floor.
We’re too old to behave like this, Annie thought. We should have more dignity. We’re bad for each other. It’ll be good for us to have Lizzie at home. Someone younger to put our lives into proper perspective. All evening people seemed to come and go, swinging into her line of sight and then out of it, disappearing from the room and coming back with no explanation.
It was late. The music had stopped and nobody had bothered to put on a new CD. The room was lit by candles. Nigel had made coffee and they were drinking it with his malt whisky, beyond caring about the next morning’s hangover. Only Janet seemed relatively sober. She got to her feet and said she’d have to let the Carswell dogs out.
‘Shall I come with you?’ Sam, not John. John was slumped on the floor next to Annie, his head so close to her shoulder that she could smell his shampoo.
‘No,’ Janet said. ‘I won’t go far. Just down the track a little way.’
Sam started to get to his feet.
‘Really, I’m fine.’ Janet already had her hand on the door handle. ‘I could do with some time on my own. Send out a search party if I’m not back in quarter of an hour.’
They all laughed, but Annie made a note of the time on the clock on the wall. If Janet wasn’t back, she’d go and look for the woman herself.
Ten minutes had passed when they heard the scream. Distant, but clearly audible through the open window. There was no music in the room now and the noise cut through the silence. They were on their feet, running outside. There was the sound of their footsteps on the gravel, they were calling out Janet’s name and it was impossible to tell where the scream had come from. By now it was quite dark. No moon and no street lights.
‘Be quiet!’ It was the professor yelling over the chaos. Suddenly they were all still, listening.
Annie could hear the water in the burn below them. Then there was another sound. A dog barking. And footsteps on the track. The light of a small torch, moving in rhythm as the person holding it walked towards them.
‘Janet!’ The professor again.
‘Come here,’ she shouted. ‘You have to come here.’
Then they were all in motion again, tumbling down the track, stumbling like children racing down a grassy bank. Annie thought it was like a nightmare. The scream had sobered them a little, but not enough for this to make any sense.
When they reached her Janet was standing still. She had the dogs beside her. John put his arm around her. Annie thought it was the first time that the couple had had physical contact all evening. ‘Are you okay? I thought something dreadful had happened.’
‘It has.’ A pause. ‘At least I think it has. Perhaps I imagined it. Come with me and check.’
She walked back down the track a little way and shone her torch along the footpath that branched from it and led to the hill. Something was lying across the path. A sack of rubbish, Annie thought at first. Fly-tipping wasn’t unknown here in the valley.
‘We’d better stay here,’ Janet leaned forward as far as she could reach without losing balance. ‘I suppose the police will find things difficult if we all get too close, though the dogs have been there. They found her.’ The torchlight showed a woman. She’d been slashed by a knife. Over and over. There was blood all over her clothes. One of the shoes had fallen off and rested at a distance from her feet.
‘Who is she?’ Nigel seemed calm, almost detached. ‘I don’t recognize her from the village.’
Annie pushed her way to the front of the group so that she could get a better view. The clothes were familiar. The patent-leather shoe with its small heel. She felt suddenly bereft, as if a relative had died. ‘I know her. That’s Shirley Hewarth. She’s the social worker who’s been visiting our Lizzie.’