‘Oh, God, I forgot your mum emigrated. With … what’s his name? Your stepdad?’
‘Philip,’ I said. Why do I always feel like a sulky teenager when I say his name? It’s a perfectly normal name.
Nina shot me a sharp look, and then jerked her head at the sat-nav.
‘Stick that on, would you, and put in the postcode Flo gave us. It’s our only hope of getting out of Newcastle town centre alive.’
Westerhope, Throckle, Stanegate, Haltwhistle, Wark … the signs flashed past like a sort of poetry, the road unfurling like an iron-grey ribbon flung across the sheep-cropped moors and low hills. The sky overhead was clouded and huge, but the small stone buildings that we passed at intervals sat huddled into the dips in the landscape, as if they were afraid of being seen. I didn’t have to navigate, and reading in a car makes me feel sick and strange, so I closed my eyes, shutting out Nina and the sound of the radio, alone in my own head with the questions that were nagging there.
Why me, Clare? Why now?
Was it just that she was getting married and wanted to rekindle an old friendship? But if so, why hadn’t she invited me to the wedding? She’d invited Nina, clearly, so it couldn’t be a family-only ceremony or anything like that.
She shook her head in my imagination, admonishing me to be patient, to wait. Clare always did like secrets. Her favourite passtime was finding out something about you and then hinting at it. Not spreading it around – just veiled references in conversation, references that only you and she understood. References that let you know.
We stopped in Hexham for lunch, and a cigarette break for Nina, and then pushed on towards Kielder Forest, out into country lanes, where the sky overhead became huge. But as the roads grew narrower the trees seemed to come closer, edging across the close-cropped peaty turf until they stood sentinel at the roadside, held back only by a thin drystone wall.
As we entered the forest itself, the sat-nav coverage dropped off, and then died.
‘Hang on.’ I scrabbled in my handbag. ‘I’ve got those print-outs that Flo emailed.’
‘Well, aren’t you the girl scout of the year,’ Nina said, but I could hear the relief in her voice. ‘What’s wrong with an iPhone anyway?’
‘This is what’s wrong with them.’ I held up my mobile, which was endlessly buffering and failing to load Google Maps. ‘They disappear unpredictably.’ I looked at the print-outs. ‘The Glass House’, the search-header read, ‘Stanebridge Road’. ‘OK, there’s a right coming up. A bend and then a right, it must be any time—’ The turning whizzed past and I said – mildly, I thought – ‘That was it. We missed it.’
‘Fine bloody navigator you are!’
‘What?’
‘You’re supposed to tell me about the turning before we get to it, you know.’ She imitated the robotic voice of the sat-nav: ‘Make a left in – fifty – metres. Make a left in – thirty – metres. Turn around when safe to do so, you have missed your turning.’
‘Well, turn around when safe to do so, lady. You have missed your turning.’
‘Screw safe.’ Nina stamped on the brakes and did a fast, bad-tempered three-point turn just at another bend in the forest road. I shut my eyes.
‘What was that you were saying about karaoke?’
‘Oh it’s a dead end, no one was coming.’
‘Apart from the other half dozen people invited to this hen-do.’
I opened my eyes cautiously to find we were round and picking up speed in the opposite direction. ‘OK, it’s here. It looks like a footpath on the map but Flo’s definitely marked it.’
‘It is a footpath!’
She swung the wheel, we bumped through the opening, and the little car began jolting and bumping up a rutted, muddy track.
‘I believe the technical term is “unpaved road”,’ I said rather breathlessly, as Nina skirted a huge mud-filled trench that looked more like a watering hole for hippos, and wound round yet another bend. ‘Is this their drive? There must be half a mile of track here.’
We were on the last print-out, the one so big it was practically an aerial photograph, and I couldn’t see any other houses marked.
‘If it’s their drive,’ Nina said jerkily as the car bounced over another rut, ‘they should bloody well maintain it. If I break the chassis on this hire car I’m suing someone. I don’t care who, but I’m buggered if I’m paying for it.’
But as we rounded the next bend, we were suddenly there. Nina drove the car through a narrow gate, parked up and killed the engine, and we both got out, staring up at the house in front of us.
I don’t know what I’d expected, but not this. Some thatched cottage, perhaps, with beams and low ceilings. What actually stood in the forest clearing was an extraordinary collection of glass and steel, looking as if it had been thrown down carelessly by a child tired of playing with some very minimalist bricks. It looked so incredibly out of place that both Nina and I just stood, open-mouthed.
As the door opened I saw a flash of bright blondehair, and I had a moment of complete panic. This was a mistake. I should never have come, but it was too late to turn back.
Standing in the doorway was Clare.
Only – she was … different.
It was ten years, I tried to remind myself. People change, they put on weight. The people we are at 16 are not the people we are at 26 – I should know that, more than anyone.
But Clare – it was like something had broken, some light inside her had gone out.
Then she spoke and the illusion was broken. Her voice was the only thing that bore no resemblance to Clare whatsoever. It was quite deep, where Clare’s was high and girlish, and it was very, very posh.
‘Hi!!!’ she said, and somehow her tone gave the word three exclamation marks, and I knew, before she spoke again, who it was. ‘I’m Flo!’
You know when you see the brother or sister of someone famous, and it’s like looking at them, but in one of those fairground mirrors? Only one that distorts so subtly it’s hard to put your finger on what’s different, only that it is different. Some essence has been lost, a false note in the song.
That was the girl at the front door.
‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘It’s so great to see you! You must be—’ She looked from me to Nina and picked the easy option. Nina is six-foot-one and Brazilian. Well, her dad’s from Brazil. She was born in Reading and her mum’s from Dalston. She has the profile of a hawk and the hair of Eva Longoria.
‘Nina, right?’
‘Yup.’ Nina stuck out a hand. ‘And you’re Flo, I take it?’
‘Yah!’
Nina shot me a look that dared me to laugh. I never thought people really said Yah, or if they did, they got it punched out of them at school or sniggered out of them at university Maybe Flo was made of tougher stuff.
Flo shook Nina’s hand enthusiastically and then turned to me with a beaming smile. ‘In that case you’re … Lee, right?’
‘Nora,’ I said reflexively.
‘Nora?’ She frowned, puzzled.
‘My name’s Leonora,’ I said. ‘At school I was Lee, but now I prefer Nora. I did mention in the email.’
I’d always hated being Lee. It was a boy’s name, a name that lent itself to teasing and rhyme. Lee Lee needs a wee. Lee Lee smells of pee. And then with my surname, Shaw: We saw Lee Shaw on the sea shore.
Lee was dead and gone now. At least I hoped so.
‘Oh, right! I’ve got a cousin called Leonora! We call her Leo.’