I tried to hide the flinch. Not Leo. Never Leo. Only one person ever called me that.
The silence stretched, until Flo broke it with a slightly brittle laugh. ‘Ha! Right. OK. Well, this is going to be so much fun! Clare’s not here yet – but as maid of honour I felt I should do my duty and get here first!’
‘What hideous tortures have you got lined up for us then?’ Nina asked as she yanked her case across the threshold. ‘Feather boas? Chocolate penises? I warn you, I’m allergic to them – I have an anaphylactic reaction. Don’t make me get my Epipen out.’
Flo laughed nervously. She looked at me and then back at Nina, trying to gauge whether Nina was joking. Nina’s delivery is hard to read if you don’t know her. Nina stared back seriously, and I could tell she was wondering whether to dangle the bait a bit closer.
‘Lovely, um … house,’ I said, to try to head her off, although in truth lovely wasn’t the word I was thinking of. In spite of the trees to either side, the place looked painfully exposed, baring its great glass facade to the eyes of the whole valley.
‘Isn’t it!’ Flo beamed, looking relieved to be back on safe ground. ‘It’s actually my aunt’s holiday house, but she doesn’t come here much in the winter – too isolated. Sitting room’s through here …’ She led us through an echoing hallway the full height of the house, and into a long, low room with the entire opposite wall made of glass, facing the forest. There was something strangely naked about it, like we were in a stage set, playing our parts to an audience of eyes out there in the wood. I shivered, and turned my back to the bare glass, looking round the room. In spite of the long squashy sofas, the place felt oddly bare – and after a second I realised why. It wasn’t just the lack of clutter and the minimalist decor – two pots on the mantelpiece, a single Mark Rothko painting on the wall – but the fact that there wasn’t a single book in the whole place. It didn’t even feel like a holiday cottage – every place I’ve ever stayed in has had a shelf of curling Dan Browns and Agatha Christies. It felt more like a show home.
‘Landline is in here.’ Flo pointed to a vintage dial-and-cord phone that looked strangely lost in this modernist environment. ‘Mobile reception is very glitchy so feel free to use it.’
But I wasn’t looking at the phone. Above the stark modern fireplace was something even more out of place: a polished shotgun, perched on wooden pegs drilled into the wall. It looked like it had been transplanted from a country pub. Was it real?
I tried to tear my eyes away as I realised Flo was still talking.
‘… and upstairs are the bedrooms,’ she finished. ‘Want a hand with those cases?’
‘No, I’m fine,’ I said, at the same time Nina said, ‘Well, if you’re offering …’
Flo looked taken aback, but gamely took Nina’s huge, wheeled case and began to lug it up the flight of frosted-glass stairs.
‘As I was saying,’ she panted as we rounded the newel post, ‘there’s four bedrooms. I thought we’d have me and Clare in one, you guys in another, Tom will have to have his own, obvs.’
‘Obvs,’ said Nina, straight-faced.
I was too busy processing the news that I’d be sharing a room. I’d assumed I’d have my own space to retreat to.
‘And that just leaves Mels – Melanie, you know – as the odd one out. She’s got a six-month-old so I thought out of us girls, she probably deserved a room of her own the most!’
‘What? She’s not bringing it, is she?’ Nina looked genuinely alarmed.
Flo gave a honking laugh and then put her hand up to her mouth, smothering the noise self-consciously. ‘No! Just, you know, she’ll probably need a good night’s sleep more than the rest of us.’
‘Oh, OK.’ Nina peered into one of the bedrooms. ‘Which one is ours then?’
‘The two back ones are the biggest. You and Lee can have the one on the right if you like, it’s got twin beds. The other one’s got a four-poster double, but I don’t mind squishing up with Clare.’
She stopped, breathing hard, on the landing and gestured to a blond wood door on the right-hand side. ‘There you go.’
Inside there were two neat white beds and a low dressing table, all as anonymous as a hotel room, and, facing the beds, the creepily obligatory wall of glass, looking north over the pine forest. Here it was harder to understand. The ground sloped up at the back of the house and so there was no spectacular view as there was from the front. Instead the effect was more claustrophobic than anything – a wall of dark green, already deepening into shadow with the setting sun. There were heavy cream curtains gathered in each corner, and I had to fight the urge to rip them across the enormous expanse of glass.
Behind me Flo let Nina’s case fall with a thud to the floor. I turned, and she smiled, a huge beam that made her suddenly look almost as pretty as Clare.
‘Any questions?’
‘Yes,’ Nina said. ‘Mind if I smoke in here?’
Flo’s face fell. ‘I’m afraid my aunt doesn’t like smoking indoors. But you’ve got a balcony.’ She wrestled with a folding door in the glass wall for a moment and then flung it open. ‘You can smoke out here if you like.’
‘Super,’ Nina said. ‘Thanks.’
Flo struggled with the door again, and then swung it shut. She straightened, her face pink with exertion, dusting her hands on her skirt. ‘Right! Well, I’ll let you get unpacked. See you downstairs, yah?’
‘Yah!’ Nina said enthusiastically, and I tried to cover it by saying ‘Thanks!’ unnecessarily loudly, in a way that only managed to make me sound weirdly aggressive.
‘Um, yeah! OK!’ Flo said, uncertainly, and then she backed out of the doorway and was gone.
‘Nina …’ I said warningly, as she made her way over to gaze out across the forest.
‘What?’ she said over her shoulder, absent-mindedly. And then, ‘So Tom’s definitely of the male persuasion, judging by Flo’s determination to quarantine his raging Y chromosomes from our delicate lady parts.’
I couldn’t help but snort. That’s the thing about Nina. You forgive her stuff that other people would never get away with.
‘I think he’s probably gay – don’t you? I mean, why would he be on a hen night otherwise?’
‘Um, contrary to what you seem to believe, batting for the other team doesn’t actually change your gender. I think. No, wait—’ She peered down her top. ‘No, we’re all good. Double-Ds all present and correct.’
‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’ I banged my own case down on the bed, and then remembered my washbag, and unzipped it more gingerly. My trainers were on top, and I set them down neatly by the door, a reassuring little ‘emergency exit’ sign. ‘Hen nights are partly about an appreciation of the male form. That’s what women have in common with gay men.’
‘Christ, now you tell me. Perfect excuse lined up and you never trotted it out until now. Could you Reply-all to my next hen-night invitation saying “Sorry, Nina can’t come as she doesn’t appreciate the male form”?’
‘Oh for God’s sake. I said partly an appreciation.’
‘It’s all right.’ She turned back to the window, peering out into the forest, the tree trunks dark streaks in the green gloaming. There was a tragic crack in her voice. ‘I’m used to being excluded from heteronormative society.’
‘Fuck off,’ I said grumpily, and when she turned around she was laughing.
‘Why are we here, anyway?’ she asked, throwing herself backwards onto one of the twin beds and kicking off her shoes. ‘I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen Clare in about three years.’