Люси Фоли - The Guest List

I turn my back to him and drop my robe to the floor, sure I can feel his eyes on me. Enjoying the power of it. Then I lift the cover and slip into the bed and as I do my bare legs make contact with something. Solid and cold, the consistency of dead flesh. It seems to yield as I push my feet unwittingly into it and yet at the same time to wrap itself around my legs.

‘Jesus Christ! Jesus Fucking Christ!’

I leap from the bed, trip, half sprawl on the floor.

Will stares at me. ‘Jules? What is it?’

I can hardly answer him at first, too scared and repulsed by what I just felt. The panic has risen into my throat in a choke. The shock reverberates through me, deep and visceral and animal. It was the stuff of a nightmare – the sort of thing you dream about finding in your bed, only to wake in a chill sweat and realise it was all in your imagination. But this was real. I can still feel the cold imprint of it against my legs.

‘Will,’ I say, finally finding my voice. ‘There’s something – in the bed. Under the covers.’

He strides over in two great bounds, takes the duvet in both hands and rips it away. I can’t help screaming. There, in the middle of the mattress, sprawls the huge black body of some marine creature, tentacles stretching in all directions.

Will leaps back. ‘What the fuck?’ He sounds more angry than frightened. He says it again, as though the thing on the bed might somehow answer for itself: ‘What the fuck …?’

The smell of the sea, of briny, rotting things, is overpowering now, emanating from that black mass on the bed.

And then quickly, recovering much more rapidly than I do, Will moves closer to it again. As he puts out a hand I shout, ‘Don’t touch it!’ But he has already grasped the tentacles, given them a yank. They come free, the thing seems to break apart – horribly, sickeningly. It was there while we fucked, waiting for us beneath the covers …

Will gives a short, hard laugh, entirely without humour. ‘Look – it’s only seaweed. It’s bloody seaweed!’

He holds it aloft. I lean closer. He’s right. It’s the stuff I’ve seen strewn along the beaches here, great thick, dark ropes of it washed up by the waves. Will tosses it on to the floor.

Gradually, the whole spectacle loses its macabre, monstrous aspect and is reduced to a horrible mess. I become aware of the indignity of my position, sprawled as I am, naked, upon the floor. I feel my heartbeat slow. I breathe more easily.

Except … how did it come to be here in the first place? Why is it here?

Someone has done this to us. Someone has brought this in, hidden it beneath the duvet, knowing that we would only find it once we got into bed.

I turn to Will. ‘Who could have done this?’

He shrugs. ‘Well, I have my suspicions.’

‘What? About who?’

‘It was a prank we used to play on the younger boys at school. We’d go down via the cliff path and collect seaweed on the beaches – as much as we could carry. Then we’d hide it in their beds. So my guess is Johnno or Duncan – possibly all of the guys. They probably thought it was funny.’

‘You’d call this a prank ? We’re not at school, Will, it’s the night before our wedding! What the fuck?’ In a way, my anger is a relief.

Will shrugs. ‘It’s not a prank for you, it’s for me. You know, for old times’ sake. They wouldn’t have meant you to get upset—’

‘I’m going to go and get them all up now, find out which one of them it was. Show them exactly how funny I think it is.’

‘Jules.’ Will takes hold of my shoulders. And then, soothingly: ‘Look, if you were to do that … well, you might say things you’d regret. It would spoil things for tomorrow, wouldn’t it? It could change the whole dynamic.’

I do, sort of, see what he means. God, he’s always so reasonable – sometimes infuriatingly so, always taking the measured approach. I look at the black mass, now on the floor. It’s hard to believe that some darker message wasn’t intended by it.

‘Look,’ Will says gently. ‘We’re both tired. It’s been a long day. Let’s not worry about it now. We can get a new sheet from the spare room.’

The spare room was intended for Will’s parents. They baulked at the outlandish idea of actually staying on the island. Will didn’t seem surprised: ‘My father’s never been particularly impressed by anything I’ve done – getting married is undoubtedly no exception.’ He seemed bitter. He doesn’t talk about his father much – which paradoxically gives me the impression that he’s a bigger influence upon my husband than he likes to admit.

‘Get a new duvet, too,’ I tell Will now. I’m half tempted to say I want to swap to the other room. But that would be irrational, and I pride myself on being the opposite.

‘Sure.’ Will gestures to the seaweed. ‘And I’ll sort out this, too – I’ve dealt with much worse, trust me.’

On the programme Will has escaped from wolves and been swarmed by vampire bats – though he’s never far from the help of the crew – so this must all seem a little pathetic to him. A bit of seaweed on the sheets is hardly a big deal, in the grand scheme of things.

‘I’ll have a word with the guys tomorrow morning,’ he says. ‘Tell them they’re fucking idiots.’

‘OK,’ I say. He’s so good at providing comfort. He’s so – well, there’s only really one word for it – perfect.

And yet, in this moment, with particularly nasty timing, the words on that horrible little note surface.

Not the man he says he is … cheat … liar …

Don’t marry him.

‘A good night’s sleep,’ Will says, soothingly. ‘That’s what we need.’

I nod.

But I don’t think I’m going to sleep a wink.

AOIFE

The Wedding Planner

There’s a noise outside. It’s a strange noise, a keening. It sounds more human than animal – but at the same time it doesn’t sound entirely human either. In our bedroom, Freddy and I look at one another. All the guests have gone to bed too, about half an hour ago now. I thought they would never get tired. We had to wait until the bitter end in case they needed anything of us. We listened to the drumming from the dining room, the chanting. Freddy, who has a little schoolboy Latin, could translate the thing they were chanting: ‘If I cannot move heaven, I shall raise hell.’ I felt the gooseflesh rise on my skin at that.

They’re like overgrown boys, the ushers. I’d say they lack the innocence of boys: but some boys aren’t ever really innocent. What I mean is that as grown men they should know better. And there is a pack feeling about them, like dogs that might behave well on their own but, once all together, don’t have their own minds. I’ll have to keep my eye on them tomorrow, make sure they don’t get carried away. It is my experience that some of the smartest affairs, populated by the most well-heeled and upstanding guests, have been those that have got most out of control. I organised a wedding in Dublin that contained half Ireland’s political elite – even the Taoiseach was there – only for things to come to blows between the groom and father-in-law before the first dance.

Here there’s the added danger of the whole island. The wildness of this place gets under your skin. These guests will feel themselves far from the normal moral codes of society, safe from the prying eyes of others. These men are ex-public schoolboys. They’ve spent much of their lives being forced to follow a strict set of rules that probably didn’t end with their leaving school: choices around what university to attend, what job to do, what sort of house to live in. In my experience those who have the greatest respect for the rules also take the most enjoyment in breaking them.