Lucy Foley - The Hunting Party

We walk, stumbling over the uneven ground, down the path towards the water, Bo, Julien and Emma using the torches provided in the Lodge to light the way. In the warmth indoors I’d forgotten how brutal it is outside. It’s so cold it feels as though the skin on my face is shrinking against my skull, in protest against the raw air. Someone grabs my arm and I jump, then realise it’s Miranda.

‘Hello, stranger,’ she says. ‘It’s so good to see you. God I’ve missed you.’ It’s so unusual for her to make that sort of admission – and there is something in the way she says it, too. I glance at her, but it’s too dark to make out her expression.

‘You too,’ I say.

‘And you’ve had your hair cut differently, haven’t you?’ I feel her hand come up to play with the strands framing my face. It is all I can do not to prickle away from her. Miranda has always been touchy-feely – I have always been whatever the opposite of that is.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I went to Daniel Galvin, like you told me to.’

‘Without me?’

‘Oh – I didn’t think. I suddenly had a spare couple of hours … we’d closed on something earlier than expected.’

‘Well,’ she says, ‘next time you go, let me know, OK? We’ll make a date of it. It’s like you’ve fallen off the planet lately.’ She lowers her voice. ‘I’ve had to resort to Emma … God, Katie, she’s so nice it does my nut in.’

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘it’s just that I’ve been so busy at work. You know, trying for partnership.’

‘But it won’t always be like that, will it?’

‘No,’ I say, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Because I’ve been thinking, recently … remember how it used to be? In our twenties? We’d see each other every week, you and I, without fail. Even if it was just to go out and get drunk on Friday night.’

I nod. I’m not sure she can see though. ‘Yes,’ I say – my voice comes out a little hoarse.

‘Oh God, and the night bus? Both of us falling asleep and going to the end of the line … Kingston, wasn’t it? And that time we went to that twenty-four-hour Tesco and you suddenly decided you had to make an omelette when you got home and you dropped that carton of eggs and it went everywhere – I mean everywhere – and we just decided to run off, in our big stupid heels …’ She laughs, and then she stops. ‘I miss all of that … that messiness .’ There’s so much wistfulness in her tone. I’m glad I can’t see her expression now.

‘So do I,’ I say.

‘Look at you two,’ Julien turns back to us. ‘Thick as thieves. What are you gossiping about?’

‘Come on,’ Giles says, ‘share with the rest of us!’

‘Well,’ Miranda says quickly, leaning into me, ‘I’m glad we have this – to catch up. I’ve really missed you, K.’ She gives my arm a little squeeze and, again, I think I hear the tiniest catch in her voice. A pins-and-needles prickling of guilt; I’ve been a bad friend.

And then she transforms, producing a new bottle of champagne from under her arm and yelling to the others, ‘Look what I’ve got!’

There are whoops and cheers. Giles does a silly dance of delight; he’s like a little boy, letting off pent-up energy. And it seems to be infectious … suddenly everyone is making a lot of noise, talking excitedly, voices echoing in the empty landscape.

Then Emma stops short in front of us, with a quiet exclamation. ‘Oh!’

I see what’s halted her. There’s a figure standing on the jetty that we’re heading for, silhouetted by moonlight. He is quite tall, and standing surprisingly, almost inhumanly, still. The gamekeeper, I think. He’s about the right height. Or maybe one of the other guests we’ve just heard about?

Bo casts his torch up at the figure, and we wait for the man to turn, or at least move. And then Bo begins to laugh. Now we see what he has. It isn’t a man at all. It’s a statue of a man, staring out contemplatively, Antony Gormley-esque.

We all sit down on the jetty and look out across the loch. Every so often there’s a tiny disturbance in the surface, despite there being very little wind. The ripples must be caused by something underneath, the glassy surface withholding these secrets.

Despite the champagne, everyone suddenly seems a bit subdued. Perhaps it’s just the enormity of our surroundings – the vast black peaks rising in the distance, the huge stretch of night sky above, the pervasive quiet – that has awed us into silence.

The quiet isn’t quite all-pervasive, though. Sitting here for long enough you begin to hear other sounds: rustles and scufflings in the undergrowth, mysterious liquid echoes from the loch. Heather told us about the giant pike that live in it – their existence confirmed by the monstrous one mounted on the wall of the Lodge. Huge jaws, sharp teeth, like leftover Jurassic monsters.

I hear the shush-shush of the tall Scots pines above us, swaying in the breeze, and every so often a soft thud: a gust strong enough to disturb a cargo of old snow. Somewhere, quite near, there is the mournful call of an owl. It’s such a recognisable yet strange sound that it’s hard to believe it’s real, not some sort of special effect.

Giles tries to echo the sound: ‘ Ter-wit , ter-woo !’

We all laugh, dutifully, but it strikes me that there’s something uneasy in the sound. The call of the owl, such an unusual noise for city dwellers like us, has just emphasised quite how unfamiliar this place is.

‘I didn’t even know there were places like this in the UK,’ Bo says, as if he can read my thoughts.

‘Ah Bo,’ Miranda says, ‘you’re such a Yank. It’s not all London and little chocolate box villages here.’

‘I didn’t realise you got outside the M25 much yourself, Miranda,’ Nick says.

‘Oi!’ She punches his arm. ‘I do, occasionally. We went to Soho Farmhouse before Christmas, didn’t we Julien?’ We all laugh – including Miranda. People think she can’t laugh at herself, but she can … just as long as she doesn’t come out of it looking too bad.

‘Come on, open that bottle, Manda,’ Bo says.

‘Yes … open it, open it—’ Giles begins to shout, and everyone joins in … it’s almost impossible not to. It becomes a chant, something oddly tribal in it. I’m put in mind of some pagan sect; the effect of the landscape, probably – mysterious and ancient.

Miranda stands up and fires the cork into the loch, where it makes its own series of ripples, widening out in shining rings across the water. We drink straight from the bottle, passing it around like Girl Guides, the cold, densely fizzing liquid stinging our throats.

‘It’s like Oxford,’ Mark says. ‘Sitting down by the river, getting pissed after finals at three p.m.’

‘Except then it was cava,’ Miranda says. ‘Christ – we drank gallons of that stuff. How did we not notice that it tastes like vomit?’

‘And there was that party you held down by the river,’ Mark says. ‘You two’ – he gestures to Miranda and me – ‘and Samira.’

‘Oh yes,’ Giles says. ‘What was the theme again?’

‘ The Beautiful and Damned ,’ I say. Everyone had to come in twenties’ gear, so we could all pretend we were Bright Young Things, like Evelyn Waugh and friends. God, we were pretentious. The thought of it is like reading an old diary entry, cringeworthy … but fond, too. Because it was a wonderful evening, even magical. We’d lit candles and put them in lanterns, all along the bank. Everyone had gone to so much effort with their costumes, and they were universally flattering: the girls in spangled flappers and the boys in black tie. Miranda looked the most stunning, of course, in a long metallic sheath. I remember a drunken moment of complete euphoria, looking about the party. How had little old me ended up at a place like this? With all these people as my friends? And most particularly with that girl – so glamorous, so radiant – as my best friend?