Fifteen years earlier
We became something of a four, you, me, Jack and Alexa.
Most nights she and I would come over, and we ordered a takeaway or occasionally cooked and quite often went out to a party.
I drank back then, which was probably just as well, because your lives were awash with booze – Chablis and claret and champagne and expensive brands of Russian vodka I’d never seen before.
After the first fortnight spent almost exclusively in bed, I always got up the next day and went to the library or my weekly tutorials while the rest of you slept.
I was a slogger, a habit I was unable or unwilling to break, while you had that casual, irritating intelligence that enabled you to read a text at the last minute without doing any background research and come up with an original, incisive commentary that always blew our tutor away.
One Friday I was hard at work in the library when a piece of paper fluttered down onto my books.
I looked up and found you leaning over the top of my cubicle, grinning.
‘Hello,’ you said in a voice too loud for the library.
‘Hello,’ I whispered back.
Another drawing, pen and ink again, but this time a grand house with pillars and turrets and three rows of long, thin windows.
My heart began to race.
I knew instantly that this was your uncle’s house, Shute Park, somewhere I’d secretly been desperate to see.
Above the drawing you’d written, Road trip ?
‘Really? I said. ‘When?
’
‘Now. Jack’s driving, more room in his car.
’
Jack’s car was more studenty than yours, a beaten-up bottle-green Golf that smelt of stale tobacco and spilt beer.
Alexa was sitting in the front beside Jack, and when we got into the back seat, she popped the cork off a bottle of champagne.
‘Here she is!’ Jack said.
‘Let’s get this weekend started.
’
He pressed eject on the CD, lifted out a disc and hurled it into the back.
The bright red and yellow Screamadelica slotted into its place.
‘We wanna get loaded!’ he cried, putting his foot on the accelerator so that we shot past a group of earnest-looking students on their way into the library.
‘It’s Friday, losers!
’ Jack yelled out of the window.
The journey seemed to take only minutes, though perhaps the champagne was blurring my sense of time.
One moment we were on the outskirts of Bristol; the next we were turning in between two stone pillars and my stomach began to flutter with anxiety.
The drive was long and tree-lined, which I’d sort of expected, but the house – we turned a bend and there it was, quite suddenly, like a mirage – was even more incredible than your drawing.
I gasped, and Alexa laughed.
‘Magical isn’t it?’ she said.
What was I doing in a relationship with someone who lived in a house like this?
‘One day, my child, all this will be yours,’ said Jack, making his voice thin and old and wavering.
It was as if he’d read my mind.
I felt like an imposter in the face of all this grandeur, and he knew it.
He slammed the car to a stop in front of the house, punching the horn once to announce our arrival.
I was in awe of Jack right then; to me his confidence seemed out of reach and overwhelming.
The front door was opened by a small, dark-haired woman whom you introduced as Mary.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Your uncle’s in the library, waiting for you.
’
In the hallway, both you and Jack sniffed the air.
‘Mary!’ Jack said. ‘Don’t tell me.
You’ve made the pie, haven’t you, you amazing woman,’ and she laughed.
‘Yes, of course you’re having chicken pie.
’
I recognised the music before we got to the library: Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks ; you played it all the time.
There were no books in the library, just a huge fireplace at one end with leather sofas in front of it, and a sideboard stacked with decanters of spirits: liquids of amber, gold and brown, bottles of gin and vodka lined up beside them.
Your uncle was stretched out on one sofa with a glass balanced on his stomach, but he stood up the moment he saw us.
He was tall and thin and surprisingly handsome; I don’t know why I hadn’t expected that.
He wore a blue paisley shirt with jeans and embroidered velvet shoes.
‘The reprobates are here. Good. About time.’
He hugged you first, then Alexa, then Jack, and finally he offered his hand to me.
‘So you’re Catherine.
I was beginning to wonder if you might be his imaginary friend.
’
He pointed to an ice bucket on the table in between the sofas.
‘We’re having champagne in your honour,’ he said, smiling at me, and in that instant I relaxed.
Here I could be whoever I wanted to be.
Everything was perfect about that weekend.
Your uncle treated us like equals, the first adult I’d ever known who did that.
Over supper in the kitchen – Jack was right, the pie was incredible – we talked about music and parties and art.
Your uncle was a collector; he took me into the drawing room, an old-fashioned room with sprigged wallpaper and highly polished furniture, and there on the wall facing us was a naked man sprawled across a snooker table, poised to take his shot.
Eye-watering nudity aside, it was a feat of geometry, this painting.
‘Francis Bacon,’ I said.
‘Hideousness is something I like in a picture,’ he said.
‘Do you?’
We sat up late in the library that night, playing through your uncle’s record collection, and I began to understand your obsession with blues and rock and roll; it came from him first. We must have listened to at least three Rolling Stones albums throughout the night – Exile on Main St. , Black and Blue , Sticky Fingers .
But there were some Elvis ballads too, and early Leonard Cohen, and quite often Alexa segued in with something unexpected.
I remember her choosing ‘Piece of my Heart’, Janis Joplin, which your uncle loved.
I’ve never been able to hear it without thinking of him since.
‘A woman of taste,’ he told Alexa.
‘I thought as much.’
I was struck by your closeness to your uncle.
Quite often I’d find myself straining to overhear conversations between the two of you, filtering out the music or Alexa’s incessant chatter to pick up on what was said.
I heard him telling you about his lover, how they’d split up and were now back together again.
He seemed to be asking your advice.
‘You’re happier when he’s around,’ you said.
‘He’s good for you.’
‘Same back at you,’ your uncle said.
‘She’s good news, your girl.
’
You laughed and looked over at me and I felt a sharp little thrill at being the cause of your new-found happiness.
I remember thinking, good, you’ve got someone who loves you, someone other than me and your friends.
It seemed important.
The next day was hot and we lay on rugs in the garden reading the Saturday papers and drinking home-made lemonade that Mary brought out for us.
Jack had driven into the village to buy the Mirror and he was reading out its most ludicrous stories.
‘Listen to this,’ he’d say, and we’d all look up from our own papers and take notice of him instead.
That was the weekend when I began to realise how much he craved your attention.
Everything he did was designed for your amusement.
I felt a little sorry for him; it looked exhausting.
It was Jack’s idea to go swimming.
‘Not in the pool,’ he said.
‘Let’s go down to the lake.
’
‘Good luck with that,’ your uncle said.
‘It’s freezing cold and choked with weeds.
You’ll last about five minutes, I reckon.
’
We took blankets and towels and Mary packed up a picnic: home-made Scotch eggs, I remember, with bright orange yolks, and coronation chicken sandwiches.
Your uncle produced more champagne.
‘The only thing to drink at a picnic,’ he said without irony.
The lake, on the edge of your uncle’s land, was like entering a secret wilderness, an oasis entirely screened by poplar trees.
There was a little wooden jetty, with a rowing boat tied to it.
‘Look. We could go out in the boat,’ I said, but Jack shook his head.
‘Good try, Catherine,’ he said.
‘But we’re going to be swimming.
’
None of us had bathing suits, and after lunch, fuelled by champagne, Jack and Alexa stripped off easily, not a moment of embarrassment as they ran naked into the water, Alexa shrieking at the cold.
‘I can’t take all my clothes off,’ I’d said to you, urgently, when you began to undress.
You leant over and kissed me.
‘Fine,’ you said. ‘Keep your underwear on.’
Even so, I felt self-conscious walking into the lake in just my bra and pants; you, out of deference to me, I suspected, had also kept your boxers on.
‘Prudes!’ Jack shouted.
‘Hurry up. It’s fucking freezing.
’
Alexa kicked her feet, sending up great white arcs of spray to splash us.
The water was cold, that deep, cutting bone-cold, but after a minute or two of hard swimming we’d warmed up enough to float on our backs, the four of us in a row.
I remember looking up at the clear blue sky and thinking that I had, finally, been accepted by your friends.
Our remaining years at university stretched ahead, a glittering view of unhampered paradise.
If only I’d known what was to come.