Four months before Lucian
There is always a moment when I remember why it is I go to the trouble of hosting this party year after year, three hundred hard-drinking guests trudging through my house and gardens, dropping cigarette butts and smashing glasses and spilling wine onto carpets (not that I care, but Mary does).
Tonight the moment comes as I’m walking to the lake with Catherine.
Harry and Ling are slightly ahead, hand in hand, a good foot of height between them, her dress an exotic yellow against his summer lightweight beige.
They talk incessantly of their planned wedding party and the joy in Harry’s voice, after all the years of loneliness, is gratifying; it lifts me up.
I don’t know anyone who deserves it more than him.
(Apart from me, and I have my own fervent hopes on that score.) Until a few hours ago I really believed that Catherine would disappear back into her old life and I’d never see her again.
And although I’d promised myself I wouldn’t fall in love with her, I’ve failed, hopelessly, at that.
Tonight, though, there’s a shift in her, I see it, I feel it, and I’m daring to hope that perhaps we will end up together, against the odds and after all this time.
I’m not sure what Liv said to Catherine when they went upstairs, but whatever it was, it worked.
So I am buoyed by Harry’s happiness and the projection of my own and by the sight of my guests wandering down to the pool or the lake in technicoloured groups, men carrying jackets, girls holding their shoes, laughter drifting out across the evening breeze.
This is when I love the party most, the formality of dinner (such as it is) behind us, just the freedom of pure, selfish enjoyment ahead.
We hear the music long before we reach the lake, another of Andrew’s genius touches, for the sound of Vivaldi or Mozart or Bach or whatever his all-girl string quartet is playing is instantly transporting, as if we’re entering another world.
And when we arrive at the lake, I see that everything Andrew planned has come together spectacularly well.
In his extra-soft lighting, just Chinese lanterns strung up high around the perimeter of the lake, the moon dominates, turning all his pastel colours luminescent.
The sky-blue jetty, the pink, yellow and green boats glow in its sharp silver light and the surface of the lake shines, a dimpled sheet of glass.
The string quartet are now playing Handel’s Water Music (Andrew does love a theme) and the banks of the lake are dotted with guests, sitting on blankets, drinking champagne.
No one seems to be in a hurry to go out on the boats.
There’s a queue of people waiting for two bouncers to admit them to the miniature nightclub, another crowd gathered around Andrew’s champagne bar, styled like an old-fashioned Punch and Judy booth in candy-coloured stripes.
Friends call out and try to draw us into conversation, but without saying so, the four of us are determined to be on our own.
I think it’s the shared feeling of secret celebration – Ling and Harry’s forthcoming party, the possibility that Catherine and I might have some kind of future.
‘Let’s go out on the lake,’ I say.
Harry picks up champagne and glasses while I help Ling and Catherine into the first boat.
There are a few girls and boys waiting on the jetty, dressed thematically in shorts and nautical stripes.
They hand us blankets and hold the boat steady while we step down into it, though they cannot prevent its sudden dramatic tilt when Harry, all sixteen stone of him, steps aboard.
Ling and Catherine sit together in the bow, their blue and yellow dresses a perfect complement, while Harry and I each take up an oar.
Once upon a time we used to do this together at school, rowing the only sport we could ever be bothered to pursue.
We were in the upper eights for a while until parties, booze and girls (for me anyway) took over.
‘Like riding a bicycle,’ says Harry as we glide effortlessly towards the centre of the lake.
We reminisce about our brief rowing career, the cold, unforgivably early starts on the Thames, the muscle-bound, non-drinking jockiness of the other six.
‘It’s a miracle we lasted as long as we did,’ Harry says.
There are a few other boats coming onto the lake now, though unlike us they stick close to the bank, and their lanterns glow from the edges of the night like fireflies.
‘Let’s rest here for a while,’ Harry says, balancing his oar across the boat.
‘Pass up the booze, girls.’
We talk about the wedding party for a bit, which is planned for the autumn.
Harry had favoured a big evening party to begin with but Ling has talked him into having a lunch instead.
‘The thing about a big party,’ Ling says, ‘no offence, Lucian, but it’s hard to spend time with only the people you want to be with.
’
‘You’re right,’ says Catherine.
‘We’ve had to go out on a boat to get away from everyone else.
And you don’t have a lake, Harry.
’
Ling and Catherine look at each other and laugh.
It’s been a revelation to see the way these two have got along with each other.
I can tell that Catherine really loves Ling.
And the change in Harry since he met her has been remarkable.
He used to be so insular and reserved, reserved, exactly what you might expect from someone born to a household where dogs were deified and children ignored.
I think if you’re a child who grows up without love, you don’t expect to find it as an adult.
And that’s what has set Harry apart – the complete lack of expectation that he would be with someone, someone he loved and who loved him back.
I look at him now and I think of all the joy he has ahead – the wedding party, the prospect of children, the transformation of his austere, grey house into a home.
When Ling starts to tell us about a lake where she swam as a child, I find myself hypnotised by her slow, soft voice.
She has a gift for storytelling and for making her childhood sound magical, always dwelling on the good things, the beauty, the peace, never the hardship.
‘We used to go to this lake on birthdays, rowing upstream in the fishing boats, two hours or maybe three to get there. But it was worth it: that lake had the clearest, brightest water you have ever seen. And the most beautiful birds. My favourite was a bit like a blackbird but with stripes of fluorescent blue. In English it translates to the fairy bluebird.’
‘I love that,’ Catherine says, then she puts out her hand and covers Ling’s.
‘You miss it a bit, don’t you?
’
‘Only in the way that we all miss our childhoods,’ Ling says.
I’m wondering if this is true.
For me, yes, up until the age of ten, when my childhood effectively ended.
For Catherine, more than any of us: she had the real deal, the insular love bubble, the shrink-wrapped family of three.
With Harry, I’d say no.
What was there to miss?
Those cold-hearted parents?
A nanny who should have been pensioned off years ago?
Harry’s happiness is strictly present-day, right here, right now.
‘One of the best things was the swimming competitions,’ Ling says, resuming her tale.
‘We used to row our boats into the middle of the lake and then jump in. We’d swim all the way round the lake.
’
She is laughing as she stands up and the boat tips a little.
She’s over the side, shoes off, dress still on, a small, sharp splash as she lands in the water, before any of us realise what’s happening.
She comes up quickly, dark hair flattened to her scalp, laughing in the blackness.
‘Actually it’s not too bad,’ she says.
‘Come on.’
Catherine says, ‘Ling, you’re crazy, you know that.
’
She turns to look at me, smiling.
‘What the hell,’ she says, and then she’s overboard too in the beautiful dark blue dress.
The moment takes us, me and Harry wrenching off our shoes, our jackets, the boat rocking violently when Harry dives in.
Christ, it’s cold, but we’ve drunk enough to be numb to it and we’re all four of us laughing at this unexpected turn, the recklessness of swimming in our party clothes, of swimming at all.
Harry lifts Ling into his arms, treading water so that his beige suit trousers balloon beneath him.
He kisses the side of her face.
‘You’re not in Thailand now, you know.
’
Catherine floats on her back, gazing up at the sky.
In the moonlight her arms are silvery white; her hair drifts around her face like Ophelia’s.
Is she remembering the headiness of that weekend we once spent here with Jack and Alexa, the four of us with nothing but enchantment ahead.
She says, ‘This is so lovely, I’m so glad we did this.
’
‘We’ll do it again,’ I tell her and Catherine looks at me and smiles, a silent acknowledgement of our shared future.
‘Maybe wetsuits next time?’ she says, and Ling laughs.
‘You’re right, it’s freezing.
’ She reaches up to kiss Harry’s neck, then drops back down into the water.
‘We need to keep moving.’ We watch her cut away in an efficient crawl, a quick blur of lemon yellow.
‘Don’t go too far from the boat, sweetheart,’ Harry calls, and we hear Ling laughing before she vanishes into the black.
‘She’s obsessed with swimming,’ Harry says, staring after her.
‘We’re starting the new pool next week.
’
More and more boats are coming onto the lake now, voices and laughter and the occasional popping sound as a bottle of champagne is opened, magnified with a strange, watery echo.
It is the party I wanted – or rather the one Andrew imagined I wanted; the lantern-lit lake, the boating, the swimming have turned it into something magical.
‘We should probably get out,’ Catherine says.
‘Some of those boats are quite close. Do you think they can see us?
‘Catherine’s right, and it’s getting cold,’ Harry says.
‘Ling,’ his voice is amplified on the surface of the water, ‘Ling, let’s go in now.
’
She doesn’t answer and he starts swimming towards her.
‘I’ll go and get her, you bring the boat.
’
Something happens to Catherine.
She calls Ling’s name in a normal voice the first time, then instantly she’s screaming it.
‘Ling! LING! LIIIING!’ Her panic is abrupt and infectious.
‘Where is she? Where is she?’
Both of us shout her name as we drag ourselves up into the boat, so cold suddenly, me rowing towards Harry and Ling, Catherine leaning right over the edge in her sodden dress, water streaming from her hair.
Ling! Ling! Ling! It’s all my brain knows.
Searching the darkness for a glimpse of yellow.
‘Why can’t we see her?
Why isn’t she answering?
She can’t have gone far.
’
Here at its heart, the lake seems vast and uncertain.
And so dark, it’s almost impossible to see.
Half-remembered facts punch my brain.
When you swim at night your body temperature drops quickly.
Drowning can happen in an instant, silently, without warning.
Harry is roaring Ling’s name; in his voice, the fading of hope.
‘We’ll find her, Harry.
We’ll find her. You take the oars,’ I tell Catherine as I drop back over the side into the water.
I’m so cold now as I plunge beneath the surface – heart pumping at the thought of the weeds, a childhood fear reignited.
I open my eyes in the murk but I see nothing but a flash of beige just ahead of me, Harry’s hand turned a luminous white.
There is no girl in a yellow dress.
I go deeper and deeper, kicking hard, so cold I cannot breathe.
I’m up again and down again – my brain pounding only this refrain: Ling, Ling – looking and looking for yellow, but I can’t see her, I can’t see anything.
When I next come up, Catherine is beside me in the water.
She’s calling Ling’s name, over and over, her voice rasping, raw.
‘Keep looking,’ she says.
‘Find her, please, please find her.’
I push myself beneath the surface again, but this time I’m weighted by hopelessness.
We’re not going to find her.
I re-emerge to the sound of Harry’s cries, a howling more animal than human that reverberates through the night.
I hear Andrew’s voice in a boat nearby.
‘Lucian, you have to get out of there. All of you, you must come out of the water.’
I watch him leaning out to pull Catherine into his boat, gathering her up as if she’s a child.
She seems oblivious to him, deranged by sadness.
‘Oh no, Ling, oh no,’ she says, as if Ling is still sitting next to her in the boat, still talking, still alive.