Chapter 6
Tuesday
The snow spirals, light but insistent. I look skyward as I’m leaving the forensic mental health unit to walk briskly along Regent Road towards the bus station.
The snow is barely lying, but I suspect I’ll be glad later on that I changed into winter boots and out of the flats I wore to work.
The leaden clouds are laden with more snow yet to fall.
The forecast is ominous, but I’m inclined to take the dire predictions with a pinch of salt.
Still, it’s undeniably cold. My coat is belted tightly, and I’ve jammed a bobble hat down over my ears, a few strands of hair escaping. I should have changed into jeans and out of my dress and tights. It will be freezing on the walk from the Peebles Road up that steep forestry track to Tarnmore.
I grip the handle of my suitcase and press on along a strangely deserted street. It seems people have heeded the forecast – the worst snowfall to hit the UK in decades, apparently.
Surely an exaggeration.
Tarnmore is not the best location to be stranded in a snowstorm – too remote.
Mind you, with those vast fireplaces and thick walls, perhaps it is the perfect place to be.
I was last there in a glorious April heatwave, but I can picture those fireplaces with merrily blazing flames vanquishing the winter dark. It may be quite cosy.
I’m excited now the reunion is imminent. After a lot of soul searching I decided I was done being caged by the past. I’m curious about the others – the paths their lives have taken, the ways in which they may have changed, or not.
So I replied to Becca, accepting her invite with only a little further nudging from Alex.
Come on, Eils, you know you want to!
And:
It’s time, Eilish. Genevieve would approve, don’t you think?
I’m not sure she would.
When I sent my RSVP it seemed like something hypothetical and fantastical I’d agreed to, but less than a month later, here I am scurrying towards the bus station, sleet in my face blown off the knife blade of a North Sea wind. I’m heading for Tarnmore, on a collision course with the past.
I packed anxiously last night, trying to balance the weather conditions and remoteness of the house with Becca’s diktats. Who mandates formal wear for a casual gathering of old friends in a remote country house?
Becca Morrow, that’s who.
I don’t own a cocktail dress – at least not one that will meet Becca’s standards. The plain black dress I’ve packed is unlikely to net her approval, but I’ll worry about that later.
Judging by the peremptory dress-code demands and Alex’s brief biography of her, it sounds like Becca has changed little whereas I feel unutterably different to that fresh-faced, bookish girl who trailed after the extraordinary Genevieve Learmonth like an extra.
I’m both quieter and more outspoken – confident in my work, less so socially. I’ve lost the sheen of innocence – you can’t be in my line of work and stay a romantic wee dreamer.
I’m proud of what I do, although people still raise their eyebrows and look at me strangely when I tell them. I don’t match their ideas of what a forensic psychologist should look like. And when I try to describe my job, it’s a bit of a conversation stopper.
I study sick-minded individuals, explore the depths of depravity to which humans can sink.
I reach the bus station and check the departure board.
I’m relieved to see that the Galashiels bus is expected on time.
The station is teeming with people trying to get home before the storm hits.
I’m anxious as well as excited now it’s come to it.
I don’t know if we’ll have anything in common …
I’m worried I’ll be a disappointment. Plus, there’s my misbehaving memory.
Once we start to talk it will be hard to hide.
Alex accepted my confession, but the truth is I’m ashamed.
Like I’m letting her down by not remembering.
I slide into a seat and remove my gloves to scroll through messages, following the recent thread of communications between me and Becca.
Alex put us in touch. I don’t have Leo’s number – or Jameson’s, although I’ve done some pretty extensive Instagram snooping on all of them these last few weeks (which feels like a backward step – it’s been years since I did so).
Leo’s social media is a catalogue of privilege: a lavish kitchen and ornate, Japanese-style garden, selfies in designer sunglasses and crisp Louis Vuitton shirts, holiday photos that wouldn’t look out of place in an exclusive travelogue.
I was jolted by the sight of Kimmy plastered across his feed – still gorgeous with that sleek raven-black hair and striking eyes.
I knew her, but not well. Everyone knew of her, after what happened with Leo, and how Gen reacted. Their infamous love triangle was the talk of campus for months until Kimmy slunk back into the shadows, vanquished by an imperious, claws-out foe who wasn’t about to let her man go without a fight.
Leo was such a tool back then – a bumbling, entitled posh boy. Nice enough, but a nightmare when it came to relationships. He even seemed to enjoy his flash of notoriety as a love cheat.
He did love Gen, and she him. It wasn’t a healthy relationship – it was a whirlpool of pain, limerence and desperation. They adored each other, and tortured each other too. But they were back together by summer – the Kimmy affair put aside.
Leo’s grief when they pulled Gen out of the sea was apocalyptic. I’ve never questioned that.
I had to steel myself when I looked at Jameson’s Instagram, braced for wedding photographs or baby pictures.
Even a girlfriend would be hard to take, although I have no right to care.
There are few pictures of him on his social media at all – no weddings, or babies.
He promotes his charity mostly. He helps inner-city teenagers navigate access to work and find routes out of spirals of addiction, poverty and crime.
I like the online version of Jameson – outdoorsy, an adrenaline junkie: Munro climbs and wild swimming, whitewater rafting trips and cliff dives. He’s tagged in a few in-jokes by a couple of mates, but beyond his charity work he doesn’t have much of a voice online.
Despite living in the city, I try to get out in nature as much as possible. I picture myself at his side in some of those pictures – sporting hiking boots and fleece, waving a canoe paddle and a GoPro.
But that’s ridiculous. I’ve well and truly lost my chance to be part of Jameson’s life. Especially like that.
I found a picture of him taken last summer with his arm around a girl. I stared at it for too long, trying to analyse their body language. Just friends? Casual lovers? Soulmates?
Becca’s an open book online. She has hundreds of thousands of followers across various platforms. Her posts blend fashion and beauty content with a countrified, horsey vibe.
There’s no reticence about Becca, no attempt to curtail her opinions or curate herself: she is bold, brash, sassy, sexy.
Everything she always wanted to be, except she could never seem to shine next to Gen’s superior dazzle.
Her profile is intimidating, but in her private messages she’s more down to earth. She says she’s looking forward to seeing me.
The question of why niggles at me. She’s had ten years to reach out; it’s curious to me that we haven’t reconnected before.
It’s thanks to Alex that we’re doing it now.
I join a shuffling queue, sink into a window seat on the bus and take a book out of my bag.
I finished the psych thriller and am back in my gothic happy place.
I’ve brought two well-thumbed favourite books plus Gen’s copy of Looking for Alaska; I’m not sure what prompted me to pack it. I still can’t bring myself to open it.
I stare out the window rather than reading.
I’m not seeing the dreich and grime of city streets.
I’m seeing Tarnmore in my mind as it was that beautiful weekend.
The glossy loch and twinkling lights of the terrace, the summerhouse streaked in moonlight where I lay in Jameson’s arms, looked up at the stars and felt for the first time that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
I remember coming upon the grand stone gateposts, the sweeping drive disappearing between ranks of towering Scots pines. The pink-stone Jacobean mansion nestled in glorious Peeblesshire countryside. We’d known Becca was wealthy, but Tarnmore was something else.
Becca had suggested that a weekend away from academic rigour and the social cauldron of university would be restorative, but as usual it was Gen who had the casting vote.
It was her seal of approval that had us all packing our bags, looking up bus routes and digging out summery clothes thanks to an early heatwave.
Becca’s parents were nice, if eccentric.
They were generous with their wine cellar and indulged our youth, exuberance and excess.
The house was stunning, the grounds even more so: the silver loch and sun-bleached jetty, acres of variegated woodland and trails leading into the hills that separated Tarnmore from the village a couple of miles away.
The Morrows were building a pool complex, but it was warm enough that we swam in the loch.
We swam in the warmest part of the day – skin gleaming in the sun, and we swam again that night in the chilly waters. Champagne bottles popped and spilled fizz into the shallows as we stripped and cavorted in the water. Later we wrapped ourselves in blankets and lay on the jetty talking.
Later still Jameson and I slipped away and sat on the distant bank. I remember sipping Champagne with his arms around me, listening to Gen and Leo flirting and splashing, Alex and Becca talking as they passed a joint between them, the sounds carrying across the water in the still air.
And then we left the loch and our friends behind and snuck into the summerhouse where we claimed the night and each other.
We’d been low-key flirting for months, but we were both too shy, too scared to take the step back in St Andrews where it seemed risky to jeopardise our friendship.
We’d kissed at the Yule Ball and I’d been painfully obsessed with him ever since.
Gen had long cautioned me against taking things further, telling me that the whole group would suffer if we split up.
Hypocritical, considering she and Leo put their tumultuous relationship ahead of the friend group’s greater good all the time, made us bear witness to both soaring passions and blazing rows.
That weekend at Tarnmore was blissful. We ate with Becca’s parents in the banquet hall, drinking ruby wine from crystal decanters and feeling grown up.
The boys hiked and the girls took some of Lady Morrow’s horses out on a hack.
Despite growing up on a farm, I’ve never been comfortable on horseback, but Becca and Genevieve were both in their element.
I lagged behind, hot and aching, while they rode ahead.
It was refreshing to see them chattering; at St Andrews they were never close.
Now, this lumbering bus carries me back to the place I was so happy. I close my eyes and can almost taste the Champagne in Jameson’s kisses, feel the span of his broad shoulders beneath my hands. I hear the splashing bodies in the loch, the shrieks of laughter.
When we left Tarnmore it felt like everything had slotted into place. We were tight knit, a unit. Becca and Gen seemed to have put their differences aside and Jameson and I were in love.
Our happiness didn’t last.
A few months later, at that final beach party on West Sands, everything felt precarious again. Leo and Gen were at odds over the Kimmy affair even though they were apparently back together. Jameson and I were broken up – I never thought he’d do what he did. He was so loyal, so decent.
But I’d seen the photograph with my own eyes.
Gen showed me. She hated hurting me but she knew I needed to see it.
He never stopped trying to get me back, pleading that he had never intended to kiss anyone, didn’t even know the girl he’d been caught with.
The night of the party, I was weakening, considering taking him back.
Gen cautioned against it – hypocrisy again, given that she’d forgiven Leo.
Although considering the torture she was inflicting on him, I’m not sure forgiven was the word for it.
The party was supposed to be a turning point. It would cement us, like that weekend at Tarnmore had. I wanted Gen to be happy again, and for the tension between her and Leo to dial down. I wanted Jameson back.
As we danced and drank by the driftwood flames, a current of hope caught at me and I started to think things were going to be okay.
But it wasn’t.
By morning, Gen was dead.
And I was gone.
The bus shudders and my eyes fly open. The snow is really coming down. It’s a whiteout beyond the windows. I coorie deeper in my seat. Memories of St Andrews are coming thick and fast. Inevitable, now I’ve opened the door.
I’m still hopeful all my lost memories will return at some point, difficult as they may be.
I remember Alex’s words from Hogmanay:
It’s time we faced up to things.
Who she was … who we were.
I don’t know if coming here is the best decision I’ve made in a decade, or the most foolish. There’s part of me that wonders if the past is better left behind.