Short Story - Untitled

She blamed facebook. The twisted body was prone on the library floor, a woman in a red silken gown, beautiful until you saw the raw angry welt at her throat, a delicate scarf pulled brutally tight.“Thirtieth birthday celebrations really are getting ridiculous,” muttered Cath as she watched the others crowd around the body. Friends and strangers alike, she felt cut off from them all. It was all because of that site; people you thought you’d left far behind catching you up. She’d tried to ignore the invitation from her old classmate, but Louise had been persistent. Cath had fretted over what it meant if she wasn’t there. They’d all studied Latin together and it was a small class of seven, so if she’d not come it would have felt like some kind of admission, proof that she was never really one of them and had acquiesced to the place they’d given her.Louise wasn’t the first of them to turn thirty, but she was the first to invite Cath to her party. In the last couple of years she’d been witness to the escalation of the celebrations. Large dinners became catered parties and soon the evening wasn’t enough and there were fashion shows, weekends in Barcelona. Cath hadn’t gone to any of those, just witnessed it grow through the online posts and photograph albums. She’d been on the outside at university and never lost the habit in her adult life. Then, it had been her background, the girl from the comprehensive in a class of private school educated privilege; she’d been surprised that it still mattered then but it had. She felt that familiar sinking as she watched them ascend the sweeping steps to the country house, their red soled heels flashing, sleek hair swept back with expensive sunglasses. Taking a deep breath, she’d walked inside to the cool reception hall, full of fresh spring flowers and other people’s laughter, and checked herself in. The weekend was costing her a fortune. As she saw the bright chattering faces crowding around the actress who was lying still in the middle of the floor, delighting in the elegance of the murder, she’d wondered how this had ever seemed like the right idea. She was one of the first to drift from the room, hoping to move away from them all completely. She’d read the notes the organisers had provided and knew who the murderer would be, couldn’t get motivated to join in with the charade of it all. As her friends at the library where she worked joked, she’d read enough murder mysteries to set up a detective agency and the simple plot being played out left her no challenges. Cath changed quickly for dinner and planned to take a walk round the grounds before taking her place at the dining table. These weekends were meant to be about friendship and teamwork, but she didn’t want to be part of their team. She knew her manners would drive her to make polite conversation at dinner; perhaps she would drop a few suggestions to people as to who the murderer was so they could clear up the mystery quickly and get this all over with. Just as she was heading out the door towards the butterfly garden, she heard the voices of her former classmates. Louise was at the centre, flanked by Sarah, Lorna, Michelle and Andy and they were all facing Stu, who had been as unpopular as her in those earlier days. Socially, he was one of them, but he showed a brilliance and passion for his studies that pushed him onto the fringes. Cath had once thought that she and Stu would have made natural allies and would lie on the thin mattress of her narrow bed thinking about him. In her mind she played it over many times, how he would kiss her, gently at first and then with more passion as his brown eyes sparked amber and they explored each other, found each other in the midst of isolation. “Stuart, oh, I mean, I’m sorry Dr Morris,” she heard Louise say as she ostentatiously looked at her weekend programme. Cath stopped and turned, Stuart was saying something quietly that she couldn’t hear, but his face said it all. In a louder voice she heard him say,“So Miss Louise, if you have any questions, I will be happy to help you. It is a terrible, terrible business and I am of course desperately heartbroken at the death of my fiancé this afternoon. But I long to see the killer brought to justice, and so I will help any way I can. If you will excuse me, the shock is still…” he trailed off and walked away, his face flushed with something other than the grief he was claiming. Cath walked out to the garden, thinking about how Louise had probably known he would be here, it might even have been the reason she chose this murder mystery weekend for her birthday, and the reason she had wanted everyone from their class to turn up. Louise was the queen bee of the class and at the heart of the social scene at university, but it always rankled that Stuart drew the attention of tutors and students alike and never paid her any notice. If she’d found out that his acting ambitions had brought him to weekend murder mystery theatre, she would be sure to want to show him up, and she’d need the right audience. She heard Louise laugh and knew it had been planned. She was meant to be there with them for a drink before dinner and was relieved not to have been made an accomplice.She took her place at the dinner table and found she’d been seated with nearly all her old classmates. Not Louise, she was seated in the centre with her fiancé at her side amidst a new circle of glamorous acolytes, but all the others were there. Even a miserable looking Stu sat amongst them, shredding his napkin and ignoring their trips down memory lane. He only ventured a comment if anyone asked about the mystery and replied defiantly as Dr Morris. Cath found out that Michelle had followed a career into teaching as she’d planned, married a teacher and now lived with him and their three children in the grounds of the private school she’d attended as a child.“Of course, I’ll go back to work eventually, but at the moment I think it’s so important for the children to have their mother at home,” she said as Cath thought of her own mother, working double shifts at Asda to help pay for her daughter’s university education, for the chance to meet people like this. Sarah worked for a large recruitment firm in the City, said she was thinking of giving it all up for a life in the country; she and her husband were currently looking at houses in Sussex where he could still easily commute to London. “I want to be closer to nature, and to raise a family. All of this,” she said, waving a perfectly manicured hand across the dining room to rest at Louise’s table in the centre, “seems so superficial, don’t you think? Cath, you are so lucky you never moved to the city.” As if she’d had any choice other than returning home after the student loans crippled her, Cath thought.Lorna was a surprise; she’d followed the career into law as she’d planned, but was currently working for environmental causes. She’d lost the lacquered veneer she’d maintained at university and seemed to have opened to the world around her. Cath discovered she’d changed a lot after she’d lost her boyfriend to Louise; they’d been together all through university and made a home together in London. When Louise moved to the city for her career, Lorna had invited her out, wanted her to feel included, and soon found herself excluded after returning home to find Louise in bed with Phil and all her friends telling her it was for the best. After that childhood bubble burst, she’d poured herself into work and it seemed that her current role was soothing her anger. Andy had been the golden boy of the group - with Stu so distant he got the attention of all the girls in the class - and took it all in his golden haired stride. He’d been in the university rugby team and smiled through those years with a revolving door of girlfriends. Now, his muscular bulk remained along with his confidence, but his blond hair was fast retreating across his pale forehead and he’d lost his golden promise. She answered the questions about her own life simply; she worked in a library, lived in a cottage by the sea, kept herself busy. She knew what she sounded like. The wine flowed and conversation turned more to gossip – Louise’s bitchy comments about Michelle’s weight, Andy and Sarah laughing over Louise’s famous black moods and epic hangovers, Lorna scarcely hiding her hatred as she typed furiously on her blackberry under the table. Only Stu remained silent; every once in a while they’d return to the mystery and ask some questions, but he didn’t participate or offer news about where he’d been for the last ten years. Eventually, Cath said she was tired and excused herself. She’d had enough of these people; her curiosity sated at how they’d turned out, she realised she didn’t regret any of her decisions about her own life, and didn’t regret not being part of their clique all those years ago. She lay awake in bed, listening to the chatter from downstairs. She didn’t belong here and didn’t want to; even those feelings of longing and regret for Stuart had gone. It was a good thing she’d come, after all, she thought as she heard someone fumble and giggle drunkenly at the door of the room next door. She made out the voices - Sarah and Andy - whispering and giggling like teenagers. For all of its pretence at opulence, the walls of the house were thin and she could hear everything. Sarah and Andy tore strips off Louise even as they tore at their own clothes; for Sarah it was a chance to be noticed after years in Louise’s shadow and for Andy, Cath guessed it was just the chance. She heard Lorna and Michelle talk as they walked along the corridor. “Thanks for sharing with me Lorna. I really couldn’t afford this weekend, but Louise was so insistent and I never would have managed it otherwise. I love Tom and I’m happy, but with three kids… Louise doesn’t seem to realise.”“Louise never will, ‘Shell. She’s never had to grow up, the regular cheques from Daddy mean she’s never had to count the cost of anything.”“I know it must have been difficult for you to come, I mean after Phil…”“That’s exactly why I came. What she did broke my heart, and it broke Phil completely. I see him a bit now and he’s never really recovered from her dropping him. I don’t want her to think she broke me.”“And this whole thing is so stupid, so expensive, it makes me want to…” their voices trailed off as they passed Cath’s door. Cath rose early the next day, there was a yoga class at the fitness centre and she felt she needed something to calm her, to get through the day. She’d already decided not to stay on for the party; she’d done what she came to do and so she’d stay for the rest of the day and slip away early in the evening. Coming back from the class she saw Andy and Sarah walking fast along the corridor, both in dark glasses despite the gloom of the morning, and retreat to their own separate rooms. She saw Lorna and Michelle walking through the gardens laughing in the weak early morning spring sunshine. At breakfast, Cath saw Stu talking to another table of people, who were feverishly writing notes and laughing as they walked towards the library. A scream pierced the gentle buzz around the room, followed at once by laughter. People moved towards the noise and found Sarah and another girl in the library, standing over the twisted body of Louise prone on the library floor, her designer gown fanned about her body, beautiful before you saw the angry red welt at her neck. “Typical Lou, has to be the centre of the action,” said Sarah as she walked away. Lorna met her as she was leaving the room.“I didn’t think we were supposed to be part of the action, just solving it. Obviously Daddy’s money can help bend the rules here too.”Everyone drifted away from the scene, checking their event notes and seeking out the actors who held all the answers. They’d been told at the beginning of the weekend not to linger at the body, but to let the actor leave discreetly and return to the scene of the crime later to look for clues. Cath overheard Louise’s sister say, “She’s probably only done it so she can skip today and go to the spa so that she looks better than the rest of us this evening. Clever Lou.”Cath noticed the actors were all standing apart, not mingling with the guests as they were supposed to, and then the manager came running.“Oh my God, call the police. What do we, ah, everyone stay where you are and don’t touch anything. There’s been a murder.”The group laughed, and it was only much later as they saw the police cars pull up in front of the hotel that anyone took it seriously.All the guests were herded into the breakfast room and taken one by one to the manager’s office to speak to a grim-faced policeman who did nothing to hide his distain for the whole event. When Cath had been interviewed, she told them what she could, but knew nothing she said would be able to help. She mentioned seeing all her classmates out so early in the morning, but explained to the policeman that it seemed unlikely to have any significance; the whole thing didn’t seem real.“That’s the problem with things like this, Miss Everett. It’s like the telly, people think it’s all a game, but that young girl is not getting up from this game any time soon.”He’d taken her contact details, said he would be in touch and with that she was dismissed. She was bumping her wheeled suitcase down the broad staircase to reception when she saw two policemen escorting Stuart away in handcuffs. The sight of him so vulnerable pierced her heart and she cried out,“Wait! No! I mean, I went to university with him. What’s going on?”A crowd had gathered by the time Cath had reached the bottom of the stairs and the policeman said,“I’m sorry Miss, er, Miss. But we can’t comment on an ongoing investigation. We have evidence that this man was involved in the murder of Louise Clarkson, and we’re taking him to the station for further questioning.”“Of course you do. He’s the murderer.”“Well, we can’t comment –““No, I mean, he’s the murderer in this mystery weekend. Dr Morris strangles his fiancé in a jealous rage because she’s going to run off with Captain Fallon. There will be evidence all over the room, props which point to Dr Morris.”As people looked once more through their notes and murmured their surprise at this new twist, the manager confirmed that this was the case and said that he would be happy to go through the evidence the police had to see if it was the planted props. The policemen moved Stuart into a small office as the manager walked towards the library with the Inspector. “How did you know?” asked Michelle.“I don’t know. I read a lot of mysteries, it seemed obvious to me.”“You always were the clever one, Cath. Do you know who did Lou in too?” laughed Andy and she moved away before he could put his arm around her. She left them talking as she checked out and walked to her car, dismissed again as they continued to follow the drama of Louise and look across at Stuart in the distance.It was a long drive home and even with the radio playing at full volume and the windows down so that cold air rushed in, she knew she was too tired from the weekend and would have to stop. She pulled in to a Travelodge and tried not to look at the cost as she handed over her card and punched in the PIN. The miles and the years fell away as she tried to settle on the thin mattress of the narrow bed. She woke when he kissed her, gently at first and then with more passion as his brown eyes sparked amber and they explored each other, found each other in the midst of isolation.