The doorbell rings just as I pull out a block of wood while playing Jenga. I cringe, and the twitch of my arm causes the whole tower to collapse. Mum, Dad, and Ember boo me, and I curse softly.
‘You’re out for the next round,’ says Mum, rubbing his hands. She is the best of us and hardly ever loses.
After telling my family about my trip and showing them a little Oxford slideshow on my laptop, we had dinner together and then decided to have an afternoon of games. This is now our third round of Jenga – and I’ve already lost twice. I admit my defeat and get up. While the others start to stack the small wooden parts on top of each other again, I go to the door. My eyes widen when I see who is standing there. ‘Lydia?’
She looks devastated. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are swollen. I take a step towards her, but she immediately raises a hand to stop me. ‘Is James here?’
I shake my head. ‘No. What happened?’ I ask, alarmed.
Lydia doesn’t seem to hear me properly. She takes her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and dials a number before holding it to her ear. I go outside to her in socks and grab her arm. I look at her insistently. ‘What happened?’
She just shakes her head.
‘Cy? ‘It’s me,’ she says suddenly. Is James with you?’
When Cyril says something on the other end of the phone, relief spreads across her face. ‘Thank God.’
Again, I hear Cyril’s voice on the other end, but I don’t understand what he’s saying. Whatever it is – it ensures that Lydia’s expression darkens again.
‘Okay. No, I’m coming.’ He says something else, and Lydia gives me a quick look. ‘Yes. See you soon.’
After she hangs up, she wants to turn around and walk back to the car Percy is leaning against. He also looks so worried that a queasy feeling spreads through my stomach.
‘Lydia, please tell me what happened,’ I repeat.
She stops and glances over my shoulder. ‘I can’t.’
‘Let me come with you,’ I say suddenly.
She opens her mouth and closes it again. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
I make a gesture that she should wait for a moment. Then I run back into the house, slip into my boots, grab my coat and the knitted scarf Dad made me. I call out to my family that I have to leave for a moment and take my key from the hook next to the front door. As I walk, I wrap the scarf around my neck. Lydia looks as if she would like to hold me back, but simply can’t muster the strength to do so.
Without another word, she disappears into the car. I greet Percy, who nods to me curtly, then I get into the car as well. Lydia sits in the seat that James usually occupies. Her gaze is glazed over, and she fiddles with the hem of her red coat. I would like to reach for her hand, but I don’t dare.
‘The offer is still standing. If you want to talk, I mean,’ I say quietly.
Lydia flinches as if I had yelled at her. She looks up, and tears shimmer in her eyes. With every second in her presence, the sinking feeling in my stomach gets worse. What must have happened that she is so devastated. Suddenly a terrible thought comes to me. I take a look up. The red light doesn’t light up, which means Percy can’t hear us. I lean forward a bit.
‘Is everything okay with the baby?’ I whisper.
Lydia glances at the driver’s cab in panic, but the partition wall is also raised. Then she turns back to me. ‘Yes,’ she says in a hoarse voice. ‘We had at home—’ She pauses and seems to think about how much she can confide in me. ‘There was an argument.’
Since James told me about his father last night, I can get an idea of what ‘strife’ means in the Beaufort house. Goosebumps cover my whole body.
‘Is James okay, Lydia?’ I whisper, unable to suppress the panic in my voice.
Lydia shrugs her shoulders helplessly. ‘Cyril says yes.’
The next quarter of an hour feels like an eternity. I claw my fingers into the hem of my jacket and try not to go crazy with worry. I don’t know what all this is supposed to mean, and Lydia avoids my gaze and just strokes her belly, lost in thought. Every now and then she blinks violently, as if she wants to prevent tears. Once her cell phone vibrates. When she reads the message, she presses her lips tightly together and afterwards no longer seems at all as if she wants to talk.
When she arrives at Cyril’s house, Lydia jumps out of the car and hurries to the front door. She slips on the icy stairs, and I get to grab her arm at the last moment so that she doesn’t fall. She thanks her with a murmur.
Cyril is already standing in the doorway. When Lydia arrives at his place, he greets her with outstretched arms. ‘Look at who enriches the party with his presence.’
He takes her in his arms, but she just stands there and lets it go over her like a lifeless doll. It takes a while for Cyril to break away from her. Then he discovers me. ‘And you even brought a plus-one with you. How nice.’ He utters the last words in a tone that leaves no doubt that he actually means exactly the opposite. Then he takes a step to the side, and we enter. Already here you can hear the booming music that is played further back in the house. Cyril still has an arm wrapped around Lydia’s shoulder. I wonder if he knows what happened or is just tactful enough not to talk to Lydia about it.
We cross the hall through which I also walked last time. This time there are no guests on the gallery, the party seems to take place completely in the salon. As we enter, music blares at us, and I look around. It’s not as crowded as the last time I was here. In fact, the party is quite manageable. I don’t know why, but that only makes me more restless. A few people I don’t know are dancing in their underwear in the middle of the room. Alistair sits on one of the sofas and smooches around with a tattooed, beefy guy. Further back at the drinks cart I discover Kesh, who watches the two with narrowed eyes and empties his glass in one gulp.
My neck starts to tingle … and then I discover James. He sits on one of the sofas near the pool. My shoulders stiffen as I let my gaze wander over him. He looks completely exhausted. His hair is disheveled, the sleeves of his shirt are rolled up, and I can see a few red spots on his gray shirt—the shirt I wore last night. My heart is sinking into my pants.
I’m just about to go to him, when I see him bending over. He tilts his head over the table, presses one side of his nose shut with one finger and pulls up a white substance through the other nostril. My mouth opens. He didn’t just …
A blonde girl, who looks vaguely familiar to me, climbs out of the pool and strolls towards James. She bends a finger and gestures for him to come to her. He stands up and tilts his head. She walks the last meter towards him and stops close to him. Then she raises her hands and begins to unbutton his shirt. At that moment I recognize her. The girl groping my boyfriend is Elaine Ellington. A cold shiver chases down my spine, and I feel a painful stinging in my stomach. I’m frozen.
‘How long has he been like this?’ asks Lydia Cyril.
‘Since noon today. He shot himself completely.’
Lydia lets out a hissing curse. The two continue to talk, but I can’t hear them over the noise in my ears. Elaine pulls James’ shirt off his shoulders until it falls to the floor. Then she starts working on his belt.
That’s enough.
At this moment, my anger is greater than my fear of the water. In a few long steps I am with them.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I hiss.
James turns his head to me, but he doesn’t look at me, but right through me.
He seems completely foreign to me. His face is petrified, his pupils so huge that they take up most of his iris and I can no longer really see the extraordinary turquoise blue. His cheeks are pale and his eyes are rimmed with red.
This is not my James. It’s the guy he was months ago, the guy who bribes people with money, gets drunk with his friends every weekend, and gets laid one girl after another. It’s the guy who doesn’t feel anything and doesn’t care about anything.
‘James,’ I whisper and take his hand. His skin is ice cold.
For a second, something flickers in his gaze. It is dark and consuming and seems to eat away at him from the inside out. He inhales audibly, closes his eyes briefly – and when he opens them again, the expression has disappeared again. ‘You have no business here, Ruby.’
‘But I—’
While I’m still talking, he turns around and jumps into the pool. The loud splashing makes me flinch. Small splashes of water land on my face, and I take a leap back. Elaine and a few other guests, dressed only in underwear, follow James into the water. Wren is also among them. He bawls as he reappears and sprays James even wetter. He shakes the water out of his hair with a grin.
Just everything here feels unspeakably wrong. I’d love to talk to James, but that’s not possible for various reasons. My fear doesn’t allow me to get any closer to the water, and besides, I don’t think you can say anything to him in this state that he understands. James seems so uninvolved. As if the world rushed past him and he just let himself be carried away in a daze.
Elaine moves towards James. He swims backwards until he reaches the wall, and she follows him with a smile. My heart beats faster and faster. I don’t understand what’s happening here. It seems like a bad dream to me. Under the water, I can see the blurred outline of her body pressing against his. She is now standing between his legs, leaning forward and whispering something in his ear. The two seem familiar. As if this wasn’t the first time this has happened. Everything in me commands me to go there and drag her away from him, but I can’t move. James doesn’t do anything when Elaine takes his face between both hands and kisses him.
Something is splintering inside me. Small shards of glass penetrate my chest and make their way deeper into my interior until I can hardly breathe.
Suddenly, someone puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Well, that’s the James Beaufort I know,’ Cyril murmurs close to my ear.
I want to say: But it’s not the James Beaufort I know.
You have no idea what he’s really like.
He’s my friend, you stupid asshole.
But that’s not true. If James Beaufort were my friend, he wouldn’t do that. If he were my friend, he would have come to me when there was a problem and confided in me instead of distracting himself from his pain with alcohol and drugs with his superficial friends. If he were my friend, there wouldn’t be another girl’s tongue stuck in his throat.
I turn on my heel. I slip on the wet ground, but just manage to catch myself. As fast as I can, I make my way through the salon. My footsteps bang on the floor of the huge hall as I run to the exit. I have to get out of here as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a place in the world where I can forget what just happened.
‘Ruby!’ calls Lydia behind me. I stop and look over my shoulder. When I see how desperate she is, a guilty conscience germinates in me.
‘I’m really sorry that your family situation is so shitty, Lydia,’ I say in a trembling voice. ‘But I can’t. Not like that, not after—’ After what? After I thought we had overcome exactly that? After we’ve slept together? I can’t possibly tell her.
‘He needs you now,’ she begs me.
I let out a bitter laugh and tilt my head back to look at the ceiling. This hall is so exaggeratedly decadent. Gold as far as the eye can see, priceless oil paintings, expensive antique vases – things that suddenly seem completely trivial to me. I turn around and continue my way through the hall until I finally arrive at the exit. Lydia calls something after me, but I don’t hear her anymore.
When the heavy door closes behind me, I see it as a symbol.
For a brief moment, I really thought that this could work with James and me if we both wanted it enough. But now something becomes clear to me:
I will never be a part of his world.
Unfortunately, I only realize this now, when it is much too late.
