Undone Read Free Page B

doomed. There is no going back.
    ‘Let’s be in touch soon,’ he’d said when we were finally allowed to leave Dravendene Hall. That afternoon, black tarpaulin sheets had shrouded the glasshouse of the swimming pool. A barrier of tape stating POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS encircled the building. Detectives and uniformed officers busied themselves indoors and out, asking questions, taking notes. The detectives looked so clean-living; pleasant, patient people in good shoes and crisp shirts, not the scotch-sozzled cynics of legend.
    I hadn’t contacted Sol since then. Back in Saltbourne, back at work, the weekend’s events became a nightmarish limbo to which I was loath to return. So many questions remained unanswered: How did Misha die? Does he have family? Who did he know at the party? What happens next? Are we under suspicion?
    I had an urge to keep talking about it, to straighten out the chaos and make a coherent narrative in an attempt to get a handle on it all. But I knew that was dangerous, hence this journal. Damn, I’m going off track again.
    To go back to the party. After meeting Sol in the utility room at Dravendene, I later saw him several times that day, always talking to someone, his aviator shades giving him silver-black, shellac eyes. He felt dangerous to look at because if he were mutually curious, I’d be none the wiser.
    I was interested in talking to him but didn’t get the chance until the evening. I’d napped, bathed and changed, and was feeling nicely buzzed. I was wearing a 1960s mod dress, cut just above the knees, in navy blue cotton with a white Peter Pan collar and large, white buttons down the front. On my feet were strappy, Lola Ramona wedges in red, white and black. As I said before, when I picture myself from the outside, the nightmare feels more manageable. The events become discrete, strung neatly and evenly across a timeline of the weekend, rather than swirling in a maelstrom of upset. If I order them by clothing, we have: Day time: tea dress. Evening: mini-dress. Night time: handcuffs.
    I spotted him alone on the fringes of the party, beyond the hubbub of the garden, where glowing Chinese lanterns now hung from trees like strange pastel moons. He was leaning against an enormous horse chestnut tree, smoking, and gazing out across undulating countryside to a mauve-blue sky shot through with streaks of pink. Swifts swooped high above, their screams trailing. Long shadows slanted across the landscape.
    Emboldened by a couple of glasses of sangria, I approached, heels a touch wonky on the grass. ‘Hey, how’s the lip?’ I called.
    He turned, giving me a quick up–down assessment, and smiled tentatively. ‘Yeah, good thanks.’ He took a last drag on his cigarette, tapped it against the trunk, and then dropped the butt to the ground, swivelling his heel where the end fell among tree roots.
    His bottom lip, although less swollen and raw, was still marked by a ruby-purple lump, sagging and splitting like an overripe fruit. The wound had a lascivious quality, as if the man were melting from an excess of sensuality; as if the private hollow of his mouth were bursting out in a shameless display of wet, pouting obscenity. I wanted to suck him there, to carefully place my lips on the tenderness and taste the point where he was too much for himself. His broken flesh and blood would tingle on my tongue in a concoction tasting of velvet and copper, and I’d drink him down.
    ‘Did you win your match?’ I asked.
    He tucked a thumb in his belt loop, and crooked his knee against the wide tree trunk, all cool and laid-back like a beat-up cowboy. Outdoors, he seemed older than he had done earlier, high on endorphins in the utility room. His hair was thick, as dark as bitter chocolate, and his brown eyes were set in warm, crinkled rays. He smiled as if he found me amusing, his mouth lopsided from the injury. It was a sexy smile, arrogant, jeering and playfully calculating; a smile which suggested nothing