And then, with a dancer's grace, she cleared the parapet.
She landed with barely a sound.
TWENTY-FOUR
Pete was beginning to think that the party had taken on an unpleasant edge. The noises had become louder, the lights were brighter and sharper, and the people around him seemed to be turning into over expansive parodies of their true selves. For Pete it was almost like being a teenager again, going to see 2001 on magic mushrooms. They'd tasted like shit but they'd sure done the stuff; everybody else had been whining about the story while Pete had been lying there with his tongue hanging out. Tonight, only a few minutes earlier, he'd been following handwritten signs down a service passageway to the toilets when, for one brief half-second, he'd seen a local councillor emerging through the doorway with the head of a pig on his shoulders. It was barely more than a flash impression and the man was turning and the light wasn't at all good; and besides, he pretty much resembled a pig anyway, so the effect was probably no more than a moment's mistake. But after that Pete had sworn that he'd touch nothing stronger than tapwater for the rest of the evening, and so far he'd been sticking to it.
He couldn't see Alina anywhere around. He supposed that she had to be somewhere and he reminded himself that they weren't supposed to be together so what did it matter, but still he kept catching himself scanning the crowd for her. Plenty of known faces nodded back at him, but none of them was hers.
He stopped by a book-lined alcove to remove his tie completely and to get some air. The books were behind glass, and the reflection that stared back at him showed the face of a stranger. He'd no reason to be anxious, and no right to it either.
So stop it, he told his reflection.
"Ross Aldridge," Ted Hammond announced breathlessly, triumphantly, as he appeared at Pete's side. He was flushed, happy, and in his shirtsleeves.
Pete said, "Who?"
"Name of the local copper that I couldn't remember. He just left. If it's the host you're looking for, he's long gone, too."
"It's tough at the top."
"Well, it isn't so great here at the bottom, most of the time. Do me a favour?"
"What kind of a favour?"
"Dance with one of the Venetz sisters for me."
"Which one?"
"Doesn't matter, but we have to ask both because you can't split them up, see?"
Pete took his jacket off, and hung it on one of the bookcase doorknobs. There was a cloakroom somewhere, but this would do as well. He said, "Okay. But if either one of them gets frisky, you're on your own."
"Deal," Ted Hammond said, and they set off to see if the sisters had joined the party yet.
Sandy was a few months younger than Wayne, but unlike Wayne she'd stayed on at school. Her mother had ideas about her going to university, but Sandy knew her limitations; she planned on a two year course at a catering college, and had diplomatically said nothing about it yet. Wayne, in her mother's view, was more than just an ordinary valley kid; he was a walking symbol of everything that she didn't want for her daughter.
It was a big weight for him to be carrying, but there didn't seem to be a lot that he could do about it. He stayed out of the way as much as he could, and Sandy mentioned him as infrequently as possible.
The one thing that she didn't do was to give him up.
He was walking just ahead of her now, checking out the trail in the darkness. It was mostly soft grass and woodchips here, and she'd stepped out of her shoes and was now carrying them, walking barefoot.
Wayne said, "Feeling any better?" He was referring to the slight dizziness she'd experienced when they'd first come into the moonshadow of the trees.
"Yeah," she said. "A bit. Must have been all those flowers. I'm sensitive to flowers."
"Is that right?"
"And perfume. There's only certain perfumes I can wear."
"Better make me a list for Christmas," Wayne said, and he gave her his hand to help her out onto the lakeside track. She stopped for a moment, and put her shoes back on for walking on the hard tarmac. She was curious as to where they were going, but so far Wayne had refused to say; as far as she knew, this was just one of the estate roads and it led nowhere.
Sandy said, "We'd better not be heading for your place, even if you've been doing it up. Oil and stuff affect me worse than anything."
"It'd take us an hour to get there. This is really close." His shadow touched her lightly on the nose. "You're not going to believe your eyes."
Their destination, Sandy discovered a few minutes later, was the Liston Hall boathouse.
He took out the keys that he'd brought from the office back home, and opened the door. He went in ahead of her and tried the lights; they flickered once, but he seemed to know what to do because he went inside and Sandy heard him thump something, and then all the lights came on. As she stood waiting, she felt again that wave of dizziness that bordered close to nausea, and she put a hand against the rough wall of the boathouse to steady herself. As Wayne returned, she quickly took her hand away; she wasn't going to tell him about this, not if she could help it.
He beckoned her in, and took her to the rail to look over. What she saw under the lights was a boat, a big one in too small a space.
"We're handling the brokerage on it," Wayne explained. "Wait until you see inside."
She had to be careful on the stairway down to the quay, because it was steep and the treads were so narrow. Wayne helped her aboard and then darted ahead, switching on all the lights and then dimming some of them to create an impression of instant welcome. When they reached the after stateroom, he left her prodding the waterbed as he fiddled with the stereo to get some low-level background music. He asked her what she thought.
"It's just like something in a film," she said.
He stood behind her and unhooked her dress; a shrug of her shoulders, and it fell easily to the floor. She shivered a little as its touch ran over her. The room seemed to give a lurch, but she ignored it. She stepped out of the dress and then turned and sat on the bed, rather heavily; smiling at Wayne to show that she was okay, she kicked off her shoes one at a time.
Wayne sat beside her, unbuttoning his shirt. "We can run a video if you want," he said. "There's some really strange stuff in there."
"Things are strange enough, thanks," Sandy said.
She got to her feet again, hooked her thumbs into her white cotton briefs, and took them off. That was everything, not counting the thin gold chain around her neck. Wayne seemed frozen in mid action as she quickly threw back the top sheet of the bed and climbed in; but then he recovered, and started an awkward fight to get his shoes off without actually untying their laces.
Something bumped against the hull, and sent a faint thud all the way through the boat.
"What was that?" she said, half-sitting up and holding the sheet against her.
"I don't know. Driftwood, probably."
"Are we locked in?"
"No," Wayne admitted. He might have lied about it if he'd been able to think more quickly, but the truth was out before he knew it.
"Go on, then, Wayne," she said. "Just to make it safe."
Wayne smiled, and she could see that he was nervous; not of the shadows outside, but of the uncertain country that lay ahead. Once entered, there was no true return. Shirtless and now shoeless, he went out to put the lock on the boat house door.
As soon as he'd gone, Sandy lay back on the waterbed. She heaved a great sigh. She so much wanted this to be exactly right; and perhaps, by the time that Wayne returned, she'd have enough of a grip on herself to ensure that it would be.
A small, sick feeling lay in Wayne like a swallowed stone. It was starting to go wrong, and he couldn't quite work out how or why. The participants were willing and the setting was ideal; they'd been close to it often enough, so what was happening now?