The Guest List Read online

  ‘The eternal dilemma,’ he says, mock-profoundly.

  ‘God, I know … but people do really care about that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘if you and I were guests I know where I’d want to be sitting.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Right opposite you, so I could do this.’ His hand reaches down and rucks up the fabric of the silk skirt, climbing beneath.

  ‘Will,’ I say, ‘the silk—’

  His fingers have found the lace edge of my knickers.

  ‘Will!’ I say, half-annoyed, ‘what on earth are you—’ Then his fingers have slipped inside my knickers and have begun to move against me and I don’t particularly care about the silk any more. My head falls against his chest.

  This is not like me at all. I am not the sort of person who gets engaged only a few months into knowing someone … or married only a few months after that. But I would argue that it isn’t rash, or impulsive, as I think some suspect. If anything, it’s the opposite. It’s knowing your own mind, knowing what you want and acting upon it.

  ‘We could do it right now,’ Will says, his voice a warm murmur against my neck. ‘We’ve got time, haven’t we?’ I try to answer – no – but as his fingers continue their work it turns into a long, drawn-out groan.

  With every other partner I’ve got bored in a matter of weeks, the sex has rather too quickly become pedestrian, a chore. With Will I feel like I am never quite sated – even when, in the baser sense, I am more sated than I have been with any other lover. It isn’t just about him being so beautiful – which he is, of course, objectively so. This insatiability is far deeper than that. I’m aware of a feeling of wanting to possess him. Of each sexual act being an attempt at a possession that is never quite achieved, some essential part of him always evading my reach, slipping beneath the surface.

  Is it to do with his fame? The fact that once you attain celebrity you become, in a sense, publicly owned? Or is it something else, something fundamental about him? Secret and unknowable, hidden from view?

  This thought, inevitably, has me thinking about the note. I will not think about the note.

  Will’s fingers continue their work. ‘Will,’ I say, half-heartedly, ‘anyone might come in.’

  ‘Isn’t that the thrill of it?’ he whispers. Yes, yes I suppose it is. Will has definitely broadened my sexual horizons. He’s introduced me to sex in public places. We’ve done it in a night-time park, in the back row of a near-empty cinema. When I remember this I am amazed at myself: I cannot believe that it was me who did these things. Julia Keegan does not break the law.

  He’s also the only man I have ever allowed to film me in the nude – once, even during sex itself. I only agreed to this once we were engaged, naturally. I’m not a fucking idiot. But it’s Will’s thing and, since we’ve started doing it, though I don’t exactly like it – it represents a loss of control, and in every other relationship I have been the one in control – at the same time it is somehow intoxicating, this loss. I hear him unbuckle his belt and just the sound of it sends a charge through me. He pushes me forward, towards the dressing table – a little roughly. I grip the table. I feel the tip of him poised there, about to enter me.

  ‘Hello hello? Anybody in there?’ The door creaks open.

  Shit.

  Will pulls away from me, I hear him scrabbling with his jeans, his belt. I feel my skirt fall. I almost can’t bear to turn.

  He stands there, lounging in the doorway: Johnno, Will’s best man. How much did he see? Everything? I feel the heat rising into my cheeks and I’m furious with myself. I’m furious with him. I never blush.

  ‘Sorry, chaps,’ Johnno says. ‘Was I interrupting?’ Is that a smirk? ‘Oh—’ he catches sight of what I’m wearing. ‘Is that …? Isn’t that meant to be bad luck?’

  I’d like to pick up a heavy object and hurl it at him, scream at him to get out. But I am on best behaviour. ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ I say instead, and I hope my tone asks: Do I look like the sort of cretin who would believe something like that? I raise my eyebrow at him, cross my arms. I am past master at the raised eyebrow game – I use it at work to fantastic effect. I dare him to say another word. For all Johnno’s bravado, I think he’s a little scared of me. People are, generally, scared of me.

  ‘We were going through the table plan,’ I tell him. ‘So you interrupted that.’

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘I’ve been such a bellend …’ I can see that he’s a little cowed. Good. ‘I’ve just realised I’ve forgotten something pretty important.’

  I feel my heart begin to beat faster. Not the rings. I told Will not to trust him with the rings until the last minute. If he’s forgotten the rings I cannot be held responsible for my actions.

  ‘It’s my suit,’ Johnno says. ‘I had it all ready to go, in the liner … and then, at the last minute … well, I dunno what happened. All I can say is, it must be hanging on my door in Blighty.’

  I look away from them both as they leave the room. Concentrate hard on not saying anything I’ll regret. I have to keep a handle on my temper this weekend. Mine has been known to get the better of me. I’m not proud of the fact, but I have never found myself able to completely control it, though I’m getting better. Rage is not a good look on a bride.

  I don’t get why Will is friends with Johnno, why he hasn’t cut him out of his life by now. It’s definitely not the witty conversation that keeps him hanging in there. The guy’s harmless, I suppose … at least, I assume he’s harmless. But they’re so different. Will is so driven, so successful, so smart in the way he presents himself. Johnno is a slob. One of life’s dropouts. When we collected him from the local train station on the mainland he stank of weed and looked like he’d been sleeping rough. I expected him to at least get a shave and a haircut before he came out here. It’s not too much to ask that your groomsman doesn’t look like a caveman, is it? Later I’ll send Will over to his room with a razor.

  Will’s too good to him. He even, apparently, got Johnno a screen test for Survive the Night which, of course, didn’t come to anything. When I asked Will why he sticks with Johnno, he put it down to simple ‘history’. ‘We don’t have much in common, these days,’ he said. ‘But we go back a long way.’

  But Will can be fairly ruthless. To be honest, that was probably one of the things that attracted me to him when we first met, one of the things I immediately recognised we had in common. As much as his golden looks, his winning smile, the thing that drew me was the ambition I could smell coming off him, beneath his charm.

  So this is what worries me. Why would Will keep a friend like Johnno around simply because of a shared past? Unless that past has some sort of hold over him.

  JOHNNO

  The Best Man

  Will climbs out of the trapdoor carrying a pack of Guinness. We’re up on the Folly’s battlements, looking through the gaps in the stonework. The ground’s a long way down and some of the stones up here are pretty loose. If you didn’t have a good head for heights it would do a number on you. From here you can see all the way to the mainland. I feel like a king up here, with the sun on my face.

  Will breaks a can out of the case. ‘Here you go.’

  ‘Ah, the good stuff. Thanks, mate. And sorry I walked in on you back there.’ I give him a wink. ‘Thought you were meant to save it for after marriage, though?’

  Will raises his eyebrows, all innocence. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Jules and I were going through the table plan.’

  ‘Oh yeah? That’s what they call it now? Honest though,’ I say, ‘I’m sorry about the suit, mate. I feel like such a tool for forgetting.’ I want him to know I feel bad – that I’m serious about being a good best man to him. I really am, I want to do him proud.

  ‘Not an issue,’ Will says. ‘Not sure my spare’s going to fit, but you’re welcome to it.’

  ‘You’re sure Jules is going to be all right about it? She didn’t look all that happy.’

  �
�Yeah,’ Will waves a hand. ‘She’ll be fine.’ Which I guess means she probably isn’t fine, but he’ll work on it.

  ‘OK. Thanks, mate.’

  He takes a swig of his Guinness, leans against the stone wall behind us. Then he seems to remember something. ‘Oh. By the way, you haven’t seen Olivia, have you? Jules’s half-sister? She keeps disappearing. She’s a little—’ He makes a gesture: ‘cuckoo’, that’s what it means, but ‘fragile’ is what he says.

  I met Olivia earlier. She’s tall and dark-haired, with a big, sulky mouth and legs that go up to her armpits. ‘Shame,’ I say. ‘’Cause … well, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed?’

  ‘Johnno, she’s nineteen, for Christ’s sake,’ Will says. ‘Don’t be disgusting. Besides, she also happens to be my fiancée’s sister.’

  ‘Nineteen, so she’s legal, then,’ I say, looking to wind him up. ‘It’s tradition, isn’t it? The best man has the pick of the bridesmaids. And there’s only one, so it’s not like I have all that much choice …’

  Will twists his mouth like he’s tasted something disgusting. ‘I don’t think that rule applies when they’re fifteen years younger than you, you idiot,’ he says. He’s acting all prim now, but he’s always had an eye for the ladies. They’ve always had an eye for him in return, lucky bastard. ‘She’s off-limits, all right? Get that through your thick skull.’ He knocks my head with his knuckles.

  I don’t like the ‘thick skull’ bit. I’m not necessarily the brightest penny in the till. But I don’t like being treated like a moron, either. Will knows that. It was one of the things that always got my back up at school. I laugh it off, though. I know he didn’t mean it.

  ‘Look,’ he says. ‘I can’t have you blundering around making passes at my teenage sister-in-law. Jules would kill me. She’d kill you, too.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ I say.

  ‘Besides,’ he says, lowering his voice, ‘there’s also the fact that she’s, you know …’ he makes that cuckoo gesture again. ‘She must get it from Jules’s mum. Thank God Jules missed out on any of those genes. Anyway, hands off, all right?’

  ‘Fine, fine …’ I take a swig of my Guinness and do a big belch.

  ‘You had a chance to do much climbing lately?’ Will asks me, obviously trying to change the subject.

  ‘Nah,’ I say. ‘Not really. That’s why I’ve got this.’ I pat my gut. ‘Hard to find time when you’re not being paid for it, like you are.’

  The funny thing is, it was always me who was more into that stuff. All the outward-bound stuff. Until recently, it’s what I did for a living too, working at an adventure centre in the Lake District.

  ‘Yeah. I guess so,’ Will says. ‘It’s funny – it’s not quite as much fun as it looks, really.’

  ‘I doubt that, mate,’ I say. ‘You get to do the best thing on earth for a living.’

  ‘Well – you know … but it’s not that authentic; a lot of smoke and mirrors …’

  I’d bet anything he uses a stuntman to do the harder stuff. Will has never liked getting his hands that dirty. He claims he did a lot of training for the show, but still.

  ‘Then there’s all the hair and makeup,’ he says, ‘which seems ridiculous when you’re shooting a programme about survival.’

  ‘Bet you love all that,’ I say with a wink. ‘Can’t fool me.’

  He’s always been a bit vain. I say it with affection, obviously, but I enjoy getting him riled. He’s a good-looking bloke and he knows it. You can tell all the clothes he’s wearing today, even the jeans, are good stuff, expensive. Maybe it’s Jules’s influence: she’s a stylish lady herself and you can imagine her marching him into a shop. But you can’t imagine him minding much either.

  ‘So,’ I say, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘You ready to be a married man?’

  He grins, nods. ‘I am. What can I say? I’m head over heels.’

  I was surprised when Will told me he was getting married, I’m not going to lie. I’ve always thought of him as a lad about town. No woman can resist that golden boy charm. On the stag he told me about some of the dates he went on, before Jules. ‘I mean, in a way it was crazy good. I’ve never had so much action with so many different women as when I joined those apps, not even at uni. I had to get myself tested every couple of weeks. But there were some crazy ones out there, some clingy ones, you know? I don’t have time for all that any more. And then Jules came along. And she was … perfect. She’s so sure of herself, of what she wants from life. We’re the same.’

  I bet the house in Islington didn’t hurt either, I didn’t say. The loaded dad. I don’t dare rib him about it – people get weird talking about money. But if there’s one thing Will has always liked, maybe even more than the ladies, it’s money. Maybe it’s a thing from childhood, never having quite as much as anyone else at our school. I get that. He was there because his dad was headmaster, while I got in on a sports scholarship. My family aren’t posh at all. I was spotted playing rugby at a school tournament in Croydon when I was eleven and they approached my dad. That sort of thing actually happened at Trevs: it was that important to them to field a good team.

  A voice comes from down below us. ‘Hey hey hey!’ What’s going on up here?’

  ‘Boys!’ Will says. ‘Come up and join us! More the merrier!’

  Bollocks. I was quite enjoying it being just Will and me.

  They’re climbing up out of the trapdoor – the four ushers. I shift over to make room, giving each a nod as they appear: Femi, then Angus, Duncan, Peter.

  ‘Fuck me, it’s high up here,’ Femi says, peering over the edge.

  Duncan grabs hold of Angus’s shoulders and pretends to give him a shove. ‘Whoa, saved you!’

  Angus lets out a high-pitched squeal and we all laugh. ‘Don’t!’ he says angrily, recovering himself. ‘Jesus – that’s fucking dangerous.’ He’s clinging on to the stone as though for dear life, inching his way along to sit down next to us. Angus was always a bit wet for our group, but got social credit for arriving in his dad’s chopper at the start of term.

  Will hands out the cans of Guinness I’d been eyeing up for seconds.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ Femi says. He looks at the can. ‘When in Rome, hey?’

  Pete nods to the drop beneath us. ‘Think you might have to have a few of these to forget about that, Angus mate.’

  ‘Yeah but you don’t want to drink too many,’ Duncan says. ‘Or you won’t care enough about it.’

  ‘Oh shut it,’ Angus says crossly, colouring. But he’s still pretty pale and I get the impression he’s doing everything he can not to look over the edge.

  ‘I’ve got gear with me this weekend,’ Pete says in an undertone, ‘that would make you think you could jump off and fucking fly.’

  ‘Leopards don’t change their spots, eh, Pete?’ Femi says. ‘Raiding your mum’s pill cabinet – I remember that kit bag of yours rattling when you came back after exeat.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Angus says. ‘We all owe her a thank you.’

  ‘I’d thank her,’ Duncan says. ‘Always remember your mum being a bit of a MILF, Pete.’

  ‘You better share the love tomorrow, mate,’ Femi says.

  Pete winks at him. ‘You know me. Always do well by my boys.’

  ‘How about now?’ I ask. I suddenly feel I need a hit to blur the edges and the weed I smoked earlier has worn off.

  ‘I like your attitude, J-dog,’ Pete says. ‘But you gotta pace yourself.’

  ‘You better behave yourselves tomorrow,’ Will says, mock-sternly. ‘I don’t want my groomsmen showing me up.’

  ‘We’ll behave, mate,’ Pete says, throwing an arm around his shoulder. ‘Just want to make sure our boy’s wedding is an occasion to remember.’

  Will’s always been the centre of everything, the anchor of the group, all of us revolving round him. Good at sport, good enough grades – with a bit of extra help here and there. Everyone liked him. And I guess it seemed effortless, as though he didn’t w
ork for anything. If you didn’t know him like I did, that is.

  We all sit and drink in silence for a few moments in the sun.

  ‘This is like being back at Trevs,’ Angus says, ever the historian. ‘Remember how we used to smuggle beers into the school? Climb up on to the roof of the sports hall to drink them?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Duncan says. ‘Seem to remember you shitting yourself then, too.’

  Angus scowls. ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Johnno smuggled them in really,’ Femi says, ‘from that offie in the village.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Duncan says, ‘because he was a tall, ugly, hairy bastard, even at fifteen, weren’t you, mate?’ He leans over, punches me on the shoulder.

  ‘And we drank them warm from the can,’ Angus says, ‘’cause we didn’t have any way to cool them down. Best thing I’ve ever drunk in my life, probably – even now, when we could all drink, you know, chilled fucking Dom every day of the week if we wanted to.’

  ‘You mean like we did a few months ago,’ Duncan says. ‘At the RAC.’

  ‘When was this?’ I ask.

  ‘Ah,’ Will says. ‘Sorry, Johnno. I knew it would be too far for you to come, you being in Cumbria and everything.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’ I think of them having a nice old champagne lunch together at the Royal Automobile Club, one of those posh members-only places. Right. I take a big long swig of my Guinness. I could really do with some more weed.

  ‘It was the kick of it,’ Femi says, ‘back at school, at Trevs. That’s what it was. Knowing we could get caught.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Will says. ‘Do we really have to talk about Trevs? It’s bad enough that I have to hear my dad talking about the place.’ He says it with a grin, but I can see he’s got this slightly pinched look, as if his Guinness has gone down the wrong way. I always felt sorry for Will having a dad like his. No wonder he felt he had to prove himself. I know he’d prefer to forget his whole time at that place. I would too.

  ‘Those years at school seemed so grim at the time,’ Angus says, ‘but now, looking back – and Christ knows what this says about me – I think in some ways they feel like the most important of my life. I mean, I definitely wouldn’t send my own kids there – no offence to your dad, Will – but it wasn’t all bad. Was it?’