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As I near the pub, the first flakes begin to fall. Not heavy, yet: just tiny kisses of cold against the cheek. More is forecast for this evening. Above me the stars have disappeared. On the radio earlier they were talking about a white Christmas, although it’s a little early to get excited. It’s the 21st of December today. The shortest day of the year and the longest night.
The pub windows gleam out of the surrounding darkness, and around each of them glitters a constellation of fairy lights. You can smell the woodsmoke already. What is it about that scent? Something primal, stirring the blood.
It’s only 8pm, but it feels so much later. I’ve had to trek across three fields in the darkness to get here, although it’s the most local pub to Charlsford, these days. The other one, the one in the village itself, burned to the ground 18 years ago with the landlord inside. He wasn’t all that popular, but it was a terrible thing — people still talk about it in hushed tones around these parts.
I’m not looking forward to this.
Businesslike: that’s the only way to go about it. A necessary duty. That’s not the way to think about old friends, is it?
I can make out the punters through the windows now — a family group in coloured paper hats, faces flushed with wine and warmth, a 20-something couple at the next table, grinning at each other over a tea light.
I can’t see them, yet … my friends. But they won’t be at the front, in the dining section, they’ll be further in there somewhere. I push open the door and a fug of warmth hits me full force. The aromas of roasted meat and mulled wine, pine needles and smoke. Near the door there’s a group waiting for their table; I push politely past. They’re pulling off Barbour jackets and cashmere hats and scarves, stamping mud from Dubarry boots, reflecting the gentrification of this pub and of the whole of the Cotswolds, really.
“Oh,” one woman says, as I pass.
“I recognise you. You’re our new MP, aren’t you?”
They’re all looking now. “Yes,” I say with a big grin, hand outstretched to shake hers (my grip firm, reassuring) and then her husband’s. “I voted for you, naturally.” I bend down, give their glossy black Lab a friendly pat on the head. Normally, I’d be enjoying this. I like being recognised and having my ego stroked as much as the next bloke. But tonight…
“Jimbo you tw*t. What are you doing over there?”
It’s Mike calling me. Half the pub has turned round to look at him. Too loud, too local.
I look up. I see all five of them now. They’ve taken the prime seats, by the fire. Of course they have. They’re all dressed in terrible novelty Christmas jumpers and they shouldn’t get too close to the flames in case they melt. I put up a tentative hand. I see the woman who recognised me glance from the group by the fire back to me, trying to work it out. Her new MP, James Thornton, known by a group of local ne’er-do-wells as Jimbo.
I excuse myself, walk towards the group by the fire before they can make any more of a scene. There’s Mike, Sal — the two of them married now. Kyle, Gaz, Katy. I hug them all, say it’s been too long, go through all the motions. I ask about their jobs, families.
I sense them looking me up and down. I tried to get it right, nothing too flashy, but I catch the lift of Mike’s eyebrow, Kyle’s smirk. I sit down quickly, shrug off my coat. “Look at you,” Mike says. “Local celebrity and all that.” The way he says it. You may be one thing to them over there, but you’ll never fool us. You’ll never rise above us. We’ll always be here to remind you of where you come from. Who you really are. “Our Jimbo,” Sal says. “Mr MP,” Gaz says, drawing out the two letters thoughtfully. “Hope there aren’t any skeletons in your closet mate.” It doesn’t take much to derail a political career. But there are no incriminating photos of me exposing myself at uni, or doing a cheeky line during my City worker days. No run-ins with the police, not even for anything minor. I have hardly any vices. I’ve always been so good, so careful. Or nearly always. If anyone knows anything it would be one of this lot. None of them do know, I’m sure of it. Still, important to keep them onside, keep them close. Close as I can bear, anyway.
“Well,” Sal says, with a smile, “at least you’re not too high and mighty to do a Secret Santa with your old mates.” She’s always been softer than the others. I smile back at her, gratefully. She gestures to me to slip my present into the bag she’s got behind her chair, covering it so that no one can see the paper it’s in, can know that it’s from me.
I shrug off my jumper. I wish we could move a little away from the fire. The heat of it is pressing against me, tightening about me. I’m burning up but I don’t have any more layers to remove. The smoke, thick and acrid, is sticking in my throat.
Beyond the windows the snow has begun to fall in earnest, now: a dazzling white curtain. I think of the freezing air outside and for a moment I’d give anything to be out in it, feeling the cold against my burning cheeks. And then slipping off into the night, without a backwards glance.
The waiter comes over — they have waiters in this pub. “Five champagne cocktails!” I tell him, trying to be magnanimous, generous. Immediately, I feel my mistake, catch Kyle and Mike’s glance. La di f***ing da.
I feel a jolt of pure dislike, of anger. I’ve worked so hard to get where I am, to wear these clothes, to be able to afford a round of bloody champagne cocktails.
This lot: they’re a bunch of wasters. Never tried to be anything more.
To think, I once wanted so badly to be one of them. Trailing after them on the journey home from school, hanging out with them in the deserted night-time playground, pretending to enjoy a smoke even though I hated the taste, even though I’d bought my own lighter to show off. Trying to blag our way into the old pub, to be told to f**k off back to your mammies by the landlord. I’d have done anything, literally anything, once upon a time, to prove that I was one of them.
Sal passes round the presents.
Katy goes first. Or KT, as she used to spell her name, which once seemed so badass. Hers is from me: a beautiful hardback edition of Agatha Christie stories. She turns it upside down, shakes it, cracks a smile. “Can I drink it?” She turns it over. “£16.99? Jesus. I could drink that.”
Gaz goes next: three pairs of novelty socks. He puts two over his ears, waggles his head.
He was always the clown, although his grin turns downwards now. Working in a call centre probably does that to you.
Mike — once our noble leader, now a lorry driver — gets an electric blanket for his van. Kyle — nearly bald now, but still rangy, and with the look of a teenager up to no good — gets a bottle of Jim Beam.
Sal gets a bottle of bubble bath. “I need this,” she says. “With my little monsters.” I can never remember how many kids she and Mike have. Their first was born after he knocked her up at 16 — I know that.
“Jimbo’s turn!”
Jimbo doesn’t exist these days.
Not for the friends I made at university after I left Charlsford behind, not for my banking colleagues, certainly not for my electoral campaign team. Only for this lot.
I don’t belong with them. Not any more. But I’m here, aren’t I? The gift is something small, it fits within the hollow of my hand. Tightly-bound in a little square of red foil paper.
I start to unwrap it. I can feel all of them watching me. My fingers are oddly clumsy. I don’t want to do this. It’s as though some inner presentiment is telling me not to do it. But I keep going.
Then it’s out: a flash of silver, into my palm. I know what it is, straight away. But I don’t smoke. I told you I have hardly any vices.
I sit here, staring at the lighter. Wanting to drop it, or to throw it as far as I can. But it is as though it is welded to my skin. A part of me.
I can’t look up. I can feel the others’ eyes on me but more than that I can feel the heat of the flames on my face. And although I’m not looking at them, I can still see them, that hideous dance of red and gold, growing, blossoming, crackling and roaring and suddenly out of control, so fast … so much more powerful and terrible than I could ever have imagined — so much more than a silly prank, a way of proving myself, showing my worth.
And then the long, agonised shriek that might just have been more hot air escaping … but that might also have been a human scream.
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins, £7.99) is out now, Guest List by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins, £12.99) is out on February 20
Behind the story meet Lucy Foley by Samuel Fishwick
Lucy Foley, 33, is the author of four novels: The Book of Lost & Found (a bestselling debut in 2015), The Invitation, The Last Letter From Istanbul, and The Hunting Party — her first crime novel, which topped the Sunday Times paperback fiction bestseller list last month. Her fifth book — and second crime novel — The Guest List, will be published in February.
Her short story in today’s Standard is centred on the dark side of party season — familiar ground for Foley, pictured. “I love parties: going to them and writing about them,” she wrote in ES Magazine in 2014. “The Book of Lost & Found starts with one: a wild 1920s affair.” The Hunting Party begins with one too. A body is found in the snow after a hedonistic New Year’s Eve party. With no way in or out, the killer must be one of the wealthy and privileged group of friends.
Foley studied English literature at Durham University and University College London and worked for several years as a fiction editor. During this time she was offered a six-figure deal for her first two novels.
