The four ushers explode back into the marquee. Peter Ramsay does a knee-slide across the laminate, nearly crashing into the table bearing the magnificent wedding cake. I see Duncan leap on to Angus’s back, his arm making a tight headlock around his neck so his face begins to turn purple. Angus staggers, half laughing, half gasping for breath. Then Femi jumps on top of both of them and they collapse in a tangled heap of limbs. They’re pumped up, excited by their stunt I suppose, carrying Will out of the marquee like that.
‘To the bar, boys!’ Duncan roars, leaping to his feet. ‘Time to raise hell!’
The rest of the guests follow them, taking this as their cue, laughing and chattering. I stay sitting in my seat. Most seem thrilled, titillated, by the speech and the spectacle that came after it. But I can’t say I feel the same – though Will was smiling there was a disturbing undertone about it all: the blindfold, tying his hands and feet like that. I look across to the top table and see that it is almost completely deserted apart from Jules, who is sitting very still, apparently lost in thought.
Suddenly there’s a commotion from the bar tent. Raised voices. ‘Whoa – steady on!’
‘What the fuck is your problem, mate?’ ‘Jesus, calm down—’
And then, unmistakably, my husband’s voice. Oh God. I get to my feet and hurry towards the bar. There’s a press of people, all avidly watching, like children in a playground. I shove my way through to the front as quickly as I can.
Charlie is crouched on the floor. Then I realise that his fist is raised and he’s half-straddling another man: Duncan.
‘Say that again,’ Charlie says.
For a moment I can only stare at him: my husband – Geography teacher, father of two, usually such a mild man. I haven’t seen this side
of him for a very long time. Then I realise I have to act. ‘Charlie!’ I say, rushing forward. He turns and for a moment he just blinks at me, like he hardly recognises me. He’s flushed, trembling with adrenaline. I can smell the booze on his breath. ‘Charlie – what the hell are you doing?’
He seems to come to his senses a little at this. And, thank God, he gets up without too much fuss. Duncan straightens his shirt, muttering under his breath. As Charlie follows me, the crowd parting to let us pass, I can feel all the guests watching silently. Now that my immediate horror has receded I simply feel mortified.
‘What on earth was that?’ I ask him as we return to the main tent, sit down at the nearest table. ‘Charlie – what’s got into you?’
‘I had enough,’ he says. There’s definitely a slur to his speech and I can see how much he’s drunk by the bitter set of his mouth. ‘He was mouthing off about the stag, and I’ve had enough.’
‘Charlie,’ I say. ‘What happened on the stag?’
He gives a long groan, covers his face with his hands. ‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘How bad can it be? Really?’
Charlie’s shoulders slump. He seems resigned to telling me, suddenly. He takes a deep breath. There’s a long pause.And then, at last, he begins to talk.
‘We got a ferry to this place a couple of hours’ ride from Stockholm, made a camp there on an island in the archipelago. It was very … you know, boy’s own, putting up tents, lighting a fire. Someone had bought some steaks and we cooked them over the embers. I didn’t know any of the blokes other than Will, but they seemed all right, I suppose.’
Suddenly it’s all tumbling out of him, the booze he’s drunk loosening his tongue. They’d all been to Trevellyan’s together, he tells me, so there was a lot of boring reminiscing about that; Charlie just sat there and smiled and tried to look interested. He didn’t want to drink much, obviously, and they mocked him about that. Then one of them – Pete, Charlie thinks – produced some mushrooms.
‘You ate mushrooms, Charlie? Magic mushrooms?’ I nearly laugh.
This doesn’t sound at all like my sensible, safety-conscious husband. I’m the one who’s up for trying stuff out, who dipped her foot into it a couple of times in my teenage years on the Manchester club scene.
Charlie screws up his face. ‘Yeah, well, we were all doing it. When you’re in a group of blokes like that … you don’t say no, do you? And I didn’t go to their posh school, so I was already the odd one out.’
But you’re thirty-four, I want to say to him. What would you say to Ben, if his friends were telling him to do something he didn’t want to?
Then I think of last night, as I downed that drink while they all chanted at me. Even though I didn’t want to, knew I didn’t actually have to. ‘So. You took magic mushrooms?’ This is my husband, Deputy Head, who has a strict zero-tolerance policy of drugs at his school. ‘Oh my God,’ I say, and I do laugh now – I can’t help it. ‘Imagine what the PTA would say about that!’
Next, Charlie tells me, they all got into the canoes and went to another island. They were jumping in the water, naked. They dared Charlie to swim out to a third tiny island – there were lots of dares like that – and then when he got back, they’d all gone. They had left him there, without his canoe.
‘I had no clothes. It might have been spring, but it’s the fucking Arctic Circle, Han. It’s freezing at night. I was there for hours before they finally came for me. I was coming down from the mushrooms. I was so cold. I thought I was going to get hypothermia … I thought I was going to die. And when they found me I was—’
‘What?’
‘I was crying. I was lying on the ground, sobbing like a child.’
He looks mortified enough to cry now and my heart goes out to him. I want to give him a hug, like I would Ben – but I’m not sure how it would go down. I know men do stupid stuff on stags, but this sounds targeted, like they were singling Charlie out. That’s not right, is it?
‘That’s – horrible,’ I say. ‘That’s like bullying, Charlie. I mean, it is bullying.’
Charlie has a fixed, faraway expression. I can’t read it. The arrogance of having always assumed I know my husband inside out. We’ve been together for years. But it has taken less than twenty-four hours in this strange place to show that assumption up for the illusion it is. I’ve felt it ever since we made that crossing over here. Charlie has seemed increasingly like a stranger to me. The stag do is one more confirmation of this: the discovery of a horrific experience that he has kept from me, that I now suspect might have changed him in some complex, invisible way. The truth is, I don’t think Charlie is quite himself at the moment: or not the self I know. This place has done something to him – to us.
‘It was all his idea,’ Charlie says. ‘I’m sure of it.’ ‘Whose idea? Duncan’s?’
‘No. He’s an idiot. A follower. Will. He was the ringleader. You could tell. And Johnno too. The others were all acting on instructions.’
I can’t quite imagine Will making the others do that. Anyway, the stags are normally the ones to call the shots, not the groom. Yeah, I can
see Johnno being behind it, no problem, especially after that stunt just now. He has that slightly wild air about him. Not malicious, but like he might push things too far without really meaning to. Definitely Duncan. But not Will. I think Charlie prefers to hang the blame on Will simply because he doesn’t like him.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ Charlie says, his expression darkening. ‘You don’t think it was Will.’
‘Well,’ I say. ‘If I’m honest, not really. Because—’
‘Because you want to screw him?’ he snarls. ‘Yeah, did you think I hadn’t noticed? I saw the way you looked at him last night, Hannah. Even the way you say his name.’ He does a horrible little falsetto. ‘Oh Will, tell me about that time you got frostbite, oh, you’re so masculine
…’
The ferocity of his tone is so unexpected that I recoil from him. It’s been so long since Charlie’s been drunk that I’d forgotten the extent of the transformation. But I’m also reacting to the tiny element of truth in it. A flicker of guilt at the memory of how I found myself responding to Will. But it quickly transforms itself to anger.
‘Charlie,’ I hiss, ‘how … how dare you speak to me like that? Do you realise how offensive you’re being? All because he made some effort to make me feel welcome – which is a hell of a lot more than you did.’
And then I remember last night, that flirting with Jules. That slinking into our bedroom in the small hours when he definitely hadn’t been drinking with the men.
‘Actually,’ I say, my voice rising, ‘you haven’t got a leg to stand on. That whole horrible charade with you and Jules last night. She’s always acting like she has you wrapped around her little finger – and you play along. Do you know how it makes me feel?’ My voice cracks. ‘Do you?’ I’m caught between anger and tears, the pressure and loneliness of the day catching up with me.
Charlie looks slightly chastened. He opens his mouth to speak but I shake my head.
‘You’ve had sex with her, haven’t you?’ I’ve never wanted to know before. But now, I’m feeling brave enough to ask it.
There’s a long pause. Charlie puts his head in his hands. ‘Once,’ he says, voice muffled through his fingers. ‘But … ages and ages ago, honestly …’
‘When? When was it? When you were teenagers?’
He lifts his head. Opens his mouth, as though to speak, then closes it again. His expression. Oh my God. Not when they were teenagers. I feel
as though I have been punched in the stomach. But I have to know now. ‘Later?’ I ask.
He sighs, then nods.
My throat seems to close up so that it’s a struggle to get the words out. ‘Was it … was it when we were together?’
Charlie folds over into himself, puts his face in his hands again. He lets out a long, low groan. ‘Han … I’m so sorry. It didn’t mean anything, honest. It was so stupid. You were … it was, well, it was when we hadn’t had sex for ages. It was—’
‘After I had Ben.’ I feel sick to my stomach. I’m suddenly certain. He doesn’t say anything and that’s all the confirmation I need.
Finally, he speaks. ‘You know … we were going through a rough patch. You were, well … you were so down all the time, and I didn’t know what to do, how to help—’
‘You mean, when I had borderline post-natal depression? When I was waiting for the stitches to heal? Jesus Christ, Charlie—’
‘I’m so sorry.’ All the bluster has gone out of him now. I could almost believe he’s completely sober. ‘I’m so sorry, Han. Jules had just broken up with that boyfriend she had at the time – we went out for drinks after work … I had too much. We both agreed it was a terrible idea, afterwards, that it would never happen again. It didn’t mean anything. I mean, I barely remember it. Han – look at me.’
I can’t look at him. I won’t look at him.
It’s so horrible I can barely begin to think about it clearly. I feel like I’m in shock, like the full hurt of it hasn’t sunk in yet. But it throws all that flirting, all that physical closeness, into a new, terrible light. I think of all the times I have felt Jules has purposefully excluded me – cordoning off Charlie for herself.
That bitch.
‘So all this time,’ I say, ‘all this time that you’ve been telling me you’ve only ever been friends, that a bit of flirting means nothing, that she’s like a sister to you … that’s not fucking true, is it? I have no idea what the two of you were doing last night. I don’t want to know. But how dare you?’
‘Han—’ He reaches out a hand, touches my wrist, tentatively.
‘No – don’t touch me.’ I snatch my arm away, stand up. ‘And you’re a state,’ I say. ‘An embarrassment. Whatever they did to you on the stag, there’s no excuse for your behaviour just now. Yeah, maybe it was awful, what they did. But it didn’t do you any lasting harm, did it? For Christ’s sake, you’re a grown man – a father …’ I almost add ‘a husband’ but
can’t bring myself to. ‘You’ve got responsibilities,’ I say. ‘And you know what? I’m sick of looking after you. I don’t care. You can sort out your own bloody mess.’ I turn and stride away.
