The collective put me on my guard immediately. I poured myself some water.
Danny raised his eyebrows at Lucas, prompting him. Lucas cleared his throat and made a show of rolling down his sleeves and fastening the cuffs. 'Danny and I are moving to Stoneborough.' His eyes were looking anywhere but at me.
'What?' I took an angry swig of whisky, which burned my throat. 'What do you mean, moving to Stoneborough?' I tried hard not to cough.
'We're going to live at the house full time, not just at weekends.'
'Why?' But I knew the answer: it was what Danny wanted.
'Well, it's like this.' Danny leant back and lit a cigarette. He put out the match with a deft flick of his wrist. 'Lucas wants to write and I'm going to try working on some short films. It's what we both should be doing, not slogging in offices. Lucas doesn't want to be a lawyer, Jo, he wants to be a writer.'
'I know that.' Did he think he was the only person who understood Lucas at all? I could feel my anger as a physical sensation. I knew I was flushed. I wanted to get up and storm about the room but doing that would show Danny just how furious I was. 'It's no reason to move to the bloody country.'
'It's much cheaper, Jo.' Lucas looked at me imploringly. Please accept this, his eyes asked me. 'At the moment, I'm paying rent on this place. The house is already mine.'
'You were just telling me money wasn't an issue. And you intend to do what all day? Write books and make short films? Really?'
'Yes. Exactly that.' Lucas drained his glass and poured himself another large measure. 'If it doesn't work out, we'll reconsider. '
'What about your job?'
'I've resigned.'
'Well, thanks for telling me. There I was earlier, while you talked about what you wanted to do with your life as if it were theoretical and now you present me with this as a fait accompli. Thanks a lot.' The cough finally got the better of me and the force of it shook my body and brought tears to my eyes. Lucas got up and came to stand beside me, holding out my water glass and slapping my back.
'And another thing,' I said, as soon as I could. 'When will I see you, if you're not here? It'll change everything.' I wiped a strand of hair off my hot face. Danny was watching me with a detached interest, as if I were an ant and he a boy with a magnifying glass on a sunny day.
'At weekends, when you come up to the house.'
'And that's it?'
'I'll come down here sometimes, too. To visit you.'
'This is crap and you know it.'
'Danny, do you think you could make yourself scarce for a bit so that I can talk to Jo? There's stuff that we need to discuss on our own,' he said.
Danny took his wine glass and the bottle and went to his room, banging the door behind him. Lucas picked up our whiskies and led me to the battered leather armchair. He sat down and pulled me on to his lap. Maybe it was the sight of my legs crossed over his or the way that he stroked my hair, I don't know, but I started to cry. I was furious with myself, swiping the tears away with the back of my hand.
'I'm not crying because I'm upset about you moving away,' I said. 'It's because I'm drunk and tired and angry.'
Lucas turned my head to face him. He burst out laughing. 'Oh, Jo,' he said eventually. 'You're so funny.'
I sniffed disgustingly. 'What the hell's so funny about me crying?'
'You look lovely. And you've got nothing to worry about. Like I said, I love you and that won't change, whether I live here or at Stoneborough.' Ill-advisedly, he kissed me. 'Trust me: I just want to write my novel and I don't have the time now.'
'It's not you I don't trust,' I said.
'I can look after myself.'
'Three days it's taken him to persuade you to quit your job, give up your flat and move to the middle of nowhere.'
'I've been thinking about it for longer than that.'
'Lucas, what's he going to do for money?'
'I've got loads of money and he's got none, Jo. Think about it from my point of view. He's been taking me out, buying me drinks, meals, for years. I've always felt like the impecunious younger brother - it'll be good to redress the balance a bit.'
'But it's different.'
'How?' He lowered his voice. 'He's in a really tight spot. He's got no job and massive debts. It's nearer thirty than twenty thousand. Who else is going to help him? He can't go to his family - his father's probably in a worse position than he is.'
'What about his mother? She's got money.'
He shook his head. 'He'd never ask her. Jo, he wouldn't tell you but Danny loathes the way his father taps his mother for cash. He thinks it's pathetic, with the way he treats her. He just wouldn't do it - it'd make him no better than he is.' He sighed. 'Look, I just want to help him.'
I could see that he'd made up his mind. 'You know, I feel like I've been set up - that's what makes me so angry. I thought I was coming over for dinner and Danny was going out so you and I could have an evening together.' I fished in my bag for a tissue and blew my nose. 'Did you have this planned all along, to sweeten me up with the great food and a few glasses of wine before he arrived back at some prearranged time?' Another wave of fury broke over me and I kicked my heel hard against the base of the armchair. 'I feel really stupid, Lucas.'
'It wasn't a set-up. I was going to tell you. I was working up to it. When Danny came home early it forced the issue.'
'I just hope you know what you're getting yourself into.'
My anger with him began to drain away. I had to admit Danny had been clever. He had identified Lucas's weak spot, his worry that he wasn't living up to Patrick's example and that he was playing the game without taking risks, and put pressure on it until he got what he wanted: the freedom that came with Lucas's money. I could imagine him next door, raising a silent toast to his new life, and I wanted to break his door down and inflict real physical pain on him.
'So you'll miss me, will you, when I'm in the country?' Lucas always knew when I'd argued enough. He stroked my hair, following the shape of my head. It had a strange lulling effect on me.
'You know I will. We're just getting started.'
'There is an alternative.'
My heart lifted. 'Is there?'
'You could come and live with us, too.'
For a moment, I thought I'd misheard. And then it dawned on me that I hadn't. I jumped off his knee as if he had suddenly caught fire. 'You want me to come and live with you in Stoneborough?'
He had the start of a smile. 'What do you think?'
'I think you don't know me at all.'
'What?'
'You're asking me to give up my job - my career - to come and live in the middle of nowhere.' I reached for my cigarettes, my hands shaking with rage.
'But you don't like your job.'
'Only because I'm not doing well enough at it yet. That doesn't mean I'm going to quit. I love journalism. It's what I've wanted to do my whole life. You know that. You know how important it is to me.'
'You could freelance.'
'Who for? I don't have the experience or the contacts. If I could do that, I'd be doing it now. Don't you understand? This is the beginning, the groundwork. I'm just not at a point where I could do that and even if I was I wouldn't want to.' I started to cry again. 'How can you not get it? After all this time? I thought you were the one person who would understand.'
'I just want to look after you.' His face was pained.
'But I don't want to be looked after. I'm not ready for that. Maybe I never will be. I need to do things.'
To my horror, he looked as if he were on the verge of tears himself. The whole situation was awful.
'Please don't cry,' I said, trying to lighten things up. 'That's my job.' I sat back down on his knee and put my arm round his shoulder. I buried my face in the side of his neck and felt my tears soak into the collar of his shirt.
'I need you to love me,' he said, holding me tightly. 'Do you?'
I said yes, because I had to and because I was afraid to look too deeply into the alternative. What I did know was that one of the things I had taken for granted about Lucas and me, that we understood each other in a way that no one else understood us, was no longer true. It was like suddenly losing faith in the floor you're walking on.
Much later, in bed, he reached for me, sliding an arm over my waist and resting his fingers lightly on my stomach. I couldn't respond. He felt lessened. That he wanted to write I could respect but I found it hard that he could so easily let go of his determination to be different from his father, to live on money that he had earned, a principle we had talked about for years. It was more important to me even than I had realised. I knew I had worried from the start that Lucas's new wealth would affect the relationship between us. I had needed him to be especially grounded to prove to me that it didn't matter, to counterbalance its weight. I lay still and pretended to be asleep.
The following morning I made an excuse about having to be at work early and slipped out of the flat quickly. I went to the greasy spoon around the corner and sat at a small table with a coffee while I tried to assimilate my new feelings. The caffeine didn't help me come to any conclusions other than what I already knew: that our relationship would never be the same again. I had only one new thought, a childish one of which I was immediately ashamed: Lucas had chosen Danny over me.
The new tradition had it that when the car went through the cutting in the Chiltern Hills, where the chalk walls rise off the road like the parting of the Red Sea, the front-seat passenger would retune the radio. As Oxfordshire opened up in front of us, we lost reception of the London station. That night Rachel was with us. Her car was in for a service and Greg was working late. He had arranged to come up with Lucas and Danny, who were already bringing the first load of their stuff. Michael wouldn't be coming at all; he had phoned that morning to say that he had a deal going through and was going to be in the office all weekend. It was the Friday-night request show on the Oxfordshire station and the caller asked for something by REM.
The DJ put on 'Losing My Religion'. I spent my customary two seconds wondering why they always chose that song when REM had so many other good ones, then fell under its melancholy spell.
'That's me in the spotlight, losing my religion ...' Martha tapped out the rhythm on the knee of her jeans. She began to sing and Rachel and I joined in. We turned off the M40 and into the countryside on the song's beautiful dying notes. There was a second's pause out of respect for it before the DJ took the next caller.
This part of the journey, like a labyrinth the first times I had driven it, was becoming familiar. The car threaded its way through the lanes to Stoneborough as if it were on automatic pilot. To our right, ten miles north, the lights of Oxford burnt the bellies of the clouds orange but where we were, everything outside the beam of the headlights was a rich soot. Only here and there did a cluster of lights shine out across the fields. I turned the radio off as we came into the village. The houses lining the road were silent and even though it was just nine o'clock, so few lights showed I was afraid we would wake everyone up as we passed by in our bubble of noise.
Since we would be the first to arrive, Lucas had given me the keys. The Manor, when we pulled up outside, looked sullen. Its unlit windows glowered in the gleam from the cuticle of moon, resentful of having been ignored for so long. The stone mass of it was bulked up against the wood behind like a dog with raised hackles and I had a premonition of the unease I was coming to associate with the place. Now, though, the feeling was tinged with a resentment of my own: the house was taking Lucas from me.
'Spooky old joint in the dark, isn't it?' said Martha, from the back seat.
'Yeah, but amazing,' said Rachel. 'I can hardly believe it, even now. How many people get the chance to spend time somewhere like this? It's like something out of a film.'
The key turned with a clunk and the front door swung open. I ran my hand along the wall until I found the switch.
The alarm was loud and discordant and it was a relief when it accepted the code Lucas had given me and fell silent. We dumped our bags and went around putting lights on, our footsteps echoing up through the house. There was a strong scent of polish. Patrick had had a cleaning lady who lived in the village and Lucas had arranged to keep her on. Though we did our washing-up at the weekends and tidied up any real mess, the dusting, hoovering and changing the beds was left to her. She came in the week and left the house ready for our arrival on Fridays. I was glad she didn't come while we were there: I found it embarrassing to have someone cleaning up after me. My mother had never had a domestic help and the idea that someone else should do my housework made me uncomfortable. Even at university, when the scout came to empty the bin and wash the handbasin in my room, I had always tried to be out.
Returning to the hall now, I stood still for a moment and raised my eyes to the ceiling, the focal point of that enormous space. Tonight there seemed an obliquity in the expression of the dark man on the chaise longue, as if he were concealing something in the rich folds of his clothing. There was urgency now, too, in the way that the Ganymede character held out his wine bowl, the muscles straining under his golden skin with the effort of proffering it. Every time I looked at the painting I noticed something different. It was as if the characters in it lived and breathed whenever my back was turned and never quite managed to find their original positions when I looked at them again.
'I'm going to light the fire,' Martha called out. I followed her voice into the drawing room, where she was kneeling on the rug. She used the kindling from the fire basket and made balls of old newspaper to stuff around it. When the flames began to catch, she put on small pieces of coal, which soon established a heart. I went around the room switching the table lamps on and dragging the heavy curtains closed.
Martha stood back and brushed off her hands. 'I could do with a glass of wine now.' There was none in the drawing room or library and none in the fridge. 'We're going to have to go down to the cellar,' she said.
The three of us stood outside the white door that led off the kitchen. I reached up and took the key off the hook. The door opened inwards and we saw the grey stone steps falling away into the darkness. Nothing would have persuaded me down them. I thought of the house's atmosphere pooling down there, collecting in the deepest part. The idea made me feel suffocated, as if I were already breathing daggy, poisoned air. I fought an instinct to slam the door shut.
'Look,' said Rachel. 'Why don't you go down and choose some - you know more about it than I do - and I'll turn the oven on for the pizzas.'
'I can't believe you're scared of the cellar,' I said.
'I'm just no good at choosing wine.'
'This isn't an off-licence. Every bottle down there is good.' 'I don't see you hurrying.'
'I'll go,' said Martha, starting down the steps. At the bottom she turned left and disappeared from sight. Rachel and I unpacked the salad and turned on the oven so that we could heat the pizzas as soon as the others arrived. After two or three minutes we heard footsteps again and Martha reappeared with a couple of dusty bottles. She put them on the table and scrabbled through the drawer for the corkscrew. 'It's amazing down there,' she said. 'It's just rack after rack after rack. These two are quite modest compared with some I could have chosen. It must be worth a fortune.'
'Perhaps I'll get Lucas to show me one day,' I said, locking the door firmly.
Things felt better when we were sitting in front of the fire with a glass of wine. I asked Rachel about her shop, a boutique in Richmond from which she sold exquisite accessories. I was fascinated by it and went there often, even though I couldn't afford to buy anything.
'Things are good.' She straightened the tassels on the hearth rug, running her nails through them to untangle the threads.
'Vogue
did a piece on one of our handbag designers in the latest issue and we got a plug. It's brought a lot of people in.'
Martha poked at the fire, trying to coax more heat from it. 'I still can't get over this place,' she said. 'Open fires - I love them.'
'How do you feel about Lucas moving up here, Jo?' asked Rachel.
I shifted position to ease the pins and needles in my calves. 'I'm worried about it. Not so much Lucas but Danny. They won't work up here. He'll just sponge off Lucas and distract him when he's writing, if he lets him write at all. You know Danny - he's hardly motivated.'
'Not to work anyway,' she said.
'And now he's lost his job, that's the only real structure in his life gone.'
'There's nothing you can do about it, Jo,' said Martha, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and drawing her legs up under her. 'You'll have to sit it out. If you ask me, Lucas feels guilty about having all this money, and sharing the wealth makes him feel better.'
'Look at these weekends,' said Rachel. 'He won't let any of us give him a penny.' It was true: we had tried to pay our way but Lucas wouldn't have it.
Through the curtains we saw headlights pan across the front of the house and there was an exuberant blast on the horn. We went out to meet them, leaving the front door open to light the path. I felt apprehensive about seeing Lucas. I hadn't seen him since the morning after our argument. I stood awkwardly on the gravel, waiting for him to open the door.
'Sorry we're late. Took ages to load up the car,' he said, getting out and giving me a formal-feeling hug, as if he were aware of new boundaries that would have to be negotiated before the old status quo could be resumed.
'Give me the keys, mate. Let's get some of this unpacked.' Danny opened up the boot, which threatened to spill its load of bags and boxes on to the drive. 'Here you are, Jo. One for you.' He held out a cardboard box. It was large and heavy. As he looked at me, making sure I had it, I saw the unmistakable light of triumph in his eyes. And he knew I'd seen it. A little smile, perceptible only to me, played around his mouth.
He withdrew his hands from the underneath of the box very slowly, his eyes never leaving my face. I turned away, disgusted both with him and with myself, for giving myself away.
It wasn't spring yet but there were signs that the end of winter was coming. In the flowerbeds around the base of the house and in the grass verges of the drive, the snowdrops had gone and now crocuses had pushed their way through the hard earth. The rain and intense cold of the week was gone by Sunday and a flat blue sky stretched over the house, the sun behind infusing it with a blank light like a cloudless summer day's. There was something dishonest about it. With the wind and cold during the week one knew where one was, but that sky promised a warmth it didn't deliver.
Martha found me in my room on Sunday morning, brushing my hair. I shared Lucas's bed along the landing and now only used my original room for dressing and storing clothes. I looked up from the mirror as she came in.
'Danny's driving me mad,' I said, waving the brush. 'He's been swanning about all weekend, talking about what they're going to do up here when it's just the two of them.' 'Don't show him you're angry, for God's sake. It'll make things worse.' She sat down on the end of the bed and bounced a little. 'It's harmless anyway - he's just enjoying winding you up.'
'Easier said than done. And I don't think it is harmless.' 'Jo.' She stopped bouncing and looked at me seriously. 'You've got to let this go. You can't let Danny come between you and Lucas. Lucas is just helping Danny out for a while and it's really kind of him. Let him do it.'
'I don't know, Marth ...' I decided to tell her what Lucas had said about my leaving my job. That, too, had been playing on my mind. 'It is Danny but it isn't just that ...' There was a knock at the door and Lucas came in, fresh from the shower. He was rubbing his head with a towel and his hair stood up from his head in black spikes. He had another towel tied round his waist and I watched Martha take in the lines of his body, looking at his image in the mirror. I caught her eye in the glass and she smiled and looked away. The line of dark hairs that ran down from his navel and under the towel curled damply. He bent slightly to kiss me behind the ear. 'You were up early again.'
'So, gorgeous, what's the plan?' said Martha, as he joined her on the end of the bed.
'I'd just come to talk to you about that. Danny's been going on about Elizabeth, you know, Patrick's old girlfriend, the one we saw in the film. I've invited her for lunch; it seemed like the best way to shut him up.'
Had anyone else been responsible for her invitation to lunch, I would have been enthusiastic. I was intrigued as much as Danny clearly was. I wanted to see what she was like now, this beauty who had captivated Patrick. But Danny's involvement tarnished it for me. When Lucas turned away I looked at Martha and rolled my eyes. She pulled a mock exasperated face but I knew that at least some of her exasperation with me was real.
Given what we knew, Elizabeth had to be fifty at least. It was hard to credit. I wouldn't have been surprised if someone told me she was thirty-eight or thirty-nine. She held herself with the sort of still power I imagined a life of posing must imbue. She was a temple goddess come to life, her skin almost unlined and her feline eyes subtly accentuated with dark shadow. She was wearing a black cashmere top and fine wool trousers that dropped in a long line to the floor, but I still had a mental image of the sharp white trouser suit she was wearing in the photograph. Her shiny chestnut hair, even now showing only a whisper of grey, was tied in a loose knot at the nape of her neck.
Lucas stepped forward to greet her properly, kissing her respectfully on each cheek. 'Darling,' she said, holding his elbows tightly.
'Elizabeth, this is my girlfriend, Joanna.' Lucas took my hand and pulled me towards him a little.
'Good to meet you,' she said in a crisp home-counties accent that took me by surprise. I had been expecting something exotic or at least a mid-Atlantic drawl. She scanned me quickly up and down. Lucas introduced the others and she nodded and murmured. Greg held out his hand and she shook it, displaying long manicured fingers and a silver ring set with a large sea-green stone. She looked at him appraisingly and held the handshake a second longer.
'Shall we have a drink before lunch?' said Lucas. He ushered us into the drawing room and seated Elizabeth on the chesterfield. She crossed her legs, pressed her ankles together, and waited beautifully for her drink. I heard the ice crack as Lucas poured the gin.
'You haven't changed anything?' she asked, looking around.
We'd done a reasonable job of cleaning up after the night before. In a fit of zeal I'd even polished the furniture and the scent of beeswax vied with that of smoke from the new fire that was now crackling merrily.
'It reminds me of him, keeping it the same.'
'He had wonderful taste, didn't he?' She sighed. 'I miss him so much.'
Lucas smiled sadly and handed her the glass. 'Elizabeth, will you excuse me for a few minutes? I'm going to go and finish getting lunch ready.' He was doing a good job of staying calm. She had been forty minutes late and he had been pacing in the kitchen when she arrived, worried that the food would be ruined. He had had to turn the oven off and was keeping everything warm as best he could.