Chapter Forty Five

Someone had decided that a taxi would be safer than a mini-van, albeit a taxi driven by one of the security staff. Sorcha sat in the back next to Jake, clutching the ridiculously small beaded purse which barely held her phone, keys and lip gloss, wondering what would turn into a pumpkin at midnight. She half wondered whether she might turn into a mouse, or possibly a guinea pig. As they had been about to leave the flat, she had managed to come close enough to her senses to grab a credit card and some cash. Jake had seemed happy to laugh about it, as she tried to squeeze the card in behind her phone and then wrap several twenty pound notes round her lip gloss. Now he was chatting to the wired-up security guard who was sitting in the back with them as if it was almost perfectly normal.

It came as a shock to be bustled into the building, going the wrong way through a fire exit, the moment that they arrived. They were hurried down dingy, institutional corridors to a bare, grubby room with barred windows. It felt like a prison, in which a number of people were already locked up: Sorcha decided that this was her moment to hang back and shut up, just as Jake put his arm around her shoulders and propelled her towards the rest of the group. She was being steered to one side, where a shortish man was having his hair spiked by an even shorter one. The really, really short one had huge, eighties, bouffant hair, but didn’t seem to think that it was a joke. Jake gave her shoulder a squeeze.

“Jeff, Julian, this is Sorcha.”

He still couldn’t pronounce it properly. He’d mostly given up on the rolled ‘r’, and managed to pronounce the “ch” as “chsh”, but when he said it she almost liked it that way. As Jake spoke, the bouffant midget turned round, and Sorcha felt herself suddenly subject to intense and not entirely friendly scrutiny. The man with the spiky hair, who she vaguely recognised as Jeff, clearly wanted to be more in control of things than he actually was; and she realised that she was somehow one of the things that were out of control. She let him take her in, realising that she was getting rather used to being stared at like an albino chimpanzee, before holding out her hand to him more shyly than she usually would.

“Pleased to meet you?”

She hadn’t meant it as a question, but it still came out that way. She could feel him hesitating between confusion and hostility. Following his glance, she saw a tall, blonde woman wearing a black and pewter coloured dress, who she presumed was Jeff’s wife. Sorcha’s first thought was envy, both of the dress and its contents, but then she saw how the woman was watching both Jake and Jeff, almost willing a happy ending. Jeff seemed to be trying to take a cue from her, and not quite getting there.

“I get the impression that I’m not quite what you expected.” Jeff looked embarrassed: Jake seemed to have decided that she could stand on her own two feet, and was standing next to her and letting her flounder, “Were you expecting pinstripes? Or just more blood?”

She got it wrong, and Jeff’s embarrassment seemed to be in danger of swallowing him up, before a professional persona clicked in, complete with a disconcertingly warm, wide grin.

“You look beautiful, darling. You just haven’t quite looked like that in the photos I’ve seen of you before,” It wasn’t quite fake, but it was very well practiced. He rather belatedly took her hand in his, “Forgive me, eh? I’m Jeff.”

More people came into the room. Sorcha didn’t get a chance to reply to him before the noise level rose appreciably. One voice carried over the rest of them.

“Sorry guys, I’m on me own. Stupid cow refused to get on the bloody plane, despite all the shit that’s going on.”

Sorcha didn’t need to turn round to see who it was, but she did have to physically keep her mouth shut to make sure she didn’t start a fight. Duncan was standing just inside the doorway, wearing a suit with a T-shirt underneath it and Converse on his feet. The only real sign that he was dressed up was a peculiar jewelled pendant, which would have looked more in keeping on a Saudi princess, and the fact that he looked a lot less hairy than the previous times they had met. His hair seemed to have been tamed into something approaching a permanent wave, and the beard had been thinned back to something which was more like long stubble. The sort which was unlikely to scratch.

Several people started talking to him at once, which Jake seemed to find funny, before Duncan caught sight of them and made his way over. He had a way of walking at people on the assumption that they would get out of his way which was rather unnerving to watch, but even Sorcha couldn’t quite bring herself to hate him for it. He stopped just in front of them, and suddenly seemed to run out of things to say – and went to run his fingers through his hair before remembering that he wasn’t meant to.

“Fucking hell. You scrub up nice.” He almost looked worried, “I mean, really, really nice. Shit.” Sorcha was trying not to laugh at him, and he could tell, “If he’s still not interested, just give me a call love, all right?”

Jake was looking happy, lightly asserting ownership rights through the hand which was resting on her shoulder. Duncan was still looking at her, confused.

“Did Julian do you?”

Sorcha had no idea how to answer the question, but thankfully this time Jake realised that she was in trouble.

“Do you seriously think I was going to let Julian loose on her?”

The midget squeaked, and Sorcha suddenly realised that they were talking about the stylist, who had been buzzing around both Jeff and Jake like a rather large insect. She turned round, to look up at Jake.

“You decided you could take me as I am?”

The gaze which met hers was about as enigmatic as it got.

Mouse and Catie were the last to arrive. Catie looked like a fairy princess, wearing an ethereal silver dress which Sorcha knew that she could never have carried off whatever her colouring. Mouse was wearing a hat which looked like it had been stolen from a tramp, but which Julian greeted and groomed like an old friend. They were almost ready to go through to the main hall when Sorcha realised that Jeff was still watching her, which made her feel uneasy. She wasn’t sure what to tell him to reassure him.

“I’m only here because he wants me here. Nothing else.”

As she said it, she thought that she saw a tear well up in the corner of his eye, but the showman cut in so quickly to tell her that he knew and that she was great that she concluded she had been wrong. It could just have been a reaction to the mascara.

Once they got into the main hall, it was much as Sorcha had expected. She found it easier to stay close to Jake, keep looking at him, and let herself be struck dumb. When the guys were shepherded together for group photos, she dropped back with Catie and smiled at somebody’s shoes to try to minimise the number of pictures of her looking as if she was being tortured. The meal was even more of a farce than Jake had said it would be, and it soon became apparent that the best way of dealing with it was not really eating at all. She saw Jeff rearranging the things on his plate, and then using a fork full of food as an intermittent prop to the conversation, and decided to follow suit. They were all trying to give a passable impression of how they might have behaved if they had been somewhere completely different, but it was something else that they were good at. Once the awards presentations started, it took her a couple of goes to get the hang of smiling at the panning cameras just before and after each award was announced, but she soon started to wish that Jane was there so that they could at least compare notes on impossible clothing and peculiar behaviour once they were safely out of range. Jake seemed to be zoned out: looking around the table, her best bet for a bitching partner was probably Jeff, but it was still early days with him. She went back to looking at Jake, and looking at the lights and colours around her and letting them merge into one event, like the weather or a landscape.

They were making the “Best Film” presentation, which was towards the end of the evening. As they stood up to go up to the stage Jake squeezed her hand and seemed to want to say something, but there were two cameramen strategically positioned in front of the table and half a dozen security men closing in around them. She smiled at him, and watched them move off through the hall. It felt as if part of her was still attached to him in some way, and was being stretched to breaking point, even though he was still only a couple of tables away. For some reason, they were walking through the audience rather than just popping up from the back of the stage: Sorcha realised with a jolt that this would leave him exposed for much longer than he needed to be, but it was too late to do anything about it. She was suddenly very afraid, and her panic seemed to be starting to throttle her. She tried to keep her eyes on Jake, and tell herself that it would only be a few minutes, although Jeff seemed hell-bent on making it take as long as he could by stopping to shake people’s hands. And people were standing as they walked through, which made it harder to see him, which then made it harder to remember to breathe.

She looked across at Jackie and Catie, and just saw immaculate calmness and fixed smiles. She needed to get a grip. Presumably to cover for the time which it was taking for them to get to the stage, video footage of them walking through was being projected up onto the screens. It meant that she could still see him. She concentrated on keeping on looking at him, as if doing so would somehow protect him, and prayed for all she was worth.

When it did eventually happen, Sorcha missed it. The band had reached the steps up to the stage: Jake was leading the way, presumably because he was the one who most wanted to get it over and done with, and had turned to wave from the middle of the steps while the others caught up with him. Sorcha had been trying to breathe a sigh of relief at being able to see him properly again, when suddenly the applause broke into panic and he disappeared from view. In among the music and the applause, and the occasional wisecrack from the host about how long it was taking them to get there, the shots didn’t exactly ring out. They were just noises in amongst other noises. There was a brief glimpse of what looked like a collapsed rugby scrum on the screens, with what she thought was a livid streak of blood down Jake’s face, before they went black and blank. Parts of the hall went dark, and then the house lights came up. Catie and Jackie had stood up and ran as best they could towards the front, pushing through people trying to run in the other direction, but Sorcha froze, unsure of what the right reaction would be but knowing it was likely to be photographed. She was caught between terror; a weird, welling sense of sadness; and the knowledge that she had known all along that this was how it was all going to end.

She heard the final shot properly, because the music had stopped and because it was fired only a few feet behind her. Sorcha suddenly remembered that she might be in danger too, and leapt up and round, ready to run in which ever direction seemed the most helpful. She knew what she expected to see, and hoped that at least this time she would remember Stephen Warren’s face. For any of this to make sense, she needed to remember his face.

It didn’t help that the lighting in that part of the hall was not particularly clear. There was a uniformed policeman in a crumpled heap on the floor in the gangway behind the table, and the shooter was standing behind him, but she didn’t see what had happened. Sorcha kept looking for Stephen Warren, hating herself for still not recognising him. All the time she couldn’t see him, she didn’t know which way to run, and not knowing was making her panic even more. The shots meant that he had to be there, but he could have been any one of the men wandering around in an anonymous DJ. She was trying to look around more methodically, when she suddenly started recognising something else. A nasty, royal blue, sequinned shrug. Pippa had one just like it, and she’d had to help her sew some of the nasty royal blue sequins back on it after she’d had a fight with Dan the previous Christmas. She couldn’t believe that she was thinking of Pippa at a time like this, and tried not to.

It was only as Pippa started screaming her name that Sorcha properly recognised her. She was struggling hard to free herself from two men, who looked to be other guests. Sorcha’s first reaction was to go to try to help her, but then she saw the gun. It was quite a small gun. For a moment she didn’t know what it meant, but seeing it took her back to Jake. She needed him, absolutely, and had no idea where he was. The area by the stage was chaotic, but she couldn’t see any sign of the band or the security guards. More than anything, she needed him to forgive her, but she could only think of the blood, and suddenly knew that might never happen. And she needed the world to stop, because she knew she couldn’t go with it.

The only reason why she carried on was that it stopped seeming real. The people weren’t real any more, and neither was the gun. Sorcha thought of Jake’s face; the way he had looked in her hallway earlier in the evening, and stepped towards Pippa.

“Pip, love, what have you done?”

Pippa seemed to be fighting harder and harder, screaming words which didn’t makes sense, and nobody else seemed to want to help restraining her. She almost certainly hadn’t heard her. Sorcha wondered whether the two men were going to give up.

“Pip, love, give me the gun. Please, Pip.”

Sorcha carried on thinking of Jake, as she tried to catch hold of the gun as Pip’s arms flailed around. She caught it with both hands, but Pip was still fighting. The thought that it going off again wasn’t the worst thing that could happen came into Sorcha’s head and stuck there, however hard she tried to think of Jake. Even his face seemed to be slipping away from her now. She tried to wrestle the gun away with force, but Pip’s grip was like a steel wrench. She knew that Pip could fight for longer than she could. The only question was whether someone else would step in before she gave up, but the gap around them seemed to be increasing as everyone else got out of danger’s way.

Sorcha gave up before she needed to, because knew that there wasn’t any point. The four of them were crouched down on the floor, with the two men still trying and failing to get Pip properly restrained. Sorcha sat back on her heels and burst into tears, no longer caring who might see it, wanting to disappear and never come back. She didn’t hear the clunk when the gun hit the ground, or notice that one of the men had managed to kick it well out of reach.

It grew quieter, although Sorcha didn’t realise that was mostly because Pip had stopped struggling and screaming. Instead, she was just repeating Sorcha’s name, and telling her than it was going to be all right. Sorcha didn’t immediately hear what she was saying, and when she did, she couldn’t make sense of it. She found it hard even to look at Pip, although she wasn’t sure what she was afraid of. She snatched glimpses of her laying limp and prostrate on the floor with two strangers holding her arms behind her back.

When Sorcha finally, properly, looked at her, Pippa started to sing her a lullaby.