Page 14 of The Perfect Guests
“Yes.” Nazleen laughs softly, her gaze on the door. Male voices are drifting closer; it sounds as though at least two guests are making their way down the stairs. “In the game, I’m the lady of the house, and my husband has—well, I’m not supposed to tell you that yet. But you have to work out who’s responsible and how it happened.”
“Excellent.” Sadie, too, turns an expectant face to the door. “It’s going to be fun.”
Nazleen rises just as gracefully as she did before, and her upper-class accent has returned in full force.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” she says as she crosses the room on her narrow heels.
Sadie sips her champagne like a new-to-the-area young lady hoping to land a job, and she thanks her lucky stars for whatever made the company pick her for this outrageously civilized role.
Then she, too, rises to greet the new arrivals.
Beth
July 1988
On the Saturday—the day of Leonora and Markus’s party—Nina sent me upstairs after lunch to grab some blankets and cushions from her bedroom.
“Why?” I said.
“It’s a surprise. I’ve got to persuade Mum first.” Nina grinned at me. “But I always get my own way in the end.”
By the time I returned with an armful of blankets, Nina was cheerfully packing a selection of party food into a big wicker basket, and she added bottles of Coke and a torch, and a game of Scrabble.
“Where are wetakingall this?” I asked, but she merely laughed.
“It’s a surprise; I told you. Just wait and see.”
Leonora hurried across the kitchen from her office. “I’m going to get changed now.” She hesitated at the door, looking back at us. “Nina, I’m really not sure about this. You’ll get cold and bored, and you know you can’t come down halfway through...”
“It’ll befine, Mum,” Nina said, rolling her eyes, and she grabbedthe basket and headed out into the garden. “Come on,” she called back to me, her dark eyes sparkling. “Trust me, Beth. You’re gonna love it.”
I followed her across the lawn, straight to the back of the garden, but I hesitated as she deliberately stepped into the flower bed and squeezed her way between two dense bushes farther back in the border. It was only when I spotted the ladder, partially hidden in the foliage, that I realized what she’d brought me to.
“Oh, you’ve got a tree house!” I peered up at the wooden planks among the branches. “This is so cool. It reminds me of”—I’d been about to say the Famous Five, but I tried to think of something more grown up—“Swiss Family Robinson.” I felt a twinge of embarrassment at the random comparison, but one of the great things about Nina was that she never tried to make me feel small.
“I know. It’s amazing, isn’t it?” She set the basket down and scrambled up the ladder. “You’ll have to pass everything up to me. Careful. Don’t shake the Coke.”
We arranged our blankets and cushions with care, and then we sprawled out in our little hideaway and peered through the gaps between the planks and surveyed the garden.
“It’s brilliant,” I said. “We’ll be able to see everything from up here. This is a genius idea.”
“I know.” Nina grinned. “I can’t believe Mum thinks we’ll get bored—there’ll be way too much interesting stuff to watch. I can’t wait to see them all arrive, and the ladies’ dresses, and their shoes, and their hair, and their jewelry...”
“Do you think anyone’ll see us up here?”
“Nah, they’ll all be drinking too much, won’t they? And they’ll be too busy gossiping and eyeing one another up to notice us.”
I liked this way of joining in the party—as a hidden observer. Itfelt thrilling, almost illicit, even though Markus and Leonora knew we were up here.Perhaps this is what it’s like to be a spy,I thought, and I scanned the garden, assessing the current situation. I wondered how much longer we had ’til the first guests arrived.
Tables and chairs sat in clusters on the lawn and under the giant white gazebo. Strings of white light bulbs hung in romantic loops from tree branches and all along the veranda railings, already glowing softly even though we still had hours of daylight left. At one end of the veranda, a bar had been set up, and a red-cheeked man in a white shirt and black bow tie was bustling around it. Nina and I had examined it surreptitiously on our way past: bottles in every different color; glasses in every size and shape imaginable; dishes of lemon and lime segments; mint leaves; glacé cherries; cubes of pineapple speared onto cocktail sticks...
“I wish I could try one of those cocktails,” I said. I’d only ever tasted cider and an occasional sip of my parents’ wine on special occasions. The thought of alcohol made me wonder what Jonas had drunk the other night, at the party in the village. I blurted out my question to Nina before I could think better of it.
“Why won’t your mum let you mix with other people? Is she afraid of germs or something?”
“Yeah,” Nina said without meeting my eye. “Something like that. It’s just one of those things.”
“Were you ill when you were little?”
