by Ali Mercer
Back in the days before Mum met Mark, she had been fond of telling us that she had champagne tastes and beer money. ‘Your grandma used to say that,’ she’d remind us. ‘That line is your inheritance. And the way things are going, that’ll probably be all you inherit.’ Then Ava would give her that sly look that meant, it doesn’t matter because I’m going to make my fortune anyway.
But since she’d started seeing Mark Mum’s life was full of fancy things, and she didn’t talk about champagne tastes and beer money any more. Luckily, I had a much better way of remembering Grandma than a few jokey words. Sometimes – and it was always a comfort – I could feel her.
Grandma had lived long enough to hold Ava but not long enough to see me. Still, I could pick up a strong but hazy sense of who she was. She lived on as a kind of golden glow, like the sun on a misty morning: heartening, but uncomfortable and possibly even dangerous to look at too directly.
We had a few photos of her, but they didn’t seem to conjure her up anything like as powerfully as the sense of her I had in my own mind. Mum always said I had an overactive imagination, but this wasn’t something I was making up: she was just there, and from time to time I knew it.
When I was younger I’d assumed that Mum could feel the golden glow that was Grandma in just the same way that I could, and that Ava could as well, but was too haughty to talk about it. But then, in the months since Mum had started seeing Mark and everything had started shifting in ways I didn’t fully understand, it had occurred to me that maybe Mum felt more cut off from Grandma than I did. That maybe her Grandma was more like photos, a mixture of pictures of the past that were sometimes faded or black and white. This made me feel very sorry for her, because there was something so warm about Grandma and I liked to turn to her when I felt sad. Not in a having-a-conversation kind of way, or even a huggy way – you can’t hug or chat to a golden glow, you just have to bask in it.
So I carried on not saying anything about Grandma to Mum. If she didn’t have the same thing, it would have sounded weird and she might not have believed me. And if she had believed me it might have sounded like boasting, like I was making out I had some kind of special access. Or it could have scared her, as if I was some kind of spooky little kid out of a horror film.
I didn’t say anything about the bad stuff I picked up from time to time because the bad stuff was too frightening to talk about and anyway, I couldn’t be sure whether it had happened already, or was maybe going to happen, or even who it had happened to or would happen to.
Most of the time, the way the bad stuff came in was just a vague, ominous feeling – like the way the light changes when it’s about to rain, and the air smells different. A waiting sort of feeling. I’d had those bad-weather feelings a few times that year. I didn’t know if that was because I was getting older or because more of the kind of events that prompted them were happening around me. They didn’t always come to anything – or maybe it was just that I didn’t always get to find out whether they were right or not. I didn’t ignore them, exactly, but also, there never seemed to be a lot I could do about them.
One of the nurses who lived upstairs had gone out one evening wearing a bright red shirt, and something about that red shirt had freaked me out and I’d known something bad was coming and then I’d found out a few weeks later that she’d been stabbed on her way home, and had left nursing and London and gone back to her family in Derbyshire.
Then there was Annie Waters, who I’d heard talking about her new horse at school. I’d felt a sudden, heavy sense of dread, followed by an equally sudden, raging headache that took hours to fade. Later on, we’d been told that she’d been thrown off that horse and hit her head, and they weren’t sure whether she’d be able to walk again. She didn’t come back to school, and I never found out what happened to her after that.
But honestly… what could I have said that would have stopped Annie, or the nurse upstairs?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
So what was the point of having these inklings of disaster? Maybe there was no point. In which case… it seemed like the best thing was to keep quiet and pretend they didn’t exist.
After all, what about Mum and Ava? If I told them about the bad-weather feelings and they didn’t believe me, it would hurt me… and if they did believe me, wouldn’t it hurt them?
For me to be living in a dreamworld or always with my nose in a book or the other, slightly less kind things Ava sometimes said about me, was fine – not fine exactly, annoying or irritating, but not scary. But if I knew things I couldn’t possibly know – well, that would be much harder for everybody to accept. Me included.
I decided not to say anything about Mark.
As time went on, I gradually became aware, on and off, of the cloud he seemed to trail around behind him. One day, out of the blue, it occurred to me what it might be. Guilt. A guilt he couldn’t escape. But what on earth could he have done that he felt so bad about?
I watched and waited in case there would be something clearer, a sign it would actually be possible to act on. I kept on reading the books he’d given me, as if touching the leather covers he himself had handled might bring me closer to understanding what he might be capable of.
But nothing happened. When Mum said he was going to be taking all three of us to France I felt only excitement. Perfectly ordinary, common-or-garden excitement.
I preoccupied myself with the question of the clothes I might need. Ava was the same as me, maybe even worse. After a token show of fretting about revision for the GCSE exams she’d have to take when we came back, she seemed to see the trip as an opportunity to get a whole new wardrobe. Luckily, Mark seemed to be more than willing to pay for everything. It was a dream, really – so much money, so much shopping.
I stopped noticing the shadow Mark sometimes seemed to have; I even asked myself if it had ever really been there. Maybe it had faded. Or maybe I just couldn’t see it any more.
The big day came closer: my first time on a plane, my first trip to France, my first journey overseas. Ava’s too, though she was obviously embarrassed to have got to her age without ever flying, and wouldn’t admit what a big deal it was.
The day before, when we were both in our bedroom packing, she accused me of going on about the holiday too much and stomped off in a huff. Totally unreasonable, because what else were you going to talk about when you were remembering your swimming costume and checking you had the right number of pairs of underpants? What else were you going to talk about when you were going to stay at the four-star Grand Hotel?
I managed to sleep all right, and then it was morning and our three new suitcases were waiting by the front door. Mum was checking all the plugs were unplugged and the windows were locked, and Ava was taking forever in the bathroom, like she thought she was about to get scouted to be a model or something.
Then the buzzer rang – it was Mark who’d got that fixed, having made sure he was in the flat for one of Mrs Elliott’s inspections. She’d been rather more receptive to him saying it should be sorted than she’d ever been to Mum.
Mark came hurrying upstairs to help us bring the cases down and joked about what we must have packed to make them so heavy. Mum looked as if she couldn’t quite believe her luck, to be jetting off on holiday with this man who loved her enough to take all of us away with him. And even Ava looked quite pleased with how life was treating her, for once.
She had clearly chosen her travelling outfit with care. She was wearing a strappy coral-coloured sundress that left most of her back and upper arms and chest exposed, and she looked very pretty in it and a lot older than sixteen. No, not just pretty, sexy, though that was a gross thing to have to think when you were looking at your sister. She certainly didn’t look like a schoolgirl who lived in a tiny flat in a boring London suburb.
Mum was wearing a yellow shirt and pale blue trousers and she looked summery and fresh, and I looked as cute as I was ever going to in a flowery blue-and-purple top and skirt, but there w
as no doubt that out of the three of us, all decked out in our new outfits, Ava was the most attention-grabbing.
Mark looked different too, in a blue polo shirt and white trousers. Impractical clothes, but if you couldn’t be impractical on holiday, when could you? He kissed Mum on the cheek and asked me if I was looking forward to flying for the first time. Then, without paying much attention to my reply, he turned to Ava and said, ‘Have you got a cardigan or something you can put on? It might get quite cool on the plane.’
‘Obviously I have,’ Ava said. ‘I’m not stupid.’
Mark didn’t look annoyed with her for being rude. He seemed hurt, but resigned. Like he was prepared to put up with pretty much anything from her. Almost as if he deserved to be rebuffed.
And there it was, that slight uneasiness I’d picked up about him before, that might or might not be guilt. Something he carried round with him that he was far from comfortable with.
‘Just thought I’d mention it, especially as you haven’t flown before,’ he said.
He picked up Mum’s case and reached for the next biggest, which was Ava’s, but she beat him to it.
‘I’ll take it,’ she said.
Mark let her, but turned to Mum and said warningly, ‘Don’t lift a finger. I’ll be back in a sec.’
Ava and Mark went off down the stairs to the taxi. Mum suddenly went over to the kitchen sink and leaned over it as if she was about to be sick. I said, ‘Are you all right, Mum?’ but she ignored me.
When she straightened up she was very pale, almost greenish, and her skin was beaded with tiny drops of sweat.
‘I’m not feeling too good,’ she said.
‘Are you going to be all right on the journey?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Have you told Mark?’
‘Oh, yeah. He knows. Don’t worry, Ellie, I’m sure it’ll pass. It’s not going to stop me going.’
I was so relieved by this I didn’t question it. At that stage, the very worst thing I could imagine was us not being able to go on that holiday because Mum was ill. It didn’t occur to me to wonder what was wrong with her, or what it might mean for the rest of us if it was something she couldn’t shake off.
* * *
On the plane I read about a ghost.
Mark had offered to buy us all magazines, a luxury that Mum wouldn’t normally have considered. Ava had said no, typical Ava being awkward. It seemed like she was still being weird about accepting gifts from Mark, even though he’d paid for everything she was wearing. Mum had picked out a glossy fashion magazine with an amazing picture on the front of a very tall, very elegant model in a turban and a short silver chain-mail dress, walking barefoot on a beach with a tiger on a leash. But she wasn’t reading it. She was sound asleep. I couldn’t see her – she was sitting in front of me – but I could hear her: soon after take-off she’d started snoring.
Ava was in the windowseat on my right, staring sullenly out at the view of clouds over the English Channel. I didn’t know why she didn’t just plug herself into her earphones and listen to her music, which was what she usually did if she wanted to shut everyone out. It was like she was determined to be bored.
I had just started Wuthering Heights – one of Mark’s red books. It was sort of hard-going, but I loved it even if I didn’t understand it all, and I was so proud of myself for reading it that there was no way I was going to give up. Besides, I wanted everyone to notice it. Maybe eventually they’d take me seriously, for a change.
I was just at the part of the story where Lockwood settles down in his room at Wuthering Heights for the night, and a little hand comes in at the window and a voice pleads to be let in.
Lockwood was terrified, and desperate to shut out whatever it was, and he brought the window down so hard on that little hand that he drew blood. It was exactly as if it wasn’t a ghost at all, but a real girl, begging to be allowed to come out of the cold.
If it had been a traditional ghostly hand, a wisp of white that wasn’t really there, it wouldn’t have bothered me nearly so much. As it was, it made me feel sick.
I looked away from the book, past Ava to the window. No ghosts up here, and the windows couldn’t be opened anyway. Planes were never haunted, were they? Much too modern. You wanted an old house for that kind of thing. A place that was warped and crooked and badly maintained, with windows that didn’t shut easily and gaps where things could get in.
For a moment I saw it – just as you see the landscape below you when you’re flying and the clouds part.
There was something. Someone. Someone Mark didn’t want anything to do with, but couldn’t or hadn’t got rid of. Did he want to? Or did he want to hang on? I couldn’t tell.
And then the moment passed. Ava wasn’t about to talk to me and we had at least an hour left to go.
I went back to Wuthering Heights. There was a load of other stuff going on with Hareton and Heathcliff and all sorts of people who were nasty to each other and hard to keep track of, but that little ghost girl scratching at the glass didn’t turn up again, and for that I was grateful.
* * *
Predictably, the French official who checked our passports eyed Ava up – he tried not to be obvious about it, but I noticed it all the same. Honestly, men – they were like animals. Dogs with their tongues hanging out. When Ava was around, anyway, though she did her usual frosty thing of behaving like it was all beneath her.
I didn’t realise how warm it was till we stepped out of the airport. Then – whoosh! It was like being drenched. The air was so still and heavy, we might as well have been walking through hot water.
Ava slipped off her cardigan and walked on looking proud and indifferent, as if she was determined not to notice any attention people might pay her. It occurred to me that in some ways it would be a disadvantage to be so conspicuous. There was something to be said for being comparatively invisible, even though I often wished I wasn’t.
* * *
A series of wonderful surprises followed, which Ava pretended to take in her stride and Mum and I were thrilled by.
First there was the hire car, a long flashy sporty white thing and air-conditioned, so Ava got goosebumps and had to put her cardigan on again. Then there were the glimpses of the sea from the road – so blue, it was obviously far from home. And finally there was the Grand Hotel itself, with its name spelt out in gold above the glass revolving door, and pillars to either side and an attendant with a cap and braid on his uniform.
I had spent a lot of time poring over the brochure Mark had given us, and the place didn’t disappoint. Inside the lobby there was vast reception desk, polished to a glasslike sheen, with clocks telling the time all around the world mounted on the wall behind it, and uniformed staff standing round just waiting to help us.
We went up to the room Mum and Mark were going to be sharing – Ava and I were next door – and it had a balcony with a sea view and the thickest carpet in the world and the biggest bed. Which was a strange and intimidating sight. It was just enormous, and so official, somehow. It announced that Mum and Mark were together the same way that thrones and crowns announce a king and queen.
I knew all about sex – they’d told us about it in school, but I’d already known, anyway – and I had assumed that Mum and Mark were doing it, and had decided that the best thing to do with this knowledge was to ignore it. Hard to ignore a bed that size, though. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could turn a blind eye to.
When I was a bit younger, I’d written several stories that sounded rather racy, because the heroines kept going down the corridors at night into the rooms of the men they liked and sleeping with them. That was before I knew the facts of life, and I thought sleeping with someone meant just that: dozing off in their arms, and waking up with them. I’d believed that was the closest thing men and women could do, the glue that kept marriages together, and an act so important that doing it on the sly was a scandal.
How silly and naïve I had been! And yet I hadn�
�t been entirely wrong. It did seem a big deal that Mum and Mark were going to be sharing a bed, when we’d never known them to before. Maybe it was going to be a test of whether they really liked each other. Or maybe it was a test for me and Ava, to see how we’d adjust.
The bellboy lifted Mum’s and Mark’s cases up onto the bed, and Mark tipped him with admirable smoothness, as if confident that he had exactly the right amount of money to give. The bellboy went out and Mum opened her case and Mark said, ‘I can unpack if you don’t feel up to it.’
‘No, no, I’m fine,’ she said, but she didn’t quite look it.
‘You should have a nap before dinner,’ Mark said. He turned to Ava. ‘How about we meet you on the balcony at six? We can have a drink and then go down for dinner. Look round the hotel if you want, but make sure you take Ellie. Stick together. We don’t want her getting lost.’
‘Of course I’ll look after her,’ Ava said. ‘You don’t need to tell me to. We’ll see you at six.’
I followed her to our room next door, where she promptly bagged the best bed, the one nearest the French windows that opened onto the balcony. I let her get her way; it was rarely worth fighting Ava once she’d set her heart on something, unless you really, really wanted it. Then I left her lying there in the sunlight and went off to have a bath.
The bathroom was amazing. It was really clean, with no mould at all, and it was stocked with little bottles of shampoo and body cream and the fluffiest, whitest towels and dressing-gowns you could imagine. I filled the bath very full and had a long soak and lost track of time. When I finally emerged my skin was pink and my fingers and toes were wrinkly like a newborn baby’s, and I felt all scented and fancy and like I could get used to this.
Ava was still lying on her back on her bed and looked as if she hadn’t moved, but when I came closer I saw that she had her earphones in. She looked up at me and opened her eyes and smiled. I wished she could look like that all the time, as if she wasn’t at all angry with anybody.