“Yes. That one.”
I smooth the skirt down.
“I think we have a match, don’t you?” says the owner, nodding.
I turn, letting the fabric flare and fall – and when I catch sight of myself in the mirror behind me, just for once the Flora reflected in the glass agrees.
“How can you two still not be ready?” Charlie’s howl from the bottom of the stairs is as loud as if he was standing in front of my wardrobe.
“Because we know you hate waiting?” I shout back. Mira laughs, sticking one more grip into her hair to hold it in place, piled up on top of her head. Downstairs, Charlie swears, but Felix laughs too.
“Anyone would think you didn’t have a party to get to! The pair of you, downstairs in two minutes – or you’re walking across the deer park.”
“What do you think?” Mira puts one hand on her hip and pats her hair. The green dress and her red lipstick look amazing. And so glamorous that they’re completely out of place in my cramped little bedroom.
“You look like…I don’t know. A film star or something.”
“Good. Film star will do.” She flashes me a grin and grabs the tiny red clutch bag she brought with her. When I asked where she’d got it, she looked embarrassed – and said she’d made it.
“You made it?”
“Does it look so bad?”
“No! It looks brilliant. You should make some more and sell them. People would totally buy them.”
She picked at the seam along the top, but I think I was only telling her what she already knew. Just like I know that, actually, what she needs is to leave here. However much I might hate her going, fashion is where she’s meant to be.
Mira rests her free hand on the doorknob. “Okay. Are we good?”
“Yes. I think so.” I don’t only mean that we’re ready to go downstairs. The mirror on the inside of my wardrobe door is a lot smaller than the one in the shop changing room, but the Flora there looks the same as she did earlier. The dress still fits like it was made for me, like it’s been waiting all this time. Like this Flora has been waiting all this time.
And the dress even goes with the one pair of heels I already own.
“See? Like it was meant to be. Like I said,” Mira says approvingly over my shoulder.
Charlie and Felix are downstairs, Felix twirling the key of the Land Rover around his finger and Charlie staring at his watch and grumbling. My brother looks surprisingly neat in his suit, and even Felix (less neat, but still smarter than usual in a grey waistcoat, his tattoos of leaves and twisting vines clearly on show below rolled-up shirtsleeves) could pass for someone who belongs around actual people and not trees. As we come down the stairs, Felix nudges Charlie and whispers something in his ear, and Charlie beams.
“About time,” he mutters, shaking his sleeve back down over his watch. “Better get going.” But the inside of his words and the outside don’t match. “I like your dress,” he says as he holds the front door open, watching Felix help Mira into the back of the Land Rover. Her shoe slips as she climbs in and she laughs, with Felix pretending to shove her in – and it really hits me how much I’ll miss her.
“Thank you.”
The inside of my words don’t match the outside either. On the outside, I’m saying thank you for the compliment, because that’s what we’re meant to do. On the inside, though, there’s so much I need to thank him for – and I don’t think I can ever say it all out loud.
Felix gives me a wink as he helps me clamber into the back of the Land Rover – which just for once, doesn’t even smell like a farm.
As we cross the deer park, Hopwood appears in flashes through the trees, the windows glowing and strings of lights criss-crossing the lawns and terraces. It looks like something out of a fairy tale, and the closer we get, the more magical it becomes. Flaming torches are fixed into metal posts along the hedges and on top of the tower in the middle of the maze. As we pull into the staff car park, tiny white lights glitter in the topiary shapes and around the stone urns in the flower borders.
“Look at this place!” Mira breathes, craning her neck to be able to see it all at once. “I never thought it could look this way!”
I didn’t either, not really. We’ve had all kinds of parties here before – weddings or birthdays or…things people have parties for – but the Hopwood has never looked this beautiful for any of them. It feels as if it’s under an enchantment.
Inside, the wooden staircase we spend so long every day cleaning is completely lost underneath the ivy and white roses wound all around the banisters and the lanterns perched at the side of each step. Giant vases of white roses and green eucalyptus branches intertwined with tiny glittering lights have appeared on every available flat surface. Through the open doors, the main lawn has sprouted an avenue of silver birches, their delicate branches also draped with little white bulbs lighting the way to a huge marquee in the middle of the grass, overlooking the lake and the maze. Lanterns line every path, flames dancing in their glass cages and casting flickering shadows on the gravel as people wander up and down with glasses in their hands. Barney moves from group to group, shaking hands and making small talk. A flash near the reception desk means the photographer is already at work, and all through the crowd I can see people I recognize – other members of staff, all looking a tiny bit awkward out of uniform. We’re not used to being the guests.
But no matter where I look, no matter how many knots of guests I pass, I can’t find him.
Hal’s not here.
The lobby is crowded and loud. People laughing, the clatter of glasses on trays, the piano in the bar, music from the marquee outside drifting in on the warm night air…
So loud.
And Hal’s not here.
He should be here – he said he’d be here. He asked me to be here.
I don’t know what’s pounding harder – my heart or my head, which suddenly feels like it might split open. The world has taken on strange outlines, as though everyone is lit from behind. I edge my way through the crowded space and lean on the end of the banister, trying to control my breathing. Where did Mira go? She was right here, and then…
“Flora.”
Only one person says my name like that.
The noisy room is suddenly silent and the air feels like water, heavy and slow – I have to push against it to turn around and it takes an eternity.
And there he is, two steps from the bottom of the staircase.
“Hal.”
His hair is swept back from his face and he’s wearing a white shirt and dark blue suit. And when he smiles at me, the room glows brighter than ever. How can he be so much himself? How can he always be the same person, the whole of himself? What does that feel like, and how can someone who finds that so easy ever understand someone like me? But then in the attic, when he spoke to Barney and was somebody so different, that wasn’t a Hal I recognized. That wasn’t the Hal who kissed me on the bridge or on my doorstep. It wasn’t the Hal who laughed when we sat on the roof of his car. How can he carry this other self inside, and never be bothered by it? How can Mira come to work day after day after day and never mention that what she really wants, where she really belongs, is somewhere and something else – something she’s working towards in secret, even though it’s hard and she’s tired? How can Charlie think all the things I overheard him saying to Felix and never let me see how much he worries?
Suddenly the world shifts and mirrors itself and knits back together – and there I am, left standing in the middle of the echoes of what I thought I knew.
Everyone is divided. Everyone has different people, different pieces of themselves, inside. Hal, Charlie, Felix, Mira – even Barney. If everyone is on their own roller-coaster, looking through their own personal panes of glass…then we’re all kind of in it together. And if we’re all in it together, maybe other people will understand, and I can just…be. No more worrying about whether I’m too fast or too slow, or how I explain me.
M
aybe he’ll understand.
Someone says my name, just on the edge of my hearing, and I turn. It takes me a moment to see them in the press of people. Three girls about my age gathered around one of the side tables and holding glasses, two wearing dresses just like ones Mira tossed aside and one wearing a jumpsuit. They look familiar, but I can’t place them.
The girl in the jumpsuit shakes her head, smiling. “I told you – it’s definitely Flora. I can’t believe she’s actually here.”
The one on the left, in a taupe dress, frowns. “My cousin said they gave her loads of pills. Probably shock therapy. He was there when she, you know, freaked out.”
They’re talking about me like I’m some kind of exhibit. They obviously don’t know I can hear them, or how loud their voices are.
Maybe they just don’t care.
A horrible, cold sensation claws up the inside of my stomach.
This is everything I’ve been afraid of.
The one in the middle, the one wearing a long navy blue dress embroidered with little gold suns, gives her a playful push. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Your cousin doesn’t either.” Her voice sails across the room on bladed wings. “So what do you think they actually did to her? Do you reckon they had to put her in one of those padded rooms?”
She lifts her glass to her lips, tilts her head back to drain her drink…and sees me looking straight at her. I watch her eyes widen, see her dig her elbow into Taupe Dress’s side, but it’s already too late.
The glow around the world sharpens, deepens. Panic pinpricks up and down my spine and my heart moves from a jog to a flat-out sprint.
Everything I’ve been trying to tell myself is a lie.
Faces turned to stare out of the bus window as Mr Parkins takes for ever to cross the road.
I used to go to school with them. They know.
They’re talking about the Incident.
About Crazy Flora, Freaky Flora, Mad Flora.
And standing right behind me on the stairs, Hal has heard every single word.
Barging past them, I make a break for the door. If I can get to the door, through the door, out into the big wide outside, then I can let everything in my head out. Somehow.
Hal calls my name – I hear it, but I don’t stop. Not even for him. Not now, not this time. My name follows me to the open door, but it doesn’t catch me, and outside in the blue-pink of the evening, the gold of the candle lanterns and the green of the lawns, it won’t find me. I can taste the scent of the grass as I run across it, away from the hotel, from history, from Hal…away from my name, away from me.
Ahead, the entrance to the hedge maze is flanked by tall flaming torches, the pathways glowing with yet more lanterns, but none of the party guests have ventured this far out and the maze is silent and still.
Into the labyrinth, right hand on the hedge and keep it there…turn, turn, turn…and my brain starts to settle as the quiet and the rhythm of the maze takes over. I’ve always loved this part of the gardens. When Charlie first got his job here I would try to find my way to the centre before he could – I never won. And after…after I broke, this was one of the places I found the pieces of myself, walking in the cool of the towering hedges, because a maze is just another puzzle.
“You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
The branches bounce my voice back to me at every turn, all the way to the heart of the maze and its fairy-tale tower – built as a folly long before the house was a hotel. Following the path through the maze, sidestepping lanterns and dead ends, means following the people who lived here before me, before any of us. It brings my edges back into focus and into reach.
The tower, like the rest of the maze, has been lit with lanterns – its little stone windows glow from the inside. Just like Sanjay taught me, I count the steps up the spiral staircase. I put all of myself into the tips of my fingers on the rough stone walls, letting them ground me, draw me back to earth even as I climb. By the time I reach the top and step out onto the platform of the round roof to lean on the low wall, the hammering in my brain has fallen silent and the world is quiet.
Except for my name, which floats up from somewhere below me, drifting between yet another pair of flaming torches that loom above my head, and lands at my feet like a feather.
“Flora!”
Not Mira. Not Charlie. Not Barney.
Hal.
Hal is in my head. It doesn’t matter where I go, or what I do, I can’t outrun him.
“Flora? Are you there?”
He isn’t in my head.
He’s here.
Somewhere…
Peering down into the maze, I can’t see any movement.
No. I must have imagined it…
“Flora! Over here!”
At the very edge of the maze, all the way back at the entrance, I see him. His hair and the white of his shirt gleaming in the torchlight. He’s waving.
“Are you okay? How do I get to you?”
How do you get to me?
How does anyone?
Why would you even want to?
I can’t let him. He’ll only see what they see – and then he’ll never want to look at me again.
I lean a little further over the wall and shout back to him, my voice carrying on the still air. “You don’t.”
“What’s wrong?” His voice has rough edges when it’s raised, and my tightly-knotted heart shakes itself loose inside my ribs.
I ignore it. “I just need…”
What? What do I need? To be normal? To not have this thing in my head? This part of me that talks too fast and feels too much and can’t bear to wait for the world, moving and thinking a million times slower than I am, to catch up? From the outside, it probably looks obnoxious. Like I’m obnoxious.
How can I tell him what it’s like when it’s too fast even to feel it coming? It’s shiny and bright and it flashes like a fairground ride, making the world whistle and spin. From outside, maybe it doesn’t even look so bad.
But like a fairground ride, all you can do is hold on tight, and hope that when the mania has burned itself out, it hasn’t taken all of you with it; that there’s something left that you can salvage…that there’s time before the bipolar pendulum swings the other way, dragging you back into the dark where everything is cold and empty.
What do I need?
To not feel like I’m faulty, I guess.
To feel like what I am is enough.
I’d almost convinced myself that that might even be true – that maybe he would think so. Stupid me. How could he? How could anyone?
“I just needed…to be on my own for a bit.”
“Can I come in?”
“Into the maze?”
“That’s the idea.”
“You’ll never get through to the middle.”
“Try me.”
He stops, and there’s silence. A long silence. Has he turned around and gone back to the hotel? However much I crane my neck, I can’t see. The light is starting to fade just a little too fast, and the shadows of the maze pathways are thickening. If he’s not careful, he’ll be in there all night.
“Hal?”
“What?” His answer comes from deep in the hedges.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting lost, apparently.”
“Hal!”
“What now?” He sounds more frustrated than he did a minute ago. “Oh, you’re kidding. How can this be another dead end?”
I cup my hands around my mouth to make my voice carry better. “HAL!”
“WHAT?”
“Pick up a lantern.”
“Unless it’s got a map on the bottom, I don’t see how that’ll help!”
“Just do it, will you?”
A corner of the maze brightens as a glow that wasn’t there a moment ago flickers into life.
“Flora? Are you still there? I can’t figure out which way to go…”
“Hang on.” I can’t quite see where h
e is – I’m not high enough.
I look along the wall to the right of me.
The torches on the roof of the tower are always here – they don’t get lit very often, but they’re a permanent fixture bolted to the wall and the floor.
They’re sturdy.
I peer down over the wall. It’s not so very high…
Okay, so it’s quite high.
But you know what? I’ll be fine.
I kick off my shoes and wrap one hand around the metal torch post closest to me, pulling the loose skirt of my dress aside with the other.
One.
Two.
Three.
I climb up onto the top of the wall…and there he is, down in the bottom corner of the maze. Going entirely the wrong way. Again.
“Hal!” I let the hem of my skirt drop back down, holding onto the pole with both hands. The ground actually looks a lot further away than I thought. “I see you!”
“Which way?” The glow of his lantern moves right…then doubles back on itself to the left.
“Keep going – straight ahead, past the next two turns.” The light stops moving. I can just about see the top of his head from here, looking left, right, straight ahead. “Okay?”
I picture myself down in the maze, following the path to the heart of it. “Left. Turn left.” The candle moves again, following my directions to the next set of possible turns.
“Hal?”
“Yep.”
“Why are you coming after me?”
“Because…” He tails off. Or at least, I don’t hear him say anything. After a pause, he says it. “Because I had to.”
“I don’t need you to rescue me,” I shout.
“That’s not what I meant. And anyway, I was kind of hoping you’d rescue me?” he calls back. His face shines in the lantern light.
“Turn right. Then right again.” I watch the candle moving, watch the light of it glittering off his hair, watch the blue of his suited shoulders lightening and darkening as he moves through the maze until he’s only a few turns away.
“Straight on, then right.”
I loosen my grip on the post and jump down from the wall to the roof, just as he emerges from the last turn of the hedge into the clearing at the heart of it. He looks up at me, standing on the tower, and I look down at him, and I can feel where our gazes meet. It pushes the breath out of my body, steals a beat from my heart. It makes my hands tremble.
The Pieces of Ourselves Page 19