The Grip Lit Collection

by Claire Douglas

  Eva takes a noisy slurp of her coffee. ‘Now that their grandparents have died they’ve only got each other.’

  ‘At least they’ve got each other,’ I say, thinking of Lucy.

  She nods in agreement, licking froth from her top lip with the tip of her tongue. ‘Yes, but it means they are very protective of one another, of course.’ She regards me over the rim of her cup. ‘They won’t let anything, or anyone come between them.’ Her words sound like a warning.

  The patter of footsteps on stone and raised jovial voices prevent her from saying anything further. My heart quickens as Beatrice skips down the stairs carrying her tennis racket, followed closely by Cass, Pam and Ben. She’s flushed, a white tennis skirt skimming the top of her tanned thighs. I try to catch her eye but she doesn’t look in my direction.

  ‘Bread smells yummy, Eva,’ she says, as if I’m not even here. ‘We’ve had a good game, haven’t we, Ben?’ She reaches up and pulls the front of his cap down so that it covers his eyes and he protests good-naturedly. I look at him, willing him to acknowledge me, relieved when he catches my eye and flashes me one of his lopsided smiles. He’s wearing khaki shorts that come down to his knees and I’m pleasantly surprised by his muscular calves.

  ‘Morning, Abi.’ He moves away from his sister and much to my delight slides into the chair next to me. The sun has brought out the freckles across his nose and he looks tanned and healthy in a white Fred Perry. I resist the urge to touch him. He cheekily asks Eva to make him a cup of coffee and after a bit of banter about her not being his personal slave she gets up and goes to the coffee machine. I can tell by the way her face lights up when she jokes with him, her accent thickening so I can barely understand her, that she would do anything for him.

  Now that we’re all in the kitchen it seems smaller, claustrophobic, and I’m glad of the slight breeze from the open window. Pam stands next to the Aga, exclaiming excitedly about the bread that we can now all smell and Cass joins us at the table. Beatrice languishes in an old velvet chair in the corner, her legs swinging over the arm, chattering away about their tennis match, making me wish I’d been included. I feel exposed, still sitting in my nightwear when everyone else is dressed and has evidently been up for hours. Even though Beatrice is her usual bubbly self as she recounts the tennis match that she and Ben won, the disagreement with one of the teenage girls from the house next door who wanted to use the courts, she avoids looking in my direction, does nothing to acknowledge me at all, and I sense that I’ve upset her somehow and now she’s freezing me out. A coldness creeps down my spine and I involuntarily shudder and glance at Ben, suppressing my hurt.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he mouths, leaning forward. Cass has taken the seat to my left, but she’s staring into space with a glazed look in her eye. I’ve hardly ever heard the girl speak, except to Beatrice.

  ‘I’m fine.’ I smile shyly, playing with my empty coffee cup, my tummy rumbling from lack of food.

  Beatrice is now chatting to Cass, who goes to sit beside her on the armchair. It’s too small for both of them and Cass is practically on Beatrice’s lap, their legs intertwined. Nauseous, I force myself to look away. Ben’s knee touches mine under the table, sending shockwaves through me so that everyone else in the room is momentarily forgotten.

  ‘Hey, guys.’ Beatrice’s clear voice reverberates around the kitchen so that we all turn to look at her and Cass squashed together in the armchair. They’re both wearing identical trainers. Dunlop Green Flash. I’ve always wanted a pair.

  ‘Shall we have a get together tonight? To celebrate Abi moving in?’ She turns to me at last. ‘What do you think, Abi? Would you mind?’ She looks at me expectantly; any animosity that I think I perceived earlier has vanished from her beautiful honey-coloured eyes, replaced by a shining hopefulness.

  When I mumble my agreement she squeals and leaps out of the chair. ‘Yay! It will be fun,’ she says, running behind me and wrapping her arms around my neck so that our heads are touching, her pale hair brushing my cheek. She smells salty and sweet at the same time and I can’t help but giggle at her enthusiasm, knowing by now that she will find any excuse to hold a party, relieved at her warmth and I realize with a sickening clarity, that I would do anything to prevent myself from being left out in the cold again.

  Chapter Ten

  No sooner have I eaten my breakfast – poached egg on toast rustled up by Eva, because, according to her, I need fattening up – than Beatrice frogmarches me up to her bedroom.

  ‘I hope I don’t offend you, darling, but you’re in dire need of some new clothes,’ she says as I shadow her up the winding staircase. ‘But until we go shopping you can borrow some of mine.’ She ushers me through her bedroom door and I step into her room, remembering with a pang of longing the open studio, my excitement at helping her out, her generosity with the necklace.

  ‘Here we are,’ she says, throwing wide the doors of a large ivory armoire, revealing a row of colourful skirts, silk dresses and pretty blouses, some of which are still wrapped in Cellophane. She’s got more clothes than Lucy, Nia and I had altogether.

  I stand by her dressing table, playing with the necklace at my throat as Beatrice ums and ahs and flicks through dress after dress. ‘This will look fab on you, and this … ooh, definitely this one,’ she says, pulling dresses, skirts and blouses off their respective hangers and throwing them on to her bed. ‘Have a look through that little lot, I think we’re about the same size. Although,’ she turns and surveys me, wrinkling up her cute ski-slope nose – something I’ve noticed she does often, ‘you are a bit thinner than me.’

  ‘I never used to be,’ I mutter as I go to the bed and pick up a green-and-white dress with capped sleeves, letting the soft silk run through my hands.

  Beatrice touches my shoulder lightly. ‘I’m sorry, Abi, I didn’t mean anything by it.’ She notices the dress in my hands. ‘This would look fabulous on you. It’s Alice Temperley, isn’t it beautiful? And this one …’ She picks up a navy-blue dress with cream pleats. ‘This would definitely suit you.’

  ‘Oh, Beatrice, I don’t know if I can borrow these things. These dresses are lovely.’ And expensive.

  ‘Don’t be silly, I insist,’ she says, moving away from me and handing me a 1950s-style full skirt and white blouse. ‘Here, try on these as well. It’s too hot for jeans at the moment anyway, what with this heatwave.’ To emphasize her point she pulls her tennis skirt down her thighs and whips off her T-shirt so that she’s standing in a pretty white bra and knickers. Her body is petite and toned with pale freckles on her shoulders and chest. I avert my eyes, assessing the pearl pink nail varnish that I painted on my toes months ago, which has now chipped away so that hardly any remains. My cheeks are burning. When I believe it is safe enough to look up again, she’s thrown on a wispy cotton dress with shoe-string straps, her décolletage glistening with sweat. The room seems hot and oppressive and I long to shrug off my dressing gown, to let it pool around my feet, but I don’t have the confidence to stand here in my underwear.

  ‘Ben’s so lucky,’ she says, ‘having a balcony in his bedroom. Sometimes I think I made a mistake, letting him have that room. And it looks out over the garden, whereas this has a view of the street. But this room is bigger, I suppose.’ She surveys the room, wrinkling up her nose as if deciding whether she has, indeed, made the right choice. Then she carefully drapes the rest of the clothes I’m allowed to borrow over my arms, so that it looks as if I’m carrying a fallen maiden, and I think how these clothes aren’t really me. I’m usually more comfortable in jeans and T-shirts, not floating around in designer togs. Lucy was always the more glamorous one out of the two of us. On our shopping trips she would hunt for vintage finds in backwater second-hand shops, whereas I preferred to head straight for Gap. A lump forms in my throat that she’s not here with me, picking her way through these dresses, exclaiming over the fabric. Her style was so similar to Beatrice’s. I know my sister would have looked fantastic in all of these clothes.


  ‘You remind me of her so much,’ I find myself saying.

  Beatrice pauses, a cotton blouse in her hand. ‘Do you mean Lucy?’ It’s almost a whisper and I nod, unable to speak. ‘I take that as the highest compliment.’

  It’s only when I’m back in my room and tugging the Alice Temperley dress over my head that it hits me. I’ve never told either Beatrice or Ben my sister’s name.

  How do you know she was called Lucy?

  Beatrice’s friends are supposed to be coming over at seven, but when I walk into the drawing room at five past, it’s empty. The French doors leading on to the terrace are open and the sun streams in, bleaching the wooden floorboards. The white embroidered voile that Beatrice picked up ‘for a bargain, darling’ in India flutters in the gentle breeze and from somewhere I can smell the distinct aroma of cigarette smoke.

  I make my way around the room, picking up, examining, then replacing a wooden Buddha, a Ming vase, a framed photograph of a young couple with arms wrapped around each other that I take to be their parents, and all the while I try to quash the disconcerting sensation that sits heavily in the pit of my stomach.

  Beatrice said my sister’s name, she must have googled me.

  She obviously knows a lot more about me than she’s let on; Ben, too, probably. I’m suddenly hot with shame that they know I caused Lucy’s death. How can Ben even bear to look at me, let alone kiss me? How can Beatrice invite me to live in this house? I gaze into the faces of the young couple in the photograph. They look to be in their early twenties, in their first flush of love as they laze against the trunk of a huge oak tree. The woman wears flared jeans and a cheesecloth top and has the same honey-coloured eyes and ski-slope nose as her daughter. The man, with his feather cut and sideburns, is gazing at her adoringly, and he’s the image of Ben. They died too, just like Lucy, the difference being that Beatrice and Ben have nothing to reproach themselves for.

  ‘Our parents.’ Beatrice’s voice makes me jump and I turn to see her waft through the open doors. She’s changed again and is now wearing a floaty calf-length cream dress that makes her look ethereal. She must have been out on the terrace this whole time. I grip the photograph, paralysed, as if I’ve been caught with the crown jewels.

  ‘I wasn’t prying,’ I stammer.

  Beatrice shakes her head. ‘Don’t be silly.’ She takes the photograph from my hands, softly stroking the glass frame with her thumb. She smells of cigarettes. ‘Her name was Daisy. I’ve always thought that was such a pretty name. I wish I could remember her – well, both of them – but we were so young when they died.’

  I realize that this daisy-themed house and the jewellery she designs is Beatrice’s homage to a mother she hardly knew. I take a deep breath. I need to say it, to clear the air. ‘You know, don’t you? About how my twin, Lucy, died?’

  She stiffens and slowly replaces the photograph on the mantelpiece before turning to look at me. ‘Oh, Abi.’ She takes my hand and leads me to one of the sofas. ‘I remember reading it in the newspaper, that’s all. It resonated with me because I’m a twin too. I wasn’t prying either.’

  It sounds plausible, and I recall detecting a flash of recognition in her eyes that first day we met, when I mentioned my name. Cavendish isn’t a surname you hear every day, it probably is the sort of name that would stick in someone’s mind. It doesn’t mean she’s been researching me.

  ‘So you know I killed her?’ I fold my hands in the silk lap of the green tea-dress, unable to meet her gaze.

  ‘You didn’t kill her, Abi.’

  ‘The car accident was my fault.’ A sob bubbles in my throat, nausea overwhelming me when I think of that night and all that happened afterwards. ‘I was driving. It was my fault.’

  ‘It was an accident. An accident. The weather was bad, it was dark, it could have happened to anyone. Please … you have to stop this.’

  ‘I don’t think that I can,’ I say, tears threatening. ‘I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to stop punishing myself.’

  ‘Would Lucy want you to do this to yourself?’ she says, her voice sharp, and when I look up I see a glint of anger in her eyes. ‘Because I know that if it was me, if Ben had caused my death by accident, I wouldn’t want him to go on punishing himself for the rest of his life.’ She takes my hand and squeezes it, and in a softer voice she adds, ‘I would want him to be happy, Abi. I would want him to live.’

  I respect her opinion the most; after all, she can understand, being a twin herself. But she doesn’t know the full story and, thankfully, that is something only the five of us who were in the car that night could ever know.

  I’m sitting alone on the sofa when Ben walks in holding a glass of red wine. Beatrice has disappeared to the kitchen with Cass to fetch some wine bottles and glasses. The sun is still burning bright in the sky and the smell of cut grass floats in through the open windows and, after the stifling heat of the day, a welcome breeze.

  Ben frowns when he notices me sitting alone, an expression I can’t read on his face, almost as if he’s seen a ghost. His eyes run over the Alice Temperley dress I’m wearing. ‘Is that yours?’ he says as he takes a seat next to me. He’s sitting so close that his bare knee touches mine. I pull the green silk further down my thighs self-consciously.

  ‘It’s Beatrice’s. I don’t have any summer clothes with me, I wasn’t expecting this heatwave.’ I laugh in an effort to dispel the tension that emanates from him and it puzzles me. Why would Ben care what I’m wearing?

  He turns to me with an urgency that surprises me. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this – and don’t get me wrong, I love my sister – but please, Abi, don’t let her turn you into her clone.’

  My cheeks grow hot. ‘I’m only borrowing some clothes, Ben. It’s no big deal.’

  He looks as if he wants to say more, but takes a sip of his wine instead. I fiddle with my hands in my lap, apprehensive about meeting more people that I don’t know. It seems both Beatrice, and Ben, have a wide group of friends. I envy them that.

  Ben grabs my fidgeting hands to still them. ‘It will be fun, Abi. Don’t worry so much,’ he says reassuringly, as if reading my mind.

  I open my mouth to reply but I don’t get the chance as I’m interrupted by a loud, brash voice and Monty appears in the doorway, blocking the light from the hall. One friendly face, at least. He has a bottle of red wine in his huge paw which he places on the walnut coffee table.

  ‘Monty!’ Ben gets up and smacks the larger man on the back, guiding him into the room where he pours his bulk into one of Beatrice’s elegant Louis XIV chairs. Ben sits back down next to me, his knee brushing mine, sending little shockwaves through my body.

  ‘Thanks for last night, Ben old man,’ says Monty, then he turns to me. ‘I needed some advice about my computer and there’s no one better at technology than Ben here.’

  Ben shakes his head modestly. ‘You’re a technophobe, Monty.’

  The doorbell downstairs reverberates through the house and minutes later Beatrice appears, clutching some glasses with one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. Three men and two women follow her into the room.

  ‘Abi, this is Grace and Archie,’ she says placing the glasses and wine next to the bottle that Monty brought over. The girl is small, dark, and pretty while the man is stocky with a crop of red hair and freckles. Ben leaps up from the sofa to greet Archie and he and Monty stand around chatting while Grace perches awkwardly on the sofa.

  ‘And this is Maria, Edward, and Niall.’ Maria, who looks to be in her late forties with thick dark expressive eyebrows and a Roman nose is resplendent in a voluminous kaftan. Edward and Niall look about my age, but while Edward is short, mousy and nondescript, I can’t take my eyes off Niall. He’s almost as tall as Ben with a similarly wiry, firm body but instead of Ben’s fair hair, Niall has mussed-up dark locks that curl around his ears and to the collar of his black leather jacket; an acoustic guitar hangs on a strap across his body. His skin is the colour of w
arm toffee, and he has large almond-shaped brown eyes. Dark flecks of stubble dot his chin and upper lip and, although I usually detest facial hair on men, it suits him. His scruffy demeanour reminds me a little of Callum.

  Beatrice positions Niall next to me and sits herself on the opposite sofa between Maria and Grace, while Edward joins the men. Monty seems to know them all quite well, although I don’t recall seeing any of these people at his party last month.

  Wine is passed around while Niall busily rolls a spliff. I sit quietly, sipping my wine while surveying the room. Niall, to my right, has hardly said two words to me and I suspect he’s already stoned. Ben is still standing with Monty, Archie and Edward by the French doors, a cigarette between his long fingers, and Beatrice is nattering away with the two women opposite me. She makes no effort to draw me into the conversation. I’m the only one who notices Cass slink into the room like a nervous greyhound, all big eyes and long limbs, her gaze intently fixed on Beatrice as she places some more wine glasses on the coffee table, along with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. I catch her eye and smile encouragingly but she turns away and perches on the edge of the Louis XIV style chair next to Beatrice.

  When Beatrice realizes that Cass has arrived she reaches across Grace to give her knee a reassuring squeeze before resuming her conversation. There is something familiar and caring about the gesture. Inclusive. And I suddenly feel left out, sitting by a mute Niall. The women are all laughing at something Beatrice is saying, their faces turned to her adoringly; even the older, frumpy Maria seems enraptured. What is it about her? Her voice is clear and soft and almost hypnotic. I glance across at Ben, hoping to catch his eye, but he has his back to me, the striped shirt he’s wearing accentuating his broad shoulders.

  As Monty’s booming voice reverberates around the room, the sweet scent of marijuana tickles my nostrils and I ask Niall if I can have a drag. Why not? I think as I lean back against the velvet sofa and inhale deeply. I haven’t smoked weed since I was at university with Nia, but it beats sitting here not being able to chat with Beatrice. Niall suddenly seems a lot more interesting, and the two of us sit giggling and smoking alone on the sofa. Every now and again I notice Beatrice look up from her conversation to glance over at us, an impassive expression on her face.