The Graces

by Laure Eve

  Adrenalin got me upright and dressed in a matter of seconds.

  I crept down the stairs.

  The kitchen door was shut and the voices were muffled. I hugged the wall, straining to hear. No good. I didn’t have to wait long, though. Before I could rabbit back up the stairs, the door opened and Mum poked her head out. She caught sight of me and her mouth shut. She’d been about to yell for me, it looked like.

  ‘Oh, you’re up, are you? You’d best come down here, then.’

  She disappeared back into the kitchen. I left the bottom step and stood just outside the door, heart kicking and kicking. It was quiet. Very quiet. What was I walking into? Scenarios buzzed anxiously through my head. Not one of them prepared me for who it was.

  Esther and Gwydion Grace were sitting at our rickety kitchen table.

  I stood in the doorway, cycling fast through surprise, fear, wariness.

  ‘Hello,’ said Esther pleasantly. ‘Late night?’

  I regarded her. She shone, luminous, in the dull light of her surroundings. Her hair was loosely wrapped in a thick trail down her back. She seemed the same. But how were you supposed to be when someone close to your family had died? Crumpled, maybe? Something? Gwydion looked like he’d walked straight out of an ancient forest fairytale and had been persuaded into normal clothes to blend in. There was a plate of biscuits on the table, and they both had mugs of dishwater-coloured tea in front of them, big thick mismatched mugs that didn’t fit with their supple, fine-boned hands.

  I glanced at my mother. The Graces seemed perfectly content to sit and say nothing, but that wasn’t her way. Perhaps they’d figured that. She fidgeted, clacking her pink nails on the tabletop.

  ‘Well,’ she said brightly. ‘We’ve been talking quite a bit while you were sleeping, haven’t we?’

  ‘We have,’ said Esther.

  I would give them nothing until I knew what their game was because it couldn’t be anything good.

  ‘We’ve been talking about you and Esther and Gwydion’s family.’ Their names sounded so thick and jerky coming out of my mother’s small mouth. ‘About everything that’s happened. And we think maybe it’s a good idea, right now, to be giving them a bit of space.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I said.

  Esther’s cat eyes were cold. ‘It means that we are grieving over Wolf right now. Our hearts are broken. Summer and Thalia and Fenrin, they need some time away from everything.’

  ‘I’m not stopping them from that.’

  ‘Oh, honestly,’ Mum snapped, growing red. ‘Put a lid on the backchat for once, please. You’re not doing well. You’re bad for one another. After what’s happened … I’ve had letters from the school, too.’

  I went still. Most of me didn’t care, but there was still a hushed, secretive bit of my soul that wanted to be the normal, popular girl who got great grades, the one people liked. That one was going to do well in life and make her parents think she was such a lovely girl. They’d smile when they talked about her. You could long for something you’d never been, even if you would never know the real shape of it.

  ‘I know you’ve enjoyed spending time with Summer,’ said Esther, her voice soft. ‘And I’m sure that what happened to Wolf has been hard on you, too, so I’m sure you understand. There’ll be no more wild parties. Everyone in my house has spent too long being given free rein to do what they like, and I don’t want them to end up like Wolf. You need to stop calling the house every day, and you need to stop coming round.’

  ‘You’ve been calling their house every day?’ Mum’s face was creased with a dismayed frown. I was silent. Sides had already been chosen before I walked in. I didn’t have a chance.

  Maybe that was why I said what I said next, the last sting of the bee before dying.

  ‘Is this about the curse?’

  The hit I’d scored flickered across Esther’s face.

  ‘Excuse me?’ she said.

  ‘The curse. The one about how if a Grace witch loves a non-witch, one of them dies or goes mad. I mean, that’s part of why you’re so obsessive over their private lives, isn’t it? You don’t let them go out. You don’t like them having friends that aren’t one of you. You never let people stay over at the house. You interrogated Summer about me because she dared to invite me over to watch films. I mean, it was just films. What did you think we were doing?’

  I felt a hand grab my arm. ‘Stop that,’ Mum said, shocked. ‘You can’t talk like that to them. Apologise right now.’

  I wouldn’t. Not to her.

  ‘Apologise, young lady!’

  It was demeaning, seeing my mother flap in their presence like this. Beauty. Glamour. Money. They all weighed heavy on the room, sucking the air out of it until you felt like you had to breathe double time just to stay upright.

  Esther held a hand up. ‘It’s quite all right,’ she said mildly. ‘She obviously needs to talk. Please, go on.’ She directed the last at me with a little smile, as if there was nothing else I could say now that would affect her.

  So I damn well tried my hardest.

  I folded my arms, holding myself together. ‘You threw Marcus out of your house, and you terrified Thalia into cutting him out completely, making her miserable and driving him crazy because he’s in love with her. That’s not a curse. That’s just cruel. Your cruelty is her cruelty now. She’s learning from the best.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told—’

  I ploughed on over her. If I stopped now, I wouldn’t start again. ‘They don’t have to tell me, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen how Fenrin could never even show anyone that he loved Wolf. They had to sneak around behind everyone’s backs because they were afraid—’

  ‘Because he knew it was wrong!’ she hissed, suddenly. ‘He knew it was—’

  She stopped. But it was too late because I could already see the word half-formed on her mouth: disgusting.

  She thought it was disgusting.

  She sighed. ‘And I suppose it was Summer who told you all of this? What else did she tell you?’

  ‘Why does it matter?’ I shot back.

  ‘Because you’re not a Grace, so how could you possibly understand us?’ Her voice was tinged with a sickly kindness. ‘You’re not like us. You’ll never be like us. You want to feel special, don’t you? Well, here’s the ugly truth – some people are ordinary. The best of them at least have the intelligence to know it. Be a little more mature. You already have a place in the world, and it’s here, with your mother. You don’t belong with us.’

  Esther sat back and folded her arms. Her jewellery tinkled.

  ‘I wasn’t sure we needed to do this,’ she said. ‘But I’m worried for you, River, and for Marcus. You’re both very sensitive individuals. We’ve been discussing it, and we think the best course of action would be to take Summer and Thalia and Fenrin out of school.’

  ‘What? You’re going to homeschool them?’

  ‘No. They’ll be going to boarding school, away from here. Of course, Thalia and Fenrin only have to finish the year and pass their exams. If they do well, they’ll be taking a year out to go travelling together abroad. Summer will stay at her cousins’ in the city at weekends and board at her new school during the week.’ She gave me a sympathetic head tilt. ‘You won’t be seeing them any more.’

  For a moment, I was struck dumb.

  ‘You can’t …’ I swallowed away the crack in my voice. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Of course we can.’ Gwydion’s voice was matter-of-fact. ‘We do what’s best for our children. Your mother will understand. So will you, one day, when you have children of your own.’

  ‘I’m sure you can make some new friends,’ Esther remarked, taking a biscuit from the plate in front of her. ‘You seem like a nice girl. Maybe even a boyfriend? I hope you like surfers – we tend to have those in abundance around here.’

  She dropped me a wink as if we shared a secret and took a bite out of the biscuit. I felt a panicking fury like vomit in
my mouth. I wanted to run. I wanted to hit back. Anything not to feel this yawning black hopelessness that told me I offered nothing, that I was nothing, and always would be until I was dead.

  Some people are ordinary.

  You don’t belong with us.

  ‘Esther,’ said Gwydion, leaning towards her.

  Her beautiful face had gone bright red. Her throat shuddered.

  ‘Esther.’

  Her chest tried to heave. She gripped at her throat.

  ‘Oh god, she’s choking,’ Mum breathed. ‘Water, let me get you water!’

  Esther struggled. I was sinking in horror.

  This was not happening.

  It wasn’t.

  I could not watch someone else die in front of me, and yet I just stood there, frozen. I heard Mum turn the tap on, splashing and sploshing frantically, but the sound seemed to come from very far away, like a television in another room. I watched Gwydion pull his wife to him and bring his fist down on her back. She was making the tiniest flat sound of no air going in. He took hold of her from behind the chair and pulled his clasped fists back into her stomach. I watched, mesmerised at the violence of it.

  Esther was hacking, dragging air in as mashed biscuit leaked out of her mouth.

  ‘Can we have a tissue please,’ said Gwydion, calm as anything.

  Mum brought a box over, her hands shaking. Esther pushed a big handful of tissue to her mouth, cleaning up. Her head hung down as if she were ashamed.

  We sat in silence.

  ‘Those bloody biscuits, they’re so dry,’ Mum ventured, in her most tentative voice. ‘I’m so sorry. I hope you’re feeling better, Mrs Grace.’

  Esther was staring at her mug. ‘Perfectly fine, thank you,’ she replied, eventually. I half expected her voice to come out all squashed, but she sounded the same as before.

  ‘I think we should be going,’ Gwydion said. He had one arm still protectively round Esther’s back.

  ‘Of course. I think we can all agree that it’s best if everybody just keeps to themselves for a while. Let people come to terms with things.’ Mum shot me a look. She had her bright, blank face on. ‘Thanks for coming to have a chat. I think we’ve got it all quite clear.’

  She pulled on my arm, moving me out of the kitchen doorway.

  I didn’t protest.

  I didn’t even know what to do now.

  Esther and Gwydion stood, manoeuvring carefully around the table. He hugged her close and wouldn’t let her go. I found myself wondering why he loved her, and how they’d met, and what they had been like when they were my age. Had time hardened her into this frightened, controlling thing, or had she been fixed from early on? What did she believe in? What made her happy?

  We watched them go from the front doorstep, and with them I felt the last of me drain away, my light, my life. My coal-black and coal-bright voice was silent. Maybe I’d never hear it again.

  ‘Well,’ said my mother. ‘She was a bit snobby, wasn’t she?’ She put her arm tentatively round my shoulders.

  I burst into great, shuddering tears.

  Away walked the last chance of fixing me.

  Away walked the last chance of ever getting my father back.

  He was gone. That was it.

  ‘It’s for the best,’ came my mother’s voice above my head, soft and final, as she hugged me to her. ‘I know you want to believe that everyone can get along, and we’re all the same, but people like them stay in their corners, and we stay in ours, and that’s how the world works. It’s for the best,’ she repeated.

  I wondered, at last, if she was right.

  CHAPTER 30

  I was locking up the café when I first felt it.

  It was Friday night. Only a couple of weeks to Christmas, and two months since Esther and Gwydion’s visit.

  Things were different now.

  I preferred to work these days. I’d been spending all my time alone again, so it made sense to put those hours of nothing outside of school to good use and get some more money coming in. I’d been lucky enough to stop off at this place just as they’d put up a handwritten sign recruiting for a new waitress. It was better to be busy because busy kept me from thinking. Busy helped me ignore the reaching, yearning feeling in my guts.

  I’d given away my witchcraft books to a charity shop. The lady running the place had shot me the filthiest look when she realised what they were – maybe she burned them instead of selling them. I found I didn’t really care, one way or the other. That part of my life was over.

  It had been a long shift. There was a family who wouldn’t leave, with one of those beautiful golden-haired kids who alternately screamed the house down and charmed the pants off you. They came in regularly, so they must have lived around there. They liked the café because, as the mother told me once, ‘It’s artisanal.’ I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just nodded.

  It was a nice place, anyway. Kind of dingy, but Delia, the manager, had done pretty well with the furnishings. She called the style natural vintage, but all I could think of was that sometimes, when I let it, it reminded me of the Grace house, and my heart tipped over.

  They did great cakes at the café. People raved about them. There was some small magic in food, I was learning. I wondered sometimes if the baker who made them might be an earth witch – her cupcakes looked and tasted like feelings. Maybe I wished I could be her. I wondered if she was happy. I wondered if she spent all day in chunky earth-coloured knits and heavy jewellery, whirling around a warm-tiled kitchen with her fingers covered in flour.

  Delia had only just started trusting me to lock up the place by myself on the evening shift. It was a stupid thing to feel pleased about, but there was something so quietly enormous about another human being placing so much trust in you with their things. I didn’t want to screw this up. I wanted to be River 2.0, the one everybody liked. Kind of quiet, okay, but reliable and worth having around. This was my second transformation, and I liked this one best so far. This one made me feel capable, and normal, and in control.

  I worked as many weeknights as I could get, and weekends too. Mum liked that I had a job and my own income again. She said I could be independent. That it would keep me out of trouble.

  But as soon as the key turned and the door gave that sliding click, I felt it on my neck, like someone was watching me. When I turned, I was alone on the street.

  I had the house to myself that night, at least – Mum was on a night-shift rotation, and I wouldn’t see her until late afternoon tomorrow, when she got out of bed. Delia slipped me leftover cake occasionally, as a bonus tip. I was grateful – it made life just a tiny bit more bearable. I had a tub of her homemade peanut butter ice cream in the freezer and a favourite book on standby – my preferred method of temporary forgetting.

  Which was smashed to pieces when I got home because Summer was sitting on my doorstep, hunched against the cold.

  She was huddled there like a lost puppy, and it was a lie, a big fat lie, because she was no puppy and she had never been lost. She’d cut her hair since disappearing off to boarding school. It was still dyed liquorice black, but now it followed the angles of her head, cropped to her skull at the back, flopping forward at the front. She looked like a supermodel.

  She broke the bubble first.

  ‘River,’ she said.

  Just her voice, saying my name, was enough to make my insides flare.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, astonished. ‘You can’t be here. We don’t do this any more.’

  We didn’t talk. We didn’t call. We didn’t do anything. I hadn’t even seen them around town – Esther had been true to her word. Two months ago they had vanished, and I’d learned to live with the hole they’d left behind.

  Summer sniffed, annoyed. ‘Stop looking at me like I’m breaking the law or something. I just wanted to see you. It’s been so long. I just …’

  She tailed off and hugged her arms close to herself. It was really cold. I had no idea how long she�
�d been sitting there.

  ‘I just wanted to know how you are,’ she finished.

  ‘Does anyone else know you’re here?’

  She hesitated. ‘No. I’m supposed to be staying at school this weekend, like a good little girl.’ The dry way she said that last melted me a little. Just a little.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘It’s just better if we stay away from each other. If we stay away, like we’ve been doing, no one else is going to get hurt, okay?’

  ‘I never agreed to that.’

  I stared at her. ‘Are you kidding me? You ignored the hell out of me for weeks, and then you all left! You just left me behind!’

  ‘You lied about Wolf. I didn’t take it well, okay? I hate it when people lie to me! It makes me so f—’ She stopped. Dragged in a deep breath. ‘I was angry with you. I couldn’t believe you didn’t trust me enough with the truth.’

  I snorted, and she rolled her eyes. ‘Look, I get why now,’ she said. ‘Now I’ve had time to think about it. I guess we’re all really good at keeping secrets. And look where that got us.’

  She shivered. ‘Please, can we just talk? Preferably inside where my balls aren’t going to freeze up and drop off?’

  ‘You don’t have any balls.’

  ‘Ouch. Well, maybe I’ve grown a pair since I’ve been away.’

  I hesitated.

  But it was too late. The moment I’d seen her it was all too late. I was buzzing again, like I’d spent the last two months without power and she was my own personal battery.

  It was just a conversation.

  *

  I hunted in the cupboards for hot chocolate while Summer perched at the kitchen table.

  ‘Esther let you come round, then,’ I goaded as I switched on the kettle.

  ‘She has no idea I’m here. This is the first time since we left that she’s not at the house. She and Gwydion are out of the country, frolicking somewhere warm for the weekend, so I took the chance to pay the old hometown a little visit.’

  I sat down and pushed a mug of hot chocolate towards her, warming my hands on my own. I took a sip to give myself something to do. It was still hot and burned my tongue.