‘Is she always like that?’ Anna whispers later, from over the top of Mabel’s back. We’re in the stable and she’s tucked up for the night – Mabel, that is, not Anna – and we’re waiting for Mum to come and pick us up.
‘Polly?’ I whisper back. ‘Yes.’
‘I want to be like her when I grow up.’ Anna fiddles with a fluffy piece of hair at the end of Mabel’s mane. She’s not much good with horses, but she likes Mabel.
‘Me too,’ I say, but I know that the chances of it ever happening are non-existent. I’m too busy balancing and trying to work out what everyone else is doing and saying and thinking to be able to be my own person like Polly.
Sometimes I think I don’t even know who my own person is.
Thank God there’s no Eve when I get back. We’ve dropped off Anna (I’m slightly worried my spare jodhpurs will be fumigated by her mother and might never make it back to my house, but I’m trying to be zen about it) and I am super tired and I feel all spacey, like my feet aren’t quite making contact with the floor.
The kitchen’s all messy, which is weird, because usually Mum’s stressing about everything being put away at this time of day and us pulling together and all that stuff. I pull out the dishwasher to find a clean bowl, but it’s dirty, and full, and nobody’s switched it on. I tip a heap of cornflakes into a plastic mixing bowl – it’s roughly the same size and shape, and there’s nothing else – and pour the last of the milk on top.
The kitchen table is spread with coffee cups and a half-unwrapped copy of a Sunday newspaper. I suspect I’ve missed today’s Eve visitation, and for that I am glad.
‘So,’ says Leah when I walk into the sitting room to find my laptop, ‘how was the party?’
She’s sitting there with a bowl of cereal watching the Disney Channel with her hair in a ponytail and she looks about nine. The fire’s lit and it’s all warm in there and I’m tempted to stay, but I’ve reached the point where the noises in the house have separated and I can hear each one individually. And at the same time I can hear them all together – it’s hard to explain. It’s like I’m trying to process what’s going on and I can’t filter anything and I can’t think at all.
‘OK,’ I say. And Leah opens her mouth to ask more, and I feel guilty because I get the feeling as I pull the door shut that she looks like she wants to talk but I can’t. I just can’t.
‘Grace, honey,’ says Mum as I’m heading upstairs. ‘Phone. For you.’
She thrusts the handset at me as I’m shaking my head. No, I can’t do Grandma on a Sunday night.
I shake my head again and put my hand out, palm towards her, as a no, no. No.
‘It’s your father,’ she says, which is a strange way of saying it’s Dad.
The line is sort of echoey and he sounds as if he’s miles away, which he is.
‘Hey, darling,’ he says, and a moment later a little echo says, ‘Hey, darling.’
‘Hi, Dad,’ I say, and I suddenly feel weirdly homesick even though I’m at home, and it almost knocks me sideways and I shut it down, because I’m too tired to deal with that feeling right now. ‘Shot any good penguins recently?’
‘Polar bears,’ his echoey echo voice comes back. ‘Not penguins.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘It was one of those joke things I hear are popular these days.’
And I sit down on the landing halfway up the stairs and listen to him and watch my cornflakes turn into orange mush beside me and he talks about what he’s been doing and how he can’t wait to get back. It’s weird because he sounds as if he wants to be there as much as he wants to be here, and I can understand that feeling. It’s how I feel about most things.
I miss him.
‘How’s home?’ he asks.
And I think about how home is. I think about the fact that bloody Eve seems to have imprinted herself everywhere and Mum is weirdly distant and Leah’s never off her phone. And the place is untidy and not like it normally is and it feels like a wrinkled sock in your shoe that worries away at you all day, making everything feel not quite right so you can’t concentrate on anything properly. And I think about how I miss him being here in the office editing and showing me bits he’s done.
‘Fine,’ I say. And then in a few moments I say goodbye and take the phone downstairs to Leah, and I forget to pick up my cornflakes, which lie soggily in their bowl on the landing.
I’m just getting into the bath when I hear my phone beep in the bedroom, and I almost don’t answer it. But I know that instead of lying there in the quiet water I’ll be wondering who it was, so I wrap myself in a towel and pad through to have a look.
It’s a number I don’t recognize.
Hi Grace. Do you fancy going out sometime?
And as I’m standing there looking at the screen wondering if it’s a joke it beeps again.
It’s Gabe, btw. :-)
CHAPTER TEN
Even I know that there’s something a bit weird about your thirteen-year-old sister being the person who helps you get ready for a first date. Well, if we’re being exact, my first date. Because this is literally the first time that I have ever been out on a date with another human being.
I haven’t told Mum, of course, because a) oh my God, the mortification, and b) she would probably have some kind of Grace’s First Date photo shoot where she’d insist on taking photos to send to Dad, and yeah, well. Also she’s still being weird and living on Planet Eve and, considering I’m supposed to be the one who gets obsessed with things, she seems to be pretty much focusing on that and nothing else. When I got up this morning, there were no clean knickers left in my drawer, and I had to go and rootle about in the tumble dryer until I found some.
Anyway, I haven’t told Mum, and Leah’s promised to keep it secret – and usually I’d think that would last precisely as long as it took for me to start annoying her, at which time she’d blurt it out by ‘accident’ just to piss me off. But Leah’s acting a bit weird at the moment, which is either some kind of being-thirteen thing or maybe because she doesn’t seem to be friends with her BFF Meg at the moment. Normally in the holidays Meg basically lives here, but she hasn’t been around at all, and when Mum asked the other day Leah just shrugged and left the room. And usually Mum would have been chasing after her, hassling to know what was going on, but it’s weird. It feels like the whole family is unravelling and nobody seems to have noticed.
I want to know what’s going on with Leah and Meg, but I’m too busy stressing about what I’m supposed to do on a date. My knowledge so far is basically gleaned from a million books (not helpful) and another million retro 80s films (chances of Gabe turning up in a beaten-up convertible borrowed from his dad: zero) so I’m on my own here.
And, just to make things even better, Anna’s parents have taken her to a cottage in the middle of Wales where there’s literally no wifi or mobile phone coverage. We had a little farewell ceremony for her phone yesterday in the bedroom. She’s promised me that she’ll keep it charged and attempt to connect to every single open wifi network she can find in the whole of the Welsh mountains. (Surely farmers must need to check stuff on the internet?)
‘Right.’ Leah hands me an outfit that isn’t my usual jeans-T-shirt-cardigan. ‘Black dress, cardigan, tights, DMs.’
‘But what about my Doctor Who T-shirt? I wore that at the party and . . .’
I trail off because Leah is giving me a look that says NO very clearly. Well, that, and the fact that she’s actually taken the TARDIS T-shirt off the bedroom floor and has balled it up in one hand and hidden it behind her back.
‘It’s a date, Grace. The idea is you make a bit of an effort.’
‘Fine.’
Sometimes I feel like everyone else was handed a copy of the rules and mine got lost.
‘Hey.’
I’ve walked up to the top of Walnut Street where we arranged to meet and Gabe’s standing there, wearing the exact same things he was wearing at Saturday night’s party, which seems a bit unfair i
f you ask me. I feel like I should be on top of a Christmas tree in this dress. Admittedly I haven’t seen many fairies wearing black dresses with tiny Day of the Dead skull patterns all over them, but I suspect it could be a thing. It should be a thing.
‘Hello,’ I say, because when I’m anxious I find it really uncomfortable to say abbreviated words.
Gabe looks at me with his very brown eyes, and smiles with his crossed-over teeth.
‘You got here OK, then?’
‘Well, actually, I got here ten minutes early,’ I say. ‘But I realized that I was going to stand here like a spare part for ten minutes and that would be awkward so I thought I’d walk round the block because that would kill time, but it didn’t, it only killed two minutes, so I walked round four other blocks and . . .’
Oh God.
‘D’you fancy going to the Botanic Gardens, seeing as it’s nice? We can get a coffee or something.’
I don’t know if Gabe’s just naturally polite, or whether he was hoping if he said that I’d shut up, but, anyway, I stop talking.
We walk along together, side by side, and there’s a silence that you could call companionable except I think it’s actually the other one, and I try desperately to come up with things to say. And all I can think of are the classes Mum used to take me to at the centre when I was younger, where I was supposed to learn how to be a functioning human being, except the woman who ran them was possibly the weirdest person I’ve ever met.
‘So,’ Gabe says, and there’s a little note of something in his voice which makes me think that maybe he’s as nervous as I am, because he sounds a bit odd. ‘Doctor Who.’
And I say, ‘Yes.’
And he says, ‘So. The big question remains. The Master, or Missy?’
And I say, ‘Oh God, that’s really hard, because John Simm was perfect as the Master, but Missy’s so deliciously evil and –’
And that’s it. And we talk and talk all the way to the Botanic Gardens and not just about Doctor Who, either. We talk about school and how Miss Jones the Biology teacher is really Victorian and how obsessed Charlotte was with having the perfect party and about our pets and about living here and then we find the cafe and we get a coffee each and decide to sit outside in the park because it’s weirdly nice for the time of year.
And there are lots of old people on all the usual benches around the flower-bed bits, and down by the duck-pond bit, and so we walk along the path to the huge old oak tree that we used to try to climb when we were smaller, and we make our way through the little path where the rhododendron bushes flap wetly against your face as if they’ve been saving up for a not-rainy day, and we sit down on the little bench where the rose garden is, where there are no people at all.
I drink my coffee even though I don’t really want it, because I realize in that moment, surrounded by rose bushes and the smell of disintegrating autumn things and the still-damp wood of the bench, that I know what’s supposed to happen now, but I don’t know how it happens. All I know is that my heart is galloping loudly in my chest and I can feel the warmth of Gabe sitting beside me drinking his coffee and he doesn’t smell of wood smoke or toothpaste or any of the things boys in books always smell of. He smells of bluebell-and-lavender fabric softener, and I know that because it’s the one I like best. And he smells a bit of shampoo, I notice, as he turns towards me, but I don’t recognize that smell. It’s not horrible, though.
I’ve watched loads and loads of films to see how it happens when a girl and a boy kiss for the first time and what seems to happen is that one of them looks at the other one for a moment and they look away and then they look back and then one of them looks at the other one’s mouth, which is the universal signal for I Want To Kiss You, and then it just sort of happens.
Except that when you’re fifteen, and even if you’re with the boy who everyone in your year fancies, the truth is that you both just sit there drinking your coffee and looking at a small brown bird scraping around in the dead leaves of the flowerbed and then, only then, when you reach down to put your coffee cup on the ground at the same time as he does, your faces sort of collide in a way you can’t ever explain afterwards and –
Kissing Gabe is like – well, actually, I don’t have anything to compare this to. Mainly I’m thinking, YES, at least this means that factually if anyone says ‘sweet sixteen and never been kissed’ I shall be able to contradict them, even if it’s in my head, and then I’m thinking about Pretty in Pink when Iona asks Andie, ‘Did he have strong lips?’ and I’m wondering if Gabe’s constitute strong lips because my knees feel a bit dizzy and oh my God tongue in mouth. Tongue. In. Mouth.
I pull back for a moment. Gabe looks at me, and does a small smile. And I try and arrange my face into an appropriate shape, because I have this serious Resting Bitch Face thing going on, and it wouldn’t really be the done thing to be scowling at someone with whom you’ve just exchanged saliva. (Oh God. Don’t think about that. This is no time for science.)
And then he leans towards me again, and takes a strand of my hair, and I sort of recoil backwards, because I don’t like people touching my hair, and he doesn’t seem to notice, because he tucks it behind my ear like someone in a film would do. It’s such a film-cliché thing to do that I realize he’s just winging it too, and I laugh.
And he says, ‘What are you laughing at?’
And I reach out, because for a moment it feels as if maybe everyone else doesn’t know the rules all that well, either, and I watch as my fingers lace between his, and I lean forward this time, and I kiss Gabe Kowalski. And this time I don’t think about anything.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’m flying on happy feet (OK, I might even have done a few skips) up the road to our house feeling like an actual proper person. I’ve been on a date, nothing disastrous has happened and today I’m winning at being a human.
That’s when I notice the flash of a red car in our driveway. Eve’s car. I don’t want to have to deal with her today. I feel all the happiness whoosh out of me like someone just stuck a pin in my side. When it goes, it goes so fast.
Suddenly I’m tired – I used every last scrap of lovely, funny, sparkly, entertaining Grace on Gabe, because I wanted to be the good bits of me, and now I need to flop and not talk to humans and be on my own.
I can feel my feet dragging with dread as I walk up the road. Withnail is sitting on the neighbours’ wall and I stop to stroke him, watching as he arches himself up to my hand, wishing I could just curl up out here and be peaceful.
By the time I get to the driveway, it feels as if someone’s switched off a light inside me, and all the good stuff that’s just happened with Gabe – the ‘I’ll text you later’, the kiss at the end of the road, the silly conversation holding hands as we walked back from the Botanic Gardens – it’s like it never existed.
I turn the key in the lock and shove the door open. I don’t even bother trying to creep in and avoid her – I live here, so why should I? It stinks of a mixture of her perfume and disgusting stale cigarette smoke and it chokes in my throat. I can hear the clock ticking loudly in the hall and as I kick my shoes off and they slide under the dresser it’s as if the sounds are amplified and they echo in my head, which is full to bursting, and I put my hands over my ears for a moment to try to block it out.
I throw my coat at the banister post and it swings sideways and slumps down on to the floor. I leave it there and stomp into the kitchen. Surprise, surprise – they’re sitting at the table and – shock horror – they’ve got a bottle of wine open.
‘Grace, darling, you look nice,’ says Mum. Her smile looks as if she’s baring her teeth, because my vision is going weird.
I don’t answer. I open the fridge and there’s hardly any orange juice. The milk is sitting out on the worktop, which makes me want to be sick. I pick it up, and pointedly put it back in the fridge, making a mental note not to drink any of it.
‘Honey, are you looking for something to eat?’ She’s put on that fake
, sing-song voice again, the one she uses when Eve’s here. It’s like she’s playing at being herself and I want to scream at her. She ought to realize I’m on the edge. Normally she can tell, but since Eve appeared it’s as if she stopped looking.
So I ignore her again. There’s no bread in the breadbin, the milk’s probably off, there’s nothing to eat in the fridge and the kitchen – and, yes, I know: I’m a hypocrite – looks like a shit-heap.
I hear Eve saying something quietly to Mum, but I can’t quite make it out. And out of nowhere I feel it beginning. It’s a heat in my head, and my ears are thrumming with red noise. I can feel my chest rising and falling rapidly and it’s weird, because there’s a split second where I could probably just stop this, just walk out and not let the meltdown happen. But then it’s too late and like a wave it hits and my temper rises and I turn round.
‘Have you got something you want to say?’ I look at her.
‘Grace.’ Mum’s tone is warning. ‘You sound like you need some quiet.’
Oh now she gets it. Well, it’s too late.
‘It’s not my place to say anything,’ begins Eve.
‘Well don’t, then.’ I glare at her.
‘But Julia’s my friend and I’m not going to sit here and listen to you giving her attitude. She’s got enough going on without you making life difficult for her—’
‘Eve –’ Mum shakes her head, her eyes sort of half narrowed – ‘leave it. Grace, darling, do you want me to run you a bath? Lavender oil?’
I know what she’s trying to do. I don’t want to calm down. I don’t want to take a deep breath. I don’t want to fake being lovely Grace let’s-remember-our-manners. I’m sick of that cow being in our house, and I’m sick of everything being different and I want her to go and I want –
‘I don’t know how you do it,’ says Eve quietly, reaching across and putting her hand on Mum’s arm. She thinks I can’t hear her.
‘And I don’t know what you’re doing here,’ I shout at her, and I slam the glass down on the table so orange juice sloshes over the sides and leaves a puddle on the wood. ‘Nobody wants you and Mum’s just too polite to say that and you should go because you’re just a—’
The State of Grace Page 7