‘I’m here because I was invited.’
Why doesn’t she just shut up?
‘Why don’t you just shut up?’
Eve’s eyes widen for a second and she turns to look at Mum, and I know what she’s expecting. But Mum doesn’t say anything, she just sits there looking at me and I realize that I’m double-flapping both my hands in agitation now because I’ve tipped over from slightly pissed off into Hulk smash meltdown mode and my mouth isn’t responsible for what it says because it’s like having tunnel vision.
‘Seriously.’ I look at Eve with hatred. ‘You’re a tragic old lush with no life – that’s why you’re trying to take over Mum’s.’
Eve opens her mouth, but Mum shakes her head.
‘Grace, that’s enough. Eve is my friend, and I won’t have you talking to her like this.’
I can’t do any more of this. I look at Mum in her brand-new just-like-Eve Converse and her suddenly-different jeans and her identical-to-Eve’s stripy top.
‘You’re tragic, you know that? Trying to pretend you’re something you’re not. You’re as bad as her.’
As soon as I say it, I feel the heart-thumpy realization that I’ve gone too far and I’ve hit a sore point, because Mum sort of crumples a bit and it makes me even more furious because she turns to her and I’m left standing there. And I hate her for being so pathetic and needy because I miss Dad too, but you don’t see me turning into a clone. And then Leah appears out of nowhere, just in time to do her perfect-child-I’m-so-virtuous act and the red fury hits me again.
‘And you don’t even care that this whole house has gone to shit since Dad went away.’
‘Because he’s so bloody perfect –’ Eve starts, but Mum shoots her a look and she stops talking.
‘Grace –’
I turn to leave the room, sweeping a load of papers off the table and kicking the door. And because she’s in the way and she’s always so perfect and I hate myself, I shove Leah, hard, so she rebounds backwards against the wall of the kitchen with a surprised noise and I slam the door and crash upstairs with the noise still ringing in my head. I hate them.
As soon as I shut the door of the bedroom and I slump down against it, blocking it shut, I feel the tears starting. I cry and cry until I’ve run out and then I just sit there for ages feeling like I’m in a black hole. Eventually I pick up one of my fidget toys and twiddle with it for a while and it’s calming, but I feel sick with what’s happened. And guilty for the things I said – well, to Mum, anyway; I still hate her – and it’s like I imagine a hangover must feel. Like my face aches with crying and I feel this solid lump of guilt in my chest that stops me breathing properly. I hate this. When I was little, it used to happen all the time. Now I’m older and I know what pushes my buttons I can stop it, sometimes. But other times it’s like there’s a game of Jenga going on in my head and I never know what’s going to make everything fall apart.
Later – and I’ve moved on to the bed, because sitting on the floor was making my legs feel weird – I’m lying down, on top of the covers, trying to work out what to do. I can hear noises downstairs but nobody’s coming to make sure I’m OK – when I was smaller and I felt like this, Mum would try to fix it. But she’s too busy with Eve and I’m too humiliated to go downstairs and be forced to apologize. And, anyway, I do wish Eve would go away and leave us all alone. But I feel like crap for shoving Leah, who didn’t have anything to do with any of it.
As if she’s heard me thinking about her, there’s a knock on the door and I know who it is.
‘I brought you coffee,’ she says. And an arm holding a cup slides through the gap in the door.
‘It’s fine,’ I say through the cushion I’ve pulled up to cover my face because I don’t want to look at her. ‘You can come in.’
She slinks in and puts the cup down on my desk.
‘Sorry.’
I surprise myself by saying it. Most of the time I find it almost impossible to get the word out. Not because I’m not sorry, but because it’s like there’s a glass bubble in my mouth stopping the words from forming.
‘’S all right,’ says Leah, and she does a sort of flat-mouthed upside-down smile, which means it’s OK. ‘Mum said to bring the coffee up. She said you needed time to calm down by yourself.’
And then she leaves.
I feel like I’ve been dipped in acid – raw and flayed and sore. I’m so tired that even though I’m drinking the coffee Leah’s brought me I’ll be asleep in a moment, cocooned under the weight of the blankets I’ll wrap around me.
‘Sweetheart?’
I’m not awake, but I am, almost. I feel the weight of Mum sitting down on the edge of the bed, the pressure of the duvet pulled tighter across my legs. I don’t move. It’s got dark outside while I’ve been sleeping.
‘I thought you might be asleep.’ A hand reaches out and rests on my leg. It’s quite comfortable, actually. I lie there with my eyes closed, because even if she thought I was awake there’s no way I could look at her. When I feel like this, afterwards, I can’t look at people. It hurts my eyes.
‘Eve’s gone back to her hotel. I thought you’d want to know that. And, Gracie, darling . . .’ There’s a pause, and I hear her sighing. ‘I’m sorry you felt the way you did – the way you do. I’m trying, you know. It’s not easy, doing everything with Daddy gone. And all this change –’
She hardly ever calls him Daddy. I imagine his nice smiling face and his beardy chin and the lump of guilt travels up into my throat and becomes a lump of missing and sadness.
I feel her getting up from the bed and switching on my lava lamps. One, two, three, four, until the room is full of purple and pink and blue and red, which I can see through my eyelids – or can I just imagine it? And there’s a rustling as she opens a box and I know just before the scent hits me that she’s dropped lavender on the little bowl on the radiator.
She sits down again.
‘All I’m trying to do is the right thing, darling. Nobody gives us a rule book when we grow up, you know.’
She rubs my leg for a moment then gets up again.
‘Love you, darling.’
As she’s closing the door, I say it. It might have been too quiet for her to hear, but I did say it.
‘Love you.’
And I think,
I’m sorry.
And then I fall asleep again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I reach under my pillow for my phone.
I don’t wake up feeling right the day after a meltdown. It’s how I imagine a hangover feels –my head hurts, everything is heavy and I have to drag my body around like an unwilling participant in a party game. I don’t want to have a hangover if this is how they feel. I’ve got enough trouble with my own head messing me up without adding drink to the equation.
The phone’s dead – I remember now that it died when I was on the way home from my time with Gabe, which feels like it happened some time in the last century. I reach under the bed for my charger and realize bloody Leah’s stolen it again.
The blank black rectangle in my hands could hold lots of things. Right now I’m not sure I want to switch it on and find out what’s inside. Leah, who can’t actually breathe unless she’s checked her notifications once a second, can’t understand why I can take or leave my phone. But the truth is life’s noisy enough and my head is full of all the things I have to remember when I’m being a person every day: don’t be rude, don’t stare, don’t look blankly into space when you’re not thinking anything, shut down the noises of everyone talking, concentrate, hold it together, don’t have a meltdown . . .
Oh God.
I climb out of bed and head downstairs, trying to wish away what happened last night.
‘Morning, darling,’ says Mum, who is still surrounded with papers on the dining table. She looks up from her laptop and smiles at me and I feel relieved that she looks back at the screen and doesn’t seem to be planning A Little Chat right now.
I feed Withnail, who tells me he’s starving to death. I realize when I hear voices from the sitting room that it’s Leah’s best friend, Meg, I can hear, and that feels like normal and I like it.
Mum taps away at her laptop for a bit while I sit on the worktop beside the toaster, waiting for the kettle to boil.
‘Empty that dishwasher for me, Grace, honey?’
More tapping. Because I’m feeling heavy with guilt and horrible things after last night, I do it without even protesting. That’s usually Leah’s department and I feel quite pleased with myself as I stack plates and put the mugs back on the corner shelf by the sink.
‘D’you want tea?’
‘Mmm? Yes, lovely, thanks, darling.’
I butter the toast – leaving crumbs on the worktop because I’ve not had a complete personality transplant, and Leah’s bound to be making some in a bit anyway – and make two cups of tea, placing one on the newspaper next to Mum’s laptop.
‘Oh, watch out – I need that article,’ she says, shifting it sideways. ‘I’m applying for a job, actually,’ she continues, turning the laptop round to show me.
I realize then that Leah would’ve asked what she was doing. I always forget to ask the questions that people want to be asked. It’s not that I’m not interested (well, quite a lot of the time I’m not that interested in where my form tutor is going for half-term, and stuff like that), but it just doesn’t really occur to me to ask because I think if they want to tell me, they’ll tell me at the end of the process. That’s the bit that confuses me. Why do people tell me their thought processes when they’re doing a thing?
‘Oh,’ I say, because I realize I’ve been standing there for I don’t know how long.
‘You’re OK with that?’ Mum’s voice sounds a bit . . . surprised or something. I can’t quite work it out.
‘Yep,’ I say, mainly because I don’t have the brain to look at all the bits of paper and the stuff on the screen that’s already giving me the warnings of a flickery headache.
She puts her arm round my waist and pulls me in towards her. She smells of something purple and soft and her hair is fuzzly from the shower.
‘Hug?’
And I put my arms round her, because I get the feeling that she’s the one that needs one. I don’t particularly like hugs when I’m processing other stuff, because it’s just another bit of information to deal with, but I know that other people like them, so I do them more than I would otherwise. And right now I’m still feeling bruised from last night and I haven’t even begun processing what happened yesterday, but I’m putting that on hold in my head until later because I don’t have the space to think about the Gabe stuff right now.
‘Have you got my phone charger?’ I say into the air. She’s still sitting there, squeezing me from the middle like I’m a tube of toothpaste. It makes her let go.
‘Nope.’ She looks automatically at her own phone, which is sitting on the table. ‘I bet Leah’s snaffled yours. She’s never away from that phone. I’m going to institute some kind of technology ban, actually.’
I step backwards because I can already tell where this is going, but it’s too late. She’s off.
‘In fact, we should be having more family time, less screen time.’ She shuts her laptop. ‘Monopoly. Proper bonding time. We don’t need your father here to do that sort of thing. In fact, really, we need to get used to it . . .’
I back out of the room while she’s still talking, because once she’s off it can go on for ages. I can hear her looking in the kitchen dresser for the stack of neglected board games already.
‘Did you nick my charger?’
‘Morning, Grace,’ says Leah. She’s dressed and her hair’s been straightened and then twirled at the ends with some kind of curling machine thingy. She’s also wearing a crop top that shows off her leftover holiday tan and make-up that makes her look a lot older than thirteen. If she wasn’t my sister, I think I’d be a bit nervous of her. She’s gone a bit spiky-looking, like she’d fit in with Holly Carmichael’s gang quite easily. Meg, on the other hand, has her hair tied back in a ponytail and her usual jeans and trainers and a hoody on. She looks like thirteen ought to look. She also looks a bit alarmed, and I get the feeling that she’s sort of holding on. It’s hard to describe, but it’s how I feel all the time and I can always recognize it in other people. Like you’re expecting to be caught out at any moment and banished from society.
‘Uh, I dunno,’ says Leah, offhand. ‘C’mon, Meg, let’s go upstairs. I’ll do your hair and make-up.’
If Meg feels alarmed by this, she doesn’t show it.
‘Charger?’ I repeat.
‘Oh,’ says Leah, and I get this weird feeling that she’s trying to look cool in front of Meg, which doesn’t make sense because they’ve been friends since preschool. ‘It’s in the sitting room.’
She beckons Meg and they head upstairs.
It’s the weirdest feeling. It’s like someone shifted everything slightly, and home feels out of sync. Everything’s changing and I don’t like change.
Maybe a shower will fix my head.
I plug my phone in and leave it behind the sofa.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
One of the weird things about Really Good Days is you never know when they’re going to happen. I’d quite like it if you did, so you could prepare, because I really don’t like surprises. Instead, Really Good Days sneak up when you’re not looking.
‘Grace?’ Mum shouts upstairs. ‘Phone for you.’
I lean over the banister and see her standing there, brandishing the landline phone.
‘For me?’
‘It’s Anna.’
I gallop downstairs two at a time and grab it from her, closeting myself in Dad’s study with my feet curled up underneath me on his office chair.
‘Hello. Welcome to 2001.’ Anna giggles. ‘You didn’t answer the mobile when I rang it seventy million times so I thought I’d try the old-fashioned method.’ She must have found some signal in the depths of Wales. I relax back into my seat, feeling myself smiling. ‘D’you want the good news or the even better news?’
‘Both?’ I reply.
‘I’m not in Wales.’ There’s a little squeak and a thud, and I suspect Anna is dancing on the spot, wherever she is. ‘I am HOME. Free. There was some major disaster at the surgery so Mum had to come back, so I am here and I am freeeeee, and we can do whatever we want for the whole week.’
‘Stay where you are. I’m on my way over.’
‘Excellent thinking.’
‘Give me twenty minutes. Bye.’ I stand up and make my way towards the door, the sitting room and my phone, which must now be fully charged.
‘Oh, and, Grace?’ Just as I am about to end the call, she asks the question. ‘What happened with Gabe?’
‘I’ll tell you the whole story when I get there.’
‘Have you heard from him?’
I unplug the phone from the charger and look at the blank screen. I don’t turn it on.
‘Um. I don’t quite know.’
‘Grace . . .’
And so I’m walking to Anna’s house to escape home because the same-not-same thing is making me feel odd, and the fresh air is making me feel better about what happened last night. Mum’s quite happy for me to be out of her hair (I bet she’s got That Person coming round again, but I’m not even going to think about that) and she gave me a tenner to go and do something nice. So we’re going to the seafront.
I haven’t switched my phone on yet, because I’ve reached the point where I’m feeling a bit like turning it on and seeing a ‘hi, thanks for yesterday, but see you around’ text is not what I want to see right now. I’m not sure why my brain’s decided that’s what has happened, but, really, the whole going-out-with-Gabe-Kowalski thing is so unlikely that I’ve half convinced myself I imagined it, anyway. And I shouldn’t be leaping on the phone even if he has texted me, because I’m busy doing important things and definitely not thinking about him every
five seconds.
(Every ten, perhaps. All right, every five. Or three. But it’s ridiculous and I’m a hideous cliché, so now I’ve agreed with myself that I’ll turn the phone on when I get to Anna’s house and not before. And her house is right across the other side of town, so that’s ages. And I’m thinking about important things like the state of the economy instead.)
This might be a lie.
Because it’s sunny and half-term the town is suddenly heaving with people and noise and I’ve got my headphones in even though I’ve got no music playing (because of no phone, which I might have mentioned, because of Gabe, which I might also have – SHUT UP, brain). They make the world a bit muffled, which helps when it’s busy, because sometimes everything starts to whoosh alarmingly in a way that’s like someone turning up and down the volume in my head. And sometimes it whooshes in time with my footsteps, and I look at all the other people going to WHSmith and buying newspapers and coming out of HMV with shopping bags and I wonder if they hear it too. But I don’t know how to ask people if their world whooshes, so for now it remains a Great Mystery of Life.
‘Jellybeans,’ I say, patting my pocket, when Anna opens the door.
‘Excellent,’ she says, which is why I love her. Because she doesn’t say ‘you need to explain what you’re thinking, Grace’ and ‘other people can’t read your mind, Grace’ and all the other sensible things I’ve heard a million times from Mum and the therapist at the Jigsaw Centre when I was little (before Mum realized that place was hellish, and that forcing me to go there was causing everyone more stress than anything else).
And then she looks at me. And because she knows me too well she holds out her hand.
‘Phone.’
‘I can’t,’ I say.
‘Hand it over,’ she says.
I don’t want to know.
I turn round on the spot while she turns the phone on. If it switches on when I’m on an odd number, I decide, it’ll be a good thing, and if I stop on an even number it’ll be back to normal, which I realize might actually be quite relaxing because this is all incredibly stressful and I don’t think –
The State of Grace Page 8