Bea
Bea didn’t often levitate on Earth, though she sometimes hovered a few inches above the ground for fun, to remind herself of her power. In Everwhere she could fly for hours and, on occasion, did. She swooped through the falling leaves, looking down on lakes and trees, until she was nothing more than a rush of air, instead of a girl who everyone thought they knew. Usually, though, Bea preferred to stay with her sisters—not that she’d tell them that.
It was a weakness, this love for her sisters, as her mamá often reminded her. She mustn’t get too attached, given the likelihood that they would meet the same fate as Bea’s aunts. Or, if they went dark, Bea would need to watch herself.
“Especially Goldie,” her mamá warned. “She sits high in your father’s regard. Should he pit you against each other, you want to be sure of—”
“¿Pero por qué?” Bea frowned. “Why would he do that?”
Cleo gave her daughter a look then, both knowing and incredulous, that clearly said Wilhelm Grimm was capable of anything.
“When did you last see a papito?”
Her mamá’s smile was like a flower blooming. “I see him often enough.”
“When will I meet him?”
“Your father comes and goes as he pleases,” Cleo said. “But it’s when you meet him on your eighteenth birthday that matters most of all. ¿Entiendes?”
When her mamá revealed her own coming-of-age story, she omitted certain moments, particularly the murderous and incestuous parts, but Bea was made to understand that she needed to keep her distance. Bea knew that her sisters would probably have preferred her to leave altogether, let them enjoy Everwhere without her. She didn’t blame them. She said cruel things, though she couldn’t seem to help it; the words slipped out before she could stop them.
Sometimes Bea thought it’d be better for everyone if she passed the rest of her days gliding above the trees, soaring up into the moonlight within touching distance of the stars, never speaking to or seeing another soul. It’d probably be safer that way; in her absence she’d be far more loved. And she could be with her father, feel his breath on the winds, his whisper on the air. Just the two of them up there. She could do it. She’d have to stop now and then to eat, it wouldn’t matter what. She’d become a forager, eating whatever she could find: mushrooms, berries, acorns—was moss edible? It seemed like it might be. Bea had never cared much for food anyway, had always been skinny as a sparrow, despite her abuela’s best efforts to fatten her up. Lately, though, Bea had been purposely eschewing food, skipping lunch at school, pushing her dinner around her plate until her mamá finally gave up trying to force her. Because, Bea reasoned, the thinner she was the higher she’d be able to fly. If only she had hollow bones like birds she might be able to fly right up to the moon.
Goldie
Sometimes I caught my stepfather watching me. Always from the corner of his eye or the edge of a room, but I felt it as surely as if he were shining a spotlight on me. I’d shrink when I felt his stare, like a tree losing its leaves. Sometimes I was sure I felt his thoughts, long tendrils of longing that tugged at my skirt like a toddler trying to get my attention.
He was a child, my stepfather, a sicky, icky baby with an elongated body, thin and stringy as a weed. He was always seeking the nearest chair to flop into, limbs folded, too lazy to stand. Fingers insidious as ivy, clinging to whatever didn’t want him. He’d sit on the sofa gobbling oversized bags of sweets, scattering sugar all over his clothes, leaving fallen sweets for me to roll over in bed, like a tacky version of “The Princess and the Pea.”
He’d been like that ever since Ma brought him home. I tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen. She wanted him too much, God knows why, insisting that he was a good one, unlike my unspeakable father, and ignored all the warning signs to the contrary. Including the fact that he was a filthy excuse for a human being. Sometimes I’d look at him and think that if Ma thought him an improvement, then my father must have been the Devil.
My stepfather grew worse after he lost the baby fight with Ma, from the moment she started waddling around the flat smiling to herself. I’d never seen her so happy. I wondered if she’d been that happy while pregnant with me. I doubted it, since this baby was the product of so-called love, while I was the product of bright-white wishing and black-edged desire, according to Bea. I asked Ma if that was true, but she didn’t confirm or deny. Instead, an odd look passed across her face, as if she was struggling to recall anything about my conception at all, before she asked me what I wanted for tea.
As Ma’s pregnancy advanced, she began retreating into herself, giving me a little breathing space, which was a relief. But then my stepfather stepped into that space, which wasn’t. At dinner he started asking about my day (something Ma now forgot to do), leaning across our tiny table so I could smell the beer on his breath. I started locking the bathroom door when I showered, wrapping myself tight in my duvet when I went to bed. I started wishing I had my own room. I agreed with Ma that we should move. The flat was too small for three, let alone four. But my stepfather insisted that we couldn’t afford the rent increase, not with the baby coming. Strangely, Ma didn’t seem to care anymore, so didn’t press him. Probably to minimize his moaning about all the new things she was buying for the baby. So she got fatter and further away, and he got thinner and closer, while the walls of our tiny flat felt like they were closing in on us all.
Leo
Lately Leo was seized by sudden, inexplicable rages. He’d recently smashed six windows in the refectory with a cricket bat, only escaping expulsion when his father bestowed a substantial donation on the headmaster’s discretionary fund. Then Leo ripped the pocket off Robin Walker’s blazer and earned five days’ lunchtime detention. While Leo sat at his desk, facing the wall, writing I will control my temper over and over again, he wondered why he’d done it and couldn’t explain it even to himself. Despite the detentions, he then repeatedly thumped a random boy in the playground, only escaping punishment because the boy had been too scared to report him.
Then, one afternoon, Leo came across a book in the school library by Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Apparently, it was a first edition, and the librarian refused to let Leo remove it from its glass case. But Leo needed to read it. And not any edition, that very one. He couldn’t explain the why of that either. So, reasoning that the ditzy old duffer librarian wouldn’t notice, Leo stole the book and replaced it with another. It took three nights under his bedclothes with a torch (also stolen, to add insult to injury, from Robin Walker) to read the book cover to cover.
When he’d finished, Leo had his answer. He was dangerous. A madman with two sides—one (relatively) good and one (increasingly) bad. He wondered if that bastard Walker had poisoned him with something concocted in the chemistry lab. He wondered if there was an antidote. Then Leo realized, somewhat to his surprise, that even if there was he wouldn’t take it. He didn’t want to suppress his rages because, although the external consequences could be unfortunate, the internal effects were rather glorious. When he was overcome with rage, when pure fury was pumping in his veins, Leo felt more exalted, more invincible, more himself than he ever had before.
8th October
Twenty-four days . . .
9:59 a.m.—Goldie
I need a job fast, one that doesn’t require references and pays in cash. Frustratingly, my search must be geographically confined, meaning a mile exclusion radius around the Fitzwilliam Hotel. Although Garrick rarely strays more than a few hundred metres from his office, preferring to send his minions on external errands, I’ve known him to go to the corner shop for cigarettes when he’s sick of the place and wants out. Personally, I’d like to go back and trim his other fingers. But I need to stay safe, if only for Teddy’s sake.
I dropped Ted at school, then went straight into town to start searching. When I reach King’s Parade, I’ve already been summarily rejected from two cafés and three restaurants. I’
m beginning to feel so desperate by this point I even include shops in my search, but I’m told no by four before I’ve barely opened my mouth. I see the sign for the No. 33 Café, something of a Cambridge institution, I believe, though I’ve never been inside. Still, it looks nice enough from the outside, with one big bay window overlooking King’s College. Sitting at a table, staring out onto the street, is an old lady, perhaps in her seventies or eighties, with a mass of white hair and a wistful smile. I catch her eye and she grins at me. I take it as a sign.
“Good morning,” I say, pushing open the door. But now the old lady doesn’t look at me, doesn’t take her eyes off the window. Other than her, the café is empty and, as I approach the unmanned counter, I start having second thoughts. No customers means no need for extra staff, and I’ve had my fill of rejections today. I’m about to turn back when a young woman with an enormous amount of curly red hair hurries out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. There’s something familiar about her, though I can’t put my finger on what. Perhaps I’ve seen her around town, though I’m sure I’d have remembered that red hair.
“Sorry,” she says, a little breathless. “What can I get you? Tea? Coffee? Cake?”
“No, um, I—” I stumble. “I didn’t—I just wondered i-if you might need any s-staff?”
She laughs. “Do we look like we need staff?”
“N-no,” I admit. “Th-thank you.” I turn to go.
“Wait.”
I stop.
She regards me. “Have we met before?”
“I don’t think so.”
She gives me a thoughtful look, the way Teddy will look at me sometimes, as if he’s searching for secrets. Then she glances at the old lady sitting by the window, a glance so private, so intimate, and so filled with sorrow that I feel embarrassed to witness it. I begin to back away. “Th-thank you anyway. And, um . . . g-good luck.”
The beautiful girl doesn’t say anything. She’s still gazing at the old woman, so lost in thought now that she doesn’t even see me leave.
11:15 a.m.—Scarlet
When Scarlet looks again the girl is gone. Although she is and she isn’t. Because it’s as if she has left an imprint of herself on the air. Scarlet can still see the curling hair, like her own, except golden instead of auburn. She can still hear her nervous chatter, can still feel the sense of slightly off-kilter strength. For a moment, Scarlet’s struck by the notion that they could be friends. Then thinks that befriending her might be a bit like biting into a fresh doughnut while not being entirely certain what you’re going to find at its centre.
“Scarlet!”
The sound wave of her grandmother’s panic knocks Scarlet out of her thoughts. She moves so fast she hits her hip against the counter as she runs across the café.
“What is it?” Scarlet reaches her grandma. “What’s wrong?”
Esme points at the window, where a large brown moth is bumping against the glass. “Get it away, Scarlet, get it away from me . . .”
“It’s okay,” Scarlet says, relieved as she reaches out to the window. “It’s only a moth—I’ll catch it.”
She scoops up the flapping insect between her palms and opens the door with her foot. Its frantic wings flutter in her cupped hands.
“Bugger off, you bloody little troublemaker.” Scarlet leans out the door, into the fresh air, and opens her hands. But the moth has gone. And in place of frantic wings is only a pinch of ashes that sprinkles the pavement like icing sugar on a bun.
11:59 a.m.—Liyana
“So, you’re a . . . lesbian?”
Liyana looks up to see Aunt Nya folding and unfolding her long legs. Her aunt, at fifty-two, is still an exceedingly beautiful woman. Surely, Liyana thinks, she could find herself another husband if she set her mind to it.
“I suppose so,” Liyana says, though that isn’t how she necessarily labels herself. Not as a lover of women, but a lover of Kumiko. Liyana can’t separate knowing Kumiko from loving her. From the moment they met, it was nothing and it was everything. The way she looked: small and slight, porcelain skin, midnight hair, dark almond eyes that seemed to take up half her face. The way she dressed: black silk, white cotton, red lipstick. The way she spoke: slow and soft, so you had to lean in to listen. The way she moved: seeming not to walk but glide through life like a river fish. The way she was: confident, certain, unlike any other teenager Liyana knew. And perhaps most of all, it was the way Kumiko made Liyana feel about herself: as if she was exactly as she should be.
Nyasha folds her legs again. She picks up her teacup. “Oh.”
“Oh?” Liyana looks up from her milky coffee. For days, weeks, months, she’s been anticipating her aunt’s reaction to this news, expecting rejection, vilification, tears, and screams. What she hadn’t expected was no reaction at all. “Is that all you have to say?”
“And what should I say, Ana?”
Liyana considers. “I don’t know. I thought you’d say . . . something.”
Aunt Nya sips her tea. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Yes,” Liyana says. “Her name’s Kumiko.”
“Okay.” Nya nods. “And how long have you . . . had Kumiko for?”
“Nine and a half months.”
“Well, well.” Her aunt raises an elegant eyebrow. “You certainly kept that quiet.”
With her index finger, Liyana circles the rim of her coffee cup. “I wanted to tell you sooner—I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”
Aunt Nya crosses her legs again. “And how am I doing?”
“Well, I thought you might be a little more . . . surprised.”
“I was a lesbian once, you know,” her aunt says. “At a party with a girl called Sefryn. Very pretty she was, like a pixie. That was . . . over thirty years ago—can you believe it?”
“This isn’t one night at a party, Dagã,” Liyana says. “I love her.”
“And does she love you?”
Liyana glances at the still pool of coffee in her cup. She nods.
“Then you’re a lucky girl, vinye.” Nya sits back in her chair and sets down her cup. “So I’ve been thinking that I’ll get a job, one that’ll pay enough for—”
“Sorry, what?” Liyana sits forward. “I must be mistaken, but I thought you said you’d get a job.”
“You’re not wrong,” her aunt says. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
Liyana stifles a smile.
Nya frowns. “And what’s so funny about that?”
“I’m sorry, but . . .” Liyana shakes her head. “You can barely stack the dishwasher. What are you qualified for?” Liyana won’t say that she’s already applied for several jobs, including Tesco, and is waiting to hear back.
“That’s hardly fair,” Nya protests. “I have several highly desirable skills—”
“True, but you’re not allowed to charge for them.”
Her aunt scowls, then sighs. “I could’ve made an excellent living, though, twenty years ago. Possibly ten.”
Liyana smiles. “The African Julia Roberts.”
“Oh, I think I can do better than Richard Gere.” Nyasha pulls herself up, chest forward, shoulders back. “I’d rather be Violetta in La traviata.”
“What, and die of TB? I think Julia had the happier ending.”
Her aunt shrugs. “Depends on your perspective, I suppose. God, I remember the first time you saw that opera, you cried so loud when she died we had to leave.”
Liyana reaches for the memory but can’t find it. “I don’t—”
“We hid in the ladies’ loos,” Nya continues. “A bosomy cleaner eventually kicked us out.”
“Oh,” Liyana says, half to herself. The coffee in her cup begins to boil. “Yeah, you . . . you promised I’d never have to be a courtesan, that you’d always . . .”
“You slept in my bed for a week.”
“I did?” Liyana says. The bubbling coffee stills. “I’d forgotten.”
Aunt Nya sips her tea and sits back in her cha
ir. “I hadn’t.”
For a few moments neither speaks, then Liyana sighs softly into the silence. “Okay, perhaps we can compromise.”
Her aunt brightens. “We can?”
“I’m not making any promises,” Liyana says. “But I’ll talk to Kumiko again . . . And if you can find a man who’ll agree to a platonic marriage, then—”
“What?” Her aunt’s smile drops. “No, that’s ridiculous. No man will agree to that, unless he’s gay.”
“Then find a gay one,” Liyana says. “Or one who’ll agree to an open marriage, but without any of the—”
“No,” Nya objects. “That’ll never—”
“Those are my terms,” Liyana says. “And they’re not up for negotiation.”
4:37 p.m.—Goldie
I’ve read stories about people realizing unknown skills when put under extreme pressure, like mothers lifting trucks off babies and stuff like that. Well, poverty has realized in me a hitherto untapped aptitude for pickpocketing. I discovered this earlier, quite by accident.
I was trawling the shops, restaurants, cafés for potential serving positions, navigating crowds of tourists and clusters of students. Then, somewhere along King’s Parade, I saw it: a fat purse sticking out of a Chanel handbag. My first impulse was to alert the owner to the precarious position of her purse. My second impulse was to relieve her of that purse. I followed the second impulse.
I’ll limit myself to one theft a day and take only purses and wallets of clear pedigree. If they’re carrying less than thirty quid, I’ll let them keep it. Anything above that, I’ll take half. I’ll leave anything important—credit cards, driving licences, passports. It’s hit-and-run theft, but I’ll bruise instead of maim. Except when I find an upper-class twit with a Coutts card. They’re fair game.
The Sisters Grimm Page 11