The Graces (8 page)

‘Why don’t they just divorce?’

Fenrin snorted. ‘Because then they’d have to admit that there’s something wrong. And we’re never wrong, darling.’ His voice trailed off dreamily. ‘Never never.’

I thought about Esther. Beautiful Esther who drew all eyes to her. She could have anyone she wanted. If I was like that, would I be able to stick to just one person for the rest of my life? Could I ever love anyone that much?

She had power. Of course she used it.

Fenrin’s eyes were half closed as he leaned his head back against the bed.

‘River, River,’ he said, his voice just above a whisper. I felt my skin prickle with slow delight.

‘Fenrin, Fenrin,’ I replied, smiling. Dropping my face just a little closer.

His eyes were closed now. The corners of his mouth curled up.

I let myself imagine how it could go, for just a moment. Maybe later, when we were all in bed. Maybe he’d slip into my room. Say he couldn’t sleep. Lean towards me in the dark. He’d try and brush it off afterwards, of course, just like Thalia had done with Marcus, afraid I’d go crazy on him. I would have to earn him back by proving myself as one of them.

We’d keep it secret, of course, just in the beginning. Everyone at school would find a reason to hate me where before they’d barely even known me. But it wouldn’t matter if I had the Graces as a shield. My best friend’s brother. The thought of it made my heart swell until it threatened to pop out of my chest.

The bedroom door flew open.

I turned, startled, guilty. It was Thalia. She stood in the doorway and she said, ‘Wolf’s here.’

Amazing how just two words could wreck so much.

Wolf’s real name was Valko Grigorov, and he was Bulgarian.

As far as I could tell, the Grigorovs were friends of the family from a long time back, and Wolf had been coming to the Grace house every summer holiday since he was a kid. He and his parents had recently moved here permanently from Sofia, so now he came over much more often than just once a year – whole weekends here and there. He was a year older than Fenrin and Thalia, and now that he was out of school, he’d started as an intern in his father’s international law firm based in the city.

He had dark curly hair and olive skin, and he was attractive in a hawkish kind of way, I guess, although he was too short for me, and his expression was always blank, as if he didn’t want anyone to know him. He didn’t talk much, either, although when he did his
curtly accented English was perfect.

Thalia brought him into the bedroom to hang out with us, but the evening was over, and we went to bed soon after that. His arrival broke whatever ephemeral magic had been holding us together in that room, and a kind of desolation washed over me. Fenrin especially seemed to resent Wolf’s arrival – he stared at him a lot, his expression an angry kind of cool. I hoped it was because he’d interrupted us. I thought it could be.

I spent the night in the spare bedroom down the hall from Summer’s and Thalia’s rooms. It was a plain, pure white with dark oak beams running down the walls. A small bowl of polished black stones sat on the bedside table. I picked one up. It fitted perfectly into the hollow of my palm. It had a neat, round hole through the middle like a fat doughnut. I couldn’t tell if it was a natural or man-made thing. A dark olive rag rug perched on the floorboards. I ran the bottoms of my feet over it, tickling my soles, swaying my legs as I contemplated, too keyed up to go to sleep. I wondered if Fenrin would come in. If he came down and saw the light on, he might risk it.

But he never did, and eventually I fell asleep.

In the morning, my head had the raspy furriness of a hangover. I lay in bed for a while, hoping to hear telltale noises of the family stirring. But there was nothing, so I
got up and crept into the en suite bathroom.

I started to get the distinct feeling that the house wanted me out. Every move I made was an intrusion. I had a hasty wash, too nervous to take a proper shower, and tried to make my hair look perfectly messy, but it just looked messy, and I gave up.

When I went down to the kitchen, Thalia, Summer and Wolf were there, but there was no Fenrin, and my heart sank. Wolf was slouching against a countertop and stirring coffee, his feet bare. Summer’s long dark hair was loose against her pale skin, dripping over her arms. She looked tired in a glowering, rock-music-photo-shoot kind of way. I wanted to brush her hair back, take it in my fingers. I wanted to be allowed to do that. She wasn’t good in the mornings, anyway, but with a hangover she barely raised her voice over a grunt. Thalia looked impossibly fresh and luminous, which was pure sorcery – maybe one day she would admit to me what she was and then give me the spell that made her look like that.

Breakfast was all business. They barely looked up as I came in. Wolf wasn’t a Grace. Wolf was an outsider, too, surely – but I was the one who felt like I shouldn’t be here.

The dining table was piled with different breads and pastries. Melon slices. Bowls of freshly cut herbs
scenting the air. Expensive-looking muesli with ingredients I’d barely heard of in sleek packages from health food shops. I grabbed a piece of melon and sat awkwardly, ekeing out the minutes until Fenrin came down.

But he didn’t show, and he didn’t show.

I’d finished my melon, and then a pastry.

The house seemed to shift, bearing down on me.

I cleared my throat.

‘I think I have to go soon,’ I said into the quiet. ‘My mother’s expecting me. We’re going shopping today.’

‘See ya later,’ said Thalia absently. She was reading a book, her hands gripping a mug. As I watched, she reached out to a bowl and took a handful of green leaves, dropping them into her mug. Wolf was staring out of the window. Summer was making more coffee, her back to me.

What had happened since last night?

Had I done something wrong?

Was this it, now? Were they dropping me?

I stood up and left the kitchen, fumbling in my haste to make it look like I couldn’t care less about staying. I’d left my bag by the foot of the stairs, and I picked it up. Their parents were nowhere to be seen. After the encounter with Gwydion in his study, and everything Fenrin had told me, I wasn’t exactly anxious
to seek them out, even though I knew it would be rude not to say thank you – but just then I heard voices from another room down the corridor and a tinkling laugh.

‘Hey,’ said a voice behind me.

I turned. Summer had appeared, one foot resting on top of the other, her hand wrapped around a staircase post.

‘Hey,’ I said.

We stood. She seemed awkward.

A sudden need to tell her about Fenrin, about our conversation and our closeness, pushed at me. I resisted it. I couldn’t risk being that obvious – not yet.

‘It was fun last night.’ Her tone was more like a question.

‘Yeah,’ I said. I tried to reassure her. ‘It really was.’ It was the most fun I’d ever had, but that was something I’d never admit to. Needy people didn’t keep friends like the Graces.

‘Next time let’s just you and me hang out,’ she said. ‘We can do anything you like.’

‘Okay,’ I said. Maybe I was too eager because it seemed to take her by surprise.

‘Okay?’ she repeated.

I was grinning. ‘Yes, idiot.’

The corner of her mouth was tugged into a half smile.

‘You don’t have to go right away, you know,’ she said. ‘You could stay—’

‘Are you heading off, River?’ came a voice behind us. I turned.

Esther and Gwydion Grace, together at last.

She was like an elf queen; he a fairy king. Of course this was a family of witches – you just had to look at them. Gwydion had his arm round Esther’s waist, and she nestled back into his shoulder.

It didn’t seem like she was having a string of affairs. It definitely didn’t seem like he knew about it. Had Fenrin been messing with me? But I remembered his face and his voice. No. They were good at secrets, this family. Good at glamour, hiding the cracks underneath.

‘My mother’s waiting,’ I managed, stammering in the face of them. Why was it so hard to talk to beautiful people?

‘Will you be able to get back all right? Is she coming to pick you up?’

‘Oh no, it’s fine. We’re going to meet in town, so I’ll get the bus.’

Esther frowned at that, but Gwydion squeezed her side.

‘All right then,’ she said. ‘It was lovely to meet you.’

‘Thank you … thank you for having me.’

Esther’s eyes slid over Summer. ‘Feel like hanging out with your mother after breakfast?’

Summer folded her arms tightly. ‘Yeah,’ she said. She’d been smiling just a second ago.

Esther and Gwydion walked off.

‘Um,’ I began, unsure how to ask her what was wrong. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, of course. She just wants a report on last night, that’s all. Make sure I didn’t say anything to you that she wouldn’t want me to,’ said Summer, and then she turned abruptly. ‘See you Monday, then.’

She went into the kitchen, leaving me alone. I waited for a long moment, but she didn’t come back.

I took a key dangling off a carved set of wooden pegs on the wall next to the front door, opened it, shouldered my bag, locked the door, posted the key back through the letterbox, and walked away as softly as I could.

I went home to a heavy quiet. I knew I shouldn’t, but it was all too easy to compare my house to the Graces’. Theirs was a warm, deep place, each room seemingly designed to evoke a cascade of memories. A place to get lost in. Ours was blank, beige, tiny and cramped. Dim and dusty. Plastic chairs in the kitchen. Sagging couch. A temporary box to hide away in.

The ceiling creaked as I stood in the hallway. Mum was walking around in her bedroom. Even in a new house, the sound of her tread was so familiar to me. It was the only thing I had left of our old life, apart from the Giger and Matisse posters on my wall, with their curling edges I could never stick down no matter how much Blu-tack I used.

I went upstairs and knocked on her door. She didn’t answer. She never answered. I went in, anyway.

She was folding her laundry. ‘There’s a pile on your bed,’ she said. ‘Put it away or it’ll crease something chronic.’

‘Don’t you want to know who I’ve been with all night?’

She shrugged. Her hair crinkled as it met her shoulders. ‘I thought you said you were at a friend’s house. Why, are you trying to tell me you were out all night clubbing?’ Her grin was hopeful.

‘No.’

‘It’s fine if you were, you know.’

‘Seriously. When was the last time I went out clubbing?’

‘You might do it all the time, for all I know,’ she said. ‘You’ve got some new friends, have you? Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Things seem to be going better here. You’re different.’

‘Different?’

‘You just seem happier the last few weeks. I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You know how you get all worked up, sometimes. But you’ve been out of the house a lot recently. It’s good. It’s a good thing! We moved here to make a fresh start, didn’t we? What’s that face for?’

‘Moving towns doesn’t make everything magically okay.’

She sighed, a here-we-go-again kind of noise. ‘Why are you spoiling for a fight? I’m not in the mood.’

Why won’t you just tell me that you think it’s my fault?

I took in a deep breath, testing the waters. ‘Have you spoken to Dad since we moved?’

Her face turned hard. ‘You know I haven’t. He’s gone. So get it out of your head, okay?’

‘He can’t just disappear like that and never even talk to us again.’

She sank down onto the edge of her bed. ‘Well, he did.’ She was unusually quiet instead of angry, so I felt safe to push.

‘Maybe you could give me his number,’ I tried.

‘Love – why are we going backwards? I thought we’d moved on from this the last couple of months. I thought you were better.’

‘I just want to talk to him. I just want to know he’s still … he’s still around.’

She raised her arms and her voice. ‘Well, he’s not! He’s not hiding under the stairs, is he?! I just … look. If it’s going to be like this again, maybe we need to have a talk about that medication you were on before we moved. Maybe it was too soon to stop taking it.’

‘Oh yes, Mum, lovely. Dope me up and shut me up!’ I said, suddenly furious, at myself most of all. This was her favourite distraction tactic – get me focused on the hated pills she’d guilted me into taking after he’d gone.

‘That’s not the point of them at all,’ she protested. ‘Just … you’re not so up and down all the time on them, you’re more—’

‘More normal,’ I said bitterly. ‘Yeah. I know. Just like you always wanted.’

She didn’t even try to deny it. Her silence followed me all the way back to my room, until I slammed the door on it.

The thing was, six months ago, my father disappeared off the face of the earth.

No explanation, nothing. Police not interested. Another missing person report.

Mum closed off the whole thing for good just before we moved. She said he’d suddenly been in contact. He said he was up north somewhere and he
didn’t want to talk to us – he just wanted us to move on without him.

I needed to believe her. I really, desperately did, and just one phone call would do the trick, but she said she didn’t have any contact details for him. He’d called her from a private landline while I was at school, and the number hadn’t shown up on the phone. He’d only talked to her for as long as it took to reassure her that he was all right. He had a new girlfriend and a new life. He was happy. And he wasn’t coming back.

I hadn’t heard his voice or seen his face since the night he supposedly walked out. I say
supposedly
because he didn’t even pack a suitcase. His razor was still on the side of the sink, wiry chin hairs caught in its blades. Not one item of his was missing. Who decides to walk out of their house, walk out on their family, without even taking a change of underwear?

No one. That was who. One day, Dad was in our lives. The next, he wasn’t. And I’d been the last person to talk to him. To drive him away. Mum kept saying I’d heal on my own, but you couldn’t heal from that kind of guilt. It was my fault he was gone.

It was because of what I did.