Stella

by Helen Eve

  ‘I want to go,’ I said. ‘Right now.’

  ‘Don’t read into it,’ Luke said quietly. ‘You don’t know how serious it is.’

  I shook my head. ‘He doesn’t know I’m coming. If I go now, I can still make my flight.’

  I marched back down the hallway, where I kicked the front door, hoping it would leave a mark, and outside. I sank down on the step and burst into tears, talking incoherently.

  ‘He didn’t even tell me he was dating someone. He totally has his own life now. And he pretended he was moving here for me when he was probably seeing this – this woman – the whole time.’

  Luke sat next to me and offered me a piece of candy. ‘For the shock,’ he said earnestly.

  At least I could smile at this. ‘I thought he and my mom would get back together,’ I admitted.

  He nodded in sympathy. ‘I thought that about my parents too. I know it hurts, Caitlin, but now I see that they’re happier apart.’

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Doubtfire,’ Edward deadpanned as he sat down on my other side.

  I laughed as he put his arm around me and wiped away my tears with his sleeve. ‘Parents suck,’ he said. ‘I only see my dad about once a year, and even then he spends the whole time checking his BlackBerry. That’s exactly why we need a huge blowout to take your mind off it. Don’t go home!’

  I leaned against him as he kissed my cheek.

  ‘Did I tell you exactly how big this party was going to be?’ he asked.

  ‘You might have mentioned it,’ I said. ‘Once or twice.’

  Luke sighed as he checked his phone. ‘Still no message from Stella.’

  ‘Quelle surprise,’ Edward said drily. ‘Please forget her so we can go and have the fun we deserve.’

  As we took off in Edward’s car, he turned up the radio loud so we could all sing along. It was my dad’s idea that I be more sociable, after all. What could be more sociable than this?

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Stella

  There was a time when I liked to be close to my mother. Perhaps because I so rarely saw her, she fascinated me, and her lengthy dinner party preparations were an unrivalled opportunity to indulge this interest. For years I watched the dinners unfold from outside the glass dining room doors as she and Siena sat equidistant from each other and their chosen dates; as they controlled every man in the room with a gravitational pull. At neat increments across the mahogany table, they were geometric in studied indifference.

  Of all the dinner parties, I remember the final one most clearly. I wouldn’t start Temperley High for another few months, but Siena was expected home after her Elevation ceremony to share all the details of her inevitable victory and I was to be allowed to attend a special celebratory meal.

  Siena was Seraphina’s most treasured possession. For as long as I could remember she had kept her close, whispering secrets and decorating her with extravagant jewellery as if she were a trophy to be competed for and exhibited.

  ‘Why does everyone watch you and Siena?’ I asked that afternoon as Seraphina spread a rhapsody of beauty products across her dressing table. ‘Why not me?’

  At twelve I knew that she never sugar-coated her comments, but I still hoped to hear that I was just as beautiful, and that my time would come.

  Turning from her mirror, she surveyed me like a teacher assessing a new student. ‘You’re too old to look like this.’

  My hair hung hazily to my waist. I’d always worn it like that, untied and unadorned, not taking account of the elaborate updos that my mother and Siena always wore, weaved and teased and threaded with gold flowers and jewels and leaves.

  Seraphina started to brush my hair, winding it into a long skein and pulling loose strands away from my face. She looked so pleased that I swelled with pride. Siena was far and away her favourite, but now my face seemed to absorb her as if she were seeing it for the first time.

  ‘Can I wear make-up?’ I asked, eyeing the cosmetic feast before me.

  She batted my hand away as I reached for her lipstick, swivelling me towards her. I’d watched her enough times to know to pout when lipstick was applied, to suck in my cheeks for blusher, and look upwards for mascara. She worked serenely, never smiling but occasionally nodding as she adorned me with a diamond necklace or crystal-studded tiara that she thought suited me particularly well.

  ‘Why do you think everyone watches Siena?’ she asked as she handed me a tissue.

  I blotted my red lips carefully. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘She never looks at them.’

  She studied me from different angles as if I were an exhibit, and then took from her jewellery box the sapphire-embellished comb that I had long coveted but never touched.

  I stared at the comb and then at Seraphina. ‘That’s Siena’s!’

  She twisted my newly tethered hair around my head before securing it in the comb’s sharp teeth. I moved my head back and forth to see different angles, finally jutting out my chin and elongating my neck as I’d watched Siena do so many times.

  ‘Exactly so,’ Seraphina murmured, kissing my cheek.

  ‘How does she know they’re watching if she never looks at them?’ I persisted.

  She turned me back to the mirror and gestured at my face. ‘That’s how she knows.’

  Without my long hair, my face looked different. Not taking my eyes off myself, I reached for Seraphina’s glass of apple juice. It tasted bitter, but, as she never made a face when she drank, I maintained an expression of perfect composure as the liquid burnt my throat.

  Evening wear wasn’t available in my size, but I stood barefoot on a stool while Seraphina ripped and sliced and shaped one of Siena’s beautiful cocktail gowns to fit me as well as it had fitted her.

  ‘Don’t be so pleased to see Edward,’ she warned me later as I hopped impatiently on one patent shoe, anxious for him to arrive. Although his mother was resting in Geneva, he and his father would be joining us for the evening. ‘You must learn to create a little distance.’

  ‘Edward’s my friend,’ I objected. ‘Why can’t I be pleased to see him?’

  She put down her hairbrush and, for the second time in a day, gave me her full attention.

  ‘Because that won’t break his heart.’

  * * *

  ‘You and Siena argued that night,’ I remind Seraphina now. Instead of turning around, I watch a blackbird fly back and forth from its nest in the roof collecting straw in its beak.

  ‘Siena was territorial,’ she says after a momentary silence. ‘She was protective of what was hers; I notice that you are less so.’

  ‘The comb was hers,’ I say. ‘She was angry that I was wearing it. That’s why you fought.’

  Seraphina is guarded. ‘I don’t know why you think we’d argue about a comb.’

  As the balcony door slams behind us, I hear our own front door on that night.

  * * *

  The table was filled with Seraphina’s usual guests, many of them friends of my father. To my knowledge he’d never contacted any of us since his departure seven years earlier, hefty monthly transfers excepting, but Seraphina allowed the guests to feed her details of his whereabouts like nourishment. They competed to share information, bathing in her full attention as their reward. The candlelight made her fragile and brittle, as though she might tear under pressure like a paper doll. Her cheekbones stood out starkly and I put my hand to my own soft and rounded face for comparison.

  Edward was subdued by the suit he’d been forced into and the way in which, with one eye on Seraphina’s silent instructions, I sat opposite him rather than close enough for him to whisper to me and share his dessert. He ruffled his black hair and looked bemusedly at the orchids, candles and white silk streamers that formed our sterile celebration. As he fidgeted, balancing peas on his knife and making shapes with the butter, I reached for the nearest bottle of wine and filled up my glass. Not wanting to be outdone by a girl who drank Montrachet as carelessly as cordial, he poured his dad’s scotch into his
lemonade. Then he turned away to hide his watering eyes.

  I watched the clock as eight, eight-thirty passed, and finally I knew Siena would be on her way following the nine o’clock announcement.

  ‘She’s here!’ I said excitedly as the front door slammed.

  I was about to jump up when Seraphina placed a warning hand on my wrist, and I kept still. We don’t chase, she had told me. I copied her pose, reclining slightly and crossing my legs, tossing my head so that my earrings caught the light and sparked like flame.

  On cue, Paula wheeled in the cake. It glittered silver across four tiers of royal icing and pearly stars, and was topped with sugar figurines of Siena and Jack dressed in their Elevation outfits. It was an exact replica of Seraphina’s wedding cake.

  Across the table, Edward’s gaze on me was penetrating, and from that moment on I never had to check if he, or anyone else, was watching me.

  Siena was laughing as she crossed the hall towards us and waited for me to run and launch myself into her arms. I wanted nothing more than to mould and mesh myself into her, but Seraphina tightened her grip on my wrist, and I sat still.

  Her Elevation dress wasn’t new, which had seemed to me a wasted opportunity, but rather Seraphina’s own wedding dress, which she had altered for the occasion. For months I’d watched Siena stand on a stool as the dress took shape around her. Once I’d demonstrated that I could be trusted not to rub fingerprints on the fine silk, I had held handfuls of pins, passing them dutifully to Seraphina whenever she snapped her fingers, and I had sometimes helped to sew gold-plated roses to the tulle and porcelain leaves to the organza. Syrena, whose hands were always sticky, spent much of the time sleeping, dormouse-like, in gauzy nests of discarded chiffon.

  That night, watching Siena in her sash and crown, iridescent in the candlelight, I understood that Seraphina’s plans were coming to fruition as her eldest daughter emerged from the wings to be the most coveted prize in the room.

  Jack stood at Siena’s side as if she were responsible for every breath he took. But Siena was watching me.

  ‘What have you done to Stella?’ she asked Seraphina.

  Seraphina crossed the room and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Aren’t you going to share your news with our guests?’

  Siena looked from me to Jack, who watched her with his usual mix of adoration and agony. ‘You should leave now,’ she said.

  ‘Okay,’ he said faintly. ‘When will I see you? Tomorrow?’

  She didn’t relent. ‘We can’t be together anymore, Jack.’

  He was bewildered. ‘But Siena, I love you.’

  ‘I know you do,’ she said. ‘And that’s why I can’t speak to you again.’

  Jack was like Edward, spiky and animated, and he held Siena’s hand as he begged her to reconsider. He seemed unaware of the other guests murmuring excuses and melting away around them. At twelve I could piece together the heartbreak from my memories of Seraphina’s own erstwhile shrieks: Don’t leave me, she’d begged as my father shut the door and drove away from us. Now, freed from the receiving end, she watched Siena and Jack as impassively as if she were directing them in a play.

  ‘You have free choice,’ Siena said. ‘Without me, you have everything. Don’t you see?’

  Her expression crumpled as she looked at my sapphire comb. ‘How could you?’ she asked Seraphina.

  Mr Lawrence hauled Jack out of the house as Edward ran after them. I remained in front of the cake, watching the candles burn down.

  * * *

  The connection that Siena shared with my mother was notable for its invisibility. They never demonstrated closeness as Syrena and I did, with fingers and hair and speech so interwoven that we behaved as a single entity. They rarely touched, but their bond was nonetheless evident to me in the way they watched and circled each other as if observing a pull that allowed only so much distance between them.

  I’d never seen Siena angry with our mother, and nor had I seen our mother unnerved by Siena; so while I may not have understood this moment, I sensed its magnitude.

  ‘You released him,’ Seraphina said, wary of behaviour that she had neither orchestrated nor approved. ‘Why?’

  Siena’s voice was tight. ‘You don’t understand why?’

  ‘No,’ Seraphina said. ‘He doesn’t want to be free!’

  ‘I released him because of what I’ve become. Because I finally understand what you’ve made me.’

  ‘Why are you speaking to me like this?’ Seraphina sounded taken aback.

  ‘I’m speaking the way you taught me,’ Siena told her. ‘You like me to be cold.’

  ‘I don’t like you to be cold to me!’

  ‘But you trained me so well that I can’t discriminate,’ Siena said. ‘You trained me to break Jack’s heart, and you succeeded. You can’t blame me now if I break yours too.’

  ‘I wanted to protect you from the pain I suffered,’ Seraphina argued.

  ‘But you made me heartless.’ Siena held her head high, but her voice shook. ‘You made me a weapon to carry out your revenge. Can’t you see that I’d rather suffer pain than inflict it on others?’

  ‘I wanted to make you strong.’ Seraphina reached for Siena’s hand. ‘You can’t deny that I succeeded.’

  Siena stepped away from her. ‘I’m alone,’ she said as a tear shone on her eyelashes and fell. ‘I’m unable to feel love; unable to form attachments. Do you really think me a success?’

  ‘It’s better this way,’ Seraphina said. ‘You’re better off like me, even if you can’t see it yet.’

  There was a silence, and when Siena spoke again her voice was soft. ‘I still have time to change. I have my own mind, and I will never be like you.’

  ‘You’re already like me,’ said Seraphina. ‘And not only you. Stella is my daughter too.’

  Siena’s face flooded pale. ‘Stella is my sister,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t ruin her.’

  ‘It isn’t me that Stella copies,’ Seraphina told her. ‘It’s you.’

  * * *

  Although I’m adept at evading it, there are moments when missing Siena is unavoidable. Following dreams in which she carries her school cases through the door and spins me until I can’t stand, or in assemblies when I sit beneath a giant portrait that exists like a memorial to my shortcomings, or when I believe for an exquisite, crippling second that the reflection I see in a window is her, I drown as if I’m still in that riptide. Now I stumble, laying my forehead on the cold metal balcony as pain like venom, as giddying as a fairground ride, shoots through me. And I know that I’m losing Syrena as Siena lost me.

  When I straighten up, I take the cigarette Seraphina hands me. My forehead is sweating. ‘It was my fault,’ I whisper numbly. ‘Siena left that night because of me.’

  I grind out my cigarette with my foot. The balcony door slams behind me and people turn to stare as I walk at speed towards the exit, the hypnotic ring of my heels all I can hear until the sound of my name makes me turn on an instinct that I can’t ignore. Syrena stands so quickly that the champagne bucket crashes to the floor.

  ‘Stella, come back,’ she shouts. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  I see once more the newborn who cries for the father she’ll never meet; the grasping toddler who trails after me with a dummy and a toy rabbit; the seven-year-old whose very existence keeps me alive on nights when I want to reject every breath I take. Syrena is still no more than that little girl who slept in acres of tulle as her baby intelligence was distorted into the asphyxiating cage of her future. And yet she’s drinking champagne, and wearing red Dior, and her hair is decorated with bridal opulence.

  I walk back to her, wrenching the comb from her hair so that it falls to its rightful place at her waist. Then I walk away in a moment I’ve been unwittingly pre-empting for months. Every letter, every phone call, every plea that I’ve ignored from her this term has steeled me against this day, after which she can never be mine again.

  As the doors swing shut behind me, I wait f
or a moment as if she’ll follow. And then I remember that she’s adhering to a different rulebook now: we don’t chase.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Caitlin

  Edward’s party wasn’t exactly what I’d imagined. From the way everyone had raved about it, I’d expected some kind of upscale cocktail evening, but the reality was more like the frat mixer I’d attended when I shadowed a freshman at NYU.

  ‘Nice house,’ I said as we arrived at his mansion deep in the countryside.

  ‘Thanks,’ Edward said dismissively. ‘It’s falling down and no one can be bothered to pay the heating bills, but, on the upside, no one ever notices a bit of extra damage.’

  I looked more closely to see that the house was dilapidated. Paint peeled off the window frames and the stone front was discoloured and dirty. Slates were missing from the roof and the pillars at the front door were starting to crumble. For all its grandeur, it looked sad and neglected.

  Luke and I followed Edward onto a path overgrown with thistles that led around the back. The garden was also abandoned, the grass too long and the pond in the centre covered in algae and choked with reeds. No one seemed to mind, because, although it was still afternoon, all the kids looked wasted. I recognized almost the entire Sixth Form, transplanted from their usual habitat but still hanging out in exactly the same cliques.

  ‘Caitlin!’ Penny squealed as she practically knocked me over. ‘You’re here!’

  I hugged her, feeling underdressed as I took in her silver party dress and teetering stilettos that kept getting stuck in the dirt. Obviously she’d been responsible for that day’s outfit, as Lila was unsteady in her identical heels and whispered that she wanted to put her flats back on. The other Stars were similarly dressed and similarly drunk, and I joined them as they danced occasionally to music pumping out from a wooden gazebo hidden behind trees at the edge of a paddock.