The State of Grace

by Rachael Lucas

  ‘But you said “see you later” to this Eve person.’ Leah slides me a look.

  ‘Ooh look, pause it – rewind it! There’s Dad.’ I wave my arm at the television where, for a brief moment, he pops into view, and I feel a weird, gulping sense of missing him that makes my cheeks ache.

  Mum sighs, and hits the rewind button. We all sit forward in our chairs for a moment, peering at the screen, not speaking.

  ‘Well, there we are,’ says Mum, taking a big mouthful of her wine. ‘That’s the closest you two will get to a bedtime story from your father this evening.’ Her face twists a bit into an expression I don’t recognize, and we all sit back with our pasta and watch the rest of the programme without talking. There’s a weird feeling in the air that makes me feel unsettled. When it’s finished, I get up and take the bowls through to the kitchen, Withnail following me for his share of leftover pasta.

  I can hear Mum and Leah laughing at some comedy thing on the television now, but I’ve had enough of today. I climb the stairs and don’t even bother getting into my pyjamas, because I’ve only got to get my uniform on again in the morning and I’ll brush my teeth later, and I stuff my headphones into my ears and turn the world off and Taylor Swift on.

  I don’t mean cool, hanging-out-with-her-squad-in-NYC, everyone-loves-her Taylor Swift. I mean Taylor-Swift-from-when-I-was-little-and-I-wanted-her-ringlets. That’s what I want to listen to. I pull the covers over my head and hit repeat on my phone so it plays over and over and over again like an aural comfort blanket until I’ve forgotten everything else, and I’m living somewhere in Tennessee and my mom is making pancakes with maple syrup as an after-school surprise.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘We need face masks.’

  We’re in Costa having a hot chocolate and it’s Friday after school and it’s half-term at last. And that also means it’s THE PARTY at last and not that we’re excited or anything but Anna’s written a list of Things We Have To Do and printed it off, because Anna is the queen of stationery and notebooks and paper in general.

  I do sometimes wonder whether I sneezed one day and she caught Asperger’s from me, or at least the bits everyone reads about, because unlike her I’ve never written a list in my life, and I’m hopeless at maths, and I don’t have a special superpower like drawing entire cityscapes from memory.

  ‘Look.’ Anna taps the list with an impatient finger. ‘Face masks. Hair-conditioning treatments. Manicure stuff.’

  ‘Y’know Gabe?’ I try to act casual. I haven’t told Anna I bumped into him. I forgot, I think, because of all the school stuff.

  ‘I am familiar with the concept of him, yes,’ says Anna, pulling out a pen and adding EYELINER to the bottom of her list.

  ‘I bumped into him the other day when I was out with Mabel.’

  There’s a silence as Anna puts her pen back in the little pencil case she has in her bag, zips it up and then looks at me. She cocks her head to one side, curls an orange lock of hair round her finger and says, ‘Spill.’

  ‘He crashed his bike. I was awkward. He was covered in mud. There’s not that much to tell.’

  ‘What did he say? Did he like Mabel? Was he nice? Did you chat?’

  ‘He asked if I’d had sarcasm flakes for breakfast.’

  ‘Ooooh.’ Anna scrunches up her mouth to one side, the way she does when she’s thinking. ‘But how did he say it?’

  I think about Gabe, dripping with mud, and me, standing there with a recalcitrant Mabel on the end of her reins. ‘Just like a question?’ I say, but I’m not really sure. He might have been joking. God, it’s hard having my brain sometimes.

  ‘Interesting . . .’ says Anna. ‘He might be at Charlotte’s party.’

  She waggles her eyebrows suggestively at me, and taps her front teeth with the lid of her pen.

  We finish up our drinks and head out on to Chapel Street.

  I’m going a bit giddy from being in Boots, where the lights are super shiny and there’s so much stuff everywhere. There are rows and rows of lipsticks and signs that are screaming and the clatter of people putting their baskets on the counter and the smells of perfume and nail varnish being sneakily tried out by girls from Leah’s year. And old people bumbling around with baskets over their arms getting in the way and it’s all just so LOUD.

  My brain is end-of-term tired. We couldn’t stop giggling in English this morning and the whole class almost ended up with an after-school detention. I reckon the only reason she didn’t do it was Mrs Markham wanted the holidays to come almost as much as we did. She flew out of the classroom even faster than us when the final bell went.

  I’ve got a gift token left over from my birthday and Mum’s given us some money-off vouchers she had in her purse. We chuck everything in the basket and spin around the shop, laughing at nothing and everything until we clatter down the hair-dye section and bump straight into Holly Bloody Carmichael, who is leaning casually against the posh make-up counter, twirling a lock of her streaky blonde hair and talking to –

  ‘Eek,’ says Anna unnecessarily.

  I try to hit reverse gear, but I end up stepping backwards on to her foot so she wobbles sideways. With a crash a cardboard display of mascara falls off the shelf. Holly looks across at us, her lip curling slightly. Gabe Kowalski, standing in the middle of the shop with a basket full of baby food, raises an eyebrow as if to suggest that we are completely inept specimens of humanity who probably shouldn’t be allowed out without our parents supervising us.

  ‘Er. Hi.’ I do a flapping sort of wave thing, like an ailing sea lion.

  ‘And bye.’ Anna pulls me by the arm back out of sight and down towards the tills.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  She’s owl-eyed.

  ‘D’you think they’re –’ She stops mid sentence as the woman behind the counter takes the basket and bleeps everything through the till.

  We don’t speak again until we’re outside the shop and heading for Primark where I’ve seen black fake nails that’ll cover my half-chewed stumpy end-of-finger disasters.

  ‘Together?’ I finish her sentence. ‘No, I reckon they were just talking.’

  ‘God, I hope so. He seems nice. It would be a shame if he ended up with Holly.’

  I feel a lurch of dread about tomorrow night. It’s weird how you can be so excited about something and at the same time utterly sick to the stomach. ‘You don’t think Charlotte’s invited Holly and her lot, do you?’

  Anna shakes her head vehemently. ‘No chance. Her mum had final say over the invites and she doesn’t approve of them.’

  I’ve found the fake nails and we’re turning to pay for them when I spot the PERFECT thing to wear tomorrow. I start making my way through the sea of clothes rails. It’s getting to the point where I’m a bit seasick from shop-ness, but I just want to get to it and pay and then we can leave. I pull the T-shirt off the rail and turn to Anna, holding it up against myself, pulling a silly face.

  ‘TARDIS!’ Anna squeals.

  ‘I know.’ I beam at her because she gets it, instantly. Never mind My Little Pony, this is it.

  ‘Seriously? A Doctor Who T-shirt? How old are you?’

  I spin round to locate the voice.

  Holly, who appears to have taken on a new role as our stalker, is standing behind me with her arms folded across her chest. I spot Emma and Lucy, her foot soldiers, rifling through the sale rail, which is full of lurid skinny-fit Lycra stuff.

  I hold on to the T-shirt awkwardly. The coat hanger is sticking into my collarbone because I’ve still got it pressed up against my chest. I can feel myself going beetroot red all over, but I just stand there while Holly looks at us, Anna with her arms full of shopping bags, and me with a TARDIS draped across me like some kind of Primark toga. Eventually after about fifteen minutes or five seconds, I can’t quite tell, she stalks off, cracking chewing gum as she leaves.

  ‘Well, I think it’s nice,’ says Anna, giving a little nod of defiance. ‘And sod her. She’s just jea
lous because we’re invited and she’s not.’

  I leave Anna at the end of Chapel Street and head down the road towards home. It’s weirdly warm, because the Indian summer they promised has arrived. On days like this I love living here. In the middle of summer when it’s heaving with holiday tourists and you can’t walk down the road without someone’s infant waving a sticky paw covered in candyfloss at you, not so much. But when autumn comes, we reclaim the town as ours. It might be tattered around the edges, and a bit dodgy in parts, but I like it here. It’s familiar. And that works for me. I turn the corner on to our road, and the red of an unfamiliar car flashes through the bushes that grow scruffily over the wall of our drive.

  We don’t know anyone with a red car, and – I can feel my steps slowing almost involuntarily – I can’t face people tonight. Not ones I don’t know, anyway. I’ve done town and school, and that’s enough.

  I creep up the side of the driveway, squeezing past the fire-engine-red car, noticing as I do that it’s tidy inside – ours is covered in sweet wrappers and left-over Costa cups, newspapers and the junk mail Mum opens while she’s sitting at traffic lights. This car has nothing in it but a glossy, unopened packet of Marlboro cigarettes on the passenger seat, and it’s dust free and spotless.

  ‘Grace.’

  I see Leah’s distorted face through the glass as she wrenches the front door open from inside. She’s already changed into a pair of tartan pyjama bottoms and a batman T-shirt, her hair clipped out of her face, a half-eaten apple in her hand. She looks completely unruffled by the fact that there’s someone here and it makes me irrationally cross that she just copes with stuff.

  I glare at her and walk past without saying anything, shifting the weight of my bag on my shoulder as I head straight up the stairs. I’m hungry and I want a coffee and there’s conversation coming from the kitchen, and laughing. I had this part of the day all planned and now it’s screwed up and I’m not impressed at all.

  ‘Grace, darling,’ I can hear Mum calling up the stairs, and there’s a tone to her voice I don’t quite recognize, ‘is that you?’

  I don’t answer, because obviously it is, given that Leah has skipped back into the kitchen with her perfect-daughter halo gleaming, and who else would be making their way upstairs.

  ‘Grace?’ Mum calls again, the same weird edge to her voice.

  I dump my bag on the bed.

  My bedroom is not tidy. OK, that’s a bit of an understatement. My bedroom is a festering, chaotic, possible health hazard. I can’t actually see the carpet because my stuff is all over it, and the bed hasn’t been made because – well, I don’t have time to make the bed in the morning, and I’ve banned Mum from her ‘helpful’ tidying expeditions where she starts throwing out stuff I might need and touching everything.

  I fish out my jodhpurs from the end of my bed where they’re tangled in the covers and pull them on under my school skirt, over my tights. I can’t be bothered getting changed properly, so I pull a hoody over the top of my school shirt and squiggle out of my skirt. It lies on the floor like a deflated grey jellyfish.

  My boots are in the kitchen. I’m going to have to face whoever-it-is.

  ‘There she is,’ says Mum, and she’s got her ‘please don’t do anything appalling’ face on, the one where she looks at me with her nostrils slightly flaring and her eyes popped open just a tiny bit too much, and tries to catch my eye.

  I do. not. want. to. look. at. her.

  And I especially don’t want to look at The Other Person.

  So I don’t.

  I slide through the gap between her chair back and the wall and capture my boots from the back door.

  ‘Grace,’ Mum repeats as I pull on my boots, ‘this is Eve. My friend from university I was talking about the other day?’

  ‘Oh.’

  Mum does a silly little laugh, one I haven’t ever heard her do before, and reaches across the table. She tips some wine into the two glasses that are sitting there. She leans forward and gives one to Eve-from-university who is sitting, with skinny legs in skinny jeans, and a stripy blue-and-white top and expensive-looking hair. Eve-from-university turns to look at me.

  ‘Hi, Grace. Wow, you look like your mum, don’t you?’

  I roll my eyes.

  Mum gives me The Look. ‘Grace is just off out to the stables, aren’t you?’ She leans forward, putting her chin in her hand, looking at Eve, who is rifling around in her posh-looking handbag.

  ‘Have a good time, darling. Eve’s staying over tonight, as she’s working in the area for a while, so we’ll try not to keep you up too late misbehaving.’

  And they laugh, loudly, and clink their glasses together, and Eve stands up. She walks across the tiles of the kitchen, as if she has every right to be there, and she opens the top half of the kitchen door, and she leans her body out slightly. Then, looking at Mum, she flips open a cigarette box and pulls one out. She half raises an eyebrow at Mum who shakes her head almost imperceptibly, eyes wide again. And then Eve lights up, sucking the smoke down deep into her lungs, before turning to blow it back out into the garden.

  I leave the room feeling weirdly unsettled, just as Leah is walking back in from the sitting room. Because I feel weird, I sort of shoulder barge her in the doorway so she bangs off, sideways, and yelps angrily. But I don’t turn round. I just grab my coat from the post at the end of the stairs, and leave.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘Who pissed in your cornflakes?’

  I’ve crashed down the water buckets from Mabel’s stable beside the taps, just as Polly appears out of nowhere.

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Why’re you banging stuff around like you’re in a major strop, then?’

  I look up at Polly. She’s got a hay net over one shoulder and the spikes of her bleached blonde hair have flopped a bit because of the drizzly rain, but she still manages to look good somehow. She’s got her ears pierced about ten times and a silver hoop through her eyebrow, which is amazing and something I’d love to do except for a) unimaginable pain and b) I would be grounded for all eternity.

  I shrug. And I don’t know why, because usually I’d just say nothing, but my mouth forms the words and they fall out.

  ‘My family is being weird.’

  Polly gives a sort of upward nod of acknowledgement. ‘Yeah, they do that.’

  And I pull an awkward face, which I hope says sorry, because I remember that Polly doesn’t speak to her parents any more. She lives with her girlfriend, Melanie, in a flat above the Spar, because when she told her parents she was gay they threw her out, like something from the 1980s when everyone was homophobic and ignorant.

  Anyway, it’s probably not fair to moan about Mum being weird when Polly doesn’t see her mum at all, so I shut up and change the subject.

  ‘Are you working tomorrow?’

  Polly laughs as Bruce, the huge black thoroughbred who lives in the stable by the taps, reaches over her head and starts hoovering up strands of hay from the net. ‘Oi, fatso, that’s not for you.’

  Bruce, who was rescued from the knackers yard and is an ex-racehorse, is the most athletic thing you’ve ever seen. He’s huge, and spare, and his whole frame ripples with muscles. He moves his big head out of the way and heaves a dramatic sigh.

  ‘Yeah, I’m working all weekend.’ Polly gives me a look. ‘You about?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Ohhh. It’s The Big Party, isn’t it?’

  I’m not quite sure how she manages to give it capital letters, or how Polly even remembers me telling her about it the other week when we were raking up leaves, but –

  ‘Yes.’

  I always get weirdly formal when I have to ask someone a favour. It’s like I lose the power of speech.

  ‘I was wondering if you could possibly look after Mabel for me?’

  ‘No chance.’ Polly gives a flat shake of her head, her mouth a straight line.

  I feel a swoop of sick panic. Mum said she’s going out w
ith Eve, so there’s no way she’ll be up for getting covered in horsehair and hay. I need someone to check Mabel at teatime and Anna’s supposed to be getting ready at mine and there’s no way I can be in two places at once and –

  ‘Course I will.’ Polly grins. ‘I was teasing, silly.’

  I shake my head and put on a smile. I like Polly, because she’s cool and interesting and nice. And she knows everything there is to know about horses. Although sometimes she makes me feel a bit on edge, because I never quite know if she’s joking or not. But I’m getting better at guessing.

  ‘She’s looking good,’ Polly calls, climbing on to the gate by the outdoor school. It’s a bit later and I’m circling Mabel round, cantering her so slowly that it’s like sitting on a rocking horse.

  ‘Give a little bit with that outside rein, and push on with the inside leg a bit, get her reaching underneath a bit more.’

  I do what Polly says and suddenly it’s as if we’ve been powered up and we’re soaring, seahorses on waves, and it’s amazing. I circle her again and then let Mabel fly round the long side of the school, letting her reach out, her mane floating in the air, before gathering her to a halt in front of the gate. All the stress I felt earlier has disappeared. If I could live here at the stables, I’d be quite happy.

  Polly reaches out and smoothes Mabel’s forelock. I can see Melanie making her way down the track. She’s still wearing her officey work clothes and skirting the puddles in sensible-looking shoes, which look weird when I’m used to seeing her in her roller-derby team T-shirts, and shorts with stripy tights. She puts a finger to her lips, and so I don’t say a word as Polly reaches into her pocket, finding a mint for Mabel to eat as a reward for working hard. Mabel gives a chuntering little noise of happiness as she crunches, shaking her head up and down so that the clinking noise of her bridle disguises Melanie’s footsteps.