‘Gotcha.’
Polly gives a squeak of delight as her girlfriend grabs her round the waist from behind and squishes her hello. She turns grinning.
‘Thought you were going straight to training?’
‘Nah.’ Melanie takes the mints from Polly’s hand and helps herself to one, offering me up the packet. I shake my head.
‘Jamie said I could get off a bit early,’ Melanie says through a mouthful of mint, ‘so I thought I’d see if you wanted to come along and do penalty timing for scrimmage?’
Polly screws up her face, looking down at her filthy jodhpurs.
‘Like this?’
Melanie laughs. ‘It’s derby, Poll.’
When I’m eighteen, I’m going to do roller derby. Anna and I went to watch Melanie in a bout once and it was the most amazing thing. Everyone was so nice and friendly and they’ve got cool clothes and it’s like being in the best gang ever, as far as I can see. Plus roller skates – and tattoos and blue hair and –
‘I need to check the stables. There isn’t time.’
Polly looks like she’d like to go. It occurs to me then that I could offer.
‘I’ll do it, if you like?’
Polly and Melanie both beam at me, and I feel a sense of getting it right wash over me like a lovely wave. It’s hard to explain. Learning this stuff – what makes people happy – it’s like dealing with Mum. I’ve already worked out that if I act all charming and lovely with her, and don’t argue back, I can pretty much do what I like. Sometimes I think people are weird. Most of the time I think people are weird. Or maybe they just know this stuff instinctively. I feel like I’m putting the world together in pieces.
‘Grace, you’re a star.’ Polly jumps down from the gate. ‘Just make sure everyone’s got hay and water, and I’ll do Mabel for you tomorrow night.’
‘Oh yeah,’ says Melanie. ‘Hot date?’
I can feel myself going scarlet-cheeked and I look down at Mabel’s neck, flipping over a stray piece of her mane from one side to the other.
‘Big party,’ Polly says.
‘Ah,’ says Melanie, as if those two words explain everything.
Polly gives Mabel a last rub on the forehead and looks up at me for a moment. ‘Just don’t stress about it, OK? You’re cool, Grace.’
‘God,’ says Melanie, rolling her eyes. ‘I wouldn’t be fifteen again if you paid me.’
I’ve checked the horses and made sure all the stable doors are bolted shut. OK, I’ve triple checked, because I was a bit stressed about someone getting out in the middle of the night and Polly getting into trouble for leaving me to lock up. And Mabel is in her stable on a bed of snowy-white wood shavings, which smell so delicious that I’d quite like to lie there for the night and not go home. Her stable and all her stuff are always immaculate. Mum always comments that if I could keep my bedroom like that, blah blah blah, but – I shudder for a second, remembering that back home she is probably still there.
Eve.
Making the kitchen feel all weird and unsettling, and Mum doing that fake-sounding laugh and acting like someone else.
It’s supposed to be my safe place, but I don’t want to go home.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Here you are, you two.’
Anna’s mum is carrying a plate of dips and tortilla chips, but they’re sort of floating in mid-air because there’s nowhere to put them. She raises her eyebrows at the state of Anna’s room.
‘Hang on.’ Anna sweeps a space clear on her dressing table, and a tsunami of eyeliner pencils and hairspray cans and Pringle tubes swooshes over the side, landing on the carpet.
‘Anna, this place is atrocious. You’re not going to Charlotte’s party until it’s sorted.’ She gives me a smile. ‘I bet your room doesn’t look like this, does it, Grace?’
‘You’re joking, Mother?’ Anna snorts with laughter. ‘Grace’s room is a health hazard. There was something growing in a cup under her bed.’
At home this morning, I’d decided that the best thing to do was to stay out of the way. Mum was grumpy and hoovering the stairs when I left the house earlier, and Leah was on the phone as usual. So I texted Anna and we agreed that the party (The Party. Oh God, it’s here . . .) was going to need an intensive all-day-getting-ready session.
So we’re here now, fixing nails and trying to work out how to clip blue hair-extension things on to the back of Anna’s head, and her mum’s going to take us up to Charlotte’s for half seven, and – I close my eyes at this bit because it makes me feel sick – we’re supposed to stay over. I don’t want to stay over. In fact, if I think about it, I can feel the knot in my stomach getting bigger and lumpier and I know I’m not going to be able to sleep all night in Charlotte’s house.
‘Is anyone else sleeping over besides us?’
I try to make my voice sound casual. Anna and Charlotte’s mothers have concocted this wonderful plan between them and I’m too polite to say no, even though it’s making me feel sick. I like routine and knowing what’s happening and everything being the way I organize it and most definitely not surprises like this.
Anna half turns from the mirror, her mouth half open, one finger still pulling her eyebrow where she’s trying to tweeze away completely invisible stray hairs.
‘No, just us.’ She puts down the tweezers for a second. ‘I’ve no idea what Mum was thinking when she agreed with Charlotte’s mum that it’d be easier for us to stay over.’
‘Probably that she wouldn’t have to get up at one in the morning to come and pick us up?’ I know it makes sense, but butterflies in my stomach are now stomping around in gigantic work boots.
‘Yeah, and she can have a glass of wine and some quality time with Dad.’ Anna rolls her eyes before turning back to look at her reflection.
‘Does she realize we don’t actually get on with Charlotte?’
‘She’s a parent.’ Anna drops the tweezers on to the carpet before turning round to show me her new and improved (can’t actually see any difference, but we won’t mention that) eyebrows. ‘She doesn’t think.’
I take a deep breath. We’re sharing a room – it’ll be fine – and Mum’s already texted to say that if I get stressed out she’ll come and get me. She followed that text with another, which said: except I’m going out to the cinema with Eve, so if you could try and have fun, darling, that’d be lovely. So we all know where we stand, really.
‘So Polly’s looking after Mabel?’
Anna’s scrolling through her phone, which is basically crammed with a million updates about tonight.
I nod. I’m sitting cross-legged on Anna’s bed in pyjamas because I don’t want to put my party stuff on yet. I know if I do I’ll spill something on it because I’m officially the clumsiest person on the planet – and even more so when I’m stressed out. And I am officially stressed out. I’ve already gnawed off all the nail glue that I got stuck all over my fingers when I was fixing on the fake black nails earlier.
‘D’you think people who wear fake nails all the time just stop noticing them after a while?’
Anna looks at my fingers, and I spread them out for examination. She doesn’t bite her nails, so she’s painted her own ones purple.
‘They look good.’
‘Yeah, but I couldn’t pull my trousers up properly when I went to the loo earlier.’
‘Maybe posh people have professional trouser-puller-uppers?’ Anna giggles at this and reaches across, plonking the dips and crisps on the bed between us.
‘I dunno.’ I look down at my nails and they look ugly all of a sudden, like I’m trying too hard. And they’re making my hands feel claustrophobic.
Breathe, breathe.
Tonight is going to be good.
I remember Polly’s words. ‘You’re cool, Grace.’
All I have to do is remember to be cool.
I don’t even have time to let the gigantic wave of utter terror hit me when we arrive at Charlotte’s farmhouse, because the music is alread
y banging out of the barn so loudly that my brain stops working properly and I’m lost.
It’s dark outside and the doors are covered with twinkling fairy lights and there’s a fire pit on the terrace that wraps around the front of the house, which has warm light glowing from all the windows. And I remember that behind one of those windows is the room where me and Anna have to sleep tonight when I can’t escape to my own bed and my own things and the safety of rolling myself up like a burrito in a blanket and –
‘Anna, Grace.’ Charlotte’s mum, Lisa, is our GP. She smiles at me with that look that I get from doctors and teachers and people like that, the one that suggests she’s always half expecting me to burst into tears or set her dog on fire or something. She waves her arm, motioning us into the house, kissing Anna’s mum hello at the same time.
‘Girls, if you just head upstairs, your room is the third on the right. Put your bags down and fix your eyeliner or whatever it is you lot do –’ she shares a smile with Anna’s mum – ‘and then you can go and get the party started.’ She sings the last bit, which is so completely cringe-makingly awful that Anna and I gallop up the stairs in horror before slamming the door shut and bursting out laughing. Charlotte might have the poshest house and the most expensive sixteenth birthday party on the planet, but her parents are still mortifying. That’s sort of comforting, really.
When we were really small, Charlotte and I had a shared birthday party once, because our birthdays are so close together. Mum and Dad and Charlotte’s parents hired a hall and a magician. We were supposed to sit alongside him and help him with his act. Charlotte performed beautifully, and I spent the party under the table playing with a castanet that I sneaked out of his music box.
I can’t think of anything worse than a gigantic birthday party, apart from a gigantic surprise birthday party. I like knowing exactly what my birthday is going to have in it, and that’s me, Leah, Mum, Dad, pizza, unlimited Coke refills and ice-cream sundaes afterwards. I’ve done it every birthday since I was four.
Anyway, the room is amazing. It’s got two single beds with fat stripy duvets and an en-suite bathroom and there’s a bottle of mineral water on each bedside table, and magazines. It’s like a hotel. Anna and I drop our bags on the floor and we head downstairs.
Charlotte’s dad is stacking a load of glasses on a tray in the kitchen. He looks up at us over the top of his glasses, which are slipping down on his sweaty nose, and smiles.
‘All right, girls?’ He puts the tray down and pushes up his glasses with the back of his arm. ‘I think a few of them have arrived while you were upstairs. I’ll be out to the barn in a minute if you want to head over. Help yourselves to drinks and stuff.’
The barn looks like the director from every teen movie you’ve ever seen has been left in charge of decoration. No wonder Charlotte’s such a princess. She lives the life of a Disney Channel character. I’m half expecting everyone to burst into song in a moment just to finish the picture off. Anna looks at me sideways.
‘Were you expecting this?’
I shake my head in silent amazement.
‘OK, well, we can officially say that Charlotte has won at parties before it’s even started.’
There are fairy lights strung from the huge wooden beams, and casually stacked bales of straw divide the whole place up into cosy little mini-rooms where I can see people from school are already settling into their usual cliques. I feel my stomach tighten with anxiety and I’m tapping my fingers against the side of my thighs because it calms my nerves a bit. The music’s so loud I can’t hear myself think properly.
If I let this spiral, I could be out of here in two seconds flat, calling Mum out of the cinema and telling her I want to be back home where everything is safe. I put my hand into my pocket, feeling the comfortable rectangle of phone, when I remember.
She’s at the cinema with Eve, so she wouldn’t even get my text. And when we stopped by to collect my purse, which I’d forgotten, Mum was distracted and answered the door with her hair half dry and a brush in her hand. And Leah, who was supposed to be going for a sleepover with Malia, had been weirdly dressed up with a ton of make-up on and when I asked her why she’d been slidey-eyed and didn’t answer.
‘Anna, Grace, there you are.’
Charlotte, holding two glasses with something pink in them, smiles at us as if we’re her long-lost relatives. I look back at her, realizing that I’m frowning when Anna gives me a slight shove with her elbow.
‘What?’ I look at her sideways.
Anna widens her eyes and shakes her head almost invisibly.
‘So glad you could make it,’ continues Charlotte, sounding weirdly like she’s been taking etiquette lessons, and also like she’s about forty-five. ‘Dad made some fruit punch. Don’t tell, but I’ve sneaked in a little something.’ She gives a little smile and taps the side of her nose. ‘Now, if you need anything at all, just shout, and have a wonderful time.’
Charlotte’s dad appears as we’re standing by the side of the barn, taking our first mouthfuls of the punch. It tastes sort of strawberry-ish, but when it’s going down it gives a whoosh of something else in my throat and it makes me cough.
‘Now I know what you teenagers are like,’ Charlotte’s dad says, smiling, ‘so I’ve got you a little something.’ He motions to the big old trestle table behind us, which is laid out with neatly stacked bottles of beer and cider. ‘Nothing too strong, not enough for anyone to get into any mischief –’
‘Dad,’ says Charlotte, actually blushing, which makes her look slightly human for once. ‘Honestly, we’ll be fine.’
And she shoos him out, pulling the barn door behind her. Ed and someone I recognize from the other year group are fiddling with the music, and it drops down to silence for a moment before they’ve swapped whatever was playing for something on their phone. Charlotte fluffs up her hair and straightens her dress. It’s super tight, and appears to be made of the same fabric as Mabel’s leg bandages, but I suspect my fashion knowledge might be slightly lacking. She marches across the room to chat to her gang of girlfriends, all of whom are hanging on her every word, nodding their heads and sipping their glasses of punch through straws.
It’s all very civilized. In fact, if I’m honest, it’s not quite what I expected. Nobody’s dancing, the atmosphere is a bit weird – like primary-school Christmas parties, where the hired DJ would come in and play music and nobody would dance until the games started.
‘We need Musical Statues or something.’
‘We need something to look at, if you ask me,’ Anna shouts back in my ear. ‘Where’s Gabe?’
‘Maybe he’s not coming?’
Anna pouts her lower lip and fiddles with the straw in her empty glass. ‘D’you want some more?’
I feel a bit warm and whooshy inside, the way that a glass of red wine with dinner makes me feel. I don’t drink it because it tastes nice (it’s like flowery vinegar) but it feels polite to take it.
‘OK.’
Anna, with that weird friend-of-the-family confidence thing, marches up to the table where the punch bowl is sitting, and scoops up two glasses full to the brim. She brings them back over. As she’s walking, I notice she’s started something, and I see Emma and Daisy sidling over and helping themselves to some more too – and we clink the edges of our glasses together.
‘Here’s to whatever Charlotte put in this.’ Anna looks at me, and downs her drink in one.
And the next half an hour goes by in a weird whirl, which I think must be the punch because suddenly everything seems a bit blurry and I’ve been given a bottle of cider by Anna and we’re laughing about nothing and Charlotte’s parents have come in for what they promise is their last ‘we’re just checking everyone’s OK’ check. And everyone’s still huddled in little groups – we’ve joined Emily and Daisy and the others. Megan’s telling us about her big cousin taking her to Reading Festival in the summer holidays – again. We’re all listening politely and nodding in the right pla
ces – well, Anna is, I’m half watching the door and wondering why Gabe and his friends aren’t here, and I can see Charlotte is too, when there’s a crash and the door bursts open.
Charlotte’s Great Dane lollops into the room and launches himself at one of the tables at our side of the barn, which is covered with a cotton tablecloth. Somehow he manages to shove it out of the way and with his gigantic paws spread, he shoves his face into the neatly arranged party food, which lies underneath.
‘HAMISH!’
Charlotte’s mum is so loud she blasts over the music, which is pretty impressive.
‘Mum!’ Charlotte’s hands are on her hips and her sweet hostess-of-the-year expression has been replaced with utter fury. ‘I TOLD you not to let him in here.’
‘I didn’t!’ Charlotte’s mum pants with the effort of hauling Hamish off the table. Hamish, undeterred, turns his head sideways and takes a massive bite of birthday cake.
‘You absolute pig,’ shouts Charlotte at Hamish, who has a birthday candle sticking out of his mouth like a cigarette. ‘Out!’
Hamish, looking unimpressed, licking his lips, is dragged away from the table and towards the door and certain disgrace.
‘Gabe!’ Charlotte’s eyes light up as – just in time to save the day – he saunters in, late, accompanied by his best friends Archie and Jacob, and followed by –
‘Holly?’
The music is banging and the lights are dim and Charlotte’s mum is too busy extracting a disappointed Great Dane out of the room to notice that Gabe’s brought a plus one. And a plus one who was categorically Not Invited.
Charlotte’s face manages to register delight and fury in the space of about five seconds. She whirls round on her heel and gathers four glasses, tipping the last of the punch into them before turning round again, placing a stripy paper straw in three of them.
‘Nice T-shirt,’ says Holly to me as she passes, pulling a face. I look down at my feet.
‘Sorry, I’m out of straws,’ says Charlotte icily. ‘We had just the right amount, you see.’
The State of Grace Page 5
