The State of Grace

by Rachael Lucas

  ‘What d’you think, Grace?’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ I say politely, because frankly this afternoon can’t get much odder. It’s like an out-of-control dodgem. I keep veering from one feeling to the next. Maybe this is what dates are like. I don’t have anything to compare it with, so I don’t know.

  ‘Go on, then,’ says Gabe. ‘We’ll catch you up.’

  ‘Cool,’ says Archie, and he wrinkles his nose when he smiles, and I think he’s pleased we’re coming.

  And our hands sort of find each other again, and we walk down towards the pier, and along the marine lake path. Old people sit on benches watching the ducks and swans floating by, and families are laughing their heads off as they try to control the little wooden rowing boats.

  We walk up the path and into the skate park and I have to force myself to keep walking because there’s a whole clump of people – I can’t pick them out to start with, because my contact lenses don’t work as well as my glasses do, and I’m hopeless at recognizing people. Because of this I’ve developed a fairly standard sort of polite (I think, but remember I am the Queen of Resting Bitch Face) half smile, which I keep in attendance while I work out who I’m smiling at.

  I have this weird thing, where people outside their normal spaces confuse me. When I see people from school that I don’t spend time with, it takes me a moment to work out who they are. When they’re in uniforms and in the corridors and they’re hanging around with the same people they always do, I can recognize them almost straight away. Put them in everyday clothes, mix them up so the populars are hanging around with the geeky science lot, and the skater boys are talking to the netball team people, and I am confused. Beyond confused.

  ‘Gabe, hi!’

  It’s Holly Carmichael.

  Of course it is. And on the bench, poking around inside a huge shopping bag from H&M, there’s Riley and Lauren. And whatever her name is, the other one with the dyed black hair that looms in the background chewing gum and looking threatening, is looming in the background looking threatening. Apparently it’s her full-time job, even in the holidays.

  Holly bunches her hair over to one side, letting it fall loosely over one shoulder.

  Gabe waves a greeting at her, then gives my hand a squeeze and turns to me, lowering his head so his mouth is near my ear again as he says, ‘We’ll just watch Arch doing his thing then head off, shall we?’

  As I nod a reply, which he feels rather than hears, I see Holly looking directly at me, her chin raised slightly as if she’s sizing me up. And I see her look down at Gabe’s hand in mine.

  ‘So what are you two up to?’ she says as Gabe turns away from my ear so we are facing them, side by side, holding hands, like cut-out dolls. ‘Not wearing your Doctor Who outfit today?’

  I wish I could send her into deep space. ‘No.’

  ‘Did you know Grace was a total geek?’ Holly says innocently, smiling at Gabe as if she’s being perfectly lovely. She somehow manages to radiate charm in his direction while simultaneously beaming hatred in mine. It’s an interesting talent. I realize I’m probably glaring at her, because my face isn’t very good at disguising what I’m thinking.

  ‘Yes,’ says Gabe, and he sort of swings my hand. ‘We’ve been comparing notes on our favourite episodes.’

  ‘Really?’ says Holly, and both her eyebrows shoot up for a moment before settling back down like two fat slugs. ‘I had no idea Doctor Who was so fascinating.’ And I think that she’s unsettled all of a sudden, and that’s not a thing I’ve seen before. I watch her rearranging her face.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Gabe, and he smiles at me as if we’re sharing a secret.

  ‘Right.’ Holly flicks her hair over her shoulder and plucks at the strap of her vest top that’s showing underneath the checked shirt she’s wearing, so we can all see what brown shoulders she’s got and it’s as if I literally don’t exist. ‘Maybe you can explain it all to me.’

  She gives me a frosty glare. I realize that Holly Carmichael is now looking at me as if I’ve got something she wants, and she’s not very happy that I’ve got it. And I’m standing here in the skate park holding its hand. His hand.

  ‘Look,’ I say, and I point up at the ramp where Archie is doing some kind of complicated spinning thing with his scooter. He looks down at me and his smile is watermelon huge and he leaps into the air and lands on the edge of the ramp before flying down and up into the air and over, so he flips 360 degrees and lands – safely – on the ramp. It makes me feel a bit sick.

  I give him a thumbs-up and a big smile to indicate how impressed I am. Holly looks at me with utter disdain and shakes her head so I feel myself blushing.

  I realize that I’ve made myself look like a presenter from kids’ TV, and I slink my hand down to my side.

  It’s all going a bit weird, and I feel really awkward about talking to Gabe about being autistic, like I’ve exposed part of myself, and I feel sort of raw. I really, really would quite like to just go. But I’m not sure how to say that, so after another five minutes when Gabe turns round and says, ‘Shall we go?’ I almost gallop towards the exit.

  And I don’t know whether Gabe doesn’t have anything to say or if he’s just bored, or whether it’s just me feeling weird. It occurs to me much later that maybe he’s shy, too.

  ‘So your mum seems nice,’ I say, realizing I sound about a hundred years old. ‘What about the rest of your family?’

  We stand waiting at the crossing.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Gabe looks a bit puzzled.

  ‘How did you end up here?’

  And instantly as he’s talking I’m thinking – is it OK to ask that? Is that rude? Is he thinking I’m rude? So I’m listening to his reply, but the voice in my head is asking questions at the same time, and it makes it really hard to concentrate and I start thinking maybe I’m acting strangely and my ears start doing that thing they do when they whoosh in time with the ground as I’m walking. I just want to lie down and have a rest.

  ‘Oh,’ says Gabe. ‘Well, my mum and dad moved here when I was only tiny. And then my grandmother came over when my grandpa died, and my uncle Piotr got a job one summer and ended up staying, but my aunty and uncle and cousins still live on the farm in Poland.’

  ‘It must be very difficult living with all your family in one house squashed together,’ I say, because I can’t imagine having that many people all taking up space and there not being anywhere for quiet and to hide and switch my brain off.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ says Gabe.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, and we walk along the road in silence. But it doesn’t feel like a companionable Anna sort of silence, and the whole time I’m searching through my head for things to say, but all I can think of is that I wish we could go back to the nice bit before all the awkward bits. And I wonder if dates are supposed to be like a rollercoaster of amazing bits and uncomfortable silences and kissing and not knowing what to say.

  We end up at the corner of my street, and Gabe lets go of my hand.

  ‘Right, then,’ he says. And he leans forward, still with a look on his face that I can’t quite read, and I’m not sure if he’s trying to kiss me on the cheek to be polite or on the mouth because he wants to, and so I duck my head sideways at precisely the wrong moment and I think he gets a mouthful of hair.

  ‘Holly Carmichael fancies you, you know.’

  I didn’t mean to say it.

  And Gabe looks at me with a frown of surprise and says, ‘Really?’

  I say, ‘Yes, it’s obvious, because if you’ve studied body language you can tell because she turns herself to face you and she was mirroring your gestures and she flicked her hair, which is a grooming motion that is used to –’

  And I stop halfway through the sentence because, honestly, I need a minder sometimes to hit me over the head with an inflatable mallet when my mouth starts going and my brain forgets to catch up.

  ‘Right,’ says Gabe. He steps backwards. ‘I better get back.’

>   ‘Me too,’ I say.

  He looks at me for a moment with a strange expression on his face, just before he turns away and walks down the road towards town.

  I watch and watch, until Gabe becomes a little speck, and then he disappears from sight.

  And I don’t know how, but I think I’ve blown it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  And that’s that, because this is real life and not a film, so I turn round and start walking towards home in the just-starting spots of rain, running my hand along the bumpy bricks of the garden walls as I go. The sky is grumbling grey and it feels as if any moment now it’ll start tipping it down, but I like the smell in the air. I love sitting inside watching the rain, but I don’t mind getting soaked, either, so I don’t rush. I’m too tired to rush. Being on for a whole afternoon is exhausting, and I can feel my legs dragging as I walk.

  I sort of want to text Gabe and say, look, it’s not just that it feels like the volume of all my senses has been turned up. But things are complicated and it’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that getting through the day is tiring, and I’m sorry my brain flatlined. And I wonder what it’s like having ADHD and I sort of want to ask about that too. But I wouldn’t even know where to start. The thing is I don’t know how to say to someone new, um, you know if I act weird it’s not me acting weird. And it’s awkward trying to figure out how to tell people or what to say. Sometimes I wish I just wore a Ten Facts About Being Autistic badge, which could answer all the questions, and I could just point to it.

  Then of course he might just reply, yeah, the thing is, I’m just not that into you anyway, weird or not so actually maybe I’ll just switch off my phone again and not think about it.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  After my bath all I want is the kitchen to myself, and Withnail sleeping on a pile of washing on the table. Sometimes I think I’d like to retire from being a person and just quietly live under the kitchen table with a book and a packet of biscuits.

  What I get is – not that.

  ‘Honestly, Barbara . . .’ Mum’s back from the tennis tournament. She’s folding up a tea towel that’s already folded. She’s shaking it out and straightening it proprietorially, so it’s just the way she likes it. ‘I wasn’t planning on making anything much for dinner this evening. The girls don’t need to . . .’

  ‘It’s fine.’ Grandma takes the tea towel out of her hands, and smoothes it out slightly before sliding it into the drawer beside the oven. I can see Mum’s nostrils flaring, which is what happens when she’s pissed off and trying to hide it. They’re having land wars over kitchen equipment. ‘You have your night out with Eve,’ and Grandma sneaks me a look as she says it, just a tiny one, sideways, ‘and we’ll have a nice girly evening, won’t we, Grace?’

  Mum turns round. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  My stealth mode is highly effective, but no match for Grandma-radar.

  ‘She’s been here five minutes, Julia.’

  ‘Where have you been, then?’ Mum rubs her head in confusion, so her hair fuzzes up around the crown and sticks in the air.

  ‘Just out,’ I say, and I stack up a pile of papers that are strewn in front of me on the dining table, more to distract myself than because I’ve suddenly become super organized.

  ‘Careful with those, darling,’ says Mum. I look down at the papers. They’re old, curled-up notes with Durham University Faculty of Education stamped across the top of them.

  She comes over and gathers them to her chest protectively. ‘They’re notes from my teaching degree. I was just looking something up for that job I was telling you about.’

  Grandma makes a disapproving sort of snorting sound as she chops onions. There’s a hiss as she slides them into a saucepan, and she turns back to the kitchen island to wipe the surface before sprinkling it with flour and rolling out a huge blob of pastry. I swear Mum rolls her eyes at this.

  I like it when the kitchen is all fuggy with cooking and smells like home. Since Dad left this time the place hasn’t been right, and Grandma coming has fixed everything. The only person who seems unimpressed with it all is Mum, and that’s only because Eve’s too-cool-for-everything attitude seems to have rubbed off on her.

  I look down at my phone in case there’s a message from Gabe, who must be home by now, but it’s blank. The last message I sent Anna isn’t showing as delivered, so she’s probably had her phone confiscated or something. I watch as Mum and Grandma take part in a sort of territorial kitchen war. Mum is now putting away the dishes that Grandma has just washed.

  ‘They’re not quite dry,’ says Grandma. ‘Let me get you a tea towel – just a moment.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ says Mum, and I can hear her teeth are gritted. She’s always had a sort of Grandma threshold when she comes to visit, where she goes past being delighted at having someone else to help and tips over into there’s-an-extra-person-in-this-house mode. Not that she’d ever admit it, of course, but I watch it happening from my quiet corners.

  ‘I can’t think how you’re planning to make this job work with Graham away as much as he is,’ says Grandma quietly.

  ‘Other women work.’

  ‘Of course they do, Julia, but other women don’t have . . .’ There’s a sort of pause, the kind of pause you get used to if you’re me. ‘Well, they don’t have the same things to consider as you do.’

  ‘It’s not the same as when she was little, Barbara.’

  ‘No, but you’re forgetting Leah. And you’ve leaned more on her than you should have, just because she’s sensible. She’s still only thirteen.’

  Mum flicks a glance across the room at me to make sure I’m not listening, but I’m hidden beneath my hair, picking at a bit of loose nail, apparently oblivious. I’m feeling slightly sick at the thought that the whole Gabe thing has ended in the usual Grace disaster, but I’m trying to be zen. All right, I’m failing to be zen, but there’s not much I can do.

  ‘Grace is about to turn sixteen. She’s growing up.’

  I sit very still because I don’t want a birthday conversation to start. It’s there on the calendar, looming. And I don’t like birthdays. Without thinking I start tapping my finger and thumb together – taptaptaptaptaptap – to try to stop my brain from shooting off into a panic. I’m not doing my birthday until Dad gets back. We’ve arranged it already. I start preparing the speech in my head just in case they’ve forgotten, but –

  ‘And it’s time I put my money where my mouth is. What kind of role model am I?’

  There’s a puffing noise from Grandma and I can imagine her face, even though her back is towards me and she’s stirring the chicken stuff for the pie.

  ‘Role model?’

  ‘The girls have grown up thinking I’m here to be at their beck and call. I don’t have a life outside this house.’

  I cock my head sideways slightly at that, before I realize that any movement might end the whispering and they’ll remember I’m party to the conversation.

  ‘You’ve been doing voluntary work at the centre for six years.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mum says, but it’s a sort of exasperated hiss, ‘voluntary work. Eve says –’

  ‘Eve.’ Grandma manages to make that one name into a whole sentence, and a question, all at the same time.

  ‘It’s supply teaching,’ says Mum carefully. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘And I think it’s a lovely idea in principle, but these girls need you.’ There’s a second where Mum opens her mouth to protest. ‘Leah needs you.’

  ‘Leah’s fine,’ says Mum, shaking her head. ‘She doesn’t need hand-holding. She’s responsible, and she’s always been the capable one.’ Mum’s voice is low.

  I scowl at this. It’s true, but it still makes me feel a bit crappy. When we were little, I remember Mum would send us into soft play with Leah holding my hand, acting as protector when I didn’t want to deal with galloping hordes of other kids throwing unexpected things at me in the ball pool. And when we went swimming, e
ven at nine, she’d be the one who remembered to fasten the locker key token round her wrist and remember where we’d left our stuff. I was unpredictable, prone to wandering off in a dream if I was thinking about something interesting, likely to forget where I’d put things. Leah didn’t have meltdowns when everything got too much and the world felt all scratchy.

  ‘That doesn’t mean you can just opt out because your friend Eve has come along and put ideas in your head.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with Eve,’ says Mum. ‘I’ll have bills to pay and two children to keep. I’ve got responsibilities. We can’t all go swanning off to the other side of the planet whenever we feel like it.’

  She’s talking in that pointy way she does when she’s about to shout. Except she won’t shout at Grandma, because she never does.

  ‘I think the two of you should be sitting down and having a look at your priorities. In my day, you didn’t just bail out the moment things got tough.’

  There’s a clang as Mum shoves the saucepan full of vegetables on to the hob and spins round. And then there’s a dangerous-feeling silence, which lasts for a long second.

  ‘I’d love to,’ says Mum, ‘but, in case you’ve missed it, he’s not bloody here.’

  She lifts her pile of papers as I look up, realizing that I can’t pretend I’m not there any more, and she looks me in the eye for a moment. There’s an expression on her face I haven’t seen before, and it makes me feel weird in my stomach.

  ‘Right, then. I’m going to get ready. I’ll leave you two to get on with your baking.’

  And she stalks out of the room.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I am sixteen.

  Charlotte had the whole school in a barn for her birthday. I creep up to mine with my finger on my lips.

  Mabel and I have been out in the sparkling morning with nothing but birds to keep us company, and we’re both sweating from too much cantering. I pull the saddle off and sling it across her stable door before I pull the phone out of the back pocket of my jodhpurs. I would’ve read the message when I was riding but Mabel was dancing on tiptoes the whole way, skittering sideways with every whisper in the grass.