The State of Grace

by Rachael Lucas

  ‘Right, well, as we’re only going to Preselli’s we don’t need to get dressed up.’ Mum checks in her handbag, pulls out a hairbrush and runs it through her hair in front of the hall mirror. Eve smiles at her and offers her a red lipstick.

  ‘You don’t have to actually start dressing like twins, you know,’ I mutter, half to myself. ‘You’ve already got the same tops, the same shoes, and now you’re in the same lipstick. It’s freaky.’

  Leah kicks me in the ankle and I yelp.

  ‘You ready, then, Ju?’ It’s not a question – it’s a command. Eve turns to open the front door.

  ‘Who’s that waiting in the car?’ says Polly as we clatter round from the field, Mabel trotting beside me.

  ‘Mum’s new – well, old – friend. Evil Eve.’ I’m quite impressed with that nickname. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. ‘She’s up here doing some work project, and has basically moved her entire life into ours.’

  ‘Why evil?’ Polly screws up her eyes to focus on the faraway car, a hand over her forehead to block out the last of the evening sunlight.

  ‘She hates me and Leah. She seems to think we’re surplus to requirements.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And she’s basically forcing Mum to go back to teaching.’

  Polly looks at me sideways. ‘Forcing? What is she, a slave trader?’

  ‘No, but she’s done the whole “your life is a waste, all you’ve got to show for it is your offspring, you’re a failed human being” thing.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Polly turns back to the haynet she is stuffing. ‘I can’t imagine your mum being forced into anything she didn’t want to do.’

  ‘And,’ I say, pushing Mabel’s food bucket into the stable and closing the door, ‘where do we fit?’

  ‘Where do you fit?’ Polly starts laughing. ‘You don’t need your mum to be holding your hand all the time. And Leah’s more than capable of looking out for herself. Your mum needs a life – I’d go mad if I were her, stuck at home all the time when your dad’s off doing the glamorous-explorer bit.’

  I slide the lock across Mabel’s door and turn round to look at Polly, who is tightening up the drawstring on the haynet.

  ‘I’m not saying I want her stuck at home all the time,’ I say, feeling a prickle of guilt. ‘I’m just – I don’t like things changing all the time.’

  ‘That’s what things do,’ says Polly reasonably.

  ‘Well, I don’t like it,’ I say, and walk back to the steamed-up car.

  I climb in the back beside Leah and we head towards the restaurant.

  ‘Table for four?’

  The girl at the door looks harassed, her hair escaping in fine wisps from her ponytail. She’s got a splodge of something red – sauce, or wine – on the front of her white apron, and her cheeks are flushed pink.

  ‘Yes, please,’ says Mum.

  ‘This one OK for you?’

  She shows us to the little booth at the back where we always sit. I slide into my usual space and for a second I think maybe this will be OK. There’s a family of six sitting opposite, their smallest child banging something loudly on the plastic table of his high chair, and a little person who is five or so weeping snottily into a bowl of macaroni.

  ‘Actually,’ says Eve, picking up her bag and leaning over to the waitress, ‘we’ll have that table by the window, thanks.’

  Mum opens her mouth to say, no, it’s fine, we’re OK here – but Eve shoots her a look, and the frazzled-looking girl flushes a bit more and says, yes, of course, and leads us across the restaurant to the huge table – which should sit eight – in the window.

  ‘We don’t want to be cramped in that grotty little booth,’ says Eve, settling back against her chair, stretching her long legs out so they take up half the space under the table. She looks over the menu at Mum.

  ‘This is nice, actually, isn’t it, girls?’ Mum says brightly, looking at me, then at Leah, who has her phone out and is scrolling through messages. ‘Leah, off the phone, please.’

  ‘Not really,’ I say loudly.

  ‘Grace.’ A raised eyebrow. Mum looks up at the waitress. ‘Two glasses of the Shiraz and two Cokes, please.’

  ‘I don’t think taking up a table meant for eight people when there’s only four of us is very nice manners,’ I say, looking sideways at Eve.

  ‘We’re paying for a meal,’ she responds, her tone crisp. ‘We’re not at a kindergarten. I don’t expect to be surrounded by children.’

  ‘Should’ve left us at home, then,’ says Leah, surprising everyone.

  ‘Leah!’ Mum sits back in her chair. Leah doesn’t do smart comments, or being rude, or rebellious anything. She does quiet, reasonable, calm, well behaved. I do rude and sarcastic.

  ‘But it’s your birthday, Grace,’ says Eve, taking the glass of wine from the waitress.

  I shoot a silent look of horror at Mum.

  ‘Your birthday?’ says the waitress. ‘How lovely!’

  She perks up at this and swooshes my napkin on to my lap, leaning over me in the process so I can smell her shampoo. I sit rigid, trying to deal with the personal-space invasion.

  Eve smiles at Mum. ‘Can you believe it?’ She turns to the waitress. ‘Julia doesn’t look old enough to have a sixteen-year-old, does she?’

  ‘Shut up, you,’ says Mum, going pink and looking pleased with herself.

  ‘Well,’ says Eve, raising her glass in Mum’s direction, ‘you’ve done your time.’

  She takes a swig of wine and clinks her glass. ‘To your new job and your new future. And to freedom.’

  ‘Freedom,’ says Mum, and a funny look crosses her face. And then she turns to me and says, ‘And to my beautiful girl, of course. Happy birthday, darling.’

  I scowl at her and don’t reply.

  ‘You girls. I can’t believe you’re not even pleased about your mum’s job.’

  Eve looks at me and Leah and tuts crossly.

  ‘I’m sure they are pleased – in their own way,’ says Mum, taking another mouthful of wine.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket and I slip it out and look at it under the table.

  I hate her, says Leah

  Me too, I type back.

  ‘If you ask me, Graham’s been allowed to spend far too long thinking the world revolves around him,’ Eve says to Mum, who pins her with her stop-talking look and somehow sort of nods at the same time.

  ‘Shall we get olives and dipping bread to start, girls?’ says Mum brightly. Not waiting for an answer, she motions over the waitress and asks for them to be brought as a starter.

  Eve swallows half her wine in a gulp.

  ‘You need to have a life of your own, Julia. These two are old enough to fend for themselves, aren’t you?’

  She looks at me and Leah, and I want to kick her in the shins.

  ‘To be honest I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t go full time. My mum wasn’t running around after me when I was your age.’

  ‘Leah’s only thirteen,’ I point out, turning to Mum. ‘And you’ve always been around and I think it’s all very well for her to come marching in and start telling you that you should disappear off and work full time and leave us to do everything and go to school, but –’

  ‘Grace,’ she says, putting a hand over mine, ‘nobody’s saying I’m going to be working full time.’

  ‘Nobody’s saying you can’t, though,’ says Eve, actually clicking her fingers for the waitress. I didn’t think people did that in real life. ‘You don’t really expect your mum to be sitting around the house waiting on you hand and foot, do you?’

  Ignore her, she’s a bitch.

  ‘Ciabatta and olives?’ says the waitress, leaning between Mum and Eve, just at the right moment.

  Megabitch, I reply, typing it into my phone while smiling sweetly at Eve’s big moon face.

  I take great pleasure in eating all the nice olives and leaving Eve the horrible ones with big lumps of garlic in the middle so she’ll stink l
ike a pig in her business meetings tomorrow. Leah eats all the bread and accidentally sticks her finger in the oil and vinegar more than once when she realizes that it makes Eve shudder with disgust. I feel a bit guilty that we’re spoiling Mum’s celebration meal, but if she hadn’t taken Bitch-face out we could have had a perfectly nice time. In fact, if Bitch-face wasn’t in the equation at all, we’d be having the same perfectly nice time that we have every other time Dad goes away. It’s not our fault that Eve-il has decided to land herself like a cuckoo in the middle of our nest. I glare at her again.

  And then just when I think it can’t get any worse, it all goes horrendously wrong. I go to the loo and when I get back there’s a tangle of silvery helium balloons floating above our table. I pull out my seat and sit down, feeling sick.

  ‘Who did the . . .’ I begin.

  ‘Eve had a word.’ Mum gives me a look that is somehow pleading and parental at the same time. Don’t make a fuss, it says. I swallow and sit there, stiff with horror, and listen as the noise of the restaurant and the metallic whisper of the balloons and the slurping and the crunching and the swallowing fill my head and the room is a swirling kaleidoscope of sensations and noises and –

  ‘Yes, that’s lovely, thank you.’

  As the back of the chair behind me crashes into mine I turn, reflexively.

  ‘Oh sorry,’ says a voice, and I realize it’s Holly Carmichael at exactly the same moment she realizes I’m me and she fixes me with her icy blue eyes.

  ‘Oh, sweet,’ she says, so quietly that only I can hear. ‘Baby’s first birthday party. Try not to wet yourself this time.’ She gives me the once over, looking me up and down. I realize I’m in yard boots and there are wood shavings stuck to the bottom of them. I watch her indicating my shoes to her cronies with an arch of her ridiculously fake eyebrows.

  ‘Nice boots.’

  I ignore her and pull my chair in tighter towards the table, hoping the lights overhead mean that my scarlet face doesn’t show. But the already terrible meal is now completely ruined and I’m hanging on by my fingernails. Now I feel like I’m too big for my chair and the food’s getting stuck in lumps in my throat. I curl my fingers underneath the seat of the chair, holding on tightly and rocking slightly, counting to ten in my head over and over.

  The waitress clears our plates and the room dims, unexpectedly. I turn to Leah, and she shakes her head almost imperceptibly.

  ‘Don’t,’ she says, as the lights begin to flicker on and off in time to some tinny-sounding music coming through the speakers.

  And I realize I’ve seen this before when I’ve been here and other people have been celebrating birthdays. And I realize that Eve is looking at me expectantly and Mum is looking at me with a pleading expression and the music suddenly unjumbles in my head and I realize what I’m hearing is ‘Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen’ and I want the ground to open up and swallow me whole. If I could actually just dematerialize in this moment, I would be quite happy. And I know, without turning round, that a sparkler-covered ice-cream sundae is coming my way. And I know that Holly Carmichael will never let me forget this.

  This is beyond anything that I have ever experienced, horror-wise. I’ve turned to stone. Leah picks up the sundae and eats some, saying that I always get too full for pudding when we come here. I’m not sure I can even move.

  Mum calls the waitress over and pays the bill while Eve readjusts her perfect lipstick in the toilets.

  ‘Oh hello, girls!’ Mum stands up, turns and smiles at Holly. ‘Out for a meal?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, Mrs Armstrong,’ says Holly with a sickeningly sweet smile. ‘It’s Lauren’s birthday so we’re just having a little celebration. Ours is a bit more low key than Grace’s, though.’

  She flashes a look at me and I want to die on the spot.

  ‘Have fun,’ says Mum, who used to help out at nursery school, and remembers Holly as an angelic little round-faced five-year-old. Holly gives me the sickly-sweet death smirk when Mum’s back is turned, and there’s a muffled sniggering as we walk out.

  ‘I can’t believe you did that.’ I glare at Mum as the door shuts behind us and I realize why I hate Eve so much. She’s just a grown-up version of Holly.

  ‘Oh, Grace,’ says Mum, ruffling my hair in what she thinks is an affectionate manner. It feels like she’s raking my head with knives and I pull away. ‘Holly’s harmless. You need to stop being so sensitive about girls like that. Grow a bit of a thicker skin.’

  She hooks her arm through my elbow and gives me a sort of jollying-along nudge. I leave my arm hanging straight down in the hope she’ll get the hint. I don’t feel particularly jolly.

  I am sixteen years old. I hate birthdays. I have just been publically humiliated in front of the absolutely worst person possible and I am never, ever going to live this down.

  And I realize I’m tired of this. I’m sick of being awkward and feeling like I don’t fit and everything’s uncomfortable. We’re driving back home and my face is pressed against the cold of the glass and the smell of the rubber strip along the edge of the window and it feels safe – well, safer. I can retreat. And then I realize the answer is glaringly obvious. All I need to do is find something that means everyone will think of me as someone who is interesting and funny and nice, and not the weirdo that stands out all the time.

  I look out at the darkness of the beach, and I have the perfect idea for how to make it happen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  My phone vibrates against my cheek.

  You up?

  It’s Anna.

  Of course I am. I’m still playing over the delights of my birthday celebration.

  Very much so.

  You amazing being of wonderfulness. I love you. (Imagine an Anna-style festival of emojis here.)

  Right. I type in the darkness. Are you OK? Just it’s – I squint more closely at the screen. Without my contact lenses in everything’s fuzzy round the edges – it’s half past midnight.

  I know I know I know. Can’t sleep. Archie walked me back from the park. Eeeeee.

  I smile at the thought of Anna’s excited face. Right now she’s probably bouncing up and down in the bed we broke, and if she’s not careful it’s going to give way again.

  Did anything . . . happen?

  NO

  . . .

  (There’s a pause, where I can see the little dots on the screen that indicate she’s typing something, then it disappears. Then it comes back again. And then it disappears.)

  ANNA you are doing that thing . . .

  . . .

  Spill. You can’t say no then use the disappearing dots of doom to leave me hanging here in the middle of the night. I’m a morning person – you’re a night person. I am ASLEEP.

  . . .

  Oh Grace he’s so . . .

  . . .

  CUTE.

  Five minutes of waiting and I get ‘cute’?

  (It’s not like Anna to be lost for words. This is serious.)

  Like *cuter than Howl* cute.

  That is serious. On the official Grace and Anna Cuteness Register, Howl (of Moving Castle fame) is the pinnacle of gorgeousness. Yes, I know he’s an anime character, but that’s a minor detail. Go and watch it and come back and tell me you’re not in love with Howl and then we’ll talk. And then we’ll make you watch it again until you are. I might just give up trying to sleep and watch it, actually.

  OK that is major. What’re you doing tomorrow?

  Hideous school-shoe-shopping hell with Mum in the morning. Want to meet me at the shore in the afternoon? I told Archie I might be there at two-ish.

  I look at the screen for a moment and think about another afternoon of hanging around while the boys wheel round in circles and Anna chats to Archie and I don’t know what to say to Gabe.

  Let’s meet there and have a beach party.

  I type the words, thinking about my decision last night. I have to make some changes. I need to work out how to be one of them. I need to start
fitting in. I want to be cool.

  Here? You do realize we don’t live in Venice Beach, right?

  Yes, duh. You’ve got those portable barbecue things in the garage left over from summer.

  We do?

  It never ceases to amaze me how unobservant people can be. I was in Anna’s garage the other day and saw them stacked up on top of the chest freezer.

  Trust me, you do. Stick a couple in your bag. I’ll bring matches and marshmallows and steal some sausages and stuff from the fridge. You do the same.

  I can see it now. Late afternoon on the beach, everyone sitting around a fire, making s’mores, chatting and laughing. We’ll be just like something from a film. And absolutely no Holly.

  Mum’s not even going to notice there’s stuff gone from the fridge. She’s on another planet most of the time. I can steal her secret chocolate and biscuits for s’mores. Oh, this is going to be so perfect.

  OK? I type.

  OK, Anna replies.

  OK, I return.

  This is all getting very John Green, Anna types. You mean OK as in see you there?

  Yes, that one. Let me know what time.

  You’re a funny thing, Gracie Moo. See you tomorrow, my lovely chum.

  I know I’ve gone monosyllabic because my brain’s now focusing on my amazing plan and I want to lie in the dark and run it through in my head until it’s all joined up and making sense and I’ve visualized the whole thing happening and what I’m going to say. It makes doing stuff easier if I do that.

  As I reach over to put my phone on the bedside table, there’s another buzz.

  Hey. See you at the shore tomorrow?

  It’s not Anna. It’s Gabe.

  There’s a little smiley face emoticon at the end – old style, like the ones we used to send when we got our first phones. I don’t reply, because I know I’m going to be there, and now I know he is too. I lie back against the pillows and plot tomorrow in my head until I fall asleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The house is still whispering creakily to itself when I get up. It’s Saturday, the one morning of the week when nobody needs to go anywhere – except me. Even Withnail doesn’t get up, but just opens one eye from the sofa and looks at me as I put my head through the sitting-room door to see if she wants breakfast.