by Julia Gray
I tore out the page, crumpled it up and threw it into the wastepaper basket.
As I fell asleep, I saw myself once more on the tightrope, aloft and wavering, while the flowery chakras swirled underneath, with their energy fronds reaching out like the tendrils of man-eating plants. And the darkness … the great and borderless darkness … and the sound of the wind on the walls …
And faintly, almost like laughter, somewhere far, far below me, a voice that may or may not have been mine, screaming.
1
Whether training a dog, embroidering a handkerchief or burying a husband, Nana had always been a person of great resolve. For a day or so more, she hovered on a tightrope of her own. And then she stabilised. It seemed she had decided not to die, after all.
‘Don’t ever scare me like that again,’ said Evie, after Nana had been discharged and we’d brought her back home. My mother seemed to glitter with an inner light. I was sure I knew why, and it wasn’t just because Nana was still with us. From time to time, Evie would look at me and twinkle with pride.
I placed my lips on my grandmother’s powdery cheek, and was glad that it felt warmer than it had in the hospital; it was as though lifeblood were flowing through her again, if only for the time being. Nana put on Murder, She Wrote and looked about for her knitting.
‘Goodbye, Nana,’ I said. ‘See you soon.’
‘“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God”,’ she muttered. ‘The Book of Matthew, 5:8. Stay true to yourself, my girl.’
‘Dad told you, didn’t he?’ said Evie, after a period of silence on our journey home. She’d decided to drive back with me, after all, now that Nana seemed to be on the road to recovery.
‘What?’ I said.
‘About Nana.’
‘Ah, yes,’ I lied. ‘He did.’
‘You knew she was going to be all right,’ said Evie, regarding me as a devout pilgrim might look upon a beloved temple.
I pointed out that according to the laws of physics, Nana wasn’t going to be all right for ever.
‘But he told us she wasn’t going to die. Not then. Nora Alison Tobias, I think what you did was the most bloody amazing thing I’ve ever bloody seen. It made that whole psychic workshop totally worth it, after all. Petra would never say so, but she’s massively jealous. She’ll keep practising now, just see if she doesn’t. The way he told you about the kite. That writing …’
She waved her tattooed fingers as she spoke. It was raining still, the slow lane of the motorway barely moving. At her mention of the writing, I suppressed a wave of revulsion.
‘I think you should do it again,’ said Evie.
I couldn’t think of anything worse.
‘But just imagine what else you could find out. You could try to talk to Grandpa! Or Brian from the Rolling Stones. Or the captain of the Titanic. Ask him why they didn’t spot the iceberg earlier.’
To this I said nothing.
‘Or Dad, of course,’ she said, as though she’d forgotten the reason for doing it in the first place. It was very Evie, this: a vault of sadness, a veil of flippancy to cover it up afterwards.
Controlling myself as best I could, I said: ‘Mum. I did it once, for you. I think twice would be stupid.’
She reached over and put her hand on my arm. ‘Sorry. You’re right. These things always take their toll, don’t they? You do look a bit shattered.’
‘He said he was OK,’ I went on. ‘And I think that’s all we can really ask for.’
As I report this conversation now, a few months later, all I can think about is how much we were leaving unsaid.
It was late on Saturday night by the time we got back. After nearly a week away, London felt louder and stranger than ever. The river was jumping with parties on boats, the air alive with sirens.
Straight away, I went to find my phone. I imagined all the things that Bel might have found to say in her messages. Congratulations on my performance in the play, for a start – or if not congratulations, then at least thanks, for my helpful part in it. Perhaps an invitation to go out with her, or round to her house. Then maybe there’d be a couple of anxious follow-ups – why wasn’t I responding? Was I OK? What about my Nana? The volume of these would go up and up as the days went by. I prepared myself, as the texts and notifications came in, to reply at once and explain that I’d left my phone behind. I might even call her, if she had left me a significant number of messages.
The first text was from Thurston, and it did indeed thank me for my part in The Belle of the Ball. I deleted it by mistake in my effort to close it quickly. Then there were five or six messages from Perfect, with details of all the homework I was missing. Perfect hated to miss an assignment. High-pitched beeps came from the living room: Evie was checking the answerphone. I listened, in case for some reason Bel had rung the landline, but knowing that she wouldn’t have done. Petra’s voice bleated fondly, asking if we’d got home safely. Then another woman’s voice. It sounded work-related. I looked at my phone again. Switched it off and back on.
There was nothing from Bel; not an iota.
‘Oh,’ I said aloud.
‘What’s wrong?’ Evie stood in my doorway, less pallid than usual.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘You OK? Any news? How’s Nana?’
‘There is news,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ve been offered a job in Romania. A vampire movie.’
‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to take it.’
‘I dunno,’ said Evie. She wandered over to the balcony door and looked down through the cast-iron bars towards the river. ‘It feels like the wrong time to go. Leaving you on your own, and Nana sick … I’d have to get a flight on Monday. I could be gone for a few weeks. Five or six, even. Away for your birthday. It’s too much right now.’
But I urged her to go. To work with vampires – with bodices and cloaks, with silk-lined coffins and doublets and hose, or whatever was needed – was Evie’s Grail, and she had to take it. Mrs DeAndrade had spare keys. I could stay with a friend, if I got lonely. She could come back, if she had to. We could speak by phone and Skype.
In the end, she agreed.
So all the next day Evie unpacked and repacked her cases. I was impressed: she seemed practical and full of purpose. The prospect of losing Nana was not the same as the loss of my father, I realised. Nana’s life had been as rich and layered as one of her beloved alfajores, and we knew that when she eventually died, she would be at peace. I saw that Evie had drawn, in red biro on the inside of her wrist, a small kite. A minicab came to get her at three in the morning, and I got up to wish her good luck.
‘I hate goodbyes,’ she said, kissing me on the ear.
I went to school a couple of hours later full of anticipation. Bel’s timetable I knew as well as my own; her form room was on the floor above mine, and I found a reason to go there before registration. But I did not see her there; nor did I see her bag. I had already decided that her lack of messages was down to impatience – she would want to see me in person, I decided, to thank me. I wondered where she was.
Then it came to me: the Art and Design Centre. More than likely, she’d be there, working on her portfolio. Hurriedly, I made my way there, brushing aside the ghosts of my dealings with Jonah Trace as I went down the stairs, and the doubts that squirrelled up and down in my consciousness about who, exactly, knew what. Those doubts were liable to kindle wildfire, and do all kinds of mischief. I couldn’t allow this to happen.
Sharon Alexis was cleaning brushes at the sink. ‘Help you, Nora?’ she said.
‘I’m looking for Bel,’ I replied.
‘She was away most of last week,’ the art assistant said. ‘Haven’t seen her today, either.’
And now it all made sense – Bel was, of course, ill. I hoped she hadn’t caught a cold from me. I’d feel bad if that were the case. It was more likely, though, that she’d gone out partying too many times. I pictured her in her conservatory, halfway through some kind of hangover-healing eggn
og in a vintage cup, or a many-plated breakfast.
But as I was going back upstairs, there she was, coming down. The usual clatter of trinkets accompanied her. She was, for once, not wearing a kimono, but a leather jacket and flared jeans. The whites of her eyes were pinkish; her nose likewise.
‘Oh, hey, honey,’ she said. ‘How’s your grandma?’
I was so pleased to see her that I could have almost reached out to hug her, but something in her manner stopped me.
‘She’s stable,’ I said. ‘Out of hospital. How are you? Have you been ill?’
She sniffed. ‘Heartsick,’ she said.
I realised she’d been crying. ‘How come?’
‘It’s just … there’s something I want, desperately, more than anything. And I can’t have it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and I was. ‘Can I do anything?’
‘I don’t even want to talk about it,’ she said, brushing past me.
I wanted to follow her down the stairs, catch her by the arm, ask her what the matter was. But I did none of those things.
‘Has anyone ever done anything that broke your heart?’ came a muffled voice from below me.
Yes, I thought. Yes, they have.
I caught up with the rest of my class, who were already winding their way to the chapel, and Sarah Cousins gave me another unsympathetic look.
All that week, each time I saw Bel it was the same – a light greeting, an airy farewell. No hugs. No confidences. No plans for the future. What was wrong with her? Was it something to do with the play? As far as I could tell, The Belle of the Ball had been well-received by children and hospital staff alike. So why, in the words of the Fairy Godmother, was Bel so sad? What was it that she couldn’t have? Who, or what, had broken her heart? I found myself quite preoccupied by it all.
Then, to make matters worse, Lori Dryden came to me with some unpleasant news.
‘There’s a rumour going around that you honeytrapped Mr Trace,’ she told me one break time, her mouth full of KitKat.
‘I don’t even know what that means,’ I said.
It was true: I didn’t. Was ‘honeytrap’ even actually a verb? I thought it was an undercover operation, something you saw on TV crime re-enactments. But Lori, who no doubt was spreading the rumour as well as receiving it, said it with relish, and I saw at once what she was trying to say. The tagline had shifted; the victims had swapped sides. Now Jonah Trace was the injured party, and I was a honeytrap. A ruthless, manipulative teen fatale. A little liar. In other circumstances, I might have thought it was quite an attractive word. And indeed, it was almost apt.
‘People are saying you led him on,’ she said, watching me closely from underneath mauve-shadowed eyelids.
‘Who’s saying that?’
‘Can’t reveal.’
With no time to waste, I began to cry, dramatic and shuddering. I ran my hands over my upper arms, as though to calm the angry bruises that had been left there by Jonah Trace’s fingers. I was helpless and unable to control my tears, and I knew that Lori, who had never seen me cry, would be suitably shocked.
She laid down her KitKat, but went on chewing as she drew me into a close embrace. Through the wall of her cheek I could hear the sound of crunching, like a combine harvester.
‘I never thought it was true,’ she said mildly.
Evie was gone, but far from the thrill of freedom that I usually felt when I had the flat to myself, I fell into a quicksand of gloom. My conversation with Lori lingered and spread, like damp on a wall, absorbing me. It wasn’t just the thought of what people were saying. It was the thought of what I had done. He deserved it, I kept thinking to myself. He did. I might have engineered certain situations, but he allowed it to happen. He wanted it to happen. For someone like my father, goodness and evil, right and wrong, were polar opposites, with not an inch of slippage between them. But I didn’t think it was as simple as that.
I forgot to eat. I slept on one side of my bed, pressed up against the wall. The boiler kept breaking down, and I missed the bristly, whiskery Oscar, who was warm, though infuriating. I found no pleasure in reading. I dawdled on my way into school. I would have stopped going altogether and spent my time instead wandering along the South Bank, or staring at the river. But I couldn’t afford to do anything else at school that might have caused trouble. They seemed not to want to investigate the Trace Incident further, in spite of my form tutor’s misgivings, in spite of the rumours, presumably because they’d found he’d done similar things with other girls at other schools. I had to be grateful for that.
But still I did not feel safe.
In the evenings, I watched movies, continuing my research into the Ingram-Lane dynasty, even though I didn’t know whether Bel would ever call me again. I went through old albums, looking at the darker spaces where photographs of my father had been. And I thought of my Felix Tobias fairy tales that I told, so fluently and with such ease that I barely connected them any longer to the person they were meant to be about.
He disappeared at sea.
He was poisoned by an oyster.
He died in a crash on the Métro.
It was funny, I thought, that I should tell such lies about my father, a person for whom truth was very important. I remembered a time when I’d brought him a sketch of a clock tower that I’d drawn. He said it was magnificent, studying it closely, following the pencil strokes with a finger.
‘Did you use a ruler? These lines are perfectly straight,’ he said.
My father frowned on using a ruler when doing an observational drawing. I assured him fervently that I had not.
‘Now, Aliénor,’ he’d said, with a sadness so clear that it pained me deeply, ‘you know that it is wrong to lie …’
I sat on the balcony in my coat. I lay in the bath, while the tap dripped onto my ankle. I stood at the bathroom mirror, watching myself and trying not to think about the tightrope and the flowers, and the long, long fall into darkness.
And although I despised myself for it, because it was maudlin and teenagey and self-absorbed, I would stand at that mirror and think: I do not know who I am.
2
March the eleventh was a Saturday, and also my birthday.
I woke early with a sharp, winded jolt. I’d been dreaming of the flowers. The tightrope in the darkness, and the flowers, and that indecipherable message, lettered with my right hand: O angry flame. Attention, Aliénor. I splashed water onto my face and made myself breakfast – toast, yogurt, coffee, more than I’d usually eat – but the dream still clung to me, the way savage and messy dreams do. Then Evie called from her trailer; even though the line was poor, she belted Stevie Nicks’ Edge of Seventeen down the phone with such gusto that I laughed aloud, and finally the dream was gone.
‘How are you?’ she said.
‘I miss you loads,’ I said. ‘But I’m fine. The weather’s all right. A bit changeable.’
While she told me at length about the joys of hooking corpulent C-list actresses into waist-hugging corsets, I opened a small pile of cards. There was one from Petra and Bill, another from an old friend of Nana’s, and a third from my French godmother, whom I seldom saw. Nothing from anyone younger than forty-five. Nothing from any of my former obligatory friends. This was not unexpected. But it made me feel something I did not often feel, because over the years I had taught myself to delight in solitude.
It made me feel lonely.
I thought for a while. And then I reached for my mobile and, with care, wrote a text to Bel. It was simple enough, the kind of message I never sent to anyone, ever.
Howdy, it said. How’s tricks?
Then I sat back with a book and waited.
Almost comically quickly, my mobile rang.
‘Nora, honey, it’s me. I’m having a party and I want you to come,’ she said.
There was no mention of why she’d been ignoring me at school. Heartsick Bel was gone; I wondered what had changed. I presumed it was connected to the party, and her reas
ons for giving it.
‘Green!’ said Bel, having given me some directions that seemed vague in the extreme. ‘Wear green. Bring anyone you like, and a bottle, of course. Two bottles.’
From eight, she’d said, but I waited until closer to nine before I set out on the tube. I had two bottles of wine, one red and one white, bought with some of the cash that Evie had left. I’d carefully planned the journey – two tube changes, and then the overland, and then a fifteen-minute walk. From where we lived, it was well over an hour. It felt like the apex of bravery to be going to a party alone.
The dress code caused me some concern. Evie owned plenty of green garments, but I didn’t like the idea of wearing something eye-catching as I walked through an area of Outer London – somewhere near Hampton Court – with which I was unfamiliar. I was therefore wearing close to my ordinary clothes – jeans, a black vest top, a denim jacket. My concessions to Bel’s code were a shamrock badge of Evie’s from her bartending days and a turquoise-and-yellow checked scarf that I’d found at the back of her sock drawer. Green eye-pencil lined my upper lids. Part of me wanted to wear something outrageous, something Bel-worthy. But I just didn’t have the courage for it.
The tube carriage smelled of alcohol and anticipation. The residue of the day hung heavy in the compartment, a thousand exhaled breaths clogging the humid air.
‘You’re early for St Paddy’s day,’ said a tanned man in a beige jacket, raising a brow at my shamrock.
I smiled and looked again at my map of London, trying to learn by heart the route I would take to the party. Constantine’s Wharf, Bel had said. Walk through the gate. Fourth boat from the end. Morgan le Fay. I had never been to a houseboat before. I wondered if there would be rats.
As I was leaving the station I saw Thurston coming up the stairs, with a white-tooth grin and a tan that said Money.
