by Hannah Emery
‘I’d love that. And why don’t you write to me in the meantime? You know, when you’ve gone back to London. I love getting letters.’
Noel laughed. ‘Write to you? I’m not great with words.’ To his horror, as he said this, he felt the tips of his ears go red and wished he could hide them. He looked down, which seemed like the next best thing to do.
‘Okay. Promise you will ring me then? You don’t depress me like everybody else does.’
Noel smiled at the drama of Grace’s words. He looked at her face: pale and tired and hopeful. He thought of how he hadn’t even missed Cara since he’d arrived in Blackpool and how the first thing he would think of when he got back to London would be how much he missed Grace.
‘I promise.’
Chapter Thirty Five
Grace, 2008
Grace decides to walk to the hall where the performance is being held on the opening evening of Macbeth. The air is icy and clear and she stuffs her hands deep into her pockets to stop them from tingling with the cold. She walks briskly, taking in the window displays in each house. Christmas is only a week away, and most of the houses burst with fairy lights and colour. Some display snowmen or plastic reindeer outside, their chaotic flashing adding to the jumble in Grace’s mind.
Christmas always makes Grace feel the same: mostly dark and sad, with a tiny, glittering flicker of hope deep inside her belly that this one will be different.
When the twins were growing up, they usually spent Christmas day with their mother at Mags’s house. Their mother and Mags would drink wine, and as the day moved into the evening, their conversations would become less clear to the children, and louder, punctuated more freely by blasts of laughter about things that Grace didn’t understand. Noel was always there, quietly reading his new Guinness Book of World Records in a corner. One year, he didn’t come home for Christmas. That was when Grace was about fourteen. He had just got his new job in London and he was spending the holidays there with friends. Mags mentioned him a couple of times that year but didn’t seem too bothered. Grace supposed that, technically, things weren’t much different, because Noel never said a lot. Still, Grace felt his absence and hoped that he wouldn’t stay away from home the following Christmas. She couldn’t imagine Noel with his friends. She wondered if he would laugh and chat to them like her mother did with Mags.
Noel returned home the following Christmas, and Grace thought that him being there might make things better. But that Christmas turned out to be one of the worst. Elsie spent most of the day locked in Mags’s bedroom, furious with their mother.
Grace nuzzles her chin into her thick scarf and thinks back to that year as she walks towards the performance hall. That was the year that Elsie had taken another fatal step away from their mother by going to stay with Mags for a couple of days. Grace remembers wanting to go and sleep at Mags’s house too, but feeling a thin thread of loyalty attaching her to their mother.
‘Mags is going to teach me how to put eye make-up on properly. I think I’ve been doing it wrong. I can’t get it to look right,’ Elsie had said as she was packing her pyjamas and the next day’s knickers.
Grace thought about Mags’s make-up and wrinkled her nose. ‘Mags wears blue mascara. Don’t let her put blue mascara on you,’ she said, remembering reading somewhere that blue mascara died out with the 1980s.
‘I won’t,’ Elsie sniffed. ‘She’s bought us face masks, so by the time you see me I won’t still have the make-up on anyway. And we’re going to watch Dirty Dancing.’
Elsie didn’t invite Grace to sleep at Mags’s too. That didn’t matter so much: if Grace had really wanted to go she could have phoned Mags and asked her. But she felt as though she should stay with their mother. Grace would ask their mother to teach her how to put make-up on properly. Then things would be as they should be.
But their mother went out all morning, so once Elsie had gone off to Mags’s house, Grace drifted into Louisa’s bedroom. The room was a mess, as always. The curtains were drawn, quivering slightly in the draught from the window. Grace pulled them open to let in the weak light, the sliver of sea in the distance catching her eye. She moved away from the window and looked around. Although there was a dressing table, it didn’t look like the place to find make-up. Clothes were piled up in front of the mirror, which reflected the tangle of dull jeans and tops that seemed to be waiting for something: ironing, perhaps, or, judging from the stale scent of her mother’s bedroom, washing. Grace shoved the pile of clothes to one side, but the pine dressing table was bare underneath. Reluctant to look in any drawers, Grace stood on her tiptoes to see what was on the shelf above the dressing table.
Bingo.
A frayed make-up bag, orange with spilt powder, sat opened on the shelf, its innards visible. Grace clambered up, leaning on the dressing table for support, and helped herself to a tube of sticky black mascara. Her mother didn’t wear as much make-up as Mags. Some days she wore a streak of bright red lipstick, but most days she just wore some powder that smelt weird, and a bit of black mascara. Come to think of it, their mother was pretty, in her own way. But, Grace decided as she climbed back down from the dressing table, she could be prettier if she tried harder. Her hair was never freshly brushed, her clothes were always thrown on and her face constantly pulled together in apology or concern that she was late, or wrong, or, more recently, drunk.
Once she was back in her own, tidier bedroom, Grace eyed the mascara wand, then pulsed it in and out of the bottle. Although most of the girls at school tried to get away with wearing mascara, and Elsie had been wearing make-up for a year or so, Grace had never bothered with it. But now, she found herself wanting to join in with everyone else. She lifted the black, gloopy stick up to her eyes, wondering whether to keep them open or shut them. When she’d watched her mother put it on, she’d always have her eyes open, and her mouth would gape open too. Grace opened her mouth, and then stroked some of the mascara onto her lashes. Her eyes tried to close automatically to begin with, so on the first few goes Grace got a smear of black on her eyelids. Every time this happened, she washed her face and started again. She wanted it to be perfect.
Once she had finished her mascara, Grace brushed her hair and stared into the mirror. She looked different. She felt a wave of excitement as she realised that make-up made her prettier, and more adult. How would Elsie’s make-up look? She lay on her bed for a while and thought about phoning one of their friends, but it seemed strange to ask them to do something without Elsie too. How long would her mother would be out for? Just as Grace was contemplating turning up at Mags’s house, complete with her own mascara lashes and sleeping bag, she heard the key turn in the front door.
Her mother had been shopping. It would have been nice if she’d noticed that Grace was wearing make-up. They might have even put on some more, together. But her mother just dumped her bags and chattered on about some magazines she’d bought and asked where Elsie was. Grace, no longer wanting to dwell on Elsie’s evening of fun with Mags, tried to keep the conversation as short as possible. She asked her mother if she’d bought marshmallows, even though she wasn’t even too bothered about marshmallows. She did it to change the subject.
Then her mother had done the thing that made Grace feel uneasy. She had taken a sip of something straight from the carrier bag. It looked like brandy, and Grace caught a wave of its potent, nutty smell as her mother swung the bottle back down from her lips.
Grace didn’t want to say it. She didn’t even want to think it. But after being on her own all day, after teaching herself how to put make-up on with nobody to tell her how it looked, after thinking all about the fun that Elsie would be having at Mags’s house, she felt brittle and angry.
So she thought it, and then she said it, before stomping off upstairs. ‘It’s no wonder Elsie’s run off to Mags.’
Grace can’t remember how long she lay alone on her bed that day. She remembers that her mother poured some of the brandy down the sink and then they had toasted
the marshmallows together, and she remembers being glad, for a few moments at least, that she wasn’t at Mags’s and that she was at home with her own mother.
It was a few days after that, Christmas day, that Louisa had admitted to the twins that she had a gift to see into the future.
‘It’s too late for her to tell us everything now,’ Elsie had said quietly as the twins sat in Mags’s bedroom. The room was full of carrier bags and bits of Sellotape and cut offs of red paper that betrayed last minute Christmas wrapping earlier on. ‘She should have told us years ago.’
Grace thinks of Suzie being told everything about their mother; the twins being told nothing.
‘I can’t believe she wasn’t honest with us,’ Grace said, her voice shaking. She thought of the other night when she had sat in front of the fire with her mother. Something had shifted that night, and Grace had felt as though things might get better, as though her mother could be someone she might trust. But now, all those feelings melted away, leaving a sticky pool in the bottom of Grace’s stomach.
‘I’ve spent years wondering why she saved you and not me when we had that car accident,’ Elsie said, her voice breaking into Grace’s thoughts. ‘I suppose I have been hoping all this time that I was wrong about her gift. But now we know for sure. She can choose who to save. And she chose you, and Suzie, and not me.’ Elsie hugged her knees as she spoke, and her words were muffled.
Grace put her arms around her sister, who closed her eyes and was silent.
Now, Grace wipes her eyes as she walks: the cold air is stinging them and making tears stream down her numb cheeks. She remembers holding a still, angry Elsie upstairs at Mags’s house, the smell of turkey and trifle wafting up the stairs and making her feel sick. Grace had been so angry with her mother that day, for choosing one of them over the other to save, for not telling them the truth from the very start, for making her once fun sister become so sad and silent, for being so different.
But then, when Grace met Eliot and had her own first vision, she realised that she was different too.
Now that she knows she is the same as her mother, Grace understands: she understands how fierce the visions are, how impossible it seems to ignore them. She understands how alcohol makes everything less painful, and makes the visions less clear and sharp. And she understands how keeping a secret from Elsie, from anybody you love, is the most difficult thing in the world.
As Grace arrives at the hall for the performance, she feels an almost pleasant anxiety rush through her body. Although she has enjoyed the rehearsals over the past few weeks and has felt confident in her lines, she suddenly thinks of the audience as she passes through the art-deco-styled entrance and feels a little nauseous. Her head starts to ache as she gets changed into her heavy, musty costume and the familiar, lightheaded haze falls down onto her as she makes her way out onto the stage for her first scene. When it’s time for her to say her lines, and she looks out into the audience, she does not see the bright lights above her, or a sea of faces, or the anxious expression of the actor opposite her as he waits for her to speak. She sees a vision: one she has never seen before.
She sees herself on a hospital bed, her legs flopping outwards, a murky pool of water between them. She sees Eliot next to her, cutting the cord of their brand new baby. He smiles at Grace and tells her it’s a boy. He tells her that he is happier than he ever could be. The baby squeals for its mother, for Grace. And then, suddenly, the picture is gone.
Grace’s mind instantly returns to her lines, and they spill from her lips, her hands shaking as she gestures to the other actor on the stage. She says each word she has practised, her voice lilting with the intonations she has decided upon over the last few weeks, makes all the movements she has rehearsed, but does not think of anything other than the vision she has just had. In between scenes, in the small dressing room that smells of old carpet and spilled drinks, she stares at her script, seeing no words: seeing nothing other than Eliot.
When Grace is saying her last lines, and rubbing furiously at invisible blood on her hands, she looks out into the audience. It’s a mistake that she shouldn’t make. Any decent actress knows that you don’t look out into the crowds, because for one, you can’t make out faces below the blinding stage lights, and because for another, if an audience member sees your face, instead of the character’s, even for a split second, the illusion that they have paid to see will be shattered.
But Grace forgets all of this, and her eyes dart fleetingly, like quick swimming fish, over the people who are watching her.
And there, towards the centre somewhere, amongst an ocean of people who mean nothing, is Noel.
As soon as the play is over, the dressing room swarms with relief and excitement.
‘Good show tonight, Grace!’
‘Great first night! That’s going to be hard to beat, eh?’
Grace has imagined the moments after the opening night’s performance more than once, lying awake in her flat, unable to sleep. She has imagined chatter such as this: the ‘well dones’ and the ‘good shows’ from Kate and Shelley and the man with the alarmingly appropriate Scottish accent who is playing Macbeth. She had expected to join them for drinks somewhere, in a stylishly scruffy flat of one of the actors, and return home fulfilled and a little drunk. She had expected to linger over dressing as Grace again, over peeling away Lady Macbeth’s clothes and bravado to reveal herself.
But in incongruous reality, Grace swoops her costume over her shoulders and hurriedly pulls on her jeans and bright pink jumper. She nods along to compliments and bats them back skilfully: ‘you too,’ ‘well done, that was your best performance yet, you know’. And then she says a quick goodbye, and darts out from behind the stage, out into the lighter, brighter world beyond to find Noel. He is waiting for her, alone in a red sea of deserted chairs and sweet wrappers.
‘You came!’ Grace says, throwing her arms around Noel. He is familiar and foreign all at once. Normally, she is able to keep her feelings about Noel tightly wound together, but tonight, something seems to unravel: she feels something spring deep inside herself. For once, Noel, the thought of being with him, being his, shines in her mind and throws everything else into its shadow.
‘Of course I came.’ Noel usually hugs Grace for an instant longer than he should, but tonight he extracts himself from her quickly, making her feel on edge, as though nothing tonight, or ever, will be like she thought it would be. ‘I’ve got some news.’
Chapter Thirty Six
Noel, 2000
‘How’s your day been?’ Bea asked Noel as she sipped her white wine.
‘Good. Really good, actually. I went to that opening of the new branch of Hersey’s Bank and did some networking. I’m going to use it for an article next week. I enjoyed getting out of the office and meeting people.’
Bea frowned in surprise. ‘You enjoyed a party? I hope you’re not bailing on me and becoming all schmoozy.’
Noel shrugged and split open his bread roll. Bea said nothing more, and silence sat between them again.
After leaving Grace in Blackpool to deal with Louisa’s disappearance, Noel had returned to London, to a stern Jack and a desk full of tasks to help him prove himself. He felt like he was still proving himself even now, almost five years on; the opening of Hersey’s was the one event Jack had put Noel forward for in a long time. Jack never spoke of the New York transfer that Noel had turned down: not with words. But Noel saw traces of annoyance in the menial tasks he was given, and could feel resentment float towards him every time he entered Jack’s office.
Noel had tried not to think about the choice he had made. He tried to carry on being there for Grace and his mum. He spoke to Grace on the phone quite a bit when he had returned to London, and even tried to write her a decent letter like she’d asked him to. She had replied to his first few notes, but eventually her replies petered out, and Noel tried to take the sting out of his disappointment at this with the thought that it meant Grace was doing okay and movi
ng on. He continued seeing Cara, until she happily accepted a sudden job offer in Glasgow and moved away one damp March morning. Noel didn’t feel what he thought he was probably meant to feel as Cara rooted around his flat, looking for things she’d left there in the past year or so, then left his front door for the last time. He mainly felt a sense of gloom and monotony. Some other girl would probably be leaving her mixtapes in Noel’s drawers in a couple of months’ time, and coming round to collect them a few more months after that. It had all seemed so pointless.
And now there was Bea.
‘So,’ Noel asked Bea now. ‘How was your day?’
‘It was okay. I have the workshop tomorrow for the school.’ Bea shook her head and her green dangly earrings jangled against her blonde hair. ‘I’m dreading it.’
Bea worked in the local library and was currently embroiled in a new initiative to give workshops on children’s classics to large groups of loud, disinterested children.
‘I mean, I’m not a teacher. I don’t want to be a teacher. I’m not brave enough. I hate that things have to change all the time. The library was doing well without any of the workshop stuff. I don’t see why we have to keep doing them.’
Their starters were placed down, and Noel spread a thick layer of pâté over his bread as Bea continued speaking.
‘I’ve spoken to Pat about it. She doesn’t like it much, either. But there’s not much she can do, I suppose.’
‘Hmm,’ Noel said, and took a bite of bread. ‘Maybe look for work somewhere else if it keeps changing and you don’t like it,’ he said when he’d finished chewing.
Bea looked hurt and Noel wondered why. ‘It’s not that simple. I’ve been there for years. It’s comfortable there.’
‘Well, just see how it goes then. Maybe you’ll get better at the workshops. Maybe you’ll even enjoy them if you stick with it.’
Bea shrugged and stabbed at her melon rather savagely. It was the most aggressive Noel had ever seen her.
