by Hannah Emery
It’s not my fault, Noel wanted to say. But he didn’t. He topped up the centimetre of wine she’d drunk since they had arrived, and finished his pâté. He didn’t speak again, and neither did Bea. The silence wasn’t awkward, but it was dreary. Noel wondered which was worse.
A tall, ivory candle flickered in the centre of the table as they ate their main courses. Noel ate out a lot with Bea these days. He did what he thought he was meant to do for Bea: he took her on nice walks out of the city and to nice restaurants with candles and wine and clean cutlery with each course. She wore fancy earrings and Noel always wore a shirt. It was all as it should have been, but there was something missing, and ignoring such an absence took more effort than Noel might have imagined, like trying to ignore a missing tooth or finger.
‘Do you want to come and meet my family?’ Noel suddenly asked Bea.
She looked up, and set her knife and fork down together on her plate, which was still half full of tarragon chicken and new potatoes that looked as though they were a little too hard.
‘Your family?’
‘Yes. By my family I suppose I just mean my mum. And the twins I told you about. It’s their twenty-first birthday party this weekend, and I wasn’t going to go, but I think I will. And you should come with me.’
Bea frowned. ‘To Blackpool?’ she said, screwing up her nose a little.
‘Yes. It’ll be nice. My mum’s hired some sort of club for the party. We’ll go Friday night, after work, and come back Sunday night.’
‘I think I’ll have a quiet weekend at home. Pat said she might need me in on Saturday. So I’ll stay here. But you should go.’
Noel shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said, as Bea sliced neatly into a hard potato and popped it into her mouth.
When he arrived back in Blackpool on Friday, Noel instantly looked up at his old bedroom window, as he always did when he pulled his car up onto the kerb. The window was open, the net curtains billowing out like smoke. He wondered if the twins could possibly be getting ready in there. Perhaps they would all go to the party together. He thought about inviting Bea here with him, and guilt mingled with relief as he realised how glad he was that she had said no.
Before he was even at the front door, Mags had rushed out, her hair in rollers, her blue eye make-up a little brighter than usual. She ushered Noel inside, and the scent of smoke and cooked meat and Mags’s scent of mints yanked him back to the past, to Louisa, to the day when Grace had clung to him so tightly he had considered never ever going back to London.
‘Where are the twins?’ he asked as he put his bag down in the hall.
‘Bring that up here,’ Mags gestured to his bag and pointed upstairs. ‘You might as well sleep in your room instead of on the sofa. Elsie and Grace aren’t staying here so much now,’ she explained as she retrieved the bunch of net curtains from their tangle around the window frame and pulled the window shut. ‘I miss them, obviously, but they seem to be doing a lot better this year. That university course they’re doing has really done wonders for them. They’ve made some good friends. Elsie’s even got herself a boyfriend.’ Mags puffed up the pillow on the bed. ‘How’s Bea?’
‘She’s okay. I asked her to come with me this weekend, but she had to work.’
‘That’s a shame. Maybe next time.’
‘So, what time’s the party tomorrow?’
‘Eight. We’ll get there early though. Auntie Sheila’s coming in our car, and Suzie is meeting us there with the balloons.’
Noel felt a tug of anxiety at seeing everyone again. Being in London made it easy to pretend that Louisa had never disappeared, to tell Grace over a crackling phone line that things would be okay, that the huge hole Louisa had left could be somehow patched together. But now, here, Noel realised that being home with family and old friends would make Louisa’s absence sharp and new all over again, even after five years.
‘It will be so strange. Without—’
‘I know,’ Mags said, laying her hand on Noel’s shoulder. She looked up into his eyes for a rare second, before pushing him gently towards the landing. His mother’s eyes were tired. The skin around them was beginning to sag with the weight of time. ‘Come on. Let’s put the kettle on.’
The party was full of people Noel had never seen before, mainly female students with jutting hips and glowing cigarettes attached to their limp fingers. The twins still hadn’t even arrived at 9 p.m.
‘Fashionably late,’ Suzie grinned at Noel. Noel had been sitting in a corner, huddled with Suzie and her husband, Mark, around a small table peppered with bent cardboard coasters, for an hour or so. ‘They’re late to everything,’ she continued, after pausing for a second to sip her lager and lime.
‘Well, Elsie is. Grace is normally on time to things like this. It’s yet another thing that they argue about,’ Mark added, using a generous smile to show that he was joking.
Noel stood up. ‘I think I’ll get another drink. What can I get you all?’
The bar was small, and Noel had to wait for some time to order the drinks. Before he’d ordered, the room gave out a united shout behind him. He turned to look at the door, but couldn’t make out the twins because of the rush of people that had swarmed towards them. The arrival of the birthday girls made the bar suddenly quiet, and Noel was served. As soon as his pint was poured, he pulled it towards him and took a sip. It was warm and not particularly pleasant, but he had another gulp, and another, until he couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer.
The twins had arrived with a tall man who stood slightly in front of them as they chatted to their guests. Elsie’s hair was a bit lighter than it had been the last time Noel had seen her and she looked thinner than she used to be. Grace looked the same to him as she always had: somehow fragile and strong all at once. Her black hair was piled on her head, and she wore a long purple dress.
Noel made himself take a step towards her. He’d grown up with Grace, he reminded himself, and was entitled to go over and spend time with her at her twenty-first birthday party. Leaving his drink on the bar, he wandered over and stood quietly next to the friends Grace was chatting to. As he waited for her, slightly apart from the group, and watched her talk, the years Noel had spent in London having a flat and girlfriends and friends melted away, leaving him as awkward as an adolescent.
The man the twins had arrived at the party with, who Noel presumed to be Elsie’s boyfriend, was in the midst of a histrionic anecdote. He flung his arms here and there, and Noel could hear wisps of various theatrical accents over the music. Elsie laughed hard and clutched the man’s tweed elbow. Grace laughed too, and a strange mixture of emotion gripped Noel: pleasure at seeing her laugh and sorrow that it wasn’t with him.
Finally, once the man had finished his story, and the small crowd that had grown during the little performance had dispersed again, Grace’s eyes moved across the room and stopped when they reached Noel. She smiled: a small, angular smile that was slightly sharper than her twin’s, catlike and delicate. She weaved through the friends who remained next to her. Noel held out his arms and Grace hugged him fleetingly. She smelt different to how she used to, of musk and adulthood, and Noel had a sudden disloyal thought that Grace’s scent was more pleasant than Bea’s, which was always a little too sweet. He hadn’t even known until that moment that he had ever even registered Bea’s scent. But Grace made it impossible not to compare.
‘Noel, I’m so glad you could come. I didn’t know if you would. It’s been absolutely ages since I saw you.’ She turned and beckoned Elsie over. Elsie moved over to them and kissed Noel’s cheek with a professional air about her.
‘Lovely to see you.’
Noel realised then that he’d forgotten to buy the drinks he had offered Suzie and Mark before the twins had arrived. He looked over at them, sitting and waiting politely. He loosened his tie a little, then straightened it again. ‘Can I get you both a drink?’
Elsie nodded. ‘I’ll have a lemonade, please. I’m pacing myself,’ she added
, when Grace looked at her incredulously. She took the hand of the man Noel had presumed to be her boyfriend.
‘Eliot, this is Noel, a family friend. Noel, this is my boyfriend, Eliot.’
‘Hello, hello,’ Eliot said. ‘So you know my girls?’ He dropped Elsie’s hand in order to shake Noel’s. He reminded Noel of the salesmen who worked on the same floor as him in London: a smooth, assured face uncreased by any kind of self-doubt. His tweed suit jacket gaped open to reveal a bright green shirt and matching slim tie.
‘I do know them. Our parents were friends,’ Noel said, immediately regretting mentioning Louisa so early on, or at all. But if Eliot thought Noel was insensitive then he didn’t show it. He put an arm around each of the twins.
‘I was just asking Elsie and Grace if they wanted a drink,’ Noel said to Eliot. ‘Can I get you anything?’
‘That’d be magnificent. What are you drinking, Elsie?’
Elsie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I’m sticking to lemonade for now.’
‘I’ll have a double vodka,’ Grace said, before high-fiving Eliot, who held two fingers up at Noel to indicate that he wanted the same.
When Noel had delivered everybody’s drinks to them, Mags beckoned him over to where she had saved him a seat. He sat down and they watched the party for a while. The venue was a squat, rather stark rugby club. Old photographs of the twins were stuck on the orange walls along with 21st birthday banners, and jostled with faded photographs of rugby teams for attention. The unattractive brown tables were sprinkled with metallic confetti and balloons bounced from the low ceilings. Grace, Elsie and Eliot moved around the room as one, Elsie shadowing Grace and Eliot, basking in their light.
‘So, are you doing okay?’ Noel asked Mags eventually.
She sipped her gin and tonic and shrugged.
‘Are you getting out much?’
Mags laughed. ‘I’m not an invalid, Noel!’
‘I know. I just want to check that you’re happy. I know you still think about Louisa a lot, even after all this time.’
It wasn’t even half an hour since Noel had berated himself for mentioning Louisa in front of the twins, and here he was again, pulling her into the room, pulling her wistful, worried face from the past into the present. But he couldn’t help it. Now that he was in Blackpool, Noel’s mind was filled with Louisa and Grace and the past. Now he was here, he couldn’t even remember what he talked about in London with his colleagues and friends. Things that didn’t matter, he supposed, as he waited for Mags to respond. He watched her lined face crease up with emotion before she answered.
‘I’m okay.’ Mags squeezed Noel’s hand. ‘I do think about her, all the time. I wonder if she’ll ever come back.’
Noel swallowed and scratched his head. He watched Grace across the room. Her expressions and movements showed a small but perceptible growth in confidence since her mother had disappeared.
‘The twins seem to think she won’t come back. Elsie thinks she left, and I think Grace believes she’s dead,’ Mags paused at the black, unthinkable word. ‘I just don’t know. I still don’t know. Louisa talked to you a lot, didn’t she?’ Mags said, suddenly facing Noel.
‘A long time ago, yes. When I was much younger. She used to talk to me about whatever book I was reading.’
‘So you didn’t talk about anything else?’
Noel frowned. ‘Nothing she won’t have told you. You were her best friend. I was just a little boy.’
‘You were like a son to her,’ Mags said as she downed the last of her drink and pushed her glass to the centre of the grimy table. ‘I don’t know where that left me.’
‘Like a mother to the twins, I suppose.’
They sat there for a few moments longer, watching, thinking, remembering.
After sitting with Suzie, Mags, Mark and Noel picking at a lukewarm buffet and talking about their university courses, Grace and Elsie were pulled onto the small dance floor by their friends. They both moved self-consciously, Grace a little more freely, their faces and bodies pocked with garish disco lights. Eliot danced with them, twirling them around alternately. The dance floor was full and occasionally spewed out a few unlucky dancers onto the carpet beyond, out of the spotlight.
When the chaotic dance music changed without warning to a slow set of songs, Grace wound her way through the couples to the bar. Eliot began to follow, but was pulled back by Elsie. He put his arms around her, his face in an expression of mock torture, and they danced slowly, hanging onto one another, smiling out at the people who watched them. Grace stood still on the sidelines, watching her sister. Her mouth was in the shape of a smile but there was something missing in her expression, a blankness, until a girl drenched in tattoos threw her arms around Grace and dragged her to the dance floor to dance to the last part of I Will Always Love You. Grace grinned widely then, but Noel could see that no matter which way she was pulled by her friend, her eyes were always on her sister and Eliot.
‘Noel, it’s been so lovely to see you. I’m going now,’ Suzie said, after tapping Noel on the shoulder and giving him a brief hug. She yawned and wriggled into her coat. ‘I’m at work early tomorrow.’
Mark stood and shook Noel’s hand. ‘Nice to see you again. You up here much these days?’
‘No. I always mean to visit Blackpool more,’ Noel said, glancing over at Grace, who was being spun around wildly by her friend to the last song. She caught Noel’s eye at that moment and he patted Mark on the shoulder in farewell, then began to move towards her.
When Grace saw Noel, she beckoned for him to join her. He took her hand as she held it out.
‘I’m so glad you came!’ Grace yelled in Noel’s ear, then moved her face level with his. Her breath was heavy with alcohol, and Noel saw a haze in her expression. Her eyes were heavily made up with black make-up which had begun to fall in crumbs under her bottom eyelashes.
‘Me too.’
Grace held onto Noel tightly and rested her head on his shoulder. As he swayed with her, he knew that she was facing Eliot and he knew that she was staring at him. They continued to sway for a while, until Eliot and Elsie began to kiss and Grace snapped around and pushed Noel away.
‘Another drink?’ Grace asked. The lights flicked on and she rubbed her left eye, causing a smudge of black to dart across her cheek.
Noel craned his neck to look at the bar. Sullen staff waited, their bar cleared and ready to be closed. ‘I think your party’s over,’ he said as gently as he could. He knew people got upset about the end of their own parties, although having never thrown one, he couldn’t say that he really, fully understood.
Grace looked up at him and Noel found himself wanting to touch her, to wipe the smudge of make-up from her cheek. He lifted his hand, not caring for that moment about Grace being younger and apparently consumed by Eliot, about him having Bea waiting for him at home, just aching to touch her warm, powdery cheek. But in the instant that Noel raised his fingers, Grace turned her head to see if Eliot was watching them. Noel’s hand fell away, back down to his side, and Grace, her gaze fixed on her sister’s boyfriend, noticed nothing.
Noel slept late at his mum’s the next day, and by the time he had showered and eaten the huge cooked breakfast that Mags insisted on making him, it was near to 1 p.m. The blank day stretched in front of him as he realised with a jolt that he had no plans. When the phone rang, Mags jumped up from the table and rushed out of the room to answer it.
‘Yes, he’s still here,’ Noel heard her say from the hall after a few seconds. He stood, wondering if Bea had somehow got his mum’s number, but before he reached the phone, Mags returned to the room.
‘Was the phone for me?’ Noel asked.
‘Yes. Grace. She’s on her way round.’
Noel suddenly felt as though he’d eaten too many sausages, or that perhaps the bacon his mum had proudly piled on his plate had been out of date. ‘What for?’
Mags shrugged. ‘Probably just wants to see you.’
&n
bsp; Noel thought of Bea, and their stilted conversations. He thought of the too-sweet-smelling lotion that she kept by her side of the bed and spread over her hands each night. Her hands were always so soft and immaculately manicured. She said that handling the library books all day dried out her skin if she wasn’t careful. Even if she stayed over at Noel’s, she brought the hand lotion with her and set it on the bedside table. It irritated him like mad, and he didn’t even know why.
‘Best do your hair, love,’ Mags said, interrupting Noel’s thoughts and making him feel sixteen again.
When the doorbell rang about half an hour later, Noel could see Grace through the frosted glass in the front door. She was holding something, although he couldn’t make out what it was. When he let Grace into the hall, the item in her hands revealed itself as a black lever arch file.
‘Noel, I’m so glad you’re still here,’ Grace said as he gestured for her to come in. ‘What with our birthday party and everything, I totally forgot about an essay that I have to finish by Monday. It’s 3,000 words on A Streetcar Named Desire. I know you did really well at uni. Will you help me?’
Noel sunk onto the sofa and Grace dropped down next to him and he could smell smoke and the heavy, musky perfume she’d been wearing the night before.
‘Did you have a good time last night?’ he asked Grace as she opened the file.
‘Yeah. I did. Feel rough now though, and I can barely remember any of it. I’d planned to stay in bed all day,’ she wrinkled her nose, ‘but unless I want to fail my module on American drama, I can’t do that.’
‘Grace, I have to say that I know nothing about the play you just mentioned, or anything you’ll be expected to write about in your essay. Why don’t you ask Elsie? Or Eliot?’ he added, the thought paining him.
‘Because Elsie’s already handed hers in, and I told her that I’d finished mine too, so I didn’t look bad. And Eliot won’t even start his till Sunday night. He’ll be in bed all day today, and my essay will be the absolute last thing on his mind,’ she finished with a dry laugh. ‘He can get away with writing his essays at the last minute. He’ll finish his in an hour and then get a better mark than anyone in our group. If I leave it any longer, then I’ll fail, but I’m not inspired to do it,’ she ended, putting her head in her hands. Her hair spilled through her fingers in black tangles and Noel wondered if she had brushed it since last night.
