Secrets in the Shadows

by Hannah Emery

  ‘What is?’ Eliot is shouting now and Grace shuts her eyes for a minute. She wonders if she should just tell him. What would he say if she did?

  It’s me you’re meant to marry. You have the wrong twin.

  She contemplates for a moment, her head burning. Then she snatches her bag and coat from the floor next to the counter and pushes the keys into Eliot’s willowy chest, hoping that they jab him and hurt him.

  ‘Fine. Look after the shop for me then.’

  She walks to the wedding dress shop, her breaths short and sharp with adrenaline. She doesn’t know why she didn’t just stay calm when Eliot asked her about her lack of interest in the wedding. Grace used to be so good at staying calm when she was young. Now, her temper is her worst fault. It is as though playing the part of Elsie for all these years, since Elsie began to be sadder and quieter, has made Grace actually morph into her twin.

  The rain drives down onto Grace’s hair. She pulls it and twists it down one side of her head and into her red coat as she edges closer to the wedding dress shop in the square. She knows its exact location: Elsie points it out every single day. The moment that Grace enters and is surrounded by cream, rustling trains and cabinets of glittering tiaras, and the huge, luxurious changing room that Elsie has described so many times, Grace knows that Eliot was right and that she should be here.

  She asks the blonde woman behind the counter if Elsie is having her dress fitting, but before the woman can answer, Elsie is shouting her. Grace can hear her voice, even though she can’t see Elsie anywhere.

  ‘Grace, is that you?’

  The curtain of the changing room sweeps open and there stands Elsie in her wedding dress. Although Elsie looks more beautiful than Grace has ever seen her, although the simple ivory tulle and veil stitched with tiny, blinking stones make Elsie look like somebody Grace never thought her sister would be, it’s the expression of happiness and hope on Elsie’s face that makes Grace’s eyes fill with tears.

  ‘I thought I heard your voice! I can’t believe you came,’ Elsie says, taking a step towards her twin.

  They hug, in a distant way so that Grace doesn’t get Elsie’s dress wet, and Grace notices that Elsie smells different to how she usually does: more gentle and floral. She’s suddenly somebody that Grace doesn’t recognise. She’s the person that Eliot could make her, if Grace wasn’t here to ruin things.

  After a moment, Elsie steps back, suddenly self-conscious. She motions down to her dress. The train isn’t long, yet is unmistakable. Elsie’s hair, normally falling around her face in layered chunks, is piled in an elaborate coil.

  ‘What do you think? Is it okay? I know I probably should have told Mags I would have Mum’s old dress and worn it instead of trying to give it to you, but I didn’t want to spend my wedding wearing something old that reminded me of the past. I took the dress home like you asked me to, but I definitely don’t want to wear it. I want to move on.’

  ‘You look incredible, Elsie. It’s all perfect. I completely understand about you not wearing Mum’s dress. We should have talked more about it when I made you take it home, but I couldn’t bear to bring it up for some reason. I’m so sorry I haven’t been much help lately.’ There, Grace thinks, she has said it. And it didn’t even hurt. She feels a tug of anger at herself for being so reluctant to get involved in the wedding, and an equal reluctance to apologise for all these months.

  Elsie snorts, ruining, for a moment, the image of the perfect bride. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I prefer doing things on my own.’

  ‘But this is your wedding. And I should have been there with you, planning. I’m sorry. Things will change, you know.’

  Elsie takes Grace’s hand, and as she pulls it towards her, Grace feels the brush of her sister’s soft wedding dress. ‘You’re here now. So they already have.’

  Elsie wants to leave it there, Grace can see that. But Grace wants to pull some more at their wound, and tell Elsie everything: about the visions, about how Grace is going to try to ignore them and not be led through a life that might not even be hers. She wants to tell Elsie about the old postcard that she found with her mother’s things, and the words on it:

  Our daughter will have my gift. She will see what should be and what will be. She must use it wisely.

  She wants to tell Elsie that she has tried to use the gift wisely, but that it’s just too difficult when she knows she should marry Eliot, and that the person she wants to be with is Noel, and Noel is nowhere in the visions of her future, because he is moving to New York.

  But Grace doesn’t do any of this. For once, she does what Elsie needs her to do, and wants her to do, and leaves it.

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Grace, 2009

  The wedding flies towards them all after Elsie’s final dress fitting. The wedding and reception are both booked at The Fortuna Hotel on North Promenade. Elsie likes the echoes of grandeur in the hotel: the sweeping staircase, the high, ornately coved ceilings and the Victorian furniture. Some of the rooms are a little tatty, but Elsie doesn’t care about that, and Eliot thinks that it adds to the hotel’s charm.

  The morning of the wedding, Grace arrives at The Fortuna early to help Elsie get ready. Elsie and Eliot stayed the night at the hotel together, together, flouting tradition.

  ‘Eliot’s gone for the morning,’ Elsie says as she ushers Grace into the shabby bridal suite. Grace tries not to notice the peeling wallpaper and concentrates on what Elsie is saying. ‘He said he might go to the bar and have some Dutch courage. I hope he doesn’t drink too much. You don’t think he will, do you?’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll let you down, Elsie,’ Grace says. If Eliot were marrying her, she thinks, and not Elsie, he would probably drink all morning. And so would Grace.

  ‘I don’t think he will either, to be honest. He’s been so much help in the shop the last few months. Things have gone quite well recently. I really think he’s the one who is meant to be my husband.’

  Grace is silent. Today is the day that they will both move on. Grace wonders what Noel is doing, and wishes that she was moving on with him.

  ‘Anything from Noel on his big America move?’ Elsie says, making Grace’s head shoot up from the faded swirling roses on the carpet.

  ‘How did you know I was thinking about him?’

  Elsie taps the side of her nose, and Grace notices her sister’s manicured nails. The tips are pearl white, which contrasts with the glossy pink nail.

  ‘Perhaps Mum isn’t the only one who had a gift.’

  Grace swallows and stands nervously, until Elsie prods her.

  ‘Grace, relax. I’m the one who’s meant to be nervous today! I definitely don’t have any kind of weird gift. All I know is that for years and years, I have known that Noel is in love with you. And now I get the feeling that it’s finally mutual. But I didn’t have to be psychic to work it out,’ she laughs, ‘I just had to get you thinking about weddings and future husbands!’

  Grace feels light and relieved. ‘Okay. I’ll admit it. I care about Noel a lot. But he’s moving so far away, I’m trying not to think too much about it.’

  Elsie nods and sighs, and Grace knows that it’s a sigh of relief that she has found a husband and isn’t in the murky water of uncertainty that Grace is always swimming through.

  If only she knew, thinks Grace, that I am certain of who I was meant to marry, and that she is marrying him instead.

  But as she watches Elsie glide over to her wedding dress and admire her naked wedding finger in anticipation of the ring it will soon bear, the gradual realisation that Elsie is the one who is really meant to marry Eliot rises up through Grace. She knows, as she watches Elsie descend the once regal staircase of The Fortuna towards Eliot with her wedding dress sweeping behind her, that Elsie brings out the best in him, and that Grace brought out the worst. She knows that Elsie is going to be happy, if Grace just manages to let them have their own wedding day without claiming it as hers.

  As she sits and eats her c
hicken and seasonal vegetables, and toasts the bride and groom with her water, Grace wonders why she was given the gift that her mother had. She reaches in her little purple bag that matches her violet bridesmaid dress and pulls out Rose’s postcard as everybody else taps into their flaky pools of meringue. She places the card onto her satin knee and looks down at it discreetly.

  It’s too late now. You have come back, but it’s too late. You chose comfort over love, money over me. Our daughter will have my gift. She will see what should be and what will be. She must use it wisely.

  Grace doesn’t know why she brought the postcard with her: she can remember everything on it. But something made her want to keep it with her the night she found it, and she’s been carrying it with her ever since.

  Her mother hadn’t used the gift wisely. But how could she, when it sent her spiraling into a dark, frightening madness? Perhaps it wasn’t a gift after all. Perhaps it was a curse.

  Grace takes a short, sharp breath and then tears the postcard into two. The paper rips easily, softly, weakened with time.

  She takes out her phone and taps out a short message, hoping it’s not too late.

  I love you.

  After the first dance, which would have been awkward were it not for Eliot’s smooth confidence, and the cutting of a leaning white cake, Grace sits in a corner of The Fortuna’s Empire Room with a Coke and wonders if she should order something stronger. Mags, Suzie, Sheila, an old couple who are apparently Mags’s cousins – a wiry man called Jimmy who Grace remembers meeting when she was very young, and a woman called Priscilla, or Penny, or something similar, and their son, a man with hair the colour of carrots – are all swaying about on the dance floor, all pretending that they are much younger than they really are. Usually, Grace would lead a chaotic takeover of the dance floor. Usually, Grace would slosh her drink over people’s toes and slur apologies. But tonight, Grace sits quietly and observes. She feels better for it. She remembers when she was a child, when she always used to be the quiet one. After Elsie fell silent and cross for so many years, Grace learned to talk more than she wanted, to cover up her sister’s sullenness. And as soon as Grace had found the things that made her feel like doing this: Eliot and alcohol, she had clung to them like a possessive toddler clings to his favourite toy. Now, watching Elsie swing about with Eliot, clutching her tulle sides and laughing, Grace sees that she no longer has a sullen sister to make up for.

  So she sits quietly, feeling like herself once more, until she sees somebody that makes her forget who she was and is and will be.

  There, shaking Eliot’s hand and kissing Elsie on the cheek, is Noel.

  Grace shoots up from her seat, leaving the torn postcard behind on her table and rushes over to him. He smiles at Grace when she reaches him and takes his phone from his pocket.

  ‘I got your message,’ he says. Grace can see from his dishevelled hair and stubble that he didn’t think through coming here. He didn’t plan it out. He just came.

  ‘I was on my way here anyway when I saw it. I realised how hard today would be for you,’ he says in her ear as she slowly puts her arms around his neck. They sway about to a slow song that has come on, and Grace sees Elsie and Eliot watching Noel, looking at the way he is holding Grace. She shuts her eyes for a moment to block them out. All she wants to think about is Noel, and that he came here for her.

  ‘I can’t get in the way of New York again. I know you didn’t go last time because of me,’ Grace says after a few moments.

  ‘You won’t get in the way, Grace. We’ll work it out.’

  Grace rests her head on Noel’s shoulder and wonders what will happen. She wonders if she will go to live in New York with him, or if she will go for long holidays, or if Noel will come back in a year or two. She wonders if she will give her share of Ash Books to Eliot and find work in America or somewhere else. She wonders if she will become an actress. She wonders if she will be with Noel until she is an old lady, and manage to be a wife to him and a mother to his children. She wonders if she is doing the right thing, for herself and her twin and their mother and her mother.

  But as Grace moves next to Noel with the lights dimming around them, there are no sudden flashes of pain and knowledge, no visions of the future, no certainties.

  Everything, for this moment, is as it should be.

  Outside, the sea purrs and the glimmer of purple dances happily on the waves.

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014

  Copyright © Hannah Emery 2014

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  ISBN: 9780007568796

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