The Graces (6 page)

I walked home in the sparkling aftermath of the rain, every grass blade like green glass. It took me a good half-hour to get to the council estate I lived on from the riverbank, but somehow I couldn’t stand the thought of being cooped up on a bus. I wanted to grin stupidly into the air, where no one could see me.

Because Summer had said she wanted me to bring overnight stuff.

‘Overnight stuff?’ I’d repeated, puzzled.

‘Yeah. You know, dolt. To stay over? I want to watch some films, and it’ll probably get pretty late, so you should just stay. We’ll feed you. It’ll be fun.’

Overnight.

No one that I knew of ever got to go to their house, least of all for the night.

‘Check with your parents that you can stay over, right?’ she yelled over her shoulder as she left. ‘Don’t
be ages. I want hot chocolate.’

I turned into my estate, the smell of wet concrete crawling up my nose. Two kids were nudging a ball about, trying to boot it into puddles, squealing with laughter whenever either of them got sprayed.

I’d insisted on Summer letting me go home first to change, and when I finally looked in a mirror, I was glad I had. My hair had separated into scruffy rattails and clung to my skull. My makeup tracked down my cheeks. I did not pull off wet chic.

The house had that special quiet that meant I was alone. My mother was on a crazy shift pattern again at the warehouse where she worked. I sent her a text that just said, ‘Staying overnight with some friends, back in the morning.’ I wondered if she’d reply this time, but my mood was too good for that kind of thinking, so I pushed on the thought carefully until it scuttled away. I let thoughts of Summer and films and food and pretending to be a Grace, just for a night, grow and grow in my head until there was no room for anything else.

As I packed my rucksack, I pictured Niral’s face when she found out.

Overnight in the same house as Fenrin.

I hopped on the bus that took me towards school, and then skirted round the back of the sports field and walked onward for a while longer as instructed,
until roads turned into potholed lanes, and buildings dwindled out into spartan landscape.

Summer was waiting for me at the top of the rocky track that ran to her house. I was glad to see her familiar shape against the lowering sky – I was beginning to think I’d gone the wrong way and the wilderness would simply swallow me up. The smell of clean, wet plants filled the air as I followed her back down. I breathed it in, and then stopped abruptly as we reached the bottom.

‘It’s not going to bite you,’ said Summer, her voice teasing.

I stood, my rucksack dangling from my shoulder, looking up at the house.

It was beautiful, a fairytale place. It was everything my life was not.

Summer led me up the drive, and I tipped my head further and further back as we neared, trying to keep the whole place framed in my gaze. Three storeys of pale stone and dark wood. Windows with shutters that were neatly pinned back against the walls. Ivy and a purple climber plant, which Summer called virgin’s bower, snaked across the front brick, its leaves wagging in the wind.

I saw winking aquamarine stones in the white stone pots that lined the paved path to the front door.
I saw a wooden wind chime hanging from a black iron handle set into one wall. A fat silver horseshoe nailed over the lintel. Gardens stretching around the side of the house, hedges tangled with blooming creepers, white flowers like little lilies. I saw everything; all the little details they’d probably been taking for granted their entire lives.

Inside, the hallway had an airy coolness to it. Summer led me to the bottom of the stairs, but I hesitated.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’ll go to my room, dump your stuff. Are you hungry?’

‘I could eat.’ I could always eat.

The staircase creaked as I put my foot on it. It felt like the house was warning me, like it was alive. We passed a windowsill housing a thin, hammered metal bowl full of strips of bark and shiny chestnuts. Dangling from the top of the frame was a bunch of dried herbs, hanging upside down from a wrap of thin leather that reminded me of the kind Fenrin always wore on his wrists.

Then we were on the first floor. Summer pushed open her door, and we went inside her room.

My first shocked thought was that it was messy and imperfect. I’d expected lots of black, and heavy textures like velvet and oak. What I got was a jumble
of colours and clothes everywhere. Mismatched chairs and posters for arthouse-looking films next to prints of cartoons I watched when I was a kid. Beaded lamps. A purple-and-pink rug.

‘The inner sanctum,’ said Summer, spreading her arms wide, but underneath the dry tone I thought she looked nervous, like she might fail a test. That was all wrong. I was the one taking tests here. Every minute I spent in their company was loaded with my concentration, my constant study in how to make them like me.

‘It’s great,’ I ventured, and her shoulders relaxed. Her desk was underneath the window, scattered with notebooks and pens and hair clips and bottles of nail varnish. It was all so jarringly normal, until I caught sight of what looked like thick parchment fastened to one wall, with two long columns of tiny gems that jutted out from its surface. I moved closer. The gems had holes bored through their centres and were sewn straight onto the parchment. Next to each one was a description in carefully printed handwriting.

‘Rose quartz’, read the description for a dusky pink stone. ‘Love, both romantic and platonic. Intimacy and friendship.’

‘Yeah,’ said Summer. ‘It’s this handmade gift we all got from our parents when we were, like, ten. It’s just
this family tradition. Different gems supposedly have specific attributes.’

I tried to imagine the gem parchment on Fenrin’s wall. I tried to imagine Fenrin’s room.

We went down to the kitchen. It was cavernous, tiled in warm colours, every wall taken up by white-painted cabinets with pretty glass panels. The thick wooden countertops were covered in boxes, tubs, pie dishes with cloths draped over them, fat vegetables stacked into corners, wooden bowls of nuts and shiny round fruit.

‘This is like a food
palace
,’ I said. I don’t think I managed to hide my envy.

‘Well, with the ravenous pack of animals in this house, it never stays that way for long,’ said a rich voice behind me. I turned.

Standing next to Summer was her mother, Esther Grace, and around her all the light seemed to gather. Up close, she was Thalia but to an almost unbearable degree. Her blonde hair hung round her body in untamed rivulets, and every part of her was
flow
and
ripple
, and yes,
grace
.

She smiled. ‘Summer never brings friends home, so I made sure she told me all about you.’

It was said to be flattering, but Summer had an odd look on her face, and I thought maybe there
was an undercurrent to the sentence; something I couldn’t see.

‘Thank you for having me,’ I said.

‘Oh, any time. We’ve always got friends or family staying, so we’re quite used to it,’ she said, waving one arm absently. She wore jangling bangles like Thalia, or maybe it was that Thalia wore bangles like her. Just for a moment, I tried to imagine what it would be like to have her as a mother.

Intense, I decided. How could you ever measure up to someone so seemingly flawless?

‘Help yourself to anything,’ said Esther, indicating the countertops. ‘I’ve got to make a load more food anyway, for when the Grigorovs arrive—’

‘This house is just
full
of gorgeous women.’ Fenrin sauntered past us all, dressed in a steel-grey T-shirt that hugged his arms. I watched as his long golden fingers selected a peach from a bowl. I tried to look completely unaffected by the fact that he was there.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘What are we all hanging around for? Isn’t this film night, in honour of our guest?’ He bit into the peach and winked at me while chewing. Juice ran down his chin. It was simultaneously the sexiest and most embarrassing thing I’d ever seen. Did he just have that Grace trait of seeming as if it hadn’t occurred to him to care what he looked like?

Was he flirting with me?

‘Don’t you have an elsewhere to be?’ Summer teased.

‘Nope.’

‘Well, you’re not invited to film night.’

‘Oh, really? Aren’t you totally planning to use my room?’

‘Of course. It’s the biggest, and you’re the only one with a TV.’

‘So never mind being invited, I’m the goddamn host.’

‘He shouldn’t even
have
a TV in his room,’ said Esther mildly. She’d crossed to the huge double fridge and was fishing inside it. ‘And I had no idea you were going to be wasting the evening glued to that idiot box.’

I caught a glance between Fenrin and Summer.

‘Gwydion okayed the TV,’ Fenrin protested. ‘And I barely switch it on.’ They seemed like they were only mock fighting, but Fenrin’s eyes were alarmed.

‘Your father has the potential to be wrong about things,’ came Esther’s voice from the fridge.

‘That’s true,’ Summer said. Fenrin shot her a deadly look. She gave him the finger.

‘Come on,’ he said, impatiently. ‘Films to choose. Plans to make.’

‘Where’s Thalia?’

‘Already upstairs.’

Summer danced off, and I followed. Fenrin was behind us. I had a feeling he was grinning at my back. Was he looking at me? I tried to walk normally. Then I tried to sway a little more than usual. Then I panicked at how that might look and stopped. He caught up with me halfway to the first-floor landing.

‘You call your father Gwydion and your mother Esther,’ I said, for conversation.

‘Those are their names.’

‘Yes, but. You don’t call them Dad or Mum or anything?’

‘It’s reductive and twee,’ called Summer over her shoulder. ‘Parents have names. Being a mother or father is not their sole occupation.’

Fenrin shrugged. ‘They never liked it. We’re just used to it now.’

We went up the next flight of stairs to the top floor. Summer opened a door and disappeared inside. I followed.

Fenrin’s room.

The first thing I said was, ‘Christ, you have your own fridge up here.’

‘Fen’s the darling child, the only son,’ said Thalia, who was sitting on his bed, leafing through a book. ‘He gets whatever he wants.’ Her feet were bare, with
tiny silver toe rings and soft plaited bracelets wrapped around her ankles.

‘Don’t listen to her,’ said Fenrin.

His room had a sloping ceiling lined with dark wooden beams, sitting snug under the eaves of the house. He called it the eyrie. In contrast to Summer’s room, it was clean and bright. There were discs of polished stone propped carefully up against surfaces, and shells scattered on his windowsill. Thick, sea-blue curtains were held back with rope. The same gem parchment was up on his wall. I went to it and ran my fingers over the little gemstones, reading the descriptions, trying to commit them to memory.

Summer hauled me over to look through their horror-film collection, while Thalia and Fenrin went back downstairs for the food. There was some dark stuff in that collection, and I’ve never had a stomach for horror, but I wanted to please Summer, so I asked her which were her favourites, and she talked through them animatedly. We chose three, and then Summer put on some music she’d just bought. I tried to like it.

‘What about this one?’ she bellowed over the noise.

I gave her a weak thumbs up.

‘STOP THE RACKET,’ roared Fenrin as he came back into the room, arms laden with plates and bowls. He put everything down and leapt on Summer, who
was defending the stereo with her life. I watched them as Thalia started spreading food out on the floor. I watched Thalia. I watched them all and felt an ache for something I couldn’t name.

Thalia opened the fridge, brought out a bottle of wine and started pouring.

‘Oh, thank god,’ said Fenrin. ‘Let’s get trashed.’ He swiped the glass from her and perched on his bed, sipping.

‘Your parents let you keep alcohol in your room?’ I said, surprised.

Thalia looked up from her pouring. ‘We’ve been drinking at family parties since we were, like, fourteen. And we have wine with dinner, sometimes. They’re not as narrow-minded as some people.’

Her voice had a mildly superior air to it. This was a semi-regular occurrence with Thalia.

‘I think they figured a long time ago that if we were going to drink, we might as well do it openly rather than secretly,’ Summer said. ‘Only in the house, though.’

‘You guys don’t go out to bars or clubs or anything?’

There was a short pause.

Fenrin tried to grin. ‘We have, how do I put it, control-freak parents? They don’t enjoy letting us range too far out of their sight.’

‘Oh, what’s the point of bars and clubs, anyway?’ Summer interrupted. ‘They never play the music I like. I want to be comfortable. I want to surround myself with people who actually interest me.’

Thalia handed me a glass. It was cold against my fingers. I sniffed it cautiously.

‘You don’t smell it, you drink it,’ said Summer.

Thalia grinned. ‘She’s being a connoisseur. You know, smell, swirl, taste, spit.’

‘I don’t know anything about wine,’ I protested. ‘I’ve drunk it, like, once before.’

‘Seriously? What do you usually drink?’ said Thalia.

‘Vodka.’

Fenrin laughed. ‘The girl takes her alcohol seriously.’

‘Wine is a better buzz,’ said Thalia. ‘Spirits are just … bleurgh.’

Common
, I think she wanted to say.

Fenrin put on some different music. I turned to him in surprise. ‘I love this band.’

‘Oh god, you pop conformists,’ Summer groaned.

Fenrin snorted. ‘Whatever.
She
knows good music when she hears it.’ He nodded to me.

‘Don’t blame her for your bad taste.’

Thalia interrupted. ‘Have you chosen the films then, or what?’

Summer put the first one on. And we drank.

I had settled at the foot of the bed. Fenrin was draped on top of it, furthest away. Every time the mattress rustled, I wanted to look round. They were like yowling cats throughout, lounging and shifting and eating and talking over the film. I missed half of it, but I didn’t care. This was what it was like to be one of them. This was what they must do all the time.