Page 115 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
I shrug one shoulder. “At home.” I rest my chin in my hands. “Where’s Astrid?”
His jaw tense for a short, split second. “On her boat.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
He takes a sip from his water. “She’s here, on her own boat, with her own friends.”
Something weird and heavy sits in the pit of my stomach then—I don’t like it. I don’t like her being here. I don’t like him being with her. I don’t like their dates. I don’t like the mere thought of them being anything more than casual friends who go on dates.
I don’t like any of it.
It isn’t right.
I used to think it’d help—him being with someone else now I know that he can be happy on his own (I think?). But the truth is, it isn’t helping. Not now I’ve realised that there was never any spark with Digby. I imagined it all. The whole thing. Digby and I—it was never real. The first kiss, the first time we slept together, the first time I thought he bought me flowers. That picking up of my heartbeat was never there. It was all imagined. When I saw Arthur for the first time on that rooftop, I knew because that’s when I felt it for real and there’s quite a significant difference between something real and fake.
I can’t be happy with Digby so surely—surely—he can’t be happy with Astrid? I mean, Arthur and I, we’re one of the same. Cut from the same body, only placed on this earth to find one another.
“That’s nice for her,” I mutter.
Arthur nods, chest out, back straight and it’s so obvious. So clear that it’s all a facade. When he saw me at Stratton and gave me the key and started being all cocky? Fake. That isn’t him. There’s a thick, plastic sheen over the both of us that we can both very clearly see but for some reason, neither one of us wants to be the first to rip it off so for now, we’ll stay pretending.
To Arthur, I’m happy with Digby.
To me, Arthur is happy with Astrid.
Are we actually?
Are we fuck.
All we’ve wanted since we were kids was each other.
George’s phone rings, he gets up, walks away.
“Here, Athena,” Arthur nods over at her. “You still talk to Josie Tilden?”
She scrunches her face up in pure disgust. “No way! If I started speaking to her again I think George would kill me.”
“Why?” He asks and then I wonder why he’s even asking after her anyway. No one asks after the Tilden’s.
“Well,” Athena flicks her hair over her shoulder. “She was—”
“A great lay,” Albie chimes in.
Athena whacks him on the arm. “Ohmigosh, Albie! Not at the bloody table!”
“She’s literally Summer Robert’s from the O.C reincarnated,” Spencer whispers into my ear. “Summer if she dated Ryan.”
“Apart from George and Athena actually make sense. Summer and Ryan are like, wet socks,” I whisper back.
She nods.
“Anyway,” Athena continues, a bit flustered. “Josie was a creep. Like, she was actually so weird. Even Lottie would say so—in fact, I think anyone would say that about her. She called her housemaid ‘the help’ and took pictures in the bathrooms at Annabel's like it was a sport. She was the epitome of social fucking suicide.”
“Oh, right,” Arthur nods with a small smile.
“Any reason?” She asks.
“Yeah?” I tilt my head at him. “Any reason you’d want to get back in touch with the Tilden’s, Arthur?”
