Page 125 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
I nudge her again. “So are you actually not going to tell me?”
“Of course I’m bloody not!”
I finish the rest of my smoothie, push the glass away and then rest my chin in my hand, staring out onto the sea as we make our way over to my house for the rest of the summer.
“George dragged Arthur away from me for something.”
“Yeah?”
I turn to her. “Do you know what about?”
She shrugs her lips, shakes her head. “I never know their business.”
“George doesn’t tell you?”
She looks at me like I’m crazy. “If he told me, I wouldn’t be safe.”
I sit up straighter, stare at her. “And you don’t ask questions?”
“I know he’s in the racket business—”
“Racketeering.”
“—Whatever, but that’s all I need to know.”
“You’re not scared?”
“About what?”
I laugh. “I don’t know—your safety, your life, your future kids?”
She shakes her head, swift and sure. “No. My parents wouldn’t let me go with someone like him if they knew he wouldn’t be able to keep me safe. I’m already a target, Phoebe. I’ve had a red dot on my back since the day I was born with my dad being who he is and the twins around. Everyone knows that me and him are dating, it’s not a secret. But I think you forget that I grew up in the same space as him. It’d be different if someone like you started dating him—don’t get any ideas, you nymph—because you truly have no idea. What’s the worst that could happen to me? I get killed? I have a hundred men who would jump in front of a bullet for me.”
My eyebrows jump to my hairline. “So is it like real James Bond stuff?”
She throws her head back, laughs. “No! It’s more kept within their own community nowadays. They’re not worldwide drug lords.”
“You sure about that?”
She looks uncertain for a second. “Fine, they’re not world wide villains, then.”
Arthur walks past us, Athena gets up to leave but he doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even look at me. Head down, speed walks right inside. My heart crawls up my throat because surely he wouldn’t get involved with them, would he? That isn’t him. There’s too much on the line for him. But then again, I never thought he’d start shooting heroin so maybe he would? But why? The twins would never involve any of us, anyway.
I want to go after him, talk about it but then I remember that isn’t really my place anymore. I think my place for him is to just be there, naked and waiting like I would in school. Not just a body—no—but maybe just an antidote to dilute the poison in his brain?
∗ ∗ ∗
Both Connie and Spencer emerge from their respective bedrooms just as we pull into the dock in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. No one says anything to them and they say nothing to us so we all start busying ourselves by loading our combined sixteen luggage cases into the town cars waiting for us.
“Do you not think it’s a bit extra that we didn’t just drive from Monaco over here?” Arthur asks me.
I throw him a look over my shoulder. “No?” I tilt my head at him. “Nice sunglasses.”
He smiles, slides them off the top of his head and onto his face. “Someone with excellent taste bought them for me.”
They are really nice sunglasses, anyway. Vintage—1980–gold and black aviators and I know that they’re only sunglasses but at the same time, they’re not? I buy—or bought—him lots of stuff. All kinds of things. Expensive, cheap, wearable, inanimate, meaningless, edible, fragile—doesn’t matter. I buyeveryone I love lots of things because that way, they’ll always have it. Sure, they might lose it but you can always find it or rebuy it again. You can’t find or rebuy lost memories. My gifts are like physical reminders of memories.
I bought those glasses here, actually—that’s the memory attached to them. We were fourteen, staying here for a week during the summer before going into year ten and probably way too young to be in a different country all on our own. But everyone’s parents agreed because well, it was me, my house—and really, none of our parents have ever had the time or patience to say no about anything, even when they really should’ve.
