Page 166 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
My throat stings and I nod. I don’t know how he does it—folds himself into my mind, takes all my thoughts and feelings and makes them his too but when I’m with him, I feel lighter. When we’re together, just him and I, we take our clothes off and go skinny dipping in each other's minds.
Arthur angles his face up to mine, brushes his lips against my own and then we spend the entire night wrapped up inside one another. Literally, metaphorically, in all the ways you can think of because he and I, we’re one of the same.
“Oh my god,” I mutter into the night a lot of hours later. “We spent the whole night up here, Arthur.”
He laughs against my head, the fireworks go off in the garden, the seconds of light flickering through his window.
“And it’s been the best birthday I’ve ever had.”
Chapter Forty-One
Lady Phoebe
I left Oxford just as the sun was rising. No one saw me leave, I don’t think. His party wasn’t like his previous ones where there were still people stumbling about two days later.
I called Harold to pick me up about an hour ago. I didn’t want to leave Arthur but I had to. He has some official birthday obligations to attend to today—interviews, photoshoots, dinners—all the shit he hates.
The wind really starts to pick up as I stand by the gates, waiting for Harold. It’s so bitter and all I want is to be warmed up by Arthur’s skin. I smile to myself. We’re a bit like penguins, always huddling up to one another to keep warm—in more ways than the obvious.
Harold pulls up outside of the gates a moment later. Hold my hand up, tell him to wait there without telling him. I do the code on the gate and slide into the backseat.
“Where to?” He smiles, looking at me through the rear view mirror.
“Digby’s, please.”
I don’t know why—it just kind of slipped out. I don’t want to see him. Guilt, maybe? I’ve just rolled out of Arthur’s bed and what now? I’m going to fall back into Digby’s? It’s so tasteless, so uncouth but I never expected it to turn out like this. Not in a million years.
But—I don’t know—there’s just something I gravitate towards with boys who show me the slightest bit of love. Not my parents' fault. More just my fault, I’m sure. I know plenty of girlswho don’t even know who their fathers are and they’re not like me. Freddy isn’t like this and we grew up the same.
Dr.Kane says it’s because I can’t be alone but that sounds mean. Sure, it’s true, I know it is but hearing it makes it real, doesn’t it? We don’t like to hear the truths about ourselves. They fracture the lies we feed ourselves everyday in the mirror. Even if we know they’re lies, there’s still a comfort in it. Truths are so hard to swallow that I’m not sure if they ever even digest properly.
As the car bumps along the country roads, I think about what Arthur told me—a truth so foul that I haven’t even put it inside my mouth, let alone swallowed it. Maybe part of me always knew. Maybe I said all those things about loving him no matter what because I knew one day he would do something terrible. Or maybe I just know that it isn’t entirely his fault. The boy didn’t die at the scene. He died in the hospital, months later. Arthur didn’t walk into his room and pull the plug on him. It wasn’t murder. We could put it in the perspective of the law but then again, the law isn’t fair. When has the law ever been fair?
Wrong place, wrong time.
It might sink in later on but as for now, it just sits peacefully on my chest. Something I can move and shift whenever I want. As strange as it sounds, it feels like another thing tying us together. As if the second he told me, another fine silver string pierced through my heart, grew out of my chest and attached itself, halfway, with the same string that poked through Arthur.
That’s all we are, really. A tangled mess of tiny little knots in fine silver strings.
I get back to London in just over an hour. I say goodbye to Harold and make my way up to Digby’s. I start to feel a bit sick—not unwell—nervous, though. Scared, almost.
I knock twice. He opens the door, his face pale, his eyes dark and his jaw clenched.
“Are you taking the piss out of me?” Is the first thing he says to me.
I move past him in the doorway, walk through to the kitchen and sit at the table.
“No.”
He leans against the counter in his jumper and jeans and runs a hand through his hair. “Where’ve you been?” He sighs, tired.
What’s the point in lying to him now?
“I stayed at Arthur’s.”
He shakes his head, glances to the left and then back to me. His eyes drop and a tiny, sad smile grows on his face. My stomach dips, my throat stings and another slap hits me round the face—not a literal slap from Digby but a metaphorical one. A slap to show me how much of a fucking bitch I’ve been to this poor man who has done nothing but love me.
Digby pulls out the chair opposite me, leans his elbows on the table and claps his hands together. With his eyes cast down, he mutters, “If I ask you one last time will you tell me the truth?”
