Page 181 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
“There’s nothing wrong with your hips,” she shakes her head. Comes marching up the stairs, goes past me and into her bedroom.
I follow her into her wardrobe where she studies some new designs she’s been brainstorming on mannequins. “No,” she mutters to herself. “What are you feeling?” She turns to me.
I huff. “I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you’re feeling and then we can go from there.”
“I don’t know what I’m feeling!”
“Bloated, perhaps?” Cynthia chimes in at the doorway. “Been eating a lot of pasta lately?”
I turn around to face her. “You have Ozempic face, Cynthia. I wouldn’t be talking if I were you.” I brush past her, back into my bedroom.
Mum flounces in, Cynthia behind her. “What about black? Black dress, Manolo Mary Jane’s?”
“It’s my birthday, not a funeral!”
“Calm down,” she rolls her eyes at me before disappearing inside my wardrobe.
Cynthia stands at my door, staring at me again.
“Stop doing that you freak.”
“I’m not doing anything,” she smiles. “You’re the one who’s been doing the do.”
“You’re senile, you know that? Mum should put you in a home.”
“How’s your sister?”
I swallow. “Why don’t you use your fucking magic and teleport over there and find out?”
She scoffs, crosses her arms over her chest. Mum comes out of my wardrobe with some more dress options and eventually, I find something. A basic black mini dress, the Mary Jane’s and my 2002 Christian Dior trench. It’s fine. It works.
“Thank you,” I smile at my mum before I leave.
She brings me in, kisses the top of my head. Cynthia joins in, too. I let her because she’s old and we’re her only family which is sad but also I’m kind of grateful because if she had a family of her own, then we wouldn’t be her family.
I kept my birthday simple this year. Intimate. Hired out Le Pont de la Tour by Tower Bridge. I invited everyone you expected me to plus a few extras because Mum felt bad.
When I get out of the car, the paparazzi are rife so I push my sunglasses over my face, head down and beeline it into the restaurant. Everyone’s so happy and so excited for me and there’s a table in the corner stacked high with presents and gift bags. I’m happy too, I think.
There’s something different about my birthday this year, though. Maybe it was this morning or maybe it’s this past year. Maybe I feel like I’m running out of time but I felt like that when I was sixteen and seventeen and eighteen and nineteen so I don’t think you ever stop feeling like that.
Actually, what I think it is, is when I find Arthur through the crowds of people wishing me a happy birthday. His eyes lock on mine and he raises his glass of water over at me. And isn’t this just so typical for us? A room full of people but we still manage to find one another. I think even if we were on opposite ends of the world, we’d still find each other.
It’s more than love, what we have. It’s an all consuming, soul crushing way of life. It’s my bedroom after school and the Tiffany ring and Paris and parties and arguing and commitment and trying and failing and stopping and starting and weekends in the country. It’s death and grieving people who are still aliveand losing and gaining and fucking up and apologising. It’s falling and falling and falling and wondering if or when we’ll ever reach the bottom.
“Hi.” Athena slides up next to me. “Happy birthday, chick.”
“What is it?” I frown.
“Nothing,” she shrugs, smiling.
“Please just tell me.”
“Okay, fine,” she relents. “Someone snuck in without an invitation.”
“Who?” I spin around, trying to find someone who I don’t recognise.
