Page 194 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
“He obviously did.”
“No,” Connie shakes his head, stands up, starts pacing. “He didn’t.”
“What are you talking about?” I stand up, sobbing. “Can’t you see that?” I gesture to the table, my voice raising. “Are you not seeing what I’m seeing?” My chest is rising and falling, the disappointment so thick and heavy, I’m not sure how or if I’ll ever get over this.
Connie ignores me, storms over to the table, dips his finger into one of the lines and sucks it off. After a second he turns to me, still shaking his head. “That isn’t cocaine, Phoebs.”
I throw my arms out. “Well what the fuck is it?”
He moves his tongue around his mouth. “I’m not sure but it ain’t coke and he,” he points over to Arthur, “Didn’t do this willingly.”
“Why are you sticking up for him?” I ask quietly. “Have you been covering for him this whole time?”
He cocks his head. “You think he’s been using this whole time?”
“I don’t know, has he?”
He looks at me. Almost a sneer. “Get fucking real, Phoebs.”
I turn around, giving him my back as I quietly sob to myself. It’s different. It is so fucking different now. Should I have told him? If I did, would he have done this? Why tonight? Did I say something? Did someone else? Did something happen that I don’t know about? Why after nearly four years?
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
Why would he fucking do this to me?
And I say ‘me’ and not ‘himself’ because if there’s one thing you should know about Arthur it’s that he doesn’t care about himself. It wouldn’t affect him. But it would affect me and he knows that.
I wonder if I’ll have to go back to mourning him—if this is the start of the beginning all over again. It’s hard mourning someone who isn’t actually dead. People can die in all different kinds of ways but to most it's simple, you die and that’s it. For me, when Arthur came back, it’s like he was resurrected. I haven’t been so full of feeling since he came back. I felt like I forgave him too quickly. And then I hated myself for thinking that and then also him for making me think that. I was screaming, three feet tall, waving my little hand, begging for everyone to come to this funeral that only I was attending. I mean, everyone got an invite to be there but they tucked it away, lived in the very real presence where he was alive. Nobody else properly mourned him, I don’t think.
And now I wonder if I’ll have to do that all over again.
Connie turns around suddenly, holding up a ripped brown box. “This wasn’t him,” he tells me again as if the more he says, the more likely I am to believe him.
“What does a box have anything to do with it?”
“Look!” He holds it up. “Got his fucking name on it, Phoebs. We don’t know much about drug dealers but what we do know is that they don’t deliver via fucking Royal Mail.”
I sniff, wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “They might.”
He scoffs, throws the box across the room at me. “Don’t be fucking dim, Phoebs.”
I catch the box as it hits my chest softly, his name and address are scrawled across the front in black pen. Nothing else. Just that.
I sigh—begrudgingly—and look at Connie, for the first time, maybe believing him. “So what does this mean?”
He pushes his hands through his hair, huffs, pulls his phone out of his pocket. “I don’t know.”
My eyes catch a brief glance at Arthur slumped on the sofa and it makes my stomach turn for a million different reasons so when Connie starts ringing someone on his phone, I go down the hall and into Arthur’s room.
I sit on his bed, not really thinking, if you can believe it. My head just feels empty, like a big black void of nothingness. Perhaps because there’s too much to think about. I’m not sure where to start. I should think about it, though? Maybe I just don’t really care anymore. What’s another bad thing, you know? They seem to be coming at me in abundance these days.
I do think that I should’ve gone back with him. He wasn’t lying about his headache. He had that look in his eye. A bit tired, worn, red. He did truly need to lie down. So why did he do this?
I don’t much like ‘why’s?’ It’s so incomplete and unsatisfying. I prefer ‘definitely’s’ and ‘absolute’s’ because you know what you’re getting.
A few minutes later, there’s a knock on the door. Connie runs down the hall, opens it and then I hear George and Albie’s voices. I don’t really want to come out of his room. This whole scene is way too familiar and I suddenly remember Digby and how this never happened with him.
The door barges open, Albie bursting through. He nods his chin at me. “You need to come with us.”
