Page 23 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
“I’m going.”
“Where are you going?” She calls back in a much smaller voice.
“Not back to Scotland if that’s what you’re thinking.”
There’s some movement behind the door and then she cracks it open, pops her tear stained face through the gap and looks up at me with a little red nose and bloodshot eyes.
All I want to do is give her a hug because I feel like she needs it but that’s weird for us—we don’t hug like that.
We did—used to—but that was only once.
It was maybe two weeks after Theo died. That weird space between someone dying and the grief sinking in where everything goes back to normal for a brief period, kind of like no one wanted to believe it. I was angry, though—everyone else was blissfully swimming through this ocean of okay-ness while I was walking along the shore all on my own in this realisation that he wasn’t coming back. Why weren’t they joining me? Why were they brushing past it? Why weren’t they fighting and drowning and struggling to breathe like I was? None of us had slept much. We were pretty much awake for like twenty three hours of the day which in hindsight was them realising what had actually happened. She knocked once on my bedroom door, pushed it open before I could say anything and stood there, red faced and exhausted.
“Arthur?” She whispered even though she knew I was wide awake.
I pushed myself up, squinted into the darkness. “What?”
“Can I sleep in here?”
“Yeah,” I nodded, pulling the cover out on the other side. She tiptoed over, curled in beside me and laid on her side, wide eyed. It was weird, I remember thinking, we’d never had this kind of relationship before. But I guess that’s what grief does, changes everything—even the things you think would never change. I mean, it was just us in this grief. Just the people in this house and even though we should’ve been closer than ever, it felt like we were the furthest apart we’d ever been because we were one short. I wasn’t even on my phone during this time, for about three weeks I didn’t even pick it up. Maybe on the odd occasion, I’d drop Phoebe a text but it was nothing more than a one word ‘yeah’, ‘fine’ or ‘goodnight’. It just felt numb. So fucking alone when I knew my mum and my dad andmy brother and my sister were all feeling the same way. It took them maybe another two months to join me on the shore.
“Are you really clean?” My sister whispers.
I nod. “Yeah.”
“I’m—I’m proud of you.”
She says it in a way that it probably felt kind of awkward for her to say. I’ve always felt closer to my brothers but with Evangeline it was different—I felt protective over her, like I had to keep her safe or had to step in when our parents wouldn’t and I was good at it for awhile until I wasn’t and then I failed her.
“Thanks.” I take a deep breath. “Do you want to talk?”
She shakes her blonde head, sniffs again and then closes the door. Feels a bit more personal than her just closing her bedroom door, though.
I beeline for the front door, Mum calls out to me but I ignore her. Was in there much longer than I wanted to be already.
Connie’s leaning against his car, smoking a cigarette.
“You can’t smoke out here.”
He throws the butt on the ground. “Why not?”
Shrug. “Don’t know—just feels a bit offensive.”
”Why?” He smiles. “Was The Queen in there—she was, wasn’t she?”
I roll my eyes, throwing my bags into the back. Thankfully, this entire street is always paparazzi free because there’s police guarding the entrance and also because they do give us breathing room for certain things. Say I go to the shops, they won’t follow me around but they’ll be outside waiting. When Mum used to drop us to primary school, they wouldn’t tail her. Everyone knows who we are and where we live and our favourite spots so it gets a bit old after a while, which is actually really nice.
I get into the passenger side. Connie turns to me.
“How’d it go?”
“Shit.”
“I’d ask if you wanna go for a pint but—”
“I’m in recovery.”
“That you are,” he nods to himself, starting the car. “And it better stay that way.”
