Page 152 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
“I need to go, I think.”
Before I can say anything else, she’s legging it back up the beach and the stone stairs and into the house. I watch as Digbyruns after her, tries to pull her back but she fucks him off and carries on inside.
She didn’t really want to marry him, did she? She wouldn’t have come to me if she had. Says it all really—about us. Of course something like this was going to happen. I mean, you’ve been following our story for how many years now? When have things ever been the fairytale we were promised as kids?
We’re the one flame that keeps the room alight while everyone else bathes in the darkness because they’re too scared to light their own.
My heart is beating so fucking fast and all I can smell is the salt coming off the sea everytime a big wave crashes up onto the rocks. Before, I would’ve dreamed of them taking me clean out, carrying me away with them to wherever they’re off to next but not now, not after all this. I don’t think I can afford to be carried off anywhere anymore.
That string tying mine and hers hearts pangs, drags me all the way over to her. The others try to stop me, get me to talk but I’m not interested in talking to them. Like usual, when it comes to Phoebs, it’s tunnel vision and she is once again, the promised light at the end of the tunnel.
I knock twice on her bedroom door, she says nothing, no sounds come from inside so I start panicking—what if she’s done something to herself? I barge in, see her sitting on her bed, her back to me.
“Phoebe.”
Lifts her head, looks over at me. Most beautiful face in the world. I know they gave that title to me but it was misplaced, should’ve been her. Look into her eyes and something dips in my stomach. She’s always been mine, always loved me—even if she loves Digby now, she loved me first and she would never love him the same way.
“Arthur,” she clears her throat, licks her top lip. “I really don’t know what to say.”
“I know,” I nod, kneeling on the bed.
I know I probably shouldn’t but I put my arms around her waist and pull her into me, shuffle us both up to the headboard and let her curl up in my lap.
“Did you really?” She whispers after a minute.
“It was an accident.”
“Mansalughter?”
“I guess so, maybe. The stroke killed him, but had he not been there that night, he’d still be alive so—”
“No,” she cuts in, wipes her face, looks up at me. “That’s different, Arthur. If he didn’t have the stroke, he’d still be here.”
“Yeah, but, it was my fault he was in hospital in the first place. He was in a fucking coma for months, Phoebs, all because of me.”
“When did it happen?”
“That night at your party, when I broke my wrist.”
“Oh,” she says softly and then goes quiet.
Maybe she’s right, maybe it wasn’t my fault but it’s also not not my fault? Like I said, had it not been for Jude and I being complete big headed wankers, he would’ve never been in hospital. It’s a chain of events that starts and ends with me. I think people will view this differently. Some will say it is all my fault, others will blame it on the fact I was high, and a few will think that I played a major part but it isn’t all entirely down to me. For as long as I live, though, I will always blame myself for taking an innocent life.
The young boy wasn’t like us. He was normal. On the way back from his girlfriend's before her parents woke up or something—I can’t remember it in full detail but he was coming back from his girlfriends and that’s why he was driving downthere. If he had stayed, taken the hit from her parents, he would’ve been in shit for a couple days, maybe, but alive.
He would have been alive.
His parents couldn’t afford top notch lawyers or to keep him on life support forever. I’ve wanted to give them something but I don’t know what. Money seems superficial. I just want them to know what really happened but I can’t do that without the whole world knowing.
I doubt they’d want to know, anyway. It’d be like Theo’s killers rocking up on our doorstep, offering a half arsed apology. Like, fuck, would we want it, you know?
I think that’s what hurts the most. The fact that I’ve already seen death rip through a family like a tornado. I know what the sister is going through and what his parents are going through—I’ve witnessed it all first hand. Only this time, I’m the reason behind it. I’m the fucking reason why they’re going through the hell I watched my family go through—and still are going through because grief doesn’t have a sell by date—for so many years.
Hates the world for my brother dying but goes out and kills someone. I mean, you couldn’t make it up, could you? Hypocrite of the century, I reckon.
Phoebe stirs on my lap, straddles me, holds my face between her hands. “Who else knows?”
“My dad, Grandad, twins, Sullivan—and Connie, told him last night. Had to.”
