Page 151 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
Jude moaned and groaned against me, his head rolling forward with his body as I tried to keep him up. The police, I thought. That’s who you ring when you get into an accident.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, the screen was smashed to shit but I managed to pull up my contacts. I didn’t ring the police but I called the next best thing and a few minutes later, a car was speeding down, towards us and George stepped out.
He was a mess.
I couldn’t tell him what happened but I didn’t think I needed to, he could see it for himself.
The high I was once riding, dropped and ice cold fear took its place. A hollow, empty, gutting feeling that I’ve never felt since. Still, I couldn’t feel a fucking thing.
George slapped me.
I remember the pressure and my face turning but it didn’t hurt. Then he grabbed me, Jude fell to the ground, and checked me over, asking a bunch of questions about if I was hurt or not but I couldn’t find the words—I couldn’t say anything.
He threw me into the back of the car he drove down in, I fell across the seats, feeling both tired and the most aliveI’ve ever felt in my whole life. Jude was slung in next, his body collapsing on top of mine.
I felt like an object—like an inanimate object—not a person. The whole night and for days after, I didn’t feel real. It never really sunk into me that this happened until just over a year later when I was in Scotland.
I could hear George talking on the phone for a few minutes before he got into the car and drove off, away from the scene. I wanted to go back, to see if the other person in the car was okay but again, I couldn’t find the words.
When we got back to the house, George dragged our bodies onto the pavement and I laid there, looking up at the grey sky, knowing it was bound to rain later on. And then I was looking up at a white sky where there was lots of talking and beeping and I realised I wasn’t still on the ground, but in an ambulance. And I wondered how I’d just gone from the ground to here and how long had it been since the crash? Minutes, hours? Time ran away from me, slipped straight between my fingers and I don’t think I’ve ever regained control of it since.
That’s what I remember from that night.
And then the next time I heard about it, it was from my dad when he visited me in Scotland and told me the boy in the other car had died.
He didn’t die on that day, though—he had died before that. After he went into hospital, he was put into a coma for three months, had severe brain damage, three broken ribs and was paralysed from the waist down. There wasn’t much his family or the doctors could do for him. But when he woke up from the coma, there was a bit of hope until he suffered a stroke and died a couple of weeks later.
He died when I was still in school and no one told me.
Even now, I don’t remember if it was Jude or me slumped over the wheel. Maybe I remember it being him because I don’t want it to have been me.
The Grosvenor’s and the Stratton’s have always had a relationship but I never understood the extent of it until that night.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Prince Arthur
Phoebe blinks, once, twice—three times—and then I see the first tear roll down her cheek.
“What?” Her voice is broken, quiet and all I want is to fix it.
Her eyes dart upwards, I follow her and see everyone hanging over the edge of the stone wall, Digby included. Fuck. He just proposed, didn’t he?
Or did he?
Did she run to me before he asked?
“Arthur,” she cries. My eyes go back to her. She’s sobbing. “I always—always—said I’d forgive you for anything but,” she sniffs, shakes her head. “I never thought I’d have to mean it.”
What the fuck has just happened?
Digby was about to get down on one knee and then seconds later, I’ve got Phoebe running towards me like I was her oxygen tank and then I tell her I killed someone?
Shit. I actually told her.
I don’t know—it hasn’t sunk in. I never thought I would actually tell her, you know? Thought I’d just go about, watching her with Digby. Never thought I’d actually tell her and we’d be here. I built up the fantasy in my head, sure. But I didn’t plan for it to become reality. What now? She runs a mile to the police station and that’s my lot?
I take a deep breath, reach for her hand but she snatches it away. “Phoebe, listen to me—”
