CHAPTER TWENTY
‘Ahh, look at that, both babies to my rescue!’ calls Mum over the garden wall, her shape blurry through the hedge.
I’ve got the keys in my hand and as I turn into the drive I’m waving them aloft, but my arm freezes in mid-air when I realize that Mum’s not alone. I turn to Leah, talking through clenched teeth.
‘Why is she here?’
‘No idea,’ says Leah. She juts her jaw slightly, and looks across the front garden at Eve.
‘We just popped out to have an afternoon glass of wine to celebrate,’ Mum begins.
‘Of course,’ says Leah to me under her breath.
Mum’s smile disappears and I can see Eve sizing us up as if she’s won something somehow, as if she thinks she’s got more right to Mum than we do.
‘I had some good news today from the supply teaching agency,’ Mum continues, her voice slightly strained. She’s in Let’s All Be Happy mode.
I paste a polite smile on my face. The truth is if I didn’t think Eve was behind all this – and I didn’t think it was because she was on some sort of mission to make Mum forget that we actually exist – I’d probably be pleased she was going back to work and getting out of our way, except I don’t really like things changing and, well, anyway. I’d be a bit pleased. Even if – with Dad AWOL half the time on his globetrotting expeditions – it would effectively leave us a bit lacking in the actual parent department.
Mum takes the keys from my hand and unlocks the front door. I give Eve a wide berth and skirt round her, scooping up a traitorous Withnail who was about to prowl through her legs in the hope of food.
‘Grace, honey. Let’s go out for something to eat to celebrate.’
I stop dead, standing in the porch as if my feet have been glued to the floor.
‘We’ll pop by the stables on the way, you can sort Mabel out quickly and we’ll wait in the car.’
‘What?’
‘It’s not every day your firstborn turns sixteen,’ Mum continues, her voice breezy and tight. She’s not leaving any spaces for me to object. ‘I know you don’t want to do anything for your birthday, but Eve thought we should all go out as we’ve got two things to celebrate . . .’
‘Happy birthday, Grace,’ says Eve. I don’t look at her, or reply.
‘I don’t want to go.’ I really, really don’t want to. What on earth is she doing? a) I don’t do last-minute changes of plan and b) I don’t deviate from my birthday routine. No, no, no. No thank you.
Leah pauses in the doorway with her finger on her lips, looking thoughtful. She clearly doesn’t want to go either – let’s face it, who would want to spend a night out with cow-face?
‘I’ve got training,’ she says, pulling her tennis shoes out from under the dresser.
I beam her a silent wave of gratitude.
‘You can miss one session,’ says Mum, pulling out her phone from her bag. ‘I’ll text Hazel and tell her you’re going out for your sister’s birthday. It’s not like you’re in the habit of skipping training.’
‘They won’t have enough people for doubles.’
‘Leah,’ says Mum, with the exact tone she usually uses on me, ‘I’m sure they’ll be fine.’
Leah puts the shoes down on top of the dresser, in a move designed to piss off Mum, who is weirdly superstitious about shoes-on-tables. Mum picks them up and holds them in her hand as she turns to me.
‘We can have the same table as always,’ she says, trying to appease me. ‘And we can do your meal when your father gets back too.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘I’m not having any arguments. Eve’s been good enough to help me get an interview for this job, and we are bloody well going out to celebrate.’ She fixes me with a look.
‘I was going to ride Mabel.’
‘You rode her this morning.’
‘I was going to ride her again.’
‘Grace.’ The Look again. ‘We’ll pop by the stables on the way, sort Mabel out.’ She glances at Eve. ‘You don’t mind waiting, do you?’
Eve shakes her head.
What’s amazing is that through all this Eve is just standing there in the hall, not saying anything, just watching us. Not even pretending to avert her eyes and secretly eavesdrop (Eves-drop – ha), but she’s just standing there with that smug cat-like smirk on her face and her too tight skinny jeans and her super-shiny expensive handbag over one arm.
‘Why should I?’
I let Withnail down, reach into the dresser and pull out my yard boots. Then I sit down on the carpet where I am, and start pulling them on. I’ll just take the bus up now. There’s nothing she can do to stop me.
‘Because your mother’s worked hard for this, and you’re being rude and ungrateful,’ says Eve in her clear, low voice.
I shoot a look up at Leah, who is standing above me. It’s hard to argue your point coherently when you’re sitting on the carpet and all you can see is everyone else’s knees.
Leah flares her nostrils in a way that looks exactly like Mum and I swear she does the smallest shake of her head. No, I think it says, don’t make a fuss about this.
I haul myself up in my yard boots and stand, facing Eve, in the hall.
‘Fine,’ I say, but I glare at Eve with my absolute best death stare. She looks back at me like she’s a cobra or something else equally venomous and generally horrible and unfriendly. You’d think seeing as she’s friends with Mum she might make at least some effort not to hate me and Leah, but – apparently not.
‘Right, well, as we’re only going to Preselli’s we don’t need to get dressed up.’ Mum checks in her handbag, pulls out a hairbrush and runs it through her hair in front of the hall mirror. Eve smiles at her and offers her a red lipstick.
‘You don’t have to actually start dressing like twins, you know,’ I mutter, half to myself. ‘You’ve already got the same tops, the same shoes, and now you’re in the same lipstick. It’s freaky.’
Leah kicks me in the ankle and I yelp.
‘You ready, then, Ju?’ It’s not a question – it’s a command. Eve turns to open the front door.
‘Who’s that waiting in the car?’ says Polly as we clatter round from the field, Mabel trotting beside me.
‘Mum’s new – well, old – friend. Evil Eve.’ I’m quite impressed with that nickname. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. ‘She’s up here doing some work project, and has basically moved her entire life into ours.’
‘Why evil?’ Polly screws up her eyes to focus on the faraway car, a hand over her forehead to block out the last of the evening sunlight.
‘She hates me and Leah. She seems to think we’re surplus to requirements.’
‘Right.’
‘And she’s basically forcing Mum to go back to teaching.’
Polly looks at me sideways. ‘Forcing? What is she, a slave trader?’
‘No, but she’s done the whole “your life is a waste, all you’ve got to show for it is your offspring, you’re a failed human being” thing.’
‘Hmm.’ Polly turns back to the haynet she is stuffing. ‘I can’t imagine your mum being forced into anything she didn’t want to do.’
‘And,’ I say, pushing Mabel’s food bucket into the stable and closing the door, ‘where do we fit?’
‘Where do you fit?’ Polly starts laughing. ‘You don’t need your mum to be holding your hand all the time. And Leah’s more than capable of looking out for herself. Your mum needs a life – I’d go mad if I were her, stuck at home all the time when your dad’s off doing the glamorous-explorer bit.’
I slide the lock across Mabel’s door and turn round to look at Polly, who is tightening up the drawstring on the haynet.
‘I’m not saying I want her stuck at home all the time,’ I say, feeling a prickle of guilt. ‘I’m just – I don’t like things changing all the time.’
‘That’s what things do,’ says Polly reasonably.
‘Well, I don’t like it,’ I say, and walk back to the steamed-up car.
I climb in the back beside Leah and we head towards the restaurant.
‘Table for four?’
The girl at the door looks harassed, her hair escaping in fine wisps from her ponytail. She’s got a splodge of something red – sauce, or wine – on the front of her white apron, and her cheeks are flushed pink.
‘Yes, please,’ says Mum.
‘This one OK for you?’
She shows us to the little booth at the back where we always sit. I slide into my usual space and for a second I think maybe this will be OK. There’s a family of six sitting opposite, their smallest child banging something loudly on the plastic table of his high chair, and a little person who is five or so weeping snottily into a bowl of macaroni.
‘Actually,’ says Eve, picking up her bag and leaning over to the waitress, ‘we’ll have that table by the window, thanks.’
Mum opens her mouth to say, no, it’s fine, we’re OK here – but Eve shoots her a look, and the frazzled-looking girl flushes a bit more and says, yes, of course, and leads us across the restaurant to the huge table – which should sit eight – in the window.
‘We don’t want to be cramped in that grotty little booth,’ says Eve, settling back against her chair, stretching her long legs out so they take up half the space under the table. She looks over the menu at Mum.
‘This is nice, actually, isn’t it, girls?’ Mum says brightly, looking at me, then at Leah, who has her phone out and is scrolling through messages. ‘Leah, off the phone, please.’
‘Not really,’ I say loudly.
‘Grace.’ A raised eyebrow. Mum looks up at the waitress. ‘Two glasses of the Shiraz and two Cokes, please.’
‘I don’t think taking up a table meant for eight people when there’s only four of us is very nice manners,’ I say, looking sideways at Eve.
‘We’re paying for a meal,’ she responds, her tone crisp. ‘We’re not at a kindergarten. I don’t expect to be surrounded by children.’
‘Should’ve left us at home, then,’ says Leah, surprising everyone.
‘Leah!’ Mum sits back in her chair. Leah doesn’t do smart comments, or being rude, or rebellious anything. She does quiet, reasonable, calm, well behaved. I do rude and sarcastic.
‘But it’s your birthday, Grace,’ says Eve, taking the glass of wine from the waitress.
I shoot a silent look of horror at Mum.
‘Your birthday?’ says the waitress. ‘How lovely!’
She perks up at this and swooshes my napkin on to my lap, leaning over me in the process so I can smell her shampoo. I sit rigid, trying to deal with the personal-space invasion.
Eve smiles at Mum. ‘Can you believe it?’ She turns to the waitress. ‘Julia doesn’t look old enough to have a sixteen-year-old, does she?’
‘Shut up, you,’ says Mum, going pink and looking pleased with herself.
‘Well,’ says Eve, raising her glass in Mum’s direction, ‘you’ve done your time.’
She takes a swig of wine and clinks her glass. ‘To your new job and your new future. And to freedom.’
‘Freedom,’ says Mum, and a funny look crosses her face. And then she turns to me and says, ‘And to my beautiful girl, of course. Happy birthday, darling.’
I scowl at her and don’t reply.
‘You girls. I can’t believe you’re not even pleased about your mum’s job.’
Eve looks at me and Leah and tuts crossly.
‘I’m sure they are pleased – in their own way,’ says Mum, taking another mouthful of wine.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I slip it out and look at it under the table.
I hate her, says Leah
Me too, I type back.
‘If you ask me, Graham’s been allowed to spend far too long thinking the world revolves around him,’ Eve says to Mum, who pins her with her stop-talking look and somehow sort of nods at the same time.
‘Shall we get olives and dipping bread to start, girls?’ says Mum brightly. Not waiting for an answer, she motions over the waitress and asks for them to be brought as a starter.
Eve swallows half her wine in a gulp.
‘You need to have a life of your own, Julia. These two are old enough to fend for themselves, aren’t you?’
She looks at me and Leah, and I want to kick her in the shins.
‘To be honest I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t go full time. My mum wasn’t running around after me when I was your age.’
‘Leah’s only thirteen,’ I point out, turning to Mum. ‘And you’ve always been around and I think it’s all very well for her to come marching in and start telling you that you should disappear off and work full time and leave us to do everything and go to school, but –’
‘Grace,’ she says, putting a hand over mine, ‘nobody’s saying I’m going to be working full time.’
‘Nobody’s saying you can’t, though,’ says Eve, actually clicking her fingers for the waitress. I didn’t think people did that in real life. ‘You don’t really expect your mum to be sitting around the house waiting on you hand and foot, do you?’
Ignore her, she’s a bitch.
‘Ciabatta and olives?’ says the waitress, leaning between Mum and Eve, just at the right moment.
Megabitch, I reply, typing it into my phone while smiling sweetly at Eve’s big moon face.
I take great pleasure in eating all the nice olives and leaving Eve the horrible ones with big lumps of garlic in the middle so she’ll stink like a pig in her business meetings tomorrow. Leah eats all the bread and accidentally sticks her finger in the oil and vinegar more than once when she realizes that it makes Eve shudder with disgust. I feel a bit guilty that we’re spoiling Mum’s celebration meal, but if she hadn’t taken Bitch-face out we could have had a perfectly nice time. In fact, if Bitch-face wasn’t in the equation at all, we’d be having the same perfectly nice time that we have every other time Dad goes away. It’s not our fault that Eve-il has decided to land herself like a cuckoo in the middle of our nest. I glare at her again.
And then just when I think it can’t get any worse, it all goes horrendously wrong. I go to the loo and when I get back there’s a tangle of silvery helium balloons floating above our table. I pull out my seat and sit down, feeling sick.
‘Who did the . . .’ I begin.
‘Eve had a word.’ Mum gives me a look that is somehow pleading and parental at the same time. Don’t make a fuss, it says. I swallow and sit there, stiff with horror, and listen as the noise of the restaurant and the metallic whisper of the balloons and the slurping and the crunching and the swallowing fill my head and the room is a swirling kaleidoscope of sensations and noises and –
‘Yes, that’s lovely, thank you.’
As the back of the chair behind me crashes into mine I turn, reflexively.
‘Oh sorry,’ says a voice, and I realize it’s Holly Carmichael at exactly the same moment she realizes I’m me and she fixes me with her icy blue eyes.
‘Oh, sweet,’ she says, so quietly that only I can hear. ‘Baby’s first birthday party. Try not to wet yourself this time.’ She gives me the once over, looking me up and down. I realize I’m in yard boots and there are wood shavings stuck to the bottom of them. I watch her indicating my shoes to her cronies with an arch of her ridiculously fake eyebrows.
‘Nice boots.’
I ignore her and pull my chair in tighter towards the table, hoping the lights overhead mean that my scarlet face doesn’t show. But the already terrible meal is now completely ruined and I’m hanging on by my fingernails. Now I feel like I’m too big for my chair and the food’s getting stuck in lumps in my throat. I curl my fingers underneath the seat of the chair, holding on tightly and rocking slightly, counting to ten in my head over and over.
The waitress clears our plates and the room dims, unexpectedly. I turn to Leah, and she shakes her head almost imperceptibly.
‘Don’t,’ she says, as the lights begin to flicker on and off in time to some tinny-sounding music coming through the speakers.
And I realize I’ve seen this before when I’ve been here and other people have been celebrating birthdays. And I realize that Eve is looking at me expectantly and Mum is looking at me with a pleading expression and the music suddenly unjumbles in my head and I realize what I’m hearing is ‘Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen’ and I want the ground to open up and swallow me whole. If I could actually just dematerialize in this moment, I would be quite happy. And I know, without turning round, that a sparkler-covered ice-cream sundae is coming my way. And I know that Holly Carmichael will never let me forget this.
This is beyond anything that I have ever experienced, horror-wise. I’ve turned to stone. Leah picks up the sundae and eats some, saying that I always get too full for pudding when we come here. I’m not sure I can even move.
Mum calls the waitress over and pays the bill while Eve readjusts her perfect lipstick in the toilets.
‘Oh hello, girls!’ Mum stands up, turns and smiles at Holly. ‘Out for a meal?’
‘Yes, thanks, Mrs Armstrong,’ says Holly with a sickeningly sweet smile. ‘It’s Lauren’s birthday so we’re just having a little celebration. Ours is a bit more low key than Grace’s, though.’
She flashes a look at me and I want to die on the spot.
‘Have fun,’ says Mum, who used to help out at nursery school, and remembers Holly as an angelic little round-faced five-year-old. Holly gives me the sickly-sweet death smirk when Mum’s back is turned, and there’s a muffled sniggering as we walk out.
‘I can’t believe you did that.’ I glare at Mum as the door shuts behind us and I realize why I hate Eve so much. She’s just a grown-up version of Holly.
‘Oh, Grace,’ says Mum, ruffling my hair in what she thinks is an affectionate manner. It feels like she’s raking my head with knives and I pull away. ‘Holly’s harmless. You need to stop being so sensitive about girls like that. Grow a bit of a thicker skin.’
She hooks her arm through my elbow and gives me a sort of jollying-along nudge. I leave my arm hanging straight down in the hope she’ll get the hint. I don’t feel particularly jolly.
I am sixteen years old. I hate birthdays. I have just been publically humiliated in front of the absolutely worst person possible and I am never, ever going to live this down.
And I realize I’m tired of this. I’m sick of being awkward and feeling like I don’t fit and everything’s uncomfortable. We’re driving back home and my face is pressed against the cold of the glass and the smell of the rubber strip along the edge of the window and it feels safe – well, safer. I can retreat. And then I realize the answer is glaringly obvious. All I need to do is find something that means everyone will think of me as someone who is interesting and funny and nice, and not the weirdo that stands out all the time.
I look out at the darkness of the beach, and I have the perfect idea for how to make it happen.