Secrets in the Shadows

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Rose said, suddenly feeling very much like her mother.

The boy stared at her with his violet eyes, smoke floating out of his mouth and curling around Rose’s face. The smell was heavy and almost pleasant in a way, and Rose took in deep breaths until her head was filled with grey, making her cough delicately into her powder blue sleeve.

I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke in here, Rose was going to say. But something stopped her. Not the fact that the boy might be an Indian King, or the fact that Gypsy Sarah had told Rose to find him, but because Rose wanted this moment to last. She wanted to be in the Indian Pavilion in Blackpool with smoke curling around her ears and weaving through her hair and her mouth, with the boy and not with her parents. She felt as though she had left a grey world behind and had stepped into a world of power and movement and colour, and she didn’t want to leave it. Not just yet.

And so they sat, with the colours of India all around them, yellowed and hazy with smoke.

After a time of sitting, the boy jumped to his feet, tossing his cigarette end away. ‘They’ll be coming in to set up for tonight’s concert soon. You’d better go. I’ll lock up again.’

They walked to the doors of the Pavilion and Rose looked out to the sea which was glinting with the dipping sun, and then back at the boy.

‘You can come and visit me, if you like,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘When I’m King.’

Rose smiled at the boy. ‘Goodbye.’

She skipped a little as she headed back to the north of the pier. She liked the idea of seeing the boy again, in a land as exotic as the Pavilion. She pulled her collar up to her nostrils and inhaled the smell of cigarette smoke, smiling as she did so. She surely hadn’t been with the boy for too long. She would be able to get back to the hotel in plenty of time for the train home.

But as Rose neared the end of the pier, she saw that the swarm of people in front of her had swelled. There were screeches and wails floating out from the crowd, and Rose felt a prick of fright at trying to find a path through it. People were gesturing, clambering over one another. They all seemed to be looking past Rose, behind her.

She turned, and what she saw in that moment haunted her forever.

The end of the pier was a terrifying orange. Flames roared up into the sky, shooting higher and higher with each second. The dark smell of burning wood was suddenly thick in the air.

‘The Pavilion!’ she heard someone wail.

At that moment, a burst of sparks flew from the pier and shattered the sky into fragments.

‘Good thing the Pavilion is empty,’ the man next to Rose murmured.

And suddenly, Rose was running towards the pier, snaking through the gasping crowd, the flames pulling her like a magnet. She thought of nothing but his purple eyes as she moved closer and closer towards the rumbling pavilion. The crowds trickled to nobody but two pier officials, who launched buckets of water towards the flames in panic. They didn’t see Rose: didn’t see her pause for half a second for fear of being eaten by the flames; didn’t see her sneak down the side of the crackling wooden sweet kiosk. They didn’t see her pull a boy underneath the tangled iron of the pier, into the safety of the sea. Everybody watched the frightening, flashing sky, mesmerised by the cloud of black smoke dancing above their heads.

The water tasted black, and Rose struggled to swim and clutch the boy’s bony body at the same time. He seemed to be dozing, his eyes half closed in a sort of dream. Rose tried to shout, but the sound of her voice was washed away with the waves. She pounded her legs against the heavy water, trying to move away from the splitting pier. Shards of glowing wood floated around her and slices of fire hurtled beside them.

She pounded, and moved, slowly, slowly, until the boy’s eyes began to open.

‘Swim!’ Rose shouted as his eyelids flickered. ‘Swim!’

And soon, his weight became lighter, as he began to move beside Rose in the littered waves. The tide was working with them and carried them towards the shore. Rose felt her legs give way as they reached the sand, and she felt herself retching, her body forcing black water from her stomach out onto the sand. She felt his arm around her and his smoky breath next to her face as they lay together. Still, nobody saw them, nobody noticed their entwined bodies, for everybody was staring up at the flashing sky.

‘My train,’ Rose moaned, and tried to shuffle herself up on the sand. She lifted her hand to her hair, which was slick and cold. ‘My parents,’ she said next.

‘I’ll come with you. I’ll tell them what you did for me,’ said the boy.

Rose looked at the boy, who, even after almost drowning in water, was still filthy. She looked at his nest of knotted black hair and his jutting collarbone and his clever smile.

‘No. You mustn’t do that. They wouldn’t like you.’ She stumbled to her feet, which squelched beneath her like two jellies. ‘I have to go.’

The boy lay on the sand and stared up at her. ‘Come back to me one day, won’t you.’

Rose smiled and thought that she might love him. ‘Of course I will.’

She climbed the stone steps up onto the promenade and made her way through the sighing crowds.

It was only after she had told her parents that she had gone in the sea to rescue a little girl’s dog, after she had joined them in the dash to the train station, after she had flopped down on her seat on the train in a dry lemon-yellow dress, that Rose remembered.

She remembered as their train huffed through the damp green countryside, over steep hills and past glassy lakes.

She still didn’t have her gift.

Chapter Ten (#u029027ba-db43-574a-8e5e-eacb5de5a228)

Grace, 2008

Eliot is late picking Grace up.

‘I wasn’t ready anyway,’ Grace waves Eliot’s apology away with her hand, bracelets twinkling and jangling with the movement.

‘Did you book a table?’

‘No, but it’ll be quiet, it’s a weeknight.’

Eliot shrugs. ‘Okay.’

They walk from Grace’s flat into Lytham square. The grand, tree-lined houses they walk beside gradually give way to small, independent shops, much like the one Grace and Elsie have just opened. Towards the square, the gold light spilling from the restaurants and wine bars twinkles with the movement of people.

When Grace and Eliot arrive at the new tapas restaurant, a troubled middle-aged waiter with a faint smear of sweat on his forehead greets them at the door. ‘Name?’

‘Oh, we didn’t book. Do you have a table for two?’ Grace asks.

‘You didn’t book? Not a chance. We’ve got an opening special, and it’s gone down a storm. You’ll be waiting hours,’ the waiter sneers, apparently cheered a little by his bad news. ‘Should’ve booked,’ he smirks, as Grace and Eliot turn to shuffle out of the door.

‘Sorry. I didn’t think. Shall we go somewhere else for a few drinks and see if they have room for us in a bit?’ Grace suggests.

‘Can do. Look, Grace, I feel guilty about not having Elsie with us. She’s my girlfriend … your sister. She should be here with us.’

Grace looks down to the cobbles, feeling sick. ‘You’re right. Phone her.’

As Eliot wanders away, shoes crunching on the ground, phone to his ear, Grace wonders what it would have been like if she had told Elsie the truth in the first place. If she had told Elsie her secret, then Eliot wouldn’t be phoning Elsie now. Grace wouldn’t be wearing a heavy necklace of resentment around her neck. And Elsie, most probably, would have met someone else.

But then, Grace reminds herself, Elsie would never have forgiven her. That’s why she could never tell her.

‘She’s not coming,’ Eliot says abruptly as he walks back towards Grace. ‘She’s still angry.’

Grace sighs. ‘Come on. Let’s get a drink.’

As they queue at the bar, jostled by people who are ordering pints, Grace remembers when she first met Eliot.

‘Shakespeare is a genius,’ Eliot had been insisting in the student union. A few of Grace’s friends from her English degree were having drinks there, and Eliot, who was studying some English modules as part of his Drama course, had joined them. ‘Imagine writing something now that people still care about and can still relate to hundreds of years in the future!’