Secrets in the Shadows

‘Was it a huge success then?’ Eliot asks.

Grace avoids eye contact with Eliot. Tonight needs to be simple. She nods and allows herself a congratulatory ‘whoop!’ as she finally manages to pop out the stubborn cork.

‘Yes. A lot of people came in and looked at the second-hand stuff. And the head of English from a high school in Lytham came in and we did a deal with him on a collection of the classics we’d put on offer. He ordered about two hundred pounds’ worth of stock.’

Eliot strokes the peppering of stubble on his chin as though he has a full beard. It makes an unpleasant scratching sound and Grace wants to prod him, to make him stop.

‘Two hundred pounds is great,’ he says. ‘If you make that much every day you’ll be heading for world domination in no time!’

‘World domination?’ Elsie says, and grins at Eliot. ‘You’re ambitious.’

Eliot smiles back. ‘I’ll bet the free cupcakes had something to do with it. Good work on those, by the way, Grace.’ He bites into a leftover cake, and Grace sees a faint trace of pink icing line his mouth.

‘More champagne, anyone?’ Grace asks loudly as she fills up her own glass. Elsie doesn’t answer, but looks at her own glass, which sits on the battered coffee table, untouched.

‘Go on then, Grace. I’ll have a top-up,’ Eliot says, leaning forward and jostling Elsie, who sits up and rearranges her hairclip.

‘I think I’ll go to bed actually,’ Elsie says.

‘Bed?’ Grace asks incredulously. ‘You’ve hardly had any champagne. I thought we were celebrating?’

‘Yes, bed,’ Elsie answers simply as she stands and stretches. ‘Night.’

There’s silence for a few minutes after Elsie has clomped upstairs. Grace and Eliot hear Elsie’s bedtime ritual float downstairs and through the open lounge door: aggressive teeth brushing, cupboard doors opening and clothes being tossed onto the floor.

Grace sighs and downs her champagne. It’s cheap stuff, not even really champagne, and tastes woody and too sweet.

‘I’m so relieved that the opening day went well,’ Grace says after a moment. ‘I started to worry this morning.’

‘About what?’

‘About opening the shop. It all seemed a bit overwhelming. I was worried we’d perhaps done the wrong thing.’

Eliot shakes his head and loosens his tie. Eliot always wears a tie, even if he’s not at work.

‘Taking a risk like this is never the wrong thing. You’ve both been talking about opening a bookshop for a while, so it was the obvious thing for you to do. You can’t have any regrets about that.’

‘I hope not,’ Grace says. She shivers. ‘It’s always freezing in this house. Don’t you make Elsie put the heating on when you stay over with her?’

‘I hate being too hot. I’d rather be cool,’ Eliot says. Grace sees him start to reach for the blanket on the arm of the sofa to give her, then watches as he thinks better of it. If only things weren’t this complicated.

‘Elsie’s the same as me. She hates being too hot as well,’ Eliot finishes. Grace thinks she detects a look of defence in his slim, stubbled face.

‘So you’re staying over here tonight?’ he asks.

‘Yes. Elsie and I are going into the shop together tomorrow. She’s made one of the spare beds up for me.’

‘You’ve not slept over here for ages.’

‘I know. I don’t like sleeping here. But Elsie wanted me to stay over so that we could celebrate our first night and go in together first thing tomorrow. I’m trying to do things right at the moment. I want us to feel like a team again. I barely even feel like we’re friends at the moment. And that’s surely bad for business,’ she finishes with a weak smile. An unexpected lump lodges in her throat like a boiled sweet.

‘Yeah. She said things were a little tense between you both.’

The reason for the tension hangs in the air, between Grace and Eliot. Grace won’t say it. Eliot doesn’t know it.

‘Let’s have another drink,’ Eliot says, filling their glasses.

The next morning, Grace shuffles further under her blanket as wisps of her sister’s voice drift into the lounge like smoke. She wonders where she is for a moment when she opens her eyes, then remembers that she is in Elsie’s lounge.

When Grace and Elsie were younger they were never allowed in this room. It feels forbidden to Grace, even now. This was the guest lounge, only to be used at Christmas. Grace can still feel the visitors in the air. It’s like they never really left. Elsie has redecorated, trading the 1970s velour orange curtains and swirling gaudy carpet for classic beige carpet and blinds and chocolate brown leather sofas. But in the weak winter light of the morning, the new decor changes nothing. Grace can hear the sea here, and, for some reason, can’t bear it. She can hear it now: the clashing of the monstrous grey waves against each other. The more she tries not to listen to it, the more she hears it, until it feels as though the shards of water are crashing against her head.

Elsie is shouting at Eliot in the kitchen. The words blur into meaning. Grace can’t help but listen.

‘I’m not asking much, am I? My boyfriend in my own bed instead of downstairs with my bloody sister!’

There’s only a silence in reply.

So Eliot obviously didn’t make it upstairs to Elsie’s room last night.

Bad move.

Grace feels a tug of guilt. They got through quite a bit of champagne in the end, and Eliot had meant to go upstairs to Elsie. Grace remembers asking him to stay until she fell asleep in the lounge. She didn’t want to be alone in a spare room upstairs. She remembers her eyes closing slowly as they talked, the room in a blur around her. She wouldn’t have asked him to stay with her if she’d been sober.

The front door slams, the stained glass rattling in its splitting frame.

Sleeping here was a terrible idea. From now on, Grace will only ever sleep in her brand new flat, surrounded by brand new furniture and brand new other flats. There are too many memories here at their old home, creeping into Grace’s body and mind like damp. And it’s too cold. Rose House has always been horribly cold in winter. Even though the central heating clunks and bangs its way around the rooms like a metal snake, the old windows let all the heat out and all the outside air in.

Grace can remember being cold every single winter of her childhood in this house. She shared Room 5, the smallest, with Elsie. Their mother never came upstairs to bed until the very middle of the night. She would often come into Room 5 instead of her own room. Grace would wake as her mother banged around the bedroom, knocking over the twins’ things and whispering to herself. There would be further noise and cursing as their mother tried to undress; sometimes she didn’t bother, and Grace would wake to the sight of her mother, fully clothed, complete with jewellery and shoes, lying open-mouthed on top of her sheets.

Those nights, in the early days, had been quite easy to bear. It was the later nights that were the haunting ones. Elsie always claimed that she couldn’t remember, that she must have slept through it all. But how could she have slept through such potent alcohol fumes, such sickening screaming as their mother awoke from yet more nightmares?

Grace gets up and stretches her long pale limbs.

‘Eliot?’ she shouts.

He appears in the living room, his wavy, dark brown hair still crumpled on one side from where it has rested on the arm of the sofa all night. ‘Elsie’s gone to the shop—’

‘I know. I heard,’ Grace interrupts as she pulls her creased cardigan over her shoulders. ‘I’m going now. I just wanted to say sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have said I’d stay over, because I never feel relaxed in this house. It was my fault we both fell asleep down here.’

Eliot shrugs and looks at the table of empty bottles and toast crusts. Eliot always makes toast when he’s drunk. Grace remembers him fiddling with the toaster in the early hours and burning the first two slices. The sickly smell of charred crumbs still lingers in the air.

‘I know Elsie’s mad with you now but she’ll get over it.’ Grace says, then sits back down on the jumble of blankets and cushions.

‘I hope so. I told her nothing happened between us. But she won’t believe it.’

‘Well, I’ll tell her later as well.’

‘She’ll believe you even less than she believes me.’