The orangery has been overtaken by servants too, rubbing silver and shining cutlery. I limp into the drawing room. Eleanor and Oliver are there, and Oliver is drinking wine. Eleanor’s jaw is tight again, but I smile. After all, he likes me because I do not judge him.
“Grace,” Oliver says, his voice loose with drink. “You are looking particularly radiant today. Isn’t Grace stunning, Mother?”
I take a seat opposite Eleanor, but she doesn’t acknowledge me. I watch her closely to see if she will give me any indication that what happened last night was real.
“Morning, Grace,” she says eventually. Her face is serene, no sign of stress or lack of sleep. Did I imagine it all? Was it just a troubled fever dream, a manifestation of this nagging need to know what happened to my mother?
“Would you like something to drink?” Oliver asks, waving a decanter at me. “Get you in the party mood!”
Party?
“Oliver,” Eleanor says, warning him. “Are you sure that this is the best idea?”
“Excuse me, Mother,” he says. “I have decided that we are having a party, therefore we are having a party.”
Eleanor stands, smoothing the wrinkles from her dress. She walks to him, placing a hand on his cheek. She looks so sad, so far from the fierceness she displayed last night (a dream, Gaia, it was clearly a dream) that I cannot reconcile the two women. “Oliver,” she says, and he nestles his hand in her palm. “Oli, my darling. Let me help you.”
“Mummy…” Oliver closes his eyes for a second then pushes her away. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mother. I’m a grown man and I need to live my life. Grace agrees with me, don’t you, Grace?”
“Grace?” Eleanor says, going to look out at the garden. “What on earth does Grace have to do with any of this? She can’t even speak.”
“Don’t talk about my friend like that,” he says. (Friend? A blow, but I keep smiling. Good girls must always keep smiling.) “You’d like a party, wouldn’t you, Grace?”
He nods as though I have spoken. “So that’s decided. We need to move on, all of us. It will be a year next month since…” He trails off, his mother still with her back to us. A year since the shipwreck. A year since his birthday, and my own. “A party will be a good distraction,” Oliver says. “And we’ll invite everyone in the county.”
“Everyone? Oliver, our friends lost people too that day. Their children. The Guptas lost two. They… they have lost a great deal.”
“And I have not?”
“Losing a child is different, Oliver. You’re too young to understand.”
“Do not tell me what I can and cannot understand, Mother. I need this.” His voice, rising to a whine. Oliver can be so— No. There is no time to criticize Oliver, or to wish that he could be different. He is my destiny. My one hope of survival. “I’m thinking a garden party since the weather has been so good these last few weeks. And then…” Oliver hesitates. “Then, we’re going to move the party on to one of the yachts. It’s not like we don’t have enough of them.” Eleanor’s shoulders visibly tense. “One of Dad’s old ones.”
“Which one?” she asks sharply and I begin to feel nervous without knowing exactly why.
“The Muireann,” Oliver says, that name tripping off his tongue as if it was nothing. “It was Dad’s favourite boat.”
Muireann.
“No,” Eleanor says, the blood draining from her face. “No, Oliver, I forbid it. Any boat but that one. It is cursed.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mother.”
“Oliver. I’m begging you,” Eleanor is so pale now, it is as if she is on her death bed. The Muireann. His father named his favourite boat after my mother. Last night was real, all of it; it must have been – the locked room, full of paintings, Eleanor screaming at me. That room.
“You can throw the biggest party you want and invite every person in the county,” Eleanor begs. “But don’t set foot on that boat.”
“I want to use the Muireann.” His gaze lights on me. “Are you okay, Grace?” he asks. “You look strange.”
My mother’s name, the name that I thought I would never hear for the rest of my life.
My mother was here. This is proof. She was here.
“What are you going to wear?” Daisy asks as she throws the wardrobe doors open, grimacing as she rifles through the dresses hanging inside.
“I’m glad Oliver has called a stop to the mourning,” Daisy continues. “You would look beautiful in blue, with your eyes… No, wait. Green! Green would be spectacular on you.”
Oliver has decided to throw the party this Friday because, “It’s a full moon, so it’ll look rather impressive from the boat, don’t you agree, Grace?” He is so excited about this party, unaware that it might be the day I meet my end. Would he even miss me? Like his father missed my mother, screaming at the sea to give her back to him?
Oliver has the power to save my life, if he only knew it; and all he cares about is the quantity of champagne they’re going to serve. “This has to be special,” he tells the event planner, a reed-thin man with a patterned cravat. “I want this to be the biggest celebration that anyone in the county can remember.”
It flashes into my mind that Oliver can be petty, with his competitive drinking and now this ridiculous party. And he can be moody and difficult and— but I push away the creeping worry. He is my love, I remind myself, my great love. And my only remaining chance. The minutes are slipping through my fingers like water; I don’t have time for regret. Oliver will love me.
And then, at last, maybe I can decide what it is that I want for myself.
“This isn’t the right colour, but it’s a good shape. We could always hire a—” Daisy holds a dress out for my inspection, and then sees my expression. “Grace. What’s wrong?”
Daisy is aware that I haven’t been sleeping; she assumes it’s because of my feet. “You must be in terrible pain,” she says to me, and I have no way to tell her about my dreams, how violent they have become.
Seas burned red with spilled blood, my sisters’ heads impaled on spikes, eyes bulging. They are dead, all of them, their tails torn from their torsos and thrown to the sharks to feed on. A mirror before me, I am standing there naked. My legs, these legs; rotting, putrefying. Decomposing from the inside out. Then I am back in that room again, Alexander’s room, the walls swirling with water, Eleanor’s arms outstretched, sucking in the waves then spewing them out of her mouth, washing all those paintings away. Her face, my face, her face, and my face. Over and over again until I cannot differentiate between them any longer.
My mother.
Am I going mad?
“Are you worried about the party?” Daisy says. “Don’t be. You’ll be the most beautiful girl there. Oliver won’t be able to take his eyes off you. This is going to be the night for the two of you, I can feel it in my bones.”
Daisy thinks it is easy. She doesn’t understand that I am falling apart, that time is eating at my skin, growing mould where my flesh should be. I am decaying before her and she cannot even see it.
A dressmaker is summoned to the estate, a stout woman with a mouth full of pins. Swathes of material are held up to my face, this colour is gorgeous, and honestly, everything looks simply divine on you. You are so beautiful, they tell me. But what does it matter, in the end? Beauty fades, Eleanor said. And what will I have left when that happens?
“Wait,” the dressmaker says, holding cloth in her hands. “This is the one.” Forest green. Silver flecks. “It could have been made for you.” And I am back in the palace, gritting my teeth while my grandmother sewed pearls into my tail for the ball. I thought I knew what pain was then. I had no idea. I wonder what Grandmother would say if she could see me now. What am I doing here? What have I done? The panic, like a rising tide. No turning back. Maybe I could—
“Are you all right, miss? You’ve gone a bit funny looking.”
“She’s fine,” Daisy says to the dressmaker. “Grace just gets distracted at times. But don’t you think the material is a little dark for this time of year?”