And so is Flora.
I try and breathe but I’m beginning to panic. (I don’t have much time left.) A burning sensation in my chest as if someone has struck a match to my lungs, a dry strike of flint against flint. (I’m going to die tonight; I am going to dissolve into nothingness.) I push my way through the crowds and I tell myself I’m searching for Oliver, but I realize that I am actually looking for Flora. That voice… My voice, it was my voice. How did Flora have my voice? And how could I have thrown it away? The only time I was ever happy under the sea was when I was singing, and I sewed my own mouth shut in the hopes that a boy I barely knew could kiss it open again.
I collapse behind a huge tree at the edge of the lawn. Hidden from sight, I rest my hands on my feet for a second. The pain is intense but at least it is real; it is something I can call my own. Night is stirring through the air, thickening with shadows. I can smell a metallic tang, a smell that is my constant companion these days. I touch my feet again, my fingertips coming away sticky. At least it is dark. No one will be able to see me bleed in the dark.
“Grace? It’s me. George.” A slight figure, the scent of tobacco. I hold my hands out, pleading with him to help me to standing. “What are you doing out here by yourself?” He waves his cigarette by way of explanation. “I’m not supposed to be smoking, my mother will kill me if she sees me. I really wish Eleanor hadn’t insisted on inviting her.” These humans and their lack of gratitude for their mothers. They seem only interested in women whose legs they can spread. George glances back at the party. “We should hurry. Have you seen the queue for the yacht? It’s absurd. Oliver has gone already, he left with that singer. Flora.”
Flora, I repeat silently. Flora with the beautiful voice. My beautiful voice.
A winding procession of people, sneaking from the garden down the steps, a sharp turn along the beach until they reach the marina where the yacht is docked. Young men and women, pushing against us, faces flushed. “I thought Oliver’s mother had the Muireann burned?” one girl says, then curses as she spills wine on to her cream dress. My heart hurts at the mention of my mother’s name, said so offhand. As if it was nothing. “Wouldn’t blame her, to be honest,” another girl laughs.
The line for the yacht turns around a corner, the sea coming into view. The sky reaching away from us to stitch stars into its surface. I see Oliver. That woman, Flora, standing beside him. She whispers in his ear, looking back at me as if she knew I would be there.
Who are you? She puts a finger to her lips, as if telling me to be quiet and I trip over the end of my dress. George’s hand on my arm steadies me and I wish I could ask him to carry me, to take the weight off these ruined legs. I wish George had been the man I had rescued, that it had been him that I had traded my voice for. I might not love George, but I could live with him and be happy.
“Are you drunk? Is our innocent little Gracie drunk?”
“Give it a rest, Rupert,” George says, but he takes his hand away from me quickly. “And you just cut the queue, by the way.”
“Don’t be so wet,” Rupert rolls his eyes. He has a half-empty bottle of champagne in one hand, the other around the waist of a barely conscious girl. Her hair is covering her face, her skirt so short that I can see her black lace underwear. He turns to the people behind us. “Do you mind that I’ve joined my good mate George here, or would you rather be fucking bastards and insist I go to the back?” The two girls nervously murmur, it’s fine, don’t worry about it, Rupert. Not a problem.
“See?” Rupert says to George. He swigs from the bottle, the girl slipping from his grip like a rag doll. She doesn’t move as she hits the ground, her legs akimbo, showing her secrets to the world. No one goes to help her.
“What a slut,” I hear someone say. “And what is she wearing?”
“Oops,” Rupert laughs as he looks down at her. “Someone has had too much to drink, haven’t you, darling?” He drags the girl up, her head lolling on her shoulders. “Cordelia here and I are going to have a very fun night.”
“That girl is comatose,” George says. “You can’t possibly—”
“You’re not my fucking mother, George.” Rupert walks away from us, carrying the girl over his shoulder, as if she was a prize he had collected. I remember Ling, her dark eyes, her new-found silence. How she now walks as if she has lead in her bones. Something stolen from her that can never be given back.
“Shit,” George says under his breath. “Grace, I have to go after him. I can’t let him – not again.” He winces an apology at me. “Do you think you can walk the rest of the way by yourself?”
I wave him off, I’ll be fine. He hurries after Rupert, yanking him back by the shoulder, Cordelia falling to the ground again. George kneels to help her, but Rupert grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, lugging him to standing and screaming in his face.
“Hello?” Fingers prodding into my back. “Hurry up, will you?” Inhaling through my nose when I take the first step without George’s help, the pain bitter-sharp.
“Sorry, miss,” a man in a peaked cap says when I finally reach the marina. “No shoes allowed on deck.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” he says when I look around, as if expecting Daisy or Oliver to come to my rescue and explain. “No. Shoes. On. Deck.” He points to a container at the side of the ladder. “Put them in the wicker basket and you can collect them after the party, like everyone else.”
I cannot take my shoes off, dancing blood across this boat like a seeping shadow, this boat which shares a name with my mother. Muireann.
“Come on,” someone shouts. “What’s the hold up? Get on the boat or go home, for fuck’s sake.”
I step out of the way. The guests boarding the yacht are all young, in their late teens and early twenties, I would wager, and their excitement is palpable. It is as if an infectious fervour is soaring within them at the thought of the night ahead, at the promise it holds. This could be the night that everything changes, you can imagine them thinking. Lovers, hand in hand, trailing kisses and sonnets from mouth to mouths. Young men, eyes hungering: What about that one? No, look at the one next to her, the dark-haired one. They estimate the beauty of each passing girl, weighing it up with their friends. Listing pros and cons as if it is their decision to make, that the girls’ beauty will be determined by their opinions rather than objective fact, because they are men and a man’s word is final. The girls, knowing the men are watching them but pretending to be unaware, performing a calculated innocence they have been told they must possess.
“Hey, you.” The man guarding the ship asks me some time later, when I am the only one remaining on the marina. “Are you coming? Crunch time, little lady. I’ll have to set sail without you otherwise.”
I could go back to the Carlisle estate, limp upstairs and call for Daisy, beg her to give me more of her potion while she bathes my feet. I would try and thank her for everything she has done for me and wave goodnight smiling, as she leaves me to die in peace. What would she find of me when she came to wake me in the morning? Bones and tides of blood smeared on the sheets? Or would I simply vanish, leaving no trace?
“Miss?” the man says. “I haven’t got all day here.”