Chapter Ten
Lady Phoebe
I come downstairs after my shower to find Evangeline sitting at the kitchen table eating a cheese toastie.
“Hello?”
“Oh, yes,” Mum waltzes in. “Evangeline popped round.”
Ev wipes her mouth, hands my mum her empty plate. “I’ve come to raid your wardrobe actually.”
I scrunch my face up. “Why are you in uniform? It’s a Saturday.”
“Don’t question what she’s wearing,” Mum tells me, eyeing me up. “Why are you wandering the house in nothing but a towel, darling? Your father could walk in any minute.”
I open the fridge to fetch a bottle of water. “The humidity dries me out.”
I nod for Evangeline to follow me upstairs into my bedroom—my childhood bedroom because I haven’t left my house in about two days after Flower Gate.
My family home is the only place where something hasn’t turned up.
Here and Hampshire. I’m trying not to think too much about it.
If I read into it, it becomes the only thing on my mind and then I can’t sleep, eat or concentrate on anything else.
Digby doesn’t know about it. Told him I needed to go home for a bit so I could work on my next collection.
He didn’t think twice about it. He’s come over for dinner, my parents like him—my dad loves him.
Think he wants us to get married just so he can have the security of knowing Arthur won’t come back into the picture.
Mum’s just happy that I’m pretending to be happy so to her it looks like I’m fine.
He hasn’t questioned why I’ve been here or why I don’t let him stay the night which I think is odd because if your girlfriend is coming up with excuses every time you ask to sleep in her bed, you’d think that’s weird, no?
I know Arthur would. But there’s something about having Digby in my bed here.
I can’t do it. I can’t have him coming in here, painting over Arthur.
Arthur’s a mural on the wall, no amount of paint can cover up the mark he’s made in this room.
I’ve been stuck in the darkness for so long that everytime I come in here, it’s like peeking through a curtain.
When I’m in here, it’s us again, how we used to be—even if that was toxic and unhealthy and codependent and whatever else Dr.Kane says.
It was us and I was used to it and I grew to love him in whatever form we were in.
Time has stopped in this room and there’s a comfort no one else would understand in that.
“…The detention wasn’t even my fault,” Ev says. I blink a few times, realise I’ve been staring at my wall for the last three or so minutes. “Phoebe?” She waves her hand in front of my face. “Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah,” I clear my throat, walking into my bathroom. “Something about detention.”
“Yeah,” Evangeline nods, follows me into the bathroom and sits up on my counter. “And it wasn’t even my fault.”
I roll my eyes, pottering around, tidying some things up. “Never is, is it?”
“Seriously,” she says, straight faced. “It was Carter’s fault.”
“Carter?” I whip my head around. “As in Carter Holland?”
She blinks a couple times as if I’m behind. “Yeah, he joined my school on Thursday.”
“Carter joined Darcy?” I arch a brow, tilt my head. “I didn’t even know he was in London.”
“Oh my goodness, Phoebe,” she throws her hands up, exasperated. “Keep up! He got kicked out of his old boarding school so now he’s at Darcy!”
“Sorry,” I mutter. She’s very feisty, actually. “And you don’t like him or…?”
She sighs, kicks her legs and leans back against my mirror. “Well…I don’t know. I don’t think so? He’s handsome but so is Connie. He’s just annoying. Like, really annoying.”
“Like Connie, then?”
“A more aggravating version.”
I wince.
She nods, eyebrows raised.
I walk into my wardrobe to throw some clothes on—nothing special.
I don’t plan to leave the house again today.
Evangeline follows me in which some people might think annoying but it’s not.
I love having her around. Her brother died, my sister left.
We’re both a bit lonely and she’s always been the younger sister I never had.
I wouldn’t even call her a friend, she’s just my non-biological sister—it’s a relationship that swims deeper than friendship.
Calling her a friend would be diminishing.
“I think Carter has a crush on me, though.”
I laugh. “Why do you think that?”
“You just know, don’t you? And plus, he’d have to be gay not to fancy me.”
“Evangeline!” I spin around. “You can’t say that.”
“Oh, whatever,” she rolls her eyes. “Eh, anyways, I don’t care about him—can I have this?” She picks up a Chanel costume jewellery necklace from the floor, I see it swinging from her fingers in the mirror and nod.
She starts wandering around my wardrobe, flicking through the racks and trying on handbags as if this is the superbrands level at Harrods.
Once I'm dressed, I lay on my bed, flicking through the latest copy of Vanity Fair that my sister was featured in. It’s the only way of communicating with her these days.
I tune into E!, buy every magazine, stalk every film premiere.
She rarely calls. She’s too busy being in love and I wonder if this is how I was with Arthur—completely consumed by him that I couldn’t see anything else.
That’s why I don’t really blame her. This was me to an extent. Sure, I didn’t pack up and leave everyone behind but mentally I think I might’ve done.
“What about this?” Evangeline pops out of my wardrobe, balancing a tiara on her head. “Actually, is this one of my family’s heirlooms?”
“Oh my god—no! Take that off!” I jump up, run over to her, carefully remove it off her head and put it back where it belongs—on a high shelf with all my other grade-A burglary items.
I put my hand to my chest, feel my heart slow back down to its normal pace. “Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack!”
She screws her face up. “What’s so special about it? Is it real?”
“No,” I roll my eyes. “It’s just platinum.”
She gives me a funny look. “Where’d you get one of them from?”
I swallow. “Your brother gave it to me.”
She laughs. “I beg your finest pardon.”
I nod, staring at it, glistening on the shelf.
Have I ever worn it? Absolutely not. Do I ever plan to wear it?
Nope. Do I even have anywhere to wear it?
Again, no. But did Arthur buy it for me because I told him once how excited I was to become a princess and wear all the pretty crowns and tiaras? Yes.
I remember it vividly, actually. We were—what, thirteen?
We weren’t even dating. He never asked me to be his girlfriend until year eleven when we were sixteen but in a way, we were always together before that.
Right back from when we were kids, it was always me and him playing the parents in ‘Mums and Dads’ on the playground.
This particular time however, we were at some real fancy event.
A royal event. None of our other friends were there and it was actually rare that me and him were invited.
Sophia was wearing the most gorgeous tiara.
Opals, diamonds, sapphires. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
I turned to Arthur, told him he had to marry me so I could wear one.
He looked at me, said ‘why wait?’ And then a few weeks later that showed up at my door.
Like I said, it’s not real. It must’ve been a few hundred pounds at least but it’s why he got it for me that I sit it on my shelf with things that should actually be in an overseas safe.
The thing with the Grosvenor kids is that they’re different from all the other families.
They have access to money, they had parents that didn’t care, they had siblings who died, they had addiction swimming through their genes.
But despite all of that, he still made an effort.
Most kids would’ve sacked any hope of anything right off.
Arthur never did. He always made sure I had the hope that one day we were going to have the fairytale ending.
Yes, it’s honestly kind of cringe when you think about it but I think that’s why I love it.
Whenever he saw it in my wardrobe, he’d laugh and say he hoped I’d been practicing before he brought me a real one.
It was stupid and funny and childish but at the time we were kids so it worked and it was special.
“Gosh,” Evangeline shakes her head. “Can’t believe you almost had a heart attack over a shitty bit of metal.”
“Shut up.” I’d never normally be so harsh with her but I know she doesn’t like Arthur at the minute—Sophia told me when Arthur came over when he first got back that the reunion didn’t go to plan.
“I can’t believe he was like that with you,” she says.
“Like what?”
“You know…” she waves her hand about. “In love.”
I lick my lips, frown. “Why do you find that so hard to believe?”
“Because he’s a twat.”
“He’s not really.”
“He is, though.”
“He’s not.”
“I know him better than you.”
“I actually doubt that.”
She arches her eyebrow. “Are we arguing?”
“I don’t know.” Put my hands on my hips. “Are we?”
“Maybe?” She shrugs.
“For someone who hates Arthur so much, this really feels like an argument over him.”
She clenches her jaw, her pretty blue eyes twitching. “Never said I hated him.”
“Well, do you hate him?”
“Most days, yes.”
“There you go, then!” I throw my hands up, spin on my heel and go back to my bed.
“I said most days! That’s not all the time!” She argues, standing at the foot of my bed.
“But you haven’t even given him a chance, Ev!”
“I have!” She nods to herself. “Multiple times in the past and where did that get me?”
“Where do you think it got me?” I shout, staring at her.
She doesn’t say anything. We’re both in very similar ways and we both wish we didn’t hate the same person in the way we do because this kind of hating is hard.
Addiction is a hard thing to hate someone for.
If you have even an ounce of empathy—which Ev and I both do—then it’s tricky not to feel sorry for him.
You want to hate him because he hurt you—and fuck me, did he hurt me.
He hurt me more than I hurt myself with blades, he hurt me more than my sister leaving, he hurt me more than my parents absence growing up. And yet, I still hate that I hate him.
It doesn’t even make sense. How on earth can you hate to hate someone?
I want to forgive him and I want to love him and I want him to give me more rushy bedtime kisses but I’m still stuck in the same place.
I’m still frightened, I’m still on edge, I’m still anxious and afraid that when things get good, they’ll go bad.
Dr.Kane tells me things are allowed to work out for me but I’m finding it hard to believe him because every time things do, they never last. Good things don’t last and Arthur is my only good thing.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Evangeline sniffs, climbing onto my bed. “Me too.”
She curls into me, I rub her back, stroke her head and we both cry a bit because we both hate him as much as we love him and we all know how much I love him.