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.
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!’
‘But his writing doesn’t make any sense!’ Grace had cried before swigging from her alcopop bottle. Elsie was working on a presentation with a group of people from her course that night so wasn’t there. Grace had been tense to start with; it felt strange to be without her twin. Since they had started at university, they had been inseparable. They had chosen mostly the same modules, and at every social event, Elsie sat next to Grace, a silent observer. For the first half hour of the evening, Grace had found herself turning to her side on more than one occasion to try to bring her sister into the conversation, surprised to see an empty seat. But now, feeling light-headed from her Bacardi Breezers, and in the full swing of conversation, she realised with a sticky sensation of guilt that she was enjoying being alone with these people.
‘Of course it makes sense. Love, death, murder, friendship! What more is there?’
It was as Eliot threw out these words, carelessly as though he had better things to do, that Grace’s head had suddenly split with pain and an image of a wedding had flown into her mind. It was