The Surface Breaks(56)
Maybe because girls have been trained to laugh at boys’ jokes rather than make any of their own.
Flora is interesting and smart and funny, whereas all I have to offer is my face and my body. And if he does not want that, then what use am I? I am a shiny ornament to be displayed and admired, but not to be touched. All I have ever wanted was to be touched by someone who loved me.
“And you know what, Grace?” Oliver continues. “I have you to thank for this.”
Me?
“It’s true.” He laughs at my astonished expression. “You’ve only been here such a short time, but I feel…” He runs a hand across his jaw while he searches for the correct word. “Settled now that you are here. Does that make sense? It was as if you were left on that beach for me to find, like the heavens sent you to help me recover. You have given me back my confidence. I know that you only ever want what’s best for me.”
I clear my throat. In that moment, I do not want what is best for Oliver. I want to slit his throat with a rusty blade, watch him fall to the deck and bleed out before me.
“Hello.” Flora has returned. Up close, she is even prettier than I had thought. Perfect white teeth in a full-lipped smile, clear skin. “Apologies for taking so long, the queue for the loo was horrifying.” Her speaking voice doesn’t sound like mine, though; it is lower. More husky. Sexy, Rupert would say, if he was here. She holds out a hand to shake mine. “I’m Flora,” she says.
“Don’t expect much in the way of conversation from Grace,” Oliver says, elbowing me as if I am one of the boys. “She’s more of the silent type.”
“Grace?” Flora raises an eyebrow at me. “That’s your name now, is it?”
“That’s what we call her,” Oliver says, adding sotto voce, “she’s a mute, poor thing. My mother and I have taken her in at the estate.” My hands curl into fists at my sides. As if I am a stray dog that they have rescued. An animal that can be easily cast aside again, when they grow bored of me.
“Well,” Flora says, grazing her hand across my shoulder, an indistinct murmur of an electric current running between us. “It’s very nice to see you, Grace.”
“So,” Oliver says, angling his body towards Flora, edging me out of the conversation. That’s rude, Oliver. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? “You were saying before that—”
“That the uprising in the islands was essential? Yes, it clearly was.”
“I disagree,” Oliver says, as if that should be enough to shut down any counter arguments. I can imagine his parents reassuring Oliver that his opinions mattered when he was a child, sitting around the dinner table and asking their young son for his thoughts on the meal or his day at school. His voice would have been valued. I wonder if I would have been so quick to relinquish my own if I had experienced the same. “I don’t think rioting is acceptable under any circumstances,” he says. “Those people were just using the protest as an excuse to smash windows and loot whatever they could get their hands on.”
“Those people? Are you serious?” Flora screws her face up at Oliver. “Those people owned the land long before you came, and those people have been treated abominally ever since. Do you expect them to wait politely while they’re being shot down in the streets? I’m shocked they’re not tearing the islands apart in fury; god knows they would have the right to.”
I draw a breath in anticipation of how Oliver will respond to being challenged in such a public fashion, and by a woman at that. But he is quiet, his forehead creasing in concentration as Flora talks. “Yes,” he says when she pauses. “I suppose you’re right, Flora,” and then: “That’s a very good point, Flora, I never really thought about it that way.”
The conversation moves from politics to music to literature to sports, Flora displaying an in-depth knowledge of each subject, as if she has spent years studying in preparation for this conversation. It’s almost mystifying, her expertise. “You’re so clever, Flora,” Oliver says, eyes shining, and I want to scream. What is it men actually want from us? “How do you know all of this?” he asks. She cracks jokes that I do not understand, but which make Oliver throw his head back in laughter. People drift towards us, the group becoming larger and larger, but Flora remains the centre of attention. No one can take their eyes off her. She’s so funny, I hear people whispering. And smart. They stand in a circle around her, enthralled. And yet her eyes remain on me, as if this entire performance is for my benefit.
Who is this woman?
The evening plummets into night, the moon rowing across the ocean’s skin. Voices spiking, people throwing words at each other but no one waiting for the replies. They are not having a conversation, these humans; they are merely delivering speeches, competing to see who can speak the loudest. The boat returns to the marina so a few guests can leave. Women with shoes in hands, make-up smeared down their faces as they stagger back towards the estate; some boys leaning over the side of the boat, vomiting. Two women wait to disembark, both petite and pretty, and they keep stealing kisses from one another. I can’t help but stare at them, open-mouthed.
“What are you looking at?” one of them asks me.
Nothing. I turn away hurriedly, and I think of Nia. Is this all that she has wanted? The freedom to hold another girl’s hand? Why had my father deemed such a simple act to be so terrible?