Unspeakable Beauty E-Book

Georgia Carys Williams

• Herausgeber: Parthian Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 537

Beschreibung

Growing up in a lonely house on the edge of a wild common, Violet Hart is a quiet and sheltered only child who has always dreamt of becoming something extraordinary: a ballet icon as famous as Margot Fonteyn. Guarding her dream closely after suffering catastrophic loss, Violet falls further into quietness, learning to speak only with her feet as she pursues a path to a career in dance. On the cusp of adulthood, she finally starts to find her voice. But when a secret, all consuming affair with her older lover Theo threatens to send her world into a tailspin, will Violet find herself? Or will she succumb to the silence she knows so well? This beautiful, poetic debut novel warns of the dangers of being a quiet person in a loud world and letting magnetic strangers pull your strings. Set on the Welsh coast, Unspeakable Beauty is an unsettling coming-of-age tale about the importance of learning how to take the lead and be yourself, of finding hope in the shadows, of letting your dreams bloom.

Leseprobe

Contents

About Georgia Carys Williams

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

PROLOGUE

Part One

SECRETHAVEN

THE NAKED FACE OF THE MOON

THE RED-HAIRED GIRL

AS BRITTLE AS PAPIER MÂCHÉ

CAN YOU LOVE SOMETHING THAT FRIGHTENS YOU TO DEATH?

MIST

MAM

THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

MY ENTIRE LIFE

A MOMENT FOR YOU TO LOSE YOURSELF

THE SUGAR PLUM FAIRY

ANA

THIRTEEN

WHAT HAPPENS TO GIRLS

FREDERICK

BEAUTY WAS PAIN

Part Two

COPPÉLIA

THEY’LL SOON SEE

THEO

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

THE DETOUR

ON THE SAME PAGE

WHIRLWIND

MY SECOND SELF

PRETTY INTOXICATING

THE AUDITION

EVERYTHING IS PERFECT

SWAN LAKE

THE SELF-PORTRAIT

PAS DE DEUX

FAITH

THE AFTER PARTY

DIGGING IN

A STRANGER

Part Three

MORNING, SUNSHINE

REMEMBER TO SMILE

STRANGE SHAPES OF DESPERATION

IT’S THE BALLET THAT KEEPS ME SANE

WHAT A MESS

THE MERCURY

MERDE

A MATTER OF TIME

THE CRACKS UNDERNEATH

POINTELESS

A PROP IN THE STORYLINE

YOU USE OTHERS TO FEEL ALIVE

PLEASE DON’T COME AFTER ME

BACK TO SECRET HAVEN

GIVE ME TIME

THE TRUTH

NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Copyright

Georgia Carys Williams lives in Swansea. Her short story collection Second-hand Rain was shortlisted for the Sabotage Short Story Award and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and the Frank O’Connor International Prize. She has a doctorate in creative writing from Swansea University. Unspeakable Beauty is her debut novel.

Unspeakable Beauty

Georgia Carys Williams

For my nan

who told me to never give up.

You do not understand my love of dreaming,

For you have never dreamed; you cannot see

The wonder of a bird with white wings gleaming,

The breathless beauty of a wind-swept tree!

– Myfanwy Haycock, ‘Taskmaster’

PROLOGUE

When you say your dreams out loud, they’re brought to life for others to kill. That’s what Mam always said. No one believes a seed will become a flower until they see it bloom. Some people will need to see it happen a hundred times and even then, they’ll have their doubts.

I wish it wasn’t true, but it only takes a whisper, and next thing you know, your dream – in all its delicious detail – is running wild in the mind of a stranger who can’t wait to put a pin in every arm and leg of your idea and watch its entire body squirm as it stretches for answers.

Over time, if you’re not careful, your dream will become so small and unrecognisable that there’ll be nothing left to pine for, just a flicker of a fleeting thought you once had. It was a stupid idea anyway, you’ll say, almost convincing yourself, but the uncomfortable truth is that something within you, months, years or decades later, somewhere deep down, will feel as heavy as the whole world but as hollow as a wooden Russian doll.

Dreams kept quiet, however, are as light as leaves; limitless. You needn’t worry about those. They make you feel invincible. You can do anything, be anything. There’s no need to work out all the hows and whys first; you’re wise enough to know that if you did, you’d never summon the energy to execute your plan.

So, to look after your dreams, you need to hold them close to your heart and keep your lips sealed. When someone steals your dream, they sort of steal you too.

For as long as I can remember, my dream was to be something extraordinary.

Part One

SECRETHAVEN

Melody and I had known each other since the beginning. We were born at the same hospital, with only a day and three beds between us, me following her lead as I sautéd into my second world. My skin was a bit bluer than it should have been, so together with Mam’s love for flowers, I was named Violet. Once I turned the expected colour again, and once we saw our mothers – all eyes and clouds of pink – we knew we’d be swaddled with them forever. After we left the hospital, we stayed only three homes apart, on the long road that rests not far from the edge of the Common.

I lived with my mam and dad on a smallholding in our ivory house, and Secret Haven was our back garden, but it was much more than that. It was a quiet, magical place they had created – all by themselves before they’d even met me. Dad had laid the earth and Mam had planted the scenery, so together, they’d made sure it was a place where the very roots of all our dreams had enough space and light to come to life. Over the years, as the trees took guard and Mam’s flowers bloomed, Secret Haven became more and more secret as well as beautiful. Mam said that was around the time I arrived, finally, after fifteen years of them dreaming me up.

At Secret Haven, Melody and I took the name of our world dead seriously, pressing our fingers to our lips and speaking in low voices whenever we discussed it at school. Our secrets were always shared so delicately – through the graze of fingertips, the rub of shoulders, our foreheads resting ever so gently against one another’s, with eyes closed, so any thoughts could float freely – without being watched. We didn’t realise back then that not all secrets are good, that some people’s secrets are just too dark to speak of.

That didn’t matter at the time. We spent so many of our days dancing at Secret Haven that it was almost the only place we knew. It was, after all, where we first learnt to point our toes, plié across the clover, lasso clouds from the sky and pirouette just to see how trees could twirl – before we even knew it was called ballet. It was where we learnt to collapse dizzily in the daisies just to gracefully get up and start all over again.

Secret Haven smelled of home; a mixture of cut grass, thirsty flowers and chicken business. And I was so glad it was my home, snaking all the way back from the ivory house with its cottage windows and sloping, charcoal cap, and then right to the end, where there was a hedge so high that we couldn’t see anything beyond it, which Mam used to laugh was her plan all along, so nobody could snatch us away.

But one late summer day stays with me more than others, rises to the surface like a bruise: changes colour depending on how I’m feeling.

I was nine years old. Everything was a flickering yellow and the rain had been hushed away beneath the twinkling blue sky. I remember how still everything felt, far from the bustle of Mam and Dad’s barn shop and the cluck of hens, just opposite our Wendy House, as I – in my daffodil-yellow swimsuit – dangled on my swing under the tree of greengages, staring at my bony ankles and knobbly knees while I waited for Melody. Some people may have found the place unsettlingly still, too comfortable a bubble, but I knew of the life that was brought to it whenever Melody arrived.

I remember gazing – one of those extra-long gazes – at Secret Haven, lengthening my neck and adjusting my head to frame everything in the best way, and then blinking to take a snapshot with my eyes. Perfect. That image is always the first one that creeps into my mind.

There was Mam, entering the shot in her paint-splashed summer dress, with a watering can in one hand, secateurs in the other, and her amber eyes reflecting the whole garden in sepia sunlight. Mam belonged outside, in the physical world, so at home with earth on her hands and petals in the ends of her chestnut hair as it fell over one of her shoulders every time she leant forward and then back, the odd, silver streak breaking free.

Mam always meant business; it was in the movement of her strong, freckled arms, the restful rhythm of her footsteps, something so sure, so the world moved with her, shadowed her, even, rather than her moving with the world. I suppose, in a way, she’d grown herself at Secret Haven too.

Melody was late and my feet were beginning to fidget.

‘You know she’ll be here soon, don’t you?’ Mam said with a smile, bending to fill the bird bath. ‘She always is.’

I nodded, feeling the same smile bloom between my cheeks. It was true. Melody had been there almost every day so far that summer. Mam certainly had a way of breathing life back into everything, while Dad especially – found joy in her atmosphere, taking in her light, so they could duet in their own little photosynthesis. Me and Melody were similar.

I focused on a Painted Lady dancing around the border of heather, the strange stiffness of its black-and-orange wings gliding towards one flower and then the next. Dad had told me how they only live several weeks, so I couldn’t help but wonder if the twitch of one of its fragile wings was because it was near death or just curious.

While Mam’s back was turned, I swung like a pendulum, stretching my legs to urge time forward as best as I could, swinging so high that I could see right over the hedge. With each sweep, I could peer down into Dad’s fields where all sorts of root vegetables were growing, and there was the long line of Mam’s greenhouses, where she brought every flower and plant to life. School wasn’t far from home and ballet was just the other side of the Common, a name I still didn’t understand being given to such an unusual and lonely-looking place, with nothing common about it at all. Further on from that was our town. I could see it all from the swing, and if I looked right past the Common, far in the distance wasthe gargantuan tongue of the sea, a place that seemed to happen all on its own, just drifting in and out whether we were there or not. I wondered if one day, it would poke right out and swallow us all.

But no, everything stayed perfectly in its place. So, I took the opportunity to stand up on my swing, with feet turned out and hands clinging to the rope either side. I lifted one of my legs behind me with a pointed toe. Look at me,on the edge of everything. If I can balance here, I can balance anywhere. If I lift my arms, I could even fly!

That’s when I heard thunder above me, the crack of wings whipping at the air. A formation of geese was in full motion, a giant V of triangles in the sky.

‘Vi-vi! Down here!’

I jumped out of my butterfly-skin and my wings shrunk into arms again. I fell onto the swing-seat with a jolt that shot right up my spine, then sloweddown and allowed my legs to flop back and forth like those of a puppet as I returned to land.

‘Did you see that?’ Melody’s sun-bronzed hand hid a gasp until she saw I was okay. There she stood, glowing – as always – wearing one of her oldest leotards, magenta with gold stars, and cradling at least six dolls tightly in her arms as she looked up.

‘Yes! Where do you think they were all going?’

‘Perhaps they’re arriving,’ Mam said, adding an ‘and be careful, you!’ as she exited our scene.

A butterfly of freckles fluttered across Melody’s short nose and pudgy cheeks as she smiled after Mam. Is it possible to miss someone when they’ve only just got here? I was glad the future had finally arrived. Her buttery hair was twirled into two buns on either side of her sparkling head, double the fun of my lonely one. I was usually much paler than Melody, with the dull dishwater hair of a mouse and a fringe that always tried to cover my eyes, but lately, even I had begun to yellow from the scorching hot summer.

‘I’m ready,’ I shouted, then jumped down and pressed play on Mam’s old CD player in the Wendy House. The Nutcracker musicburst out of the saloon door while Melody lined the audience of dolls up on the bench and rushed to join me on our green palladium. We would do everything Ms Madeline taught us at ballet class last week, just as we did every week, drawing fists towards our hearts.

‘This is someone in love,’ I shouted, becoming the teacher, ‘this is someone sad and tearful,’ as we rubbed our eyes, ‘ballet is about acting, and we can feel whatever we want to feel!’ Melody laughed at my serious, Ms Madeline-voice, as we both pas de bourréed across the grass and I blew my fringe out of my sight again. ‘Be whatever you want to be; I want to see your dreams come true,’ she screamed, sprinkling blades of grass and limbless daisies over my head, and laughing straight afterwards. Being worried wasn’t something we felt the need to practise.

That’s what I most loved about ballet; being able to be anything so freely, to play someone different from the ‘quiet Violet’ I was at school. In ballet, life was limitless. Friendships were limitless. Vi-vi and Dee-dee were forever because our world had a beginning and end that only we decided.

During our performance, on one of our lefts and one of our rights, the back of the ivory house cast a shadow over a third of the lawn, and just the other side of that dark line, we danced and danced and danced, perfectly warm in the bright sunlight. Secret Haven was our whole universe and it was just the beginning.

If we forgot anything, I just whispered, ‘Dee-dee, it’s like this,’ or Melody shouted, ‘Vi-vi, it’s like that,’ and then we carried on, attached – by strings – to the sky. For us, there was only that land, with its perfectly green grass, and that sliver of light in each other’s eyes. Melody’s glistened like sapphires and she said mine were like peridots. Together, we were precious.

We were as innocent as dolls to each other; arms were just arms, legs were just legs and clothes were just clothes. She was just my Melody, who I’d always known, and when I was the one to play dead, she was always the one to save me.

When the shadow on the lawn drew over us, we knew our time was up, that the whole sky would change – until tomorrow.

I ran to turn off the music, noticing – at the same time – that Melody’s mother was standing near Mam at the back door, so tall and pointed towards the sky that she was already altering something in the air.

‘To be honest, it’s been on the cards for months,’ she said, nodding her severely parted hair.

‘Well, it’s good of you to come round,’ I heard Mam say.

And there was Melody, already standing alongside them with her head down, its two buns sticking up like ice-cream cones.

I ran over too, trying to meet her eyes again, but for the first time ever, she wouldn’t look at me.

Mam wrapped her arm around my shoulders and gently squeezed. ‘Violet, love,’ she said, ‘something quite important is happening. Melody and her family are moving house tomorrow…⁠’

At first, I pictured our Wendy House. We’d just refurbished it, pinned new Margot Fonteyn posters to the eggshell blue walls for some famous ballerina inspiration, added a vinyl floor and some curtains, so nobody could see in… Then I remembered the other house, the supposedly real one. How could they possibly move the whole house, with all their lives still inside it, and our lives all around it?

‘Melody’s mum has been lucky enough to find a new job, so they’re moving away to be a bit closer to her work,’ Mam added. She was trailing off into some explanation, but I didn’t recognise the name of the place she mentioned, I didn’t remember Melody telling me about this and I didn’t understand how this was ‘lucky’ in any way whatsoever, especially not for me. I wished somebody had warned me about how big the world was going to be. Secret Haven suddenly felt so small, and it was getting smaller by the second.

‘We only surprised Melody with the news this week,’ her mam said, looking at mine, ‘you know how it is, Haze…⁠’

As Mam threw her hair back over her shoulder and puffed out some air, I wondered if she really did know.

And when Melody started to cry, I found it hard to look.

Her mam eventually came down from the sky to put an arm around her and carved the best smile she could. Still, she looked so stiff as she stood there, all in grey, ready to knife through anything she found a bit too pleasant. What is she wearing?Some kind of office blazer and trousers? On a day like this? I’d never seen such a dull flower before. Supposedly younger than Mam, she looked so many years older… No, my mam was a multicoloured artwork all of her own, wearing mustard wellies and gently blowing a ladybird from the inside of her elbow. Mymam was a sigh of relief.

‘Melody, darling,’ she said, edging her daughter forward, ‘why don’t you give Violet…⁠’

Give me what? What could possibly…

Melody took a few deep breaths before wrapping her arms right around me, tighter than she ever had before. The chunky pads of her digits said they weren’t letting go.I suppose none of this is Melody’s fault. I wrapped my arms around her too, rested my head upon her cushiony shoulder, closed my eyes to properly take in the coconut smell of her suncream and the way those stray ringlets of hers brushed my neck. This isn’t acting, not this time. For many seconds, we stood like that, twins after all, never more than three houses away. And that’s when I wanted to cry too, needed to explode like the seeds of a dandelion at the mercy of Melody’s breath.

But I didn’t cry.

Instead, I found myself unpeeling Dee-dee and pushing her whole body away. It wasn’t her fault, I knew that, and yet, I whispered,

‘How could you not tell me, Deeds?’ I looked at her again. ‘Were you never going to tell me?’ My voice cracked and it seemed to cause the deepest splinter between her eyebrows.

She bowed her head and reached out to hug me again.

‘Don’t do that,’ I whispered, but a loud whisper, ‘stay away,’ and then I crossed my arms, not wanting to be taken in again. That blue sky above us all could have been any colour; if it was as black as a crow, it made no difference to me – to any of us.

‘Oh, Violet,’ said Mam, as her eyes sussed out mine, ‘this isn’t like you.’

But who am I now?

‘There’s no need to worry, dear. I’m sure we’ll be back someday, won’t we?’ Melody’s mam said, looking down at my shrunken twin with her beady blue eyes. ‘Well, we’d better go and carry on with our packing…⁠’

That’s when Melody’s shoulders gave way and her sniffles turned to sobs.

‘Okay, well, thanks for coming to see us,’ said Mam, ‘Gosh, we’ll really miss you – I know this one will,’ nudging me, ‘but we hope everything goes okay with the move, don’t we?’ she nudged me again. ‘Keep in touch. Please keep in touch.’

‘Ohhh, of course we will.’

Melody raised her chin with some hope, took a deep breath and then became inconsolable, her blotchy face streaming with tears. She collected her dolls from the bench before her mam grabbed her hand and dragged her away from Secret Haven. Sometimes I wished she wasn’t her mother at all.

I wanted to shout, ‘We’ll be okay, Dee-dee, we’ll see each other tomorrow,’ only this time, we wouldn’t, and I was worried about how we’d ever dance together again – how I’d ever dance again.

‘You’ll be fine, love,’ Mam said, quickly turning to me and cradling my face in both her brambly hands. ‘You’ll be fine, I’ll make sure of it.’ She looked me straight in the eyes, and then planted a kiss on my forehead, right where my fringe had parted thanks to the heat. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘come inside and I’ll get us a nice glass of that iced lemonade I made.’ Then she turned to go into our ivory house.

Dad had turned up in his usual blue jeans – frayed at the knees – and a striped shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He was beginning to mow the lawn as though the whole world hadn’t changed, and I couldn’t bear the noise. I was worried about what I’d said to Melody; tormented by it.

Mam used to say words were like toothpaste, once you’ve said them, you can never squeeze them back into the tube. Now, I tried to gulp down every one of them. Stay away, I’d said, stay away, but I felt the vowels stick to my throat as I stood there, watching our green dance theatre go up in dust.

THE NAKED FACE OF THE MOON

This day had crafted hours into years. I’d aged since Melody had said goodbye, I must have, our summer holidays seemed as though they’d only been imagined. What will happen to our games? I wondered, and our thoughts? Will they all travel back to the mysterious place where they came from? A place built from the intertwining strands of us over the years – scraped knees and broken nails and bee stings and giggles and jinxes and snaps and hands and feet and faces, and Vi-vi and Dee-dee – will they be forgotten?

I heard doors being slammed as I wandered past the landing window. Through it, I could see Melody’s car struggling to reverse off their drive. Yes, there it was, gaining pace as it passed us, heading towards the Common, as peaceful as ever beneath the naked face of the moon, and then it was gone. They were gone.

There, under the faint light from the lamp post, was the roof of Melody’s house; I couldn’t quite believe there were no people underneath it. It must have still been warm from their last-minute arguments, from Melody being shouted at for pouring too much milk into her cereal bowl, and Polly their dog, barking if anyone other than Melody’s mum tried to touch her pom-pom-shaped coat. But now it sat empty.

I wanted something to happen, anything – a shock of lightning, a galloping pony, a scream because none of it felt right, nothing should have been that quiet, but still, nothing came.

Even one of my Russian dolls on my bedroom windowsill had turned her back on me.

THE RED-HAIRED GIRL

I was standing at the bottom of the stairs, still in my flamingo pyjamas and slippers when a long-legged red-haired girl blazed through the house as though she’d been there a million times before. She kicked off her shoes, chasséd down the hall, jetéd up the stairs and split-ran across the landing while our mothers spoke together. They were clueless of their surroundings and the show this girl with pigtails was suddenly putting on for me, whose hair fell more like rats’ tails upon my shoulders after just waking up…

She nosed in and around the rooms of our ivory house, in and out of my bedroom, and I began to panic as she seemed to gravitate towards the final room, my special room, the dance room. That was when I really felt my blood boil.

‘No, please. Don’t!’ I said, trying to flatten my morning-fringe with one hand, but this stranger was turning the doorknob, pretending not to listen.

‘No––! My – Mam’s – dolls’ house is in there!’

‘A dolls’ house?’

I wanted to kick myself for saying the wrong thing. The girl’s glassy eyes lit up as she threw open the door and faced the white four-storey home in all its ornate glory.

‘Oh my God, I love dolls’ houses!’

And I’m not sure why I stood so still while she breathed it all in, harassed the delicate, painted faces of each figure, examined the bottoms of each little table and chair with its spindly legs, and crouched in absolute awe of the miniature creation.

‘This is so good. I’ve never seen any like this before.’ Her eyes were wide as she turned to me, but I sent her the sullenest face I could, hoping that if I closed my eyes for long enough, she’d leave. The longer she crouched there, the less the dolls’ house belonged to Secret Haven, to me – or Mam.

‘It’s not to be played with,’ I mumbled, ‘just looked at. It’s my mam’s…⁠’ but she just laughed in disbelief, tugging at its side-windowsills, and stroking its black roof.

‘Why would dolls not be played with? That’s the whole point! You’re so silly…⁠’ Her eyes rolled.

It felt like she was playing with me, and it hurt; it hurt more than any of the week before, or maybe it was because of the week before, I wasn’t sure.

‘Wow, look how much better this looks over here,’ the girl was exclaiming, but I couldn’t look.

She poked around a little more, swapping bathroom and living room furniture, removing shoes and shawls from the women, and not putting anything back as it was found. She was finding every possible way to dull its shine with her own vision until there was nothing of Melody, Mam or me left anywhere inside. She was stealing its story; stealing me.

Then, she started looking through the attic windows in wonder and asked, ‘Does this come off? It would be easier if the roof came off. There’d be more room to play.’

As she was about to try, I shouted,

‘Stop it! Please! Stop it now!’ Still, my voice wasn’t as loud as I wanted it to be, and it was trembling like jelly as I shut my eyes again.

But it was too late. When I opened them, the red-haired monster had upturned the whole house and its insides were an unrecognisable heap on the rug.

The girl held two hands over her mouth and nose when she looked up and saw my tears. She started to pick things up, all in the wrong order. Useless.

‘Bobbie? BOBBBBBBIIIIIEEEEE?’ Her mother was calling her from the front door, so she gave me one last ‘oops’ look and then scarpered.

‘Bobbie’s mum brought some old dance outfits for you, Violet! Isn’t that lovely?’ Mam shouted to me after shutting the door behind the intruders’ noise. ‘They’re very pretty and she said the only reason they’re getting rid of them is because they’re too small for Bobbie now.’ But I didn’t respond. How could I possibly dance without Melody?And why would I want anything that’s belonged to such a show-off? Pfft.

Mam’s footsteps reached the landing where I was still standing. ‘Oh, Violet. What happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, feeling the lump rising in my throat.

‘Why did you let her in here?’

‘But I didn’t. I didn’t let…⁠’ I shrugged my shoulders as the tears filled my eyes. It was all my fault.

‘Well, you’ll have to clear that up and put it back just right. You really need to look after your things, Violet. Is anything broken?’

I hoped not but it certainly felt like I was, like a storm had swept through me and taken down everything in its path. That’s what happens when someone walks in on your world – uninvited. I slumped against the wall and let the tears roll down my cheeks.

Those dolls had watched me for years. They didn’t say a word, but I knew they paid attention. One stood with her toe over the edge of the second floor and a hand upon her hip. I waited for her to gallop side to side, which of course, she didn’t. They were all dusty, too, their hats had doubled in height and the furniture was layered with what had become extra cushions, all the bold-coloured fabrics of them faded from terracotta to yellow, from blue to green.

Slowly, I began to save each figure from the massacre, where shoes had flown across the room and left dolls’ arms raised as though trying to reach them. I patted down their hairstyles, replaced their hats, and made sure they were all back in their starting positions on the floors where they’d stood for years. Still, they looked different since their trauma. They looked at me, as though I was the one who’d viciously uprooted them.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered, still shaking a little as I twisted their faces away, not wanting them to see me in such a state, ‘just for a while.’

I stomped towards my bedroom, greeted – as always – by the huge poster of Margot’s perfect ballerina pose and immaculate face, smiling at me from the wall. I tore it down and shut the curtains on Secret Haven for good.

AS BRITTLE AS PAPIER MÂCHÉ

All week someone kept yanking me out of one nightmare and hurling me into another, changing the scenery in the blink of a stage curtain, leaving parts of me behind with each act: a hand here, a leg there, one on theCommon and one in the sea, and what could I do about it?

Finally, I was back in my bedroom where my Russian dolls stared at me from the windowsill like mute choristers. Their big navy eyes smiled above rosy cheeks, all of them dressed in violets, with parted yellow hair; a gift from Mam after my first ballet exam. She had hung a kingfisher-blue costume – a hand-me-down from the red-haired girl – on the wardrobe door, where it taunted me with sequins that glittered in the sun.

I’d been on good terms with summer for years, but now, we were unhappy with each other. Its glare made it impossible for me to shut my eyes. There was the sound of swallows. I watched their silhouettes, shadow puppets; I imagined their red throats diving at me, and then, squawk, they were only spindles of light flying through the gaps in the dusky pink curtains, stalking the glass with golden beaks. That was Secret Haven trying to get in, but it wasn’t allowed, not on the first day back at school, maybe not ever.

When I stood up, everything looked the same but felt different. Do I have company? Has someone followed me from one of my dreams? I shook my pillow upside down, but not even a moth fluttered out, and neither did Melody.

The floorboards creaked beneath my feet, and it struck me that our house was as brittle as papier mâché. It looked sturdy from the outside, but it felt as though, say I was to knock at the surface a bit too hard, it would tremble, and, say I stepped too far forward, I would fall – slippers and all – through all the paint and scrunched-up newspaper, and straight into another planet. I would fall through to the earth’s centre, where Dad said it was too hot for anything to survive. He’d said before that the earth was burning up more and more every day, and so we needed to look after the sky, to make sure we didn’t pollute it with unnecessary matter. The trouble was most things mattered to me.

My green check school dress was sitting upon the wicker chair, with my cardigan around its shoulders as though someone was already wearing it. Mam must have crept in last night. She did that kind of thing for Dad and me sometimes, mapped out our worlds. I often found abandoned socks moved by the time I woke up, and the glowing petals of my bedside lamp switched off. A few weeks earlier, I’d woken up to Mam looking at me from the bedroom door, much quieter than she usually was; she was just standing there, not even whispering.

Once I’d slid my dress over me, I ran to brush my teeth.

‘Violeeeet, are you nearly ready?’ Mam was shouting upstairs. ‘There’s toast on the table for you!’ I ran back to my room to steal the smallest Russian doll from the windowsill and nestled her familiar face inside my sleeve before I raced downstairs.

Walking to school with Mam instead of Melody made my stomach hurt but I was glad Mam was there. As we strolled up the road, the sun needled through the air around us, and a snapshot of the house before we’d left it stayed in my head; a flash of the door slamming before Mam had rushed off and I’d followed. Abandoned cups of tea would drink themselves up in their own time, and a tower of strawberry jam jars, which Mam must have stirred up overnight, waited to be stacked at the barn shop. As we made our way up the sloping road, there was no car in the driveway of Melody’s house.

Mam kept a strong hold of my wrist. She knew I was thinking of Melody, but she kept her head high for both of us. I imagined Melody starting at a new school that morning. It felt as though I was too. When she was in my class, the teachers had often sat us at the same table, so we’d smile across at each other whenever we could, and no one else would know what we were thinking. I had no idea where I’d end up sitting now; I’d hardly spoken to anyone else.

Our feet were at the playground before we knew it, where hundreds of small strangers swarmed around the tarmac. None of them were the shape of Melody and I seemed to have frozen to the spot. The size of school suddenly looked so enormous that my chest blew up like a balloon. If I explain everything, just to Mam, it might all feel better. But I couldn’t. I sensed myself stepping back as I watched the schoolchildren. There was a sheet of glass between us; they were characters on a television screen, and my ears were turning down the volume. I knew it was just a playground, but it felt like an auditorium. If I closed my eyes, maybe I could escape altogether. My heart was growing larger and larger inside me as I heard Mam say,

‘It must be lovely to be back here with everyone!’

My stomach tumble tossed. ‘I don’t want to go,’ I mumbled.

‘Now, don’t be silly, love, of course you do, you love school! You’ll soon make new friends.’

But how? I’d never had to do it before. I’d always known Melody. Mam was chatting to some of the other mothers; something about summer being gone in a flash… She managed to knit friends like gloves, and she’d made so many gloves, there weren’t enough hands to wear them all.

‘I can’t!’ A lump the size of the largest Russian doll rose in my throat. As the crowds of children swirled around in front of us, I edged behind Mam, but she immediately moved out of the way.

‘Come on, now, love.’ She knew me too well, and when people know you well, you run out of choices. In the distance, we saw lines of shouty children forming at the bottom of the playground, a teacher at the end of each one.

‘Go on then,’ Mam nodded towards the queues of children, ‘off you go!’

She planted a kiss on my cheek, took the soggy, uneaten slice of toast from my palm and handed me my school bag, not allowing me to say any more. I heard the crunch while she turned around, leaving me no choice but to run over to one of the lines. I stood at the very back, behind Frederick, a fidgety boy whose light-blonde curls moved like rice pudding. He wasn’t talking to anyone either. I looked down at the gravel and imagined Mam dropping the breadcrumbs along the way as she walked home. If she ever lost me, she could find her way back.

I kept an eye on Frederick as he hung his coat and backpack up in the cloakroom, and I followed him follow the other children towards our new classroom.

‘That’s right, everyone; choose your own seats for now,’ said the teacher. ‘We’ll see how it goes for the first few weeks and think about moving around later on in the term.’

I watched Frederick pick a seat in a corner at the back, and I sat next to him. We didn’t look at each other and we didn’t say anything about him not being Melody. The varnished desk was cold as I folded my arms, and as Frederick scribbled alongside, his elbow invaded my space.

The morning grew around me. Through the window, the clouds looked whiter; the day was puffing out, then inhaling again. If I sit still forever, will I miss anything? Everything felt larger than usual, even the wooden seat I was sitting on. I drew it as close to the desk as I could, and with every chance I got, I glanced at the watch on Frederick’s wrist; the strap was bright green and yellow, one of those watches that had little illustrations along each strap to help you to tell the time. It was a whole three hours until lunchtime, but at least it was the same time wherever Melody lived. I wondered if she was sitting at her desk, feeling lost like I was. I picked up my new rough book and wrote Violet & Melody, BFFs on the inside cover.

I found it strange that no one mentioned Melody’s disappearance; commented upon how tragic it was that we were cut right down the middle, that her mother had completely ignored the tall hedge, scooped her out of Secret Haven and left a Melody-shaped crater everywhere I went. How will you survive? They should have been asking me. Who will you be without her?

‘Best friends forever,’ I mouthed under my breath.

Frederick’s foot nudged mine, but I ignored it and continued to stare through the window at the sunny playground, at the fence beyond it, at the road beyond it and the hills behind that, and the fickle sky. You can’t colour in a landscape like that with crayons. Just how far away is Melody?

‘Violet!’ A voice made me jump. It was Mrs Treadwell. ‘Will you look this way, please? There’s nothing more interesting out there.’ But I felt sure she was wrong. I saw her long, bony face, all beak and all directed at me. I wondered what kind of bird Dad would say she was. A rook, perhaps, with that glossy, black plumage of hair.

She was talking about water, how it begins in the sky, in a large puff of cotton wool. Her hands formed fists and cracked open to fall like rain. She was describing how the rain lands in streams, and the streams join up to rivers, where the water begins to meander before it splurges out into the big blue sea. I couldn’t help but imagine that happening to tears after they’ve rolled down your cheeks.

I was amazed, hearing how rivers flow through so many towns and cities. It sounded like a very watery world, the way all of us drift past each other in our own little bubbles, about to collide and not knowing when. If Melody stands in the river, and I do, perhaps our feet would be in the same water. It would be just like when we both used to look up at the moon from our bedrooms. I wished I could tell Melody to find out where her river was, and to dip her feet in it right now!

At the lunchtime bell, Frederick merged with the crowd and then disappeared again. I walked outside not knowing where to go. There was an old stone bench at the edge of the playground, so I sat down and watched some kids playing football and other games, but I couldn’t see Frederick anywhere. While my feet dangled, they started practising their ballet point.

‘Not now,’ I whispered, ‘not anymore.’

Back in class that afternoon, there were no more questions about rivers, but there were plenty of others that came like currents in the rising and falling sea of arms. My elbows didn’t move from the desk, and Mrs Treadwell didn’t look in my direction. Mam will be here soon. I’ll tell her everything. Whenever I pictured Mam, if she wasn’t with me and Dad, she was looking after Secret Haven, gently pruning leaves and inspecting flowerheads, speaking to them in her low, calm voice, or helping Dad at the barn shop and breaking out into a loud laugh with the odd customer. That made me wonder what else she did when I wasn’t there. I guess I could never know for certain.

At quarter past three, Mrs Treadwell told us to pack our books away inside our desks, and I could already see the rusty red pick-up truck through the window. There was Mam, swinging open the door, jumping out and walking towards the school gate in her long, purple summer dress. The fact that I’d soon be sitting alongside her made me feel homesick. I willed the moment closer to me with magic. Maybe I could will myself away from the next few days at school just as easily…

CAN YOU LOVE SOMETHING THAT FRIGHTENS YOU TO DEATH?

I’d taken a stand; no ballet ever again, and I’d ignored Secret Haven for days. Melody and I usually went together but without half a duet, a stage is empty.

Mam found me wrapped under the covers like a marshmallow at 11am. I tried to roll the torn Margot poster under my bed as soon as I saw her, but her eyes darted straight towards the gap on the turquoise wall.

‘Violet, what’s gotten into you?’ She perched on the end of my bed and for a moment, I thought I might have a chance. ‘You’re being ridiculous! You love Margot, and I hope you know you’re going to ballet whether you like it or not. You don’t want to miss the first class of the new term.’ She’d already stood up again. Her hands were on her hips.

‘Mam, Melody’s…⁠’

‘I know how you’re feeling love, but put your ballet clothes on now, please, or you’re going to be late. Simple as that.’

I knew she’d stand there until I was dressed, so I started rifling through the drawers. I ignored the blue sequined outfit; it felt wrong to be in such bright colours under the current circumstances. Instead, I put on the plainest leotard I could find – a black one with white tights and a pink elastic belt around my middle. I could mourn in style. Margot would have. Still, it wasn’t going to be the same without Melody.

‘Right, face the mirror,’ Mam said, with bobby pins pursed between her lips, a hairbrush in her right hand and a bobble over her wrist. Surely, I can’t go to ballet feeling this way. I don’t think Mam gets what it’ll be like for me. I slumped down in front of my dressing table for her to whip my hair up into a bun. ‘Don’t you look at me with those big green eyes,’ she mumbled as I peered out of my puffy lids. ‘Gosh, just like your father’s, they are.’ The face looking back at me had already paled since Melody had left and taken all the colour with her. I’d have preferred not to see it. ‘When did this hair start to get so long?’ Mam yanked the hairbrush through all the mousy knots, so the ends managed to reach just below my collarbone. ‘Anyway, you’re a beautiful dancer, Violet. It’s the thing you enjoy the most, isn’t it?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘You have to go. Don’t you dare let Melody stop you!’ But she doesn’t understand, I told that face looking back at me. When I didn’t smile, it appeared narrower. It’s not Melody’s fault, it’s just that I’ve never done anything without her. I don’t know if I’d enjoy it without her, I just don’t know who I am all of a sudden.

Outside, even the sky seemed stretched to full capacity, the air around us threatening to pucker. The pick-up truck yawned whenever we climbed into it. Dad insisted it was tired from the sun just like he was, which would explain why it gave up every now and then. Hopefully, it’s had enough today, I crossed my fingers, and I won’t have to go to ballet.

‘Come on, love,’ Mam said, winding down the windows so the clumps of dried mud catapulted off the glass. She tapped the dashboard, ‘be good to us today. Our Violet has to get to ballet class!’ She flashed me a wide smile that fell before she started the engine.

‘I didn’t tell you earlier love,’ she said, ‘as I didn’t want to make you nervous, but Ms Madeline has something very important to share with you today!’ She rested her hand on mine before reaching back to the gearstick. ‘Don’t worry, it’s very good, but I think she should tell you herself.’

Part of me thought Melody might be there to surprise me, but part of me had also learnt to leave dreams behind.

I’d never known the Common’s true name, just that it had always been quiet, like me. Not many people seemed to acknowledge it, that mysterious piece of land spread along either side of the main road, but I’d always been drawn to it – its stillness, its silence. There had been so many weeks of uninterrupted sun that the Common was solid like clay, fringed by scorched gorse, thirsty heather and dried-up ponds. Wild ponies were circling, scraping their hooves against the dirt, probably wondering when everything would change back to how it was before. So was I. Where do they come from, anyway? And where do they go? I’d have to ask Dad. It looked so incomplete, like the scenery of an abandoned performance.

As the truck gained momentum, Secret Haven became a speck through the rear window. We could see the blush-red of the new housing estate on the other side of the Common, and the vague, pointed shape of the ballet building in the distance. When we stopped, the truck sighed. As soon as Mam had wound its windows back up, she stole my hand and rushed us along the busy road.

Ms Madeline’s School of Dancewas a distinctive old chapel. We strutted along the black and white chess tiles of the empty corridor and that’s when I realised we were very late.

‘It’s all through expression,’ shouted Ms Madeline from the dance room as we reached the studio door. ‘Remember, this is for an audience. You always have to tell a story!’

The fact the music was already playing made me want to cry. I hadn’t been late for ballet my whole life! I followed Mam to the closed door. I did love ballet but I really didn’t want to be there alone. Can you love something that frightens you to death?

Mam barged in, leaving me to peep around the corner behind her. There, clear as the afternoon, was the slender but imposing Ms Madeline, dressed in her long, black skirt, which was wrapped around a purple, long-sleeved but low-back leotard, with her customary black bun, sunken at the back of her head. Her hands were a clapping metronome to the ballet steps before her as she slowly strode left and then right, and then… One of her dark eyes spied us straight away.

Mam nudged me. ‘Go on, love.’

I tiptoed closer, trying to ignore every dainty bunhead that turned towards me. Mam slid my dance bag from her shoulder and handed it to me. Everyone else’s were in little heaps alongside the wall; all the socks rolled into shoes and T-shirts with the arms still in. And there, in a line along the barre, was a rainbow of stretching gazelles, only, the mirrors all around the room made everything look much larger than it really was, so there were four times as many heads, arms and legs.

Mam and I stood there for what seemed like forever. The longer I stood, the more scared I became, and I found my mind stepping out of the dance room, running down the stairs and ending up in yesterday, back at Secret Haven. But Secret Haven wasn’t even the same since Melody left. Mam’s figure was blurring back into view alongside me. I didn’t yet have the power to disappear whenever I wanted to.

‘Come and stand by me at the front, dear, once you’re free to join us!’ Ms Madeline said, seeing me dither.

I unfolded my black ballet shoes like liquorice, slid them on and ran towards the barre. The bang of the dance room door behind me meant Mam had gone and taken away the opportunity to crawl back to moments ago. I blinked twice to stop myself crying, clenched and unclenched my fists, then looked up and caught up with the other dancers.

‘Good girl, Violet. Lovely point,’ Ms Madeline said, raising one of her heavily powdered eyebrows, and I knew that while my foot was as curved as a cashew, the moment before – me being late – was forgotten; I was good again.

‘Okay girls, now move to the centre and pair up for some free dancing,’ Ms Madeline said. ‘Let your imaginations run wild, that’s why we do this!’ She said ‘we’ as though she danced as much as we did, and I hoped that was the case. ‘Just let yourselves go!’

The other girls all found partners and for a moment, forgetting how everything had changed, I searched for Melody. She hadn’t turned up after all. Instead, I saw myself spinning in the mirror, ghostly white in my black leotard, grieving. I lifted my arms into a port de bras and closed my eyes. Melody will always be with me, I thought, as I let the music carry us to a faraway place, until all the other girls disappeared.

‘Wonderful, Violet!’ Ms Madeline’s voice made me jump out of my skin. ‘I think you’re ready to attend the older girls’ class.’

As I looked up at her, her eyes lit up.

‘You’re already dancing just as well as some of them. So, if you’re happy to join them, next time you come, make sure you turn up an hour later.’

She winked so only I could see her. Maybe Ms Madeline understood what I was going through. She had lost a dancer too.

‘Right, now, cool down before you all leave, girls.’

I pressed my forehead against the cold, tiled floor and closed my eyes, allowing every muscle to find its own way of expanding within me. Melody and I used to do that before class started; practise our stretches together. I wandered into our usual corner and found my usual space on the floor.

Oo! The floor is freezing, Melody would have said, flinching as though we were inching into the sea together in February.

I rolled my eyes and laughed; she said the same thing every week. Sometimes, we whispered about how long Ms Madeline’s hair would be if it was ever let loose from its bun, and we imagined it travelling across whole countries and continents. I slid into the splits, where I threw my arms as far in front of me as I could, and stretched my chest as far across the floor as it would go, waiting for Melody’s ice-cold fingertips.

I thought about what Ms Madeline had said. I either moved forward or I remained alone. Maybe I could still be like Margot…

MIST

Sunday morning, just as I did every week, I put on some jeans and went for a walk to find Melody. My feet tiptoed away with themselves before I arrived at her empty driveway and remembered I had nowhere to go.

It bewildered me what could change overnight. The air felt unsure of itself and so did I. As I was outside, I decided I might as well keep going. The trees either side of the road looked cold, some of their leaves were forgotten at their feet and they seemed to shiver a little with a breeze that blew whenever it felt like it. The ground crunched like ash: autumn had arrived all at once, as everything had lately.

Someone else arrived too. A sound escaped one of the bushes; a rrrr not too far from my shoes. When I looked more closely, I heard rustling and there, I saw them: two marbled jade eyes looking back at me. A tiny paw. And then another. I loved the way it looked at me, with a little sympathy somehow. What do you know, kitty? Hypnotised, I found myself slowly blinking at the kitten until she blinked back. Her ears were like tiny roofs, and her whole face, so fluffy, with leaves for hair, pounced at me. But I didn’t mind. As she clawed at my jeans, I stroked her messy grey, squirrely body until she let go.

‘Have you been looking for Melody too?’ I whispered, following her, and making sure to stroke the back of her warm, collarless neck whenever she stopped to check I was still there.

She seemed to purr at every touch. Maybe she didn’t belong to anyone; maybe she was like the wild ponies on the Common. She followed me up the drive and around the side of our ivory house, and through the squeaking gate that startled her when it swung shut.

‘Come here, kitty,’ I said quietly, and as I kicked off my trainers at the back door, her paw padded the air for a while as though to check the room for any bad energy. She piquéd the terracotta tiles and finally leapt over the threshold. Then, she ran her fur along every shoe on the mat, and the edge of every cupboard and chair leg in the kitchen. I considered how I’d have no choice but to keep her a secret; make her a home in a cardboard box, feed her chicken while my parents worked outside, but as I shut the back door, Mam strolled into the kitchenwith her nose in the air.

‘That’s one skinny kitty,’ she said, hand on one hip as she rested on the worktop, with an amused look on her face. The kitten froze, ready to turn around, but her eyes stayed focused on this human she’d never met. Within seconds, Mam was as hypnotised as I was, and she couldn’t help but smile. She took a saucer from the table and began pouring some cream from a pot in the fridge. Still, I could see that the kitten was nervous; one of her ears twisted independently of the other and she stood stiff as a brush as the unknown hands placed the dish in front of her and said, ‘not too much. Just a little treat.’

She shivered as Mam leaned over us both to watch her enjoy.

‘Oh dear, look at her. You’d better watch out. Cats don’t ever leave once you start feeding them, you know?’

‘That’s fine with me,’ I said, grinning.

The kitten didn’t move a hair at first; her tail stood firmly on end behind her while she purred. She already had a strength about her, I liked that, treating the scenery with caution. Mam took a large step back, looked me deep in the eyes and mimed,

‘You can do it. Go on…⁠’

I looked into those jade eyes, frozen like gemstones. I leaned forward, ever so gently, so my denim knees didn’t scratch loudly against the floor, and I ducked my head a little and pretended to drink. It only took seconds for the kitten to imitate. She lapped up the cream with her pink tongue.

Once she’d finished every drop, she stood up straight, looked up at me, and began to wind her body back and forth in a figure of eight around my ankles. I kept still, eyes closed for a bit. I can do it.This is how you make friends. Mam was right.

‘Nice to see you smiling again, love.’ She stroked the top of my head as though I was a kitten too.

Dad muddily appeared in the doorway; the odd leaf needing to be raked from his short wave of grey hair, and his tawny face still squinting from the sun. He was carrying a bedraggled birdhouse under one arm; I remembered him nailing it onto the fence years ago, but birds didn’t seem to flock to it. I could tell from its soggy insides that it needed to be either fixed and spruced up or thrown away altogether. Mam walked straight into the living room, I followed her in, and the kitten followed me.

Mam was searching. She was lifting the sofa cushions and slapping them back down, before doing the same with the rug in front of the fire, determined to find whatever it was. When Dad walked in, and eventually lifted his chin to look at her, I could see – as Mam threw her hair over her shoulder – that it was an argument she’d been looking for, been shoehorning into shape for that particular moment. The empty birdhouse sat in Dad’s arms, with wood-tags hanging from it.

‘You’re always fixing things,’ Mam announced to him from the other side of our living room, ‘fixing, fixing, fixing.’

‘You’re always breaking them,’ Dad said, more quietly, before turning to walk straight back into the kitchen. He was right, now I thought about it. Most of the things he’d ever fixed, Mam had been the one to break: drinking glasses, furniture, garden ornaments, and yet Dad seemed to enjoy fixing them. Looking around, there were many parts of our house that needed repairing; it had always been that way, from the chairs at the kitchen table that were duct-taped together, to loose floorboards, to the attic door that was always open to the Bogeyman.

‘We’ll just buy a new one!’ Mam had flown into the kitchen now, easy as a cuckoo since the door handle no longer worked. She’d continue like this for a while, dancing back and forth. I followed her from room to room, without stepping into her air. Mam always needed to keep moving.

In a brief interval, as I was about to go upstairs, Mam dropped her hand upon my shoulder. Her face was splintering with news.

‘I almost forgot to tell you, Violet,’ she said, and I could feel a flutter high up inside my chest, ‘we had a phone call from a certain someone while you were out!’

Not that I needed to guess who. I didn’t feel as excited about it as I thought I would.

‘Melody’s mum said it’s been an exhausting time, but Melody would love to speak with you,’ Mam talked on and on and I found my ears tuning out. Then she started laughing, as though my face was the most hilarious thing on earth. ‘Oh, I bet Melody misses you too, love.’