Grace

Chapter 16

And so the weeks passed by in a regular rhythm of lessons, rowing, homework, listening to Master MacLachlan tell us about his life and the terrible sadness and incredible joy he'd witnessed, one dinner Master and Dame Clarke, one with Master Wagnerite and his wife, and me finding time to learn the rest of Duo Seraphim so that it could be recorded, Ben turned seventeen on the Tuesday a week after my birthday and we had cake again. Then the middle of October swung by and most people prepared for a weekend of short leave. I was just picking up some music to play on the harp when I got the all but inevitable call from Mum and Dad telling me that they both had to fly to America for work. I told them it was fine – it most certainly was not fine – and let them go.

We'd been emailing almost every day. Just short emails because we were all so busy, but it had been nice. Really nice. I now felt like I knew them better than I ever had before. I'd felt for sure that they'd be home and I'd be able to actually spend some time with them. I'd made sure I didn't have any homework and everything.

Well, what a preposterous idea that turned out to be. Of course they had to work and that always came first. It always had done and nothing was going to change that for them. Not even be being at boarding school and not seeing them for even just half an hour every day like I used to. I counted it all up. They hadn't been able to drop me off for the days of testing, or pick me up, or take me to the interview or bring me here on my first day. I supposed I had to give them credit for taking the morning off and looking around the house with me back in June and for Mum coming to see me for five minutes when I was concussed and she had a surgery to prepare for. But seriously. Was it so hard for them to take even just another half day off to see me for the first time in a month and a half?

Apparently yes, it was. It was too difficult.

I threw my phone onto my bed and kicked my empty bin across the room as hot, angry tears came to my eyes. Every other girl had gone home. Most of the boys had gone home. There were only five people in Walpole staying. The only other one in my year being Ben. The others being B blockers who already had too much work to be doing.

I'd been stupid to think that things were any different. Emails. They were written words. Not spoken ones. Spoken ones meant so much more. Everyone knew that. I should have known that. Things hadn't changed. Of course they hadn't. Life had been the same since I was born. Work or spend time with our daughter? Work. I'm going to work. You're going to work too? Ok, I'll call her and let her down. Again. She'll be ok with it. She's always ok with it. She's never complained before, why would she now? Yeah, she'll be fine. Of course she will be. She always is.

Well what if I wasn't? What if I was never ok when they did this to me? What if...

I was not going to cry over this I decided. I righted my bin, shoved my phone in a desk drawer where I didn't have to acknowledge its existence and put some running kit on and headed downstairs.

"Grace!" Dame Clarke exclaimed when she saw me.

"Change in plans," I said and brushed passed her on the stairs which I was more or less flying down.

Once on the ground floor I headed for the front door which meant fighting with the dividing door's lock and then not crashing into furniture on the way through the house. What I did crash into was Ben as he came down the brother stairs without a care in the world.

"Grace!" he gasped and somehow managed to steady us.

"I'm fine," I said.

And then burst into tears.

"Grace? What's –"

I pushed him away from me just enough to make him let me go. "I said I'm fine," I managed to say and dashed out.