You Only Live Once Read online

  I shook my head quickly as if trying to dislodge the uncomfortable feeling and quickly scrolled past the photo and onto a series of photos of Blake with his shirt off, being painted by a group of three girls with some kind of neon paint.

  But then I was forced to pause again, because here was another familiar face.

  Til.

  Til! Since when did Til know Nathan and Blake? And since when did Til go to parties? And, more to the point, since when did Til go to parties without telling me about them?

  Since now apparently. Here she was. Here Til was, at a party, with Sarah – my Sarah – probably having a tremendously good time and agreeing what a dreadful, Australian-snogging, yellow-legged bore I was.

  I closed my phone and shoved it under my pillow crossly. I lay on my back in bed looking at the ceiling and tried to tell myself that I had a much better time with Vicky and Spider than I ever would at some stupid house party full of morons from school.

  I couldn’t shake the irritation though. The jealousy. Why was it that, no matter how much fun you were having, everyone else was always having more fun?

  And why was it that they were always having the fun together?

  Without you?

  Nagging

  My bedroom, by this stage of the summer, was an absolute disgrace.

  One morning Ollie came in to ask to borrow my phone charger and as he hovered in the doorway while I unplugged it, he said, ‘You’re really letting things go, eh, Gracie?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I demanded, before looking around me and realising exactly what he meant.

  There were plates of half-eaten sandwiches – both real ones and Paddy’s more questionable offerings – dotted around the carpet. I’d stopped using my wardrobe at all and clothes were draped over my chair and in piles in the middle of the floor. My desk, once the epitome of organisation, was hidden under a carpet of crisp packets and bus tickets and –

  ‘Ugh, gross,’ Ollie said, looking at it. ‘You keep your dirty pants in the middle of your desk now?’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ I said. ‘I can clean it up in no time. Look.’

  I took my bin over to the edge of my desk and in one smooth arm movement, swept every item straight into it. Dirty pants and everything.

  ‘You can’t just throw your pants away. What you going to do when you run out?’

  I shrugged. ‘Wear yours again.’

  Ollie just shook his head and took my charger from me.

  ‘Oh, guess what?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I said grumpily.

  ‘I’m going to college.’

  ‘What do you mean? When?’

  ‘In September. I’m going to do a BTEC in Music Production.’

  I laughed, and not in a kind way. ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean why?’

  ‘Like, what’s the point? You’re not going to be a pop star.’

  Ollie looked at me, his head on one side. He looked bemused, almost, like he was finding me puzzling in some way. ‘I never said I was. I don’t know where it’s going to take me. But I reckon I’ll enjoy the course and that’s a start.’

  ‘If you say so.’ I was lying on my bed not looking at him, scrolling through my phone.

  Paddy was downstairs in the kitchen. ‘Gracie!’ he called. ‘I made you a sandwich!’

  ‘I’m not hungry, thanks,’ I mumbled.

  Then Mum’s voice came from somewhere else in the house. ‘Oh, just humour him, Grace. He’ll kick off again otherwise.’

  I trudged downstairs to receive this latest creation. I was surprised to see that for the first time in his life, Paddy had grasped the concept of a sandwich made out of two pieces of bread.

  ‘Padster!’ I ruffled his hair. ‘You made an actual sandwich!’

  He beamed proudly.

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Surprise,’ he said.

  Luckily I decided to investigate the exact nature of this surprise before taking a bite. When I peeled back the top slice of bread I found a thick wodge of toilet roll soaked in something that may have been orange juice, or may have been something more upsetting.

  ‘Lovely,’ I smiled at Paddy. ‘What a treat.’

  Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, cradling a cup of tea in his hands and looking out the window. He looked sad. Wistful. I had been meaning to say something, and now seemed like the time.

  ‘Mum said you were sad about Nan,’ I said awkwardly. I managed to make it sound more like an accusation than empathy. ‘So … sorry about that. I’m sad too.’ I cringed. I sounded like a children’s picture book. My First Emotions. I’m sad. Are you sad?

  Dad turned to look at me. He sighed. ‘Yeah. It’s not just that though. Not just missing her. I suppose it’s just made me realise – remember – how life is short. We don’t get a lot of it, do we? And between you and me, Grace, sometimes I’m not totally sure how well I’m using mine.’

  I was alarmed.

  Dad was cheery. Dad danced the Macarena in the queue at Asda and made the same joke about me having missed Christmas every time I got up after 9 a.m. Dad did not get morose and despair that he was wasting his life. I didn’t know what to say.

  Luckily, Dad seemed to abruptly snap out of his gloom so I didn’t have to say anything.

  He went over to the dishwasher and started unloading it. ‘Are you out today?’

  I nodded. ‘Probably.’

  ‘You’re never in, these days, it seems!’ he said brightly.

  I shrugged. ‘It’s summer.’

  Dad nodded. ‘I know, I know. But you can bring people back here too, you know! What about Til? Haven’t seen her for a while.’

  ‘She’s busy. Getting ready for college.’

  ‘Is there anything you need to be doing? To get ready for the new term? Not long now …’

  ‘Oh for god’s sake!’ I exploded. ‘No, I don’t need to be doing anything. I don’t need to be tidying my room or reading school books or working in some pointless summer job. Why can’t you all leave me alone? You’ve literally just said about wasting life! Just now! So stop trying to make me waste mine!’

  Dad just stood there, looking at me, a teatowel in his hand.

  I marched down the hallway and out of the front door, slamming it behind me.

  The Spirit Whisperer

  It was, I think, in the fourth week that I’d known Vicky and Spider that we were watching telly in their lounge when a programme called Spirit Whisperer came on.

  The Spirit Whisperer was a man called Dale Keller and the concept of the programme was that he’d invite members of the audience to come up to the stage, bringing with them a photo of a dearly departed loved one. Dale would then sit opposite the person at a small square table so they could watch while he attempted to make contact with the dead person’s spirit.

  In the episode we saw, Dale’s guest (victim?) was a woman called Nancy and she came to the stage armed with a photo of a man she told us was her brother, Mark, who had died in a mountaineering accident four years ago.

  ‘I just want to know he’s warm enough,’ Nancy tearfully told Dale. ‘It’s on my mind all the time. The terrible idea of him being cold and wet still, wherever he is.’

  Dale nodded seriously and took the photo from Nancy and placed it between his palms. He closed his eyes and began to breathe deeply. Nancy, along with the rest of the audience, waited anxiously.

  ‘I’m getting a strong sense of a beard,’ Dale said, moving his hand around his own chin, his eyes still closed. ‘A brown … or maybe even reddish … beard.’

  Nancy’s eyes widened. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, breathlessly. ‘He did have a beard. He shaved it off a few years before the accident. It was a big beard though, for some years.’

  Dale nodded slowly, as if this confirmed the messages he was receiving.

  ‘And a hat,’ Dale said. ‘I’m sensing a hat. Woollen.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nancy said again. ‘He did wear a wo
olly hat sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, please!’ Vicky said, throwing a grape at the screen in disgust. ‘So the dude once had a beard and owned a woolly hat. I could have told you that much.’

  Spider sniggered and I had to agree it was all absolute nonsense.

  Dale went on, listing all the elements of Nancy’s brother Mark that he was ‘sensing’ – the fact he liked dogs, that he’d once been to Scotland, that he didn’t like Christmas. Nancy lapped it all up.

  Even when Dale got it completely wrong he managed to work the situation to his favour. ‘He liked a drink … whisky?’ he’d suggested.

  But Nancy pointed out that in fact, Mark had never drunk a drop his whole life. ‘Our father was an alcoholic, you see. We both swore we would never go that way.’

  Dale just nodded wisely as if this all made perfect sense. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s it. I’m getting a strong alcohol message from him. That’s what it is. A dislike of it. I can smell it almost, now.’ He theatrically sniffed the air in front of him.

  Once Dale had impressed Nancy with enough of his insights into what kind of a man Mark had been, he was able to move onto the probably entirely fictional business of giving Nancy messages.

  ‘He says that yes, he is warm enough. He says not to worry. He says to look after the girls.’

  Nancy frowned.

  ‘Kids maybe? Your daughters? Or Mark’s?’ Dale said tentatively.

  Nancy shook her head. ‘Mark didn’t have children. And I have just one son … Oh!’ she said suddenly. ‘He’s talking about his rose bushes! The wally. He always called them ‘she’. Tell him they’re still going strong, in my garden now. They’re doing well.’

  Dale smiled indulgently at Nancy. ‘You just told him yourself.’

  Nancy beamed.

  By the time it was time for Nancy to depart the stage and the next bereaved relative to step up, Spider had had enough. ‘I cannot watch another second of this.’

  ‘Total morons,’ Vicky agreed. ‘All of them.’

  ‘No way,’ I said, laughing. ‘Look at this.’

  I passed my phone over to Spider to show him Dale’s Wikipedia page. ‘He’s absolutely loaded. From doing that!’

  ‘Dale owns a two-million-pound mansion in the Cotswolds as well as properties in Los Angeles, Stockholm and Cape Town. His net worth is estimated to be eighteen point four million pounds,’ Spider read.

  ‘Eighteen point four mill!’ Vicky said, shaking her head. ‘From doing that! Jesus, Mary and Joseph in heaven. What is this world?’

  ‘We should become psychics,’ Spider muttered, grabbing the remote and flicking through the channels. ‘Clearly money in it.’

  ‘We should, you know,’ Vicky said suddenly.

  We looked at her.

  ‘What?’ Spider said.

  ‘Become psychics. Seriously. We need money and that is apparently where the money is.’

  ‘I don’t think you can order psychic powers off the internet like one of those dodgy print-out degrees,’ Spider said.

  ‘We don’t need psychic powers,’ Vicky said, sitting up now. ‘Psychic powers aren’t even a real thing, you moron! Dale whatever-his-name-is hasn’t got psychic powers any more than any of us have, and look at him – raking it in.’

  I thought about this. She had a point. But if it really was that easy – if anyone could just set themselves up as psychic and demand money for spouting some made-up details about a few random coincidences, then why wasn’t everyone doing it?

  I put this question to Vicky.

  ‘Balls. Cojones. You’ve just got to have the guts to stand up there and do it. That’s all it is.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Spider said uncertainly, as he started to flick through the channels again.

  Just then, the TV cut out and so did the lights.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Vicky sighed.

  I looked at Spider.

  ‘Meter’s empty,’ he said, standing up and looking at a box on the wall.

  ‘Go top it up then,’ Vicky said, irritably. She was now lying on the sofa with her legs hanging over the arm scrolling through her phone.

  ‘What with, Vicks?’ Spider said. ‘We haven’t got money to keep pumping into it.’

  Then he went into the kitchen and came back with three candles and a box of matches. He positioned them in a row along the coffee table in the lounge and lit them.

  ‘We’ll just do without power for tonight. We don’t need it anyway. We were only watching junk. We can sit. And talk.’

  ‘Sounds fascinating,’ Vicky said, still without looking up.

  Sensing the tension in the room and as it was getting late anyway, I made my excuses and headed home.

  Madame Violet Verano

  The next time I called in at the flat was the following afternoon.

  ‘Gracie,’ Vicky said, beaming widely as she opened the front door. ‘Come and take a look at this. I’m a god’s honest genius.’

  She led me by the hand into the lounge where she handed me a wodge of A4 papers. They were all copies of the same thing – a poster, hand drawn, but very professionally so.

  Madame Violet Verano

  Psychic medium and clairvoyant

  Get in touch with the dearly departed

  There was a number at the bottom.

  ‘Your mobile number?’

  Vicky nodded proudly.

  ‘You’re Madame Violet Verano?’

  She pulled the hood of her cardigan up so it cloaked her face and pushed her fingertips together and held them about chest height.

  ‘Yes, child,’ she purred in an accent that was somewhere between Jamaican and Welsh. ‘I am Madame Violet Verano. My ears are attuned to the voices of the dead. How can I help yoooou?’

  Then she burst into hysterical cackling and pulled her hood back down.

  I looked at her with one eyebrow raised and smiled. ‘This is never going to work. You are surely not really going to try it?’

  Spider came in to join us. ‘You’ll be surprised the things Vicks goes ahead with once she’s made her mind up.’

  Vicky took my hand. ‘Come, come, ye of little faith,’ she said, once again adopting the peculiar accent. ‘Come into my chamber.’

  ‘Chamber?’ I said as I followed Vicky to the bedroom. ‘Is that really what you’re going to call it? Isn’t that where people go to be executed?’

  ‘Hmm,’ Vicky said, frowning. ‘Maybe you’re right. What should I call it? My studio? My boudoir?’

  When Vicky opened the bedroom door I had to admit that, whatever she decided to call it, she’d done an impressive job with the space.

  She’d covered the bed with a red-and-gold woven blanket, and in the middle of it she’d positioned a small circular table. She climbed on to the bed and sat with her legs crossed, her palms resting on the table.

  ‘This is me in position,’ she explained. ‘I’ll sit here, and they can sit opposite me. The customers, I mean. Not the ghosts. The ghosts will probably just … float around.’ She waved her hands around in the space either side of her head.

  She’d draped a sheet of sheer red fabric over the window, which served the dual purpose of blocking out the view of the tattoo parlour opposite and bathing the room in a warm, dim glow. She’d cleared away all the bottles of moisturiser and deodorant and all the books and DVDs from the shelves on the wall and had lined them instead with a row of flickering candles. There was a speaker somewhere – I couldn’t see where – emitting some strange panpipe music.

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  ‘I know, right?’ Vicky said, grinning. ‘And wait till I’m in my costume.’

  ‘You have a costume?’

  ‘Of course!’ Vicky said, jumping off the bed and going over to the wardrobe. ‘That’s the best bit. Get out. I’m going to put it on now. I want to give you the full effect.’

  I did as I was told and a few minutes later Vicky emerged from the bedroom wearing a long purple robe – a sort of cross between a dressing gown and a wizar
d’s dress. Her hair was piled up on top of her head with a few loose tendrils falling over her face. She had on some long dangly earrings – one like a raindrop, the other a star – and thick gold bangles rattled around her wrists. Her make-up was the most surprising element though. Heavy black eyeliner, thick mascara and bright red lips, and she’d coloured her eyebrows in completely so where they’d once been blonde and barely noticeable, they were now black and thick and – for some reason – joined in the middle. I don’t suppose I’d really stopped to think about it before, but it occurred to me then that I’d never seen Vicky in make-up before. She looked like a different person. She looked mysterious. I was impressed.

  ‘Why have you done that to your eyebrows?’ I asked, peering at her.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, turning to the mirror to examine them. ‘I always think striking eyebrows are a good way to make an impression. Might have overdone it though, I admit.’

  ‘You are mad,’ I told her.

  ‘Aw, babe!’ She crinkled her nose and ruffled my hair. ‘You say the sweetest things.’

  Down to Business

  ‘So how’s it going to work then?’ I said, sitting down on the sofa.

  ‘You want to know the business plan?’

  ‘There’s a business plan?’

  ‘Of course, honey!’

  It did cross my mind that only a few days ago Spider had lectured me on the evils of private enterprise. But this didn’t seem anything to do with that. This was different.

  ‘It’s pretty simple,’ Vicky said. ‘First thing is that we advertise, obviously. Get the word out. Let people know that there’s a hot new psychic in town with a direct line to the other side. Then people call up, make appointments. We don’t let them have one straight away – we make it clear that Madame Violet is very much in demand – so by the time they get in the door, they’re already half convinced of her – of my! – powers.’