We Were Sisters: An absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by Wendy Clarke

  ‘There’s nothing I want to hear.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I’d like to tell you all the same.’

  My fingernails dig into the soft flesh of my palm and I’m filled with a sense of foreboding. I want to run from this place. Away from her. But there’s something in the force of my mother’s stare that makes me stand mute and waiting for whatever it is she’s about to tell me. Despite the years that have gone by, nothing has changed. A part of me still wants to please her.

  At last I find my voice. ‘It’s about Freya, isn’t it?’

  I watch the colour drain from her face at the mention of her name. ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s not.’

  In the years since I’ve seen her, her plump skin has slackened around her jaw and the eyes are empty. It’s hard to reconcile this woman with the one from my childhood – the one whose eyes lit with feverish excitement whenever a new brother or sister was arriving. She’s hurting, and despite myself, I can’t help but feel sorry for her. In trying to create the perfect family, she sacrificed her own flesh and blood. She’s ended up with nothing and now the man she did it for is dead.

  ‘All right. I’ll come back, but I can’t be long.’

  She nods and takes out her car keys. ‘I’ll see you there.’

  * * *

  I get to the house before my mother does and park in the narrow lane outside. The place hasn’t changed. If anything, it seems larger than in my memory. It looks sad. Lost. The small-paned windows mean and black. The thatch heavy and damp-looking.

  By the time my mum’s old Fiesta pulls into the small standing space at the side of the house, I’ve almost persuaded myself that I won’t go in, but she comes over to the car and knocks on the window. With a sigh, I get out and follow her to the door, standing back to let her open it. Her hand trembles as she tries to fit the key in the lock.

  ‘Here. Give it to me.’ Taking the key from her, I unlock the door and push it open to reveal the dark hallway I haven’t seen in years. As I step inside, I notice that the wallpaper is the same as when I lived here, if a little more faded. There are two darker patches either side of the door where small hands once rested as shoes were taken off.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on. Make yourself at home.’

  Make yourself at home. The way she’s said it, you’d think I was a distant relative or acquaintance – not her daughter. Even as a child, I struggled to feel at home in this house. Always felt as though I shouldn’t be here. It’s the same now. Going into the living room, I sit gingerly on the edge of the settee. It’s where Freya lay the day she got ill, before she left us the first time. I can still see the way she smiled as she slipped my twisted blanket around my doll’s neck and held it above her head.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ my mother calls from the kitchen. It’s followed by a sigh, as though I’m causing her inconvenience.

  ‘Tea,’ I say, a lump coming to my throat as I realise how sad it is that she doesn’t know. There are so many things she doesn’t know about me.

  I try to keep my memories at bay as I wait, craning my neck round to look through the window at the garden where I used to play. Beyond the fence at the back, is the field of wild grass. It can be seen only from the room the foster-children used to sleep in and I get a sudden urge to see it. Watch the seed heads bending against the wind.

  I don’t move, though. Just wait.

  ‘I didn’t know if you took sugar.’ My mother places a tray on the coffee table and sits opposite me. As she holds out my cup to me, the teaspoon rattles on the saucer, and I fight to keep my heart hardened to her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I ask.

  She looks at me blankly. ‘You never expect someone you love to die.’

  As I take the cup from her, I wonder if she’s thinking about Freya as well as my father. If things had been different, she’d be surrounded by people who loved her. Me, Mitch and the kids… her family. Sophie and Isabella would have made cards to cheer her up and we’d give her Noah to hold, hoping the feel of his little body in her arms would give her comfort.

  Instead, there’s just me.

  ‘Why do you hate me so much?’ I don’t mean it to come out. I expect her to look shocked, but she merely looks surprised.

  ‘I don’t hate you.’ She takes a sip of tea. ‘I don’t feel anything.’

  A wave of self-pity floods through me. ‘But why? I tried so hard to please you both, but I could never do anything right. You loved the foster-children more than me.’ With a shock, I realise I’m crying. Tears running down the neck of my blouse. Pulling a tissue out of my sleeve, I blow my nose, hating that I’ve shown this woman my weakness.

  She shakes her head sadly. ‘It’s what I need to explain to you. Why I asked you to come here today. I would have been in contact before, but I thought it might cause trouble.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  We don’t speak. The only sound is the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece. I see that she’s moved the photographs that once followed the line of the staircase, onto a table by the window. To my surprise, I see there’s a photo of me there too.

  ‘The problem was, I loved my husband too much and had to prove it to him every day. You know there were other women?’

  I say nothing in reply. It doesn’t surprise me.

  ‘He never particularly wanted to have children, but I thought that if I could just provide him with a child he loved, he’d change his mind. Wouldn’t leave me. When you arrived, I was overjoyed.’

  The words hang in the air between us and I know what she’s telling me. ‘I guess my dad wasn’t then.’

  ‘No, he thought I’d tricked him, gone behind his back, but by then, it was too late. After you, he was even more distant, refused to share a bed with me. I thought it was because you cried too much… had all the attention… didn’t have his eyes. But it didn’t put me off – it just made me more determined to provide him with the perfect family.’

  If I wasn’t hearing it with my own ears, I wouldn’t believe it. Can it really be that my mother stopped loving me because my father couldn’t?

  ‘But what about me? I was just a child. You can’t know how terrible it was not to be loved.’

  Her face falls. ‘Oh, I know all right. I just thought that if I could find the one child he could love too, everything would work out. But it didn’t. It wasn’t the happy ending I’d prayed for. Instead, it all went wrong.’

  A sob bursts from her, and with a sting of certainty, I know that Freya was that one. Maybe I always knew.

  I get up to leave, not wanting to hear any more, but as I’m picking up my coat, a thought occurs to me. ‘Why are you telling me all this now?’

  She stands and clutches my shoulders with her swollen fingers. ‘Because you have what I never had. A husband who loves you and three perfect children. I want to be part of that. A part of your family.’

  I stop, my arm half in my coat sleeve. ‘What do you mean? What do you know about my family?’

  She drops her hands. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  But I know she’s lying. I can see it in her eyes. ‘Tell me, Mum. Or I swear I will never come here again. You’ll be as good as dead to me.’

  ‘If I do. You mustn’t think badly. It was done for the best.’

  I sit heavily on the settee. ‘I don’t understand.’

  I watch as she goes over to the sideboard and pulls open one of the drawers. Her hand hovers for a moment and then she takes something out. It’s a bundle of letters and photographs. With a sigh she hands them to me.

  ‘I’m sure he meant well, but every letter, every photograph, was like a dagger to my heart.’

  With a shock, I see that the photograph on the top is one of Sophie, she’s standing beside a border full of tulips, so fair and tiny that she looks like a flower fairy. I remember taking it while we were at the park. The next one is of both the twins. It was the one I took the day they started school, standing stiffly to attention in their
uniform, by the front door. There are other photos too. Ones of them when they were babies and a couple of Noah in his bouncy chair.

  ‘Where did you get these?’ My voice is cold. Expressionless. For I know the answer already.

  Pulling a letter from the pile, I read it and recognise the handwriting immediately.

  Mitch.

  42

  Kelly Now

  I stand in the doorway of the living room. I haven’t even taken off my coat or shoes.

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  Mitch knows what I’m talking about. I can see it in his eyes – the seconds of confusion followed swiftly by the certainty. I wonder whether he’ll try to deny it or make excuses, but he does neither. Instead, he crouches down beside the play mat and lays Noah on his back beneath his activity gym. Without looking at me, he taps at a red-maned padded lion that hangs from the frame, and watches it swing.

  ‘I take it you’re talking about the letters.’

  I’d been hoping that the drive home would calm me, but it hasn’t. ‘Of course, I mean the letters. What else would I be talking about? Unless you mean the photographs you’ve been sending my mother for the last five years. Five fucking years! How could you, Mitch?’ I’m seething with anger. ‘I’m just wondering if there’s anything else you haven’t told me – that you’ve taken the girls round for tea or asked her to be godmother to the baby.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  I stare at him wide-eyed, throwing my handbag onto the settee. ‘I find out that my husband has been sending letters and photographs to my estranged mother and somehow it’s me who’s being ridiculous? You shared with her the details of my children’s lives – their first day at school, their arguments, their haircuts. You even put in some of Sophie’s hair! What were you thinking of?’

  ‘Our children.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re our children.’

  I glare at him. ‘That doesn’t give you the right to go behind my back. Tell her things that don’t concern her.’ The room is too hot. My anger making my face glow with a film of sweat. Shrugging off my coat, I sink my head into my hands.

  ‘How could you, Mitch? How could you do this behind my back? Lie to me.’

  ‘I didn’t lie to you. I just didn’t tell you. I’m sorry, Kelly, but I did it for the best.’

  I lower my hands and stare at him. ‘The best? For whom, Mitch? Certainly not for me or the children. For all I know, she could have been creeping round our house spying on us.’ A coldness pierces through the red anger. ‘But of course, this isn’t about us at all. It’s about you, isn’t it?’

  I see from his expression that I’ve hit the nail on the head. He looks at me with eyes dark with pain. ‘They’re my children too, Kelly. Whatever you might think, everyone has a right to know their family. I know you didn’t want your mother to meet them, but I thought if she could just see their photographs. See how great they are—’

  ‘Yes? What then? What did you think was going to happen? That we’d all live happily ever after? Did you really think that what you did would change what happened to you as a boy? My mother is dangerous, Mitch. She ruined my life once before, who’s to say she won’t do it again.’

  Mitch gets up. He stands awkwardly, his arms hanging heavily by his sides. ‘I don’t know what I thought.’

  ‘No. You never do. You didn’t have a proper family, but that doesn’t mean you can foist one on our kids. You know nothing about my mother or what she was like.’

  Bored with watching the swinging lion, Noah has started to cry. I go over to him and pick him up, trying not to give in to the tears that are stinging my eyes. The smell from his nappy hits me and I stare at Mitch accusingly.

  ‘He’s only just done it… honestly. I’ll change him.’

  Ignoring him, I grab the muslin cloth that’s draped over the back of the chair and leave the room. As I go upstairs, I hold my baby close to my chest. My mother knows where we live. It was a long time ago, but I remember, only too well, the lengths to which she would go to have the perfect child.

  ‘Let’s at least talk about it, Kelly.’

  I don’t want to talk about it. Don’t want to hear his excuses and explanations. I want to hold my anger to me. Scared that if I look at Mitch it’ll melt away as it always does. This time he’s stepped over the line.

  ‘I’m going to change Noah,’ I shout down at him. ‘Then I’m going to collect the girls from school. You do what you want.’

  Mitch follows me up the stairs and reaches out to me, but I bat his hand away. He looks hurt.

  ‘Don’t be like this, Kelly.’

  ‘How do you expect me to be?’ Turning my back on him, I lay Noah on his change mat.

  He stands helplessly and watches as I pop open the legs of Noah’s little trousers. ‘You haven’t even told me what happened at your dad’s funeral.’

  I don’t answer. Even if I’d wanted to, I can’t form the words to tell him that the man he’s talking about never wanted me.

  ‘Well, I’ll be out of your way this evening.’ His guilt has made his voice belligerent, like a child’s. ‘I’m going back to work, then straight to the pub. I said I’d meet Maddie.’

  It’s said as a challenge and I stop what I’m doing.

  Without saying anything else, Mitch leaves the room and I hear his heavy footsteps on the stairs. The front door slams. I think of Maddie with her willow-thin body and her dimpled smile. Despite what he told me, I know he’s been seeing a lot more of her recently. It bothers me that once I would have been invited too. In the last few weeks Mitch and I have been talking less and I wonder if it’s because he’s said all there is to say to her. I lift Noah’s legs and take the soiled nappy from him, then drop it into the yellow plastic bin on the floor.

  What does he tell her? Does he talk about our marriage? Our family? And do they laugh at the wife who’s slowly going crazy?

  Sinking onto the bed, I take a deep breath and try to relax, counting slowly from one to twenty. Something tells me that I need to hold things together if I’m to protect my family.

  43

  Kelly Now

  The children have been at school for almost two months now and I’m relieved that Sophie has been less reluctant to go into the classroom in the mornings. I’ve just come back from collecting them and Isabella is sitting cross-legged on the hall floor, her book bag emptied out in front of her. I stare at the scraps of paper, half-finished drawings and sweet wrappers in despair. Even the bookmark, that holds her place in her reading book, looks like it’s seen better days.

  ‘Oh, Izzy. You really need to sort that bag out.’

  I unclip Noah from his pram and place him on my hip, his little feet kicking at my side. He’s grizzling as usual and I force myself not to give in to the frustration that’s pushing up through me. I’d hoped that by now he’d have become less demanding, but it hasn’t been the case. He still isn’t sleeping through the night and although he’ll smile and gurgle when the girls play with him, it doesn’t take long for the smiles to turn into cries of pain. I look at him now, with his red cheeks, his wet chin causing a rash to develop, and wonder if he’s teething.

  ‘You don’t need all that rubbish in there, Isabella,’ I say wearily.

  I open my hand and my daughter empties an assortment of sweet wrappers into it.

  ‘There you are, Mummy.’

  ‘Where did you get all these anyway? You shouldn’t be eating sweets at school.’

  She looks at me through dark lashes. ‘Jack gave them to me. He’s my best friend.’

  I frown. ‘Isn’t Jack the one who was mean to Sophie?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Then I don’t think he’s the greatest choice for a best friend. It would be nicer if you spent more time with your sister in the playground. Try to include her in your games.’

  Through the glass rectangles in the living room door, I can see Sophie. Her thumb is in her mouth and she’s watching a cartoon
. She looks up when Isabella kicks off one of her shoes and it hits the door, then back at the screen again.

  ‘She doesn’t need anyone to play with her,’ Isabella says. ‘She’s got Miss King.’

  I glance again at Sophie. So fair. So quiet. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jack says she’s a teacher’s pet and she is.’

  Taking off the other shoe, Isabella tosses it into the corner. ‘It’s not fair. She gets to have indoor time when I have to be outside in the cold.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’ I make a mental note to ask Mrs Allen about it. ‘It’s probably because she needs a bit more time to get used to the other children.’

  ‘She’s had lots of time. We’ve been there ages.’

  It might seem like ages to them, but it hasn’t been all that long really. They’ve been uneasy weeks, with Mitch and I edging around each other. After the children have gone to bed and it’s just the two of us, our dinners have been eaten in near silence. Once it would have been companionable, but now it’s awkward. I used to look forward to that time when we could be a couple again. We’d chat about Mitch’s building project, our plans for the future or how the girls were getting on at school. We’d laugh at the memory of Isabella’s impression of Mrs Allen trying to rap the alphabet or would try to think of ways to make Sophie’s classroom experience easier.

  But that was before I knew what Mitch had done. Before he’d betrayed my trust. I hate how the bonds that once held us so tight are loosening, but I haven’t the strength to tighten them again. Scared of what he might tell my mother next, I’ve begun to close myself off. I hardly go out at all now, isolating myself from others like I did when I was younger and, apart from when they’re at school, I make sure I never leave the children with anyone else. Not now that the one person who can destroy my family is trying to get back into my life.