by Vivien Brown
her Janine Caroline. Caroline, after me! Ooh, I’m that pleased! But it’ll be Janey, for short. Just think, only hours old and she has a nickname already!’
‘Right.’
‘Right? Is that all you can say? You’re an auntie now, Eve. And after all they went
through the last time . . . Oh, you will come down, won’t you? To see her, I mean. And us. It’s been so long.’
‘I’m busy, Mum. The start of a new school term. I can hardly just up and go.’
‘Of course not. But at the weekend? We’re only a couple of hours away on the train,
Love. And isn’t it time this silly feud ended? She’s your sister. The only one you’re ever going to have.’
‘Well, I wish she wasn’t.’
‘You don’t mean that! Surely, by now, you could let bygones be bygones. It’s been five
years, and it’s not as if you and Josh were engaged or anything . . .’
‘As if that would have stopped her, even if we had been. He was my boyfriend, Mum.
Mine. And she took him. It’s not what sisters do.’
‘Oh dear. Look, I know it was you who first brought him home, Love, but there didn’t
really seem to be anything that serious between you. He was your friend, yes. Boyfriend, if
that’s what you like to call him, but boyfriends come and go, don’t they? And he was your first.
You certainly weren’t showing any signs of wanting to settle down. Your course, your career .
. . and, well, it’s not as if I approve of the way they went about it. Under our own roof, and
your sister getting pregnant so quickly, but you have to admit they’ve made a go of it. He’s
Sarah’s husband now, Eve, and the father of her child. After all they went through, losing that first baby, can’t you at least try to be happy for them now?’
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‘Give my congratulations to Sarah. Well, to both of them, and I’ll send a card, but—’
‘I really think it would be nice if you spoke to your sister yourself, Love. Maybe a phone
call, if you can’t come down just yet . . .’
Nice? Surely we were beyond being nice?
I made an excuse about someone knocking on the door and hung up. Mum didn’t
understand. Well, I don’t suppose anyone did really. I had loved Josh. No, I hadn’t run around
telling the world how I felt, chucking myself at him, snogging his face off in public. I wasn’t that sort of a person. Not then, and not now either. I had my reservations, my inhibitions. I
knew that, and so did Josh. And we had been dealing with them. I had never said the magic
words. Never told him I loved him. But he’d known how I felt. Hadn’t he? And we’d been
getting there, or I’d thought we were. Taking our time, getting to know each other slowly. Not
ripping our clothes off and jumping on each other the way so many other couples seemed to do
without a moment’s thought. I had believed he would wait, until I was ready, until I was
absolutely sure, but all it had taken was a few hours away from me, an offer of sex he clearly
couldn’t refuse, and there he was, in bed with somebody else. And not just any old bed, or any
old body. My bed. And my sister . . .
How was I supposed to forget that? Or to forgive? It was hard to know who I felt angrier
with, who had betrayed me the most. Her? Or him?
I moved the papers around on my crowded dining table. It was half past nine on a
Sunday evening and I was alone, as usual, in my tiny rented ground-floor flat in the back streets of Cardiff, and I still had a pile of marking to do for the morning. A class full of fifteen-year-olds reading the First World War poets, and all most of them had managed to write were a few
words about how boring it must have been in the trenches or a paragraph clearly copied from
a text book. What about the language? The imagery? The emotion? To me, it leapt from the
page and grabbed me by the throat. But they weren’t all like me. In fact, very few of them were.
Most of them, I had to concede, were probably a lot more like Sarah. Heads filled with boys,
and bodies filled with the rush of hormones, desperate for school to end and what they saw as
their real lives to begin. I sometimes wondered why I bothered.
I pushed the homework aside and closed my eyes. I couldn’t stop the images and the
emotions that were flooding into my head, and they had nothing to do with the war poets. That
awful day, when I came home early from seeing Lucy, was still so clear in my memory. The
silence of what I thought was an empty house. Mum and Dad still at work. Every step I took
up the stairs, Buster pressing at my heels. Opening the bedroom door and seeing them there, a
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tangle of naked limbs and crumpled sheets. My sheets. Somehow, that meant more, hurt more, than I could ever explain. Not only had my sister stolen my boyfriend, and so casually taken
the one thing he was meant to be saving for me, but she had chosen to do it in my bed. When
her own, untouched and perfectly made, was just feet away.
Josh sat up instantly, surprise, shock – and was that shame? – written all over his pale
face as he saw me standing in the doorway. But Sarah just lay there, flat on her back, a big
purple-red suck mark on her neck, her small breasts horribly exposed, and gazed up at me, her
expression totally unreadable.
‘Eve. I’m so sorry.’ Josh was tugging at the bedclothes, trying to hide himself, and her
. . .
I heard Buster jump up onto the bed, tail thumping, as I turned away, but Sarah pushed
him off, his paws sliding as he landed awkwardly on the floor.
Sorry? Was that it? What was he thinking? That this was another of those fifty-pence
moments, when I would laugh it off and say that saying sorry wasn’t necessary, that everything
was going to be all right?
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
The word had run around and around inside my head as I charged blindly down the
stairs, Buster knocking against my ankles, almost tripping me up, and straight into Dad, coming in through the front door, with a badly folded newspaper under one arm, his keys still dangling in his hand.
‘Eve? What’s happened? Whatever is the matter?’
I pointed up the stairs, wordlessly, leaning on the banister for support, and he dropped
the paper on the hall table and walked up past me, slowly, cautiously, as if he expected to find a burglar or a giant spider, or maybe even a dead body, when he reached the top.
I couldn’t stay, after that. The idea of sharing a room with Sarah, or of sleeping there,
in that house, that bed, after what they had done . . .
I spent that first night at Lucy’s. I wailed and raged and cried, and she listened, like the
true friend she had always been, as I spilled out all my hurt and disbelief and heartbreak, until we both fell asleep, buoyed up with vodka, exhausted, my pillow damp with tears. And then,
the next day, Lucy went round to the house and packed me a bag of essentials, refusing to
divulge my plans to my parents who, she assured me, were clearly as outraged as I was, and I
got on a train to Beth’s. I didn’t ask Lucy about Sarah, if she had been there, what she had said.
I really didn’t want to know. And with a bit of luck, I had thought, since Dad had apparently
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thrown him out onto the street and chucked his bags out after him, I would never have to set eyes on Josh Cavendish ever again. How wrong I was.
I spent what was left of that summer shuffling about between my uni friends, from one
town and one sofa to another, calling my parents from time to
time to let them know I was
okay, that I was surviving, but knowing the last place I wanted to be right then, despite their pleas, was home.
It was only when I moved back into my room at Bryden and immersed myself in the
second year of my English literature course that I was finally able to feel anywhere like normal again. From then on, I was determined to lead the only life that mattered.
Sarah’s pregnancy had shocked us all. I couldn’t believe she had been so careless. Or
that Josh had. We all knew about being careful. There had been lessons at school, embarrassing
though they were, and Durex machines in the toilets in just about every pub we ever sneaked
into. Magazines packed with agony-aunt pages and advice columns. I knew Josh carried a
condom in his wallet. I’d seen it and been impressed by his good sense, even if I had checked
a few times over the months we had known each other, to make sure it was still there.
How had they let it happen? I couldn’t help dreaming up scenarios in my head. And
blaming myself. Because we’d had such a nice day, hadn’t we? And I’d been the one to spoil
it. Hyde Park. Lying side by side in the grass, me on my back, twisting the long dry stems
together, trying to make a bracelet, him propped up on his elbows, holding one thick blade of
grass and tickling me with it until I begged him to stop. Sharing a paper bag of grapes, a bottle of lemonade, a kiss . . . I know I probably reacted too strongly, pushed him too hard, spoke
loudly enough for a couple on the path behind us to turn around and stare, but his hands had
been moving too quickly, finding their way into my clothes, and it had been broad daylight . . .
We didn’t speak on the way home. He had finally lost patience with me; he’d waited
long enough, he’d said, and nothing had changed. Nothing ever would. He’d called me frigid,
said he was going to leave, pack up and go the next morning. I made some excuse about having
to see Lucy, hoping he would just leave while I was out, but then I think it was Dad who
suggested Sarah go out with him, to some museum or other, so he wouldn’t have to go alone.
And before I could do anything, say anything, she was agreeing to it. Smiling up at him the
way she always did, like some kid with a crush.
I could imagine it all. Rightly or wrongly, I could see it unfurling in my mind. Sarah
getting bored with the exhibits at the museum, as I had known she would. Them going for food
instead, and drinks. Cans of cider on some bench somewhere, as she was too young for the pub.
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Sarah giggling, talking, spilling out confidences, tilting her face at him, throwing back her hair, flirting, letting him know she was interested, willing, available . . . His arm going around her on the train, their bodies squashed together, close, too close, and then stumbling into a quiet, empty house, her dragging him upstairs, or perhaps him dragging her, the raw passion taking
over, or maybe just the need for revenge, pushing all thoughts, all common sense, aside. Had
it been like that? I would never know. But she had him then, didn’t she? Trapped, like a fly in a web, bound together by what they had done, and by what they had made. A baby, who didn’t
even survive long enough to make any of it worthwhile.
I looked up at the clock. It was getting late. I quickly finished the last of the marking,
giving it the same level of inattention the students so obviously had, and pushed it aside. I
wondered, briefly, as I boiled the kettle for a final cup of tea, what they would be doing now.
Sarah and Josh. She would probably be propped up in her hospital bed, her new daughter
pressed – I hoped painfully – to her nipple, her hair all messy, and wearing one of those hideous open-fronted cotton nighties. Or maybe she’d be trying to sleep in a noisy ward, lying there
wide awake, finding it hard to believe what had just happened but seeing her baby in its little transparent cot beside the bed and knowing it was true. And Josh? He would have been out
wetting the baby’s head with his banker mates in some pub somewhere, or more than likely
crashed out by now in their little flat above the dry cleaner’s, still in the clothes he’d worn all day, shattered after hours of hand holding and brow mopping, his camera bursting with photos
of little Janine that he couldn’t wait to share with everyone he knew.
It was hard and, after five years, it still hurt. If only Josh had waited. If only he had
cared about me in the same way I’d cared about him. He’d told me he loved me, just days
before, and I had believed him. But he hadn’t meant it. Hadn’t meant any of it. He couldn’t
have done. It had just been a way to try to get me into bed. And, when it hadn’t worked on me,
he’d simply transferred his words, his attention, his body, to her.
Oh, yes, I still had my books, my teaching career, a little boxy home of my own, miles
away from the life I once knew, a few friends from uni who I still met up with from time to
time, but that was all. I hardly ever saw my family. I had lost my sister, and I had lost Josh, irretrievably and forever, and had never felt the urge to replace him. I didn’t know who to trust anymore, or if I ever could, and the idea of meeting another man, embarking on some sordid,
loveless sex life with anyone else, sent shudders through me. I was alone, and I was lonely.
Sarah had stolen my life.
***
79
‘Miss?’ Laura Wilson, one of my Year Eights, was standing in front of my desk, with an open poetry book in her hand and a puzzled look on her freckly face.
‘Shouldn’t you be outside with the others?’ It was break time and I had been hoping for
a few minutes of peace, a cup of coffee and a doughnut, with my feet up, in the staff room.
‘I suppose. But I wanted to ask you something, Miss.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ I started gathering up my paperwork and bundling it into my bag, ready
for the next lesson down the hall.
‘I suppose,’ she said again, but she didn’t move away.
‘Go on then, but make it quick.’ Oh, God, I sounded prickly. This really wasn’t the sort
of teacher I wanted to be. ‘Sorry, Laura. Don’t mind me. I must have got out of bed on the
wrong side this morning!’ I plastered on a smile, dragging myself away from the memory of
the restless, sleepless night I had endured thanks to Sarah and her baby, whose tiny face I could already picture as a miniature version of Josh’s. ‘Go on, ask away.’
‘Well, it’s what Keats wrote about the clouds, and the stubble, and the gnats.’ She held
out her book, and I could see the poem we had been studying, ‘To Autumn’, and the light pencil
marks she had made all over it. ‘Don’t worry, Miss. I will rub those out again when I’ve
finished, I promise. But the last verse of the poem’s not just about what happens to the crops
and stuff in autumn, is it? Not just about night time coming, or winter?’
‘What do you think it’s really about, Laura?’
‘I think it’s about dying, Miss. You know, the changes, moving on, being ready to give
up . . .’
I took the book from her hand and motioned for her to sit down beside me. ‘And does
that make it a sad poem, do you think?’
‘Oh, no. I think it’s beautiful, and such a nice way of saying things that aren’t nice at
all.’
‘I agree. The language makes it very special, doesn’t it? And the image of the fruits all
bursting into life and then not being there anymore, and the spring lambs now grown up and
&nbs
p; bleating on the hillside. It’s a lovely portrayal of nature, and its cycles.’
‘My granddad’s dying, Miss,’ she said, suddenly. She looked up at me, her face
betraying nothing of what she must be feeling. No tears.
I put the book down on the desk. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’
‘It’s okay, Miss. I’m sad, but he’s not in any pain or anything. He’s just old, and it’s his
time. That’s what my dad says, anyway. But Keats says it even better, doesn’t he, Miss? I think 80
the swallows are gathering now, like at the end of the poem, and he’ll be gone soon. And then, before we know it, it will be spring, and my mum will have her new baby, and everything will
start again.’
‘That’s a lovely way to think about it, Laura. I didn’t know your mum was having a
baby, but I’m so glad the poem has meant something to you. Something personal. Helps bring
it all to life, doesn’t it? Gives the words real feeling and depth.’
‘It’s the way you explain things, Miss. It sort of makes sense of the words that are hiding
behind the words. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes, I do. And thank you for coming to talk to me. I know it’s not always easy to talk
individually in class. If you like Keats, there are other poems I could show you. Other poets
too.’
‘Oh, yes, please. I’d like that. I’d much rather sit on a bench with a book to read than
go out there playing with a ball or doing each other’s hair or something. Such a waste of time.’
She stood up to go and I could see myself at that age, my own yearning for knowledge
and understanding reflected in her earnest little face.
‘Laura?’ Remembering that time, and how I had felt, I had a sudden fear that maybe
there was more to this meeting than she had let on. That maybe she was seeking me out,
avoiding the other kids, because they were taunting her for spending her breaktimes alone with
her head bent over a poetry book. ‘They don’t bully you, do they? The other girls? Because it’s okay to be different, you know.’
‘Oh, yes, I know.’ She smiled at me and tucked the book under her arm. ‘Don’t worry,
Miss. They leave me alone. I’ve got a big brother, you see. And nobody messes with me, or