No Sister of Mine (ARC)

by Vivien Brown

  Obviously not, as you couldn’t even wait until we’d finished up here to start stuffing your face!

  No, if we’re going to read this love story, we have to read all the letters in order. It’s the only way it’s going to make any sense.’

  ‘If you say so. Go on then, let’s hear letter number two. Although we’re not going to

  see any of Mum’s replies, are we? So we’re only getting half the story, whatever we do.’

  Half the story. Was that what I was getting too? I had been right beside her for a couple

  of hours now, squashed together in an airless room, but today there was no perfume, not on her

  skin, not on her clothes, and I could see now that there was no bottle of it on her dressing table either, no telltale scent to drag my thoughts in directions I didn’t want them to go. Perhaps it had all just been in my imagination, the mad workings of a mind twisted by grief. Eve and

  Josh? Together, when Mum lay dying? Or rushing to each other as soon as they heard the news?

  No, surely not. But it was possible. They had history after all. They had been a couple once –

  just like Carrie and her Pussy Cat – before I had torn them apart.

  ‘ Being apart from you is tearing me in two,’ Eve read, as if the words were echoing

  what was in my head. And there was something there, in her face, in her voice, that told me it

  was true. My sister had known love and lost it. She had lost it, lost him, to me. She knew the pain of being parted, and of being alone. And suddenly I didn’t really care who Pussy Cat might have been, why he and my mother had been separated or how their story ended. What did it

  matter, now that Mum was gone? All that mattered was the truth. The truth of what was

  happening right now. Why Eve had never married, never found a forever man of her own, why

  Josh had come home smelling of her, why he had lied to me, and just how many times he –

  they – might have done this before. Made a fool of me behind my back.

  And in that moment I hated her. Hated my own sister for trying to take what was mine.

  Just as, for so many years, she had hated me. But she wasn’t going to have him. I couldn’t let

  her win. And for as long as she had no idea that I knew, no idea that we were now at war, it

  was me who held the upper hand.

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  CHAPTER 21

  EVE

  It was the hardest decision I had ever had to make. Running away to uni to escape the memories

  Arnie had implanted in my mind, leaving home so abruptly after I had caught Josh in bed with

  my sister, giving up a job I loved at a school where I had felt so settled and comfortable to

  come back here for Mum, and for Dad, all paled in comparison.

  Josh and I were over. We had to be. I couldn’t carry on seeing him, loving him, and still

  find a way to look my dad, or Sarah, in the eyes, day after day. Being back at home made

  everything real. Our seemingly impenetrable bubble had finally burst, just as I had always

  known it one day must. There was to be no happy-ever-after for us. How could there be?

  He had booked a hotel room that evening. One of those cheap ones, with just a bed, a

  TV and a kettle. The sheet had a cigarette burn in it, the window didn’t open properly, there

  was a faded abstract picture on the wall and a plan of the fire exits on the back of the door. In the tiny bathroom the plain white tiles in the shower were old and tired, a thin crack running

  diagonally up the wall from taps to ceiling, and as we lay on the bed after what I had already

  decided would be the last time we would ever make love, both of us staring at the ceiling, that was how I felt too. Plain and old and tired, like the tiles, the cracks in our relationship definitely starting to show. We were set in a pattern, a rut, and nothing ever changed. There was no joy

  anymore, no sense of wonder, no hope. Only a barely suppressed feeling of panic and fear.

  This was all too close to home, too . . . sordid. We had been doing this for too long. It was

  leading us nowhere. This was no longer the sort of woman I wanted to be.

  It wasn’t an easy conversation, and not one I wanted to have naked, so I’d pulled my

  underwear back on, and my T-shirt, and sat up, cross-legged on the bed while Josh just lay

  there listening and slowly shaking his head.

  ‘But why, Eve? After all these years, I thought . . . well, that we would always be

  together somehow.’

  ‘Somehow? What does that even mean? Because we’re not together, are we? Not really.

  A few hours here and there. A bed, a bottle of wine, a kiss goodbye, and we’re back to our own

  lives again. Our separate lives.’

  ‘I thought that suited you. Fitted in. You had your career, your own place, your

  independence. I thought you understood . . .’

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  ‘What? That you’re married? That you have a child you can’t bear to hurt, or to leave?

  Of course I understand all of that. How could I not, when they’re my own family? But can’t

  you see that things have changed now? I’m not hundreds of miles away anymore, I don’t have

  a job to keep me occupied, I’ve given up my home, and I don’t even have Simon around to talk

  to. I’m right here on your doorstep, under your wife’s nose, and that is never going to work. It feels . . . dangerous. Wrong.’

  ‘But you’ll get a job, a home, new friends. And I still want you, Eve. I still love you.’

  ‘I wonder if you do. Really love me, I mean. And, even if you do, it’s not enough. Look

  at me, Josh. I’m thirty-five. I can’t go on like this. I need a life of my own. A real life. Maybe even kids . . . before it’s too late.’

  He stared at me, as if I was some kind of alien, talking in tongues. ‘Kids? But I can’t

  give you kids, Eve. How could we ever get away with—’

  ‘Get away with it?’ I cut in, yelling at him now. ‘That’s exactly my point. I don’t want

  to have children with someone who’s trying to get away with it! Someone looking for excuses,

  trying to keep me hidden away like a dirty secret. I want someone I can be seen with, openly,

  in the streets, someone I can take home to meet Mum and Dad, someone who’s proud to be

  with me, who wants to have children with me, live with me, bring up a family together, like a real couple. And that someone’s not you, Josh, is it? It can never be you.’

  The ring of his mobile from the bedside table stopped me in my tracks. Life outside

  these walls, intruding again. Couldn’t he have put it on silent as I had with mine? Didn’t I

  deserve even an hour or two of uninterrupted attention once in a while? Josh reached over and

  picked it up, glanced at it, then quickly switched it off.

  ‘Sarah,’ he muttered.

  ‘She’ll always be there, Josh.’ I felt around on the floor for my jeans and tugged them

  on. ‘But I won’t be. Not anymore.’

  ‘Come on. Just lie back down, let me hold you. You’re upset, with your mum being so

  ill, and everything in your life changing. But this doesn’t have to change. We don’t have to change. Come on, we’ve got the room for the night. I can make some excuse, stay until

  morning.’ His hand was working its way up under my T-shirt.

  ‘And lie to Sarah again? What would you say? That you got drunk? Crashed on a mate’s

  settee? We’re not teenagers anymore, Josh. And I, for one, am going home now. You stay if

  you like. Make the most of the room. Don’t want to waste it, do you? Not having paid for it.’ I 163

  grabbed my bag. ‘Don’t bother getting dressed. I don’t need you to drive me back, or risk being seen.
I can call a cab.’

  ‘Eve, you’re being ridiculous.’ He sat up, running his hand through his messy hair.

  ‘Come back to bed. Please.’

  I had my phone out, ready to look up a cab firm, when I saw it. A missed call. No, three

  missed calls. All from Dad.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ I said, flopping back down on the edge of the bed, my fingers

  fumbling as I dialled Dad’s number.

  Josh watched as I listened, tried to speak, nodded blindly, then crumpled down beside

  him. Mum was dead. While I had been here, letting her down, doing something I know would

  have made her so ashamed of me, she had slipped away, with only Dad beside her.

  Josh pulled me into him, nuzzled my neck, let me cry. I knew I was shaking, and I think

  he was too. Then he got dressed quickly, tossed the room key onto the unmade bed and drove

  me back to the house, dropping me on the corner, away from the streetlights, where we

  wouldn’t be seen, and drove himself home to Sarah. Neither of us stopped to look back.

  ***

  The funeral had been tough. Keeping away from Josh, sticking to my resolve. But there were

  other things to think about, and to cry about, that day. I had got through it, holding it all in, trying to support Dad the best I could. But the letters were different. They tore into my heart.

  Other people’s love, other people’s pain, only served to drag my own back to the forefront of

  my thoughts. I shouldn’t have read them. If Sarah had just said no, I probably wouldn’t have

  done. But she didn’t, so I did.

  I knew we were stepping into Mum’s secret life, one she had kept stashed away in a

  box, probably since before we were born, but the letters drew me in. It was a chance to get

  close to her again, to find out things about her that we didn’t know. They must have been

  important, for her to have kept them for so long. Had she pulled them out from time to time,

  re-read them when she was alone? Had she remembered, reminisced, cried? Or had she simply

  forgotten they were there? We would never know. Yet, private though they were, there was

  something compelling about them. I should have stopped as soon as I realised what they were,

  but I didn’t. I couldn’t. The need to know more drove me on, turning page after page, even if

  Sarah was keen to get to the crux of the thing and then dump them in the nearest bin.

  I suppose it was all tied up in how I was feeling about my own life, my own secrets.

  How would I feel if someone found them out and started picking over them after I was gone?

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  But the sad thing was that Mum would never know, would she? That we had found them? It couldn’t matter to her anymore what happened to them, who read them. But it did matter to

  me. I needed to know.

  I was reading the third letter aloud when I heard the front door open and the clank of

  keys.

  ‘Dad’s back,’ said Sarah, getting to her feet. ‘I’ll go and make him a cup of tea.’

  She closed the bedroom door behind her and I got the distinct impression she was glad

  for an excuse to go. I knew Dad would never come poking about in my room, but I stashed the

  letters away again anyway, just in case. It was stupid, but somehow Mum’s secret had started

  to become my secret, something I felt the need to hide just as much as she probably had. At

  least until I had read them all, and decided what to do with them.

  I sat for a while, in the silence. Sarah had said nothing about Josh in days, but then why

  should she? I had done the right thing in ending it, I was sure of that, yet I longed to hear how he was, what he was doing, thinking, feeling. I needed him to be hurting as I was, if only to

  convince myself that he had loved me, that he still did. ‘ You can never know how much I have missed you these last few days. Not being able to touch you, or hear your voice. ’ The words from Mum’s first letter ran through my head. They felt so real, as if they were all about me.

  My life, my feelings. And they hurt. But, right then, only weeks after her death, we were all

  hurting. All quiet. All sad. Who was going to notice a little extra sadness amongst so much? In a way I had chosen the perfect time to break my own heart. Everything was masked and so

  easy to explain away because of my grief. I could cry and no one would question it. And, in

  my imagination, Josh would be crying too. But I didn’t see him, dared not ask after him, and

  Sarah gave nothing away.

  I went down to join the others. We sat in front of the TV and shared a pot of tea. Sarah

  was eating again, working her way through a packet of biscuits that no one else had any interest in. I suppose food is one of those things you either turn to for comfort or go off altogether. As in most things, Sarah and I fell into opposite camps. I don’t think I had eaten anything since

  breakfast, and that had only been a slice of toast.

  Dad looked better. The fresh air had done him some good, bringing a little colour back

  into his face, and the walking had tired him, making it easier for him to forget for a while and sleep. I watched him doze off in his favourite armchair, Smoky the cat curled up on his lap,

  and wondered what his life would be like from now on. Forty years with one woman, and then

  losing her, would be hard to recover from. And soon it would be Christmas. None of us would

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  be looking forward to that. The first one without her. The cooking, the forced merriment, her presents not there under the tree. Christmas, the fearful word we had yet to say out loud.

  ‘I think I’ll be off now.’ Sarah slipped into her coat. There was a paper poppy still

  pinned to it, a leftover from Remembrance Day a week or so before. ‘Be there when Janey gets

  home from school.’

  ‘She walks home by herself these days?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Quite the Little Miss Independent, she is. And they do encourage it now she’s

  at the big school. Well, you’ll know that, won’t you? From your teaching days.’

  ‘You make it sound like I’ve retired! I am still a teacher, just one without a job at the

  moment.’

  ‘Better get out there and find one then, hadn’t you?’ There was a chill in her voice that

  seemed to wipe away any imagined feelings I had of renewed closeness. There was still an

  invisible wall between us. We weren’t close. Perhaps we never could be, not after so long.

  ‘I’m trying. But Dad still needs me here.’

  ‘Does he? I think what Dad needs is to get back to normal. Well, a new kind of normal,

  but a routine at least. And that’s probably what you need too. Or the pair of you will sit here forever, moping about day after day, and that won’t do anybody any good.’

  ‘Well, as it happens, I have an interview next week. Not sure you’ll like it though.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s at Janey’s school. English teacher, but deputy head as well.’

  ‘Oh. I remember, you said there was one. Didn’t realise where though. Janey’s not been

  there long enough for me to get to know much about the teaching staff. I didn’t even know

  there was a vacancy. And they’ve actually asked you in for an interview?’

  ‘Yes, they have. No need to sound so surprised. You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Why should I mind? If it’s good for your career . . . and it’s not as if you’d actually be

  teaching Janey, is it? Well, I assume not. I’m sure you can declare an interest and claim

  diplomatic immunity or whatever they call it. I mean, it’d be like having someone in your own

  family as
your doctor. Imagine having to show Cousin Bill a boil on your bum! And Janey

  having to call you Miss Peters all the time, and you telling her off or giving her detention.

  Doesn’t seem quite right. But it’s a nice school, and local enough for you to get to while you’re still living here with Dad. Go for it!’

  ‘Thanks.’ I held my arms out towards her, thinking we might manage a hug, but she

  sidestepped it.

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  Dad slept on after she’d gone, snoring gently. I turned the TV off. The clock ticked in the hall, the last of the tea went cold in the pot, and the light started to fade so I got up and closed the curtains. The room felt different without Mum in it. The whole house did.

  When Dad woke up half an hour later, he opened his eyes and smiled at me, as if, just

  for a moment, he had forgotten she was gone. But then the cloud descended again and the lines

  sunk back into his face. ‘Sarah gone home, has she?’ His hand ran over the cat’s fur, head to

  tail, and head to tail again, smoothing it until I could hear the gentle purring from right across the room. The cat had been Mum’s really, and no doubt he missed her too, wondered where

  his number-one carer had gone. But Dad seemed to have taken over the role. They could be

  good for each other. Company. Something for Dad to care about, and to bring a bit of comfort.

  ‘Let’s have some music, Evie,’ Dad said, pointing to the old stacking stereo system that

  had sat in the corner for as long as I could remember. The cat arched his back, stretched and

  jumped down. ‘Pick out one of your mum’s favourites.’

  Mum and Dad had never really taken to CDs, and certainly not to any kind of new-

  fangled downloaded stuff as Dad called it. All of their records were just that. Actual vinyl

  records, the albums bearing outdated photos and psychedelic designs, the singles in small paper cases with a hole in the front to read their names through. 1960s and 70s originals, mostly,

  bought by one or the other before they had even met and now merged into one extremely

  diverse collection. Probably worth a fortune now that vinyl was said to be making a comeback.