Snow Sisters

by Carol Lovekin

  Don’t be silly – everyone knows you can’t see them.

  Some ghosts were so quiet you could be forgiven for missing them.

  Meredith had small ears and excellent hearing. Ghosts, she thought, were made of yearning and illusion. They were invisible. Real ghosts, Meredith believed, didn’t show themselves, and what you thought you saw was what they left behind: the aftermath of the chaos that might have existed in their human lives. If you listened, you might perhaps sense a breath of longing.

  It took a special kind of person to see a ghost.

  The shape in the corner of her bedroom was lighter than shadow. It trembled and though she was lying down, Meredith thought she might faint.

  It isn’t real, it can’t be. Everyone knows…

  Meredith Pryce believed in ghosts with every bone in her body. When Angharad Elin Lewis’ ghost had begun talking to her, she’d known, behind the murmuring lay a real voice.

  Mine is a story as old as the moon…

  And now, however hard she wanted to deny it, she could see her.

  …a girl who ripped her gowns and lost her gloves…

  Present

  Backing away from the crumbling steps, I’m still uncertain about going inside.

  Any house, left empty for more than twenty years, is sure to have suffered from the erosion of time. It isn’t that though, it’s the air of melancholy I’m unprepared for. A house you spent the first sixteen years of your life in imprints on your heart. You have a memory and it isn’t meant to change. When it does, what was beloved can be diminished.

  Rounding the edge of the building, I halt in my tracks.

  Close to the wall, a vast gunnera has taken root threatening to undermine the foundations of the house. Behind it, half hidden and jutting from the wall, the semi-circular, once elegant iron-framed conservatory – never in the best state of repair – is now covered in a green patina. Russian ivy creeps across the roof. Beneath an ornate porch, the rusting door stands slightly ajar. Through the filthy panes of glass, the shadow of more vegetation looms.

  There is a wild flapping as a bird hurtles through the gap in the door. Instinctively, I raise my hand. The bird knows its business and in a moment is gone.

  Behind me, rain begins to fall, the fine horizontal kind that soaks through to a person’s skin and leaves them shivering.

  How very Welsh.

  A shiver of breeze changes direction, a cast feather rises in the air, caught in the thin rain. I run my fingers over the conservatory door-frame, the layers of paint, repeated to a thickness almost holding the thing together. My hand touches a rusty patch.

  I hear my mother’s considered critique of her work (and her contrived criticism of me.) Again, I sense her; her disdainful smile, cleverly disguising her monstrous personality.

  ‘Goodness, how clever of you. A librarian!’ Her emphasis had made it sound like an insult.

  My heart speeds up a little. I pause, listen, press the flat of my fingers to my breastbone as if to reassure my heart there is no longer anything to be belittled by.

  I step inside.

  At the back, hidden behind a wall of green, a smaller door leads to a room off the kitchen, an old scullery with a crock sink we called the glory hole. We stored our boots there, cans of paraffin, brooms and buckets, Allegra’s easels and painting paraphernalia.

  The door is open and I frown, knowing it ought to be locked. The key is missing. I think about passing tramps again – the glory hole leads into the kitchen and the rest of the house.

  Could Nain have left it open?

  The idea is ridiculous; my grandmother hadn’t ever left a door unlocked or, unless someone was here, windows open either. I take hold of the handle meaning to close the door and notice a groove where the bottom of the frame has dragged over the ground.

  It’s fresh: a clean curve in the soil.

  Someone has definitely been here. I reach into my bag, find my phone and search for the caretaker’s number. I dial it and watch as it fades.

  No signal.

  Who knew?

  Using my weight, I push the door, force it closed. Maybe the key is in the house. Or it’s on the bunch in my bag. I’ll check later, before I leave.

  My thoughts are opening other doors and I brace myself against a rush of memories. Isee Allegra and her ubiquitous hair, standing back from her easel, paintbrush poised. In my travel-crumpled clothes, my mother stands in her casual finery – splashed with paint and still managing to appear implausibly stylish.

  An accumulation of verdigris on the glass creates the illusion of being underwater. I catch my breath and for a second I do see her: my mother in her absurd clothes, a child of the fifties enamoured of the twenties, addicted to gin and love and the conviction no one understood her.

  I don’t like myself when I’m unkind. It is Carla who is the kind one. In the face of Allegra’s extravagant and embarrassing response to our relationship Carla had been simply amused. ‘She means well.’

  My mother never meant well.

  Carla tells me I’m a good person. She tells everyone. It isn’t true. After twenty years, she still hasn’t found the nasty part of me and I don’t want her to.

  Looking around, I hold my breath.

  Allegra’s ghost isn’t here. And even if she is a ghost, she’s drifting on the ether, dressed to the nines, still insisting school is a waste of time, art is the answer to everything and if only I bucked up my ideas, I might make something of my life and be as clever as my sister.

  Fifteen

  Verity woke before daybreak, disturbed by a crash.

  In the kitchen, Allegra was kneeling on the floor, rattling coals in the grate, her hair awry, a smudge of soot on the perfect skin of her cheek.

  The coal scuttle lay on its side. A half-empty bottle of gin stood next to it.

  ‘Damn the bloody thing; why won’t it light?’ She jabbed a poker at the embers with one hand, waved an empty glass in the other. ‘I can’t bear this cold.’

  ‘Here, let me.’ Verity righted the coal scuttle. ‘What are you doing up at this hour anyway?’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep.’ Allegra reached for the gin, sloshed a measure into the glass. ‘You know how it is. I never sleep.’

  Verity didn’t. She slept like a log and in any case, her mother’s claim was absurd. Allegra regularly made up for her late nights by sleeping until noon.

  Leaning into the grate, Verity screwed up some newspaper and fed it to the embers. It caught and a few sparks flew out. She batted them away. Flames leapt up, she added twigs, a few pieces of kindling, held a sheet of newspaper across the opening to draw the fire. ‘There we are.’ Before the newspaper caught, she snatched it away, folded it and put it in the basket, settled back into one of the cane chairs.

  Allegra carried on as if Verity wasn’t there. ‘This is no way to live. I wasn’t meant for this kind of life.’ She swallowed some gin. ‘Why did she stay here?’

  Verity knew her mother was talking about Nain. ‘You know why. When they fell in love, Taid wanted to come back to Wales the same as she did. If they both loved the house, why wouldn’t they live here when they got married?’

  Allegra poured more gin, banged the bottle down on the floor. ‘It was selfish. To make me live here.’

  ‘You make us live here.’

  ‘That’s different and you know it. You and Meredith like living here.’

  ‘I thought you did. At least, there isn’t any reason for you not to. Not really.’

  Allegra gave a pinched smile. ‘You think you know me, Verity but you don’t. And you don’t know how hard it is for me – trying to keep body and soul together.’

  It’s easy come, easy go though, isn’t it?Nain always bails us out.

  Verity kept this disloyalty to herself.

  Were it not for Mared – the banker’s daughter – Allegra and her children would be impoverished. Her personal income was erratic. During the tourist season, her watercolours sold fairly well. They hung i
n a shop with a tiny gallery, run by an arty couple with aspirations Allegra pretended to be impressed by. She helped out in the shop and although the proceeds from her canvases ran through her spendthrift fingers as easily as the water off her paint brushes, somehow they managed.

  ‘You need to be more organised, that’s all.’ Verity watched the flames glowing through the iron bars, felt the heat on the palms of her hands.

  Allegra rolled a cigarette. ‘Oh, please. You sound like him.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Idris. He thought he knew me.’

  Verity turned and looked at her mother. ‘You don’t talk about him much, do you?’

  ‘Why would I? He left me. He was cruel.’

  ‘I thought you loved him.’

  ‘You’re too young to understand.’ Allegra took the other chair, cradled the glass.

  ‘I didn’t know him; how can I understand?’

  ‘You’re too young to understand about love.’ Allegra sipped her gin. ‘He adored my work you know. Idris wanted me to go to London and show there; then I fell pregnant with you.’

  ‘Say what you mean why don’t you?’

  ‘There you go again, Verity, trying to be clever, taking it personally. It’s not all about you. You have no idea what my life’s been like, bringing up two children on my own.’

  ‘Mam, get real. Until a few years ago you had Nain to help out.’

  Once again, Allegra continued talking as if Verity hadn’t spoken, as if what she said had no value.

  ‘Love’s complicated – especially when both people are artists.’ She paused, a faraway look on her face. ‘He was a poet, you know. It mattered.’

  ‘And what about us; didn’t we matter?’

  Allegra looked pained. ‘How can you say such a thing? I live for you girls.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  Her mother ignored her. ‘Everything I’ve ever done has been for you and your sister. I’ve sacrificed my talent and my youth to bring you up. If I’d gone to London things would have been very different. It’s another world. City people appreciate art.’

  The fire was settling. Verity added coal, filled the big kettle and set it on the hotplate, cut some bread, put it in the toaster. ‘Do you want some?’

  When Allegra didn’t answer, Verity turned round. Her mother was staring at her, one arm over the back of the chair, her eyes filled with unshed tears.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘You can be very cruel sometimes, Verity.’ Allegra dumped her empty glass on the floor.

  ‘Mam, please don’t; it isn’t true. You think if you cry it’ll make me care, as if that’s what it takes. I already care; I just don’t buy the fake tears or the fantasy I’m against you.’ The toast popped up and she buttered it, slapped it on a plate. ‘Here, you need to eat something.’

  Allegra waved away the plate and Verity shrugged.

  ‘I’m not against you,’ she said, nibbling the toast. ‘I want it to be fair.’

  Allegra had a habit of holding two fingers to her temple, as if her head hurt or she was struggling to recall something. It was an affectation and she did it now, cigarette smoke trailing through her hair, and Verity struggled not to say something really unkind.

  The tears overflowed, ran down Allegra’s cheeks like old pearls.

  ‘You are though.’ Sniffing, she dropped the cigarette butt into the empty glass. ‘Against me. You don’t try to understand. Not like Meredith.’

  This was more than Verity could bear. ‘Meredith does as she’s told. She’ll do anything to be in your good books because she thinks you’re amazing and she wants us all to be happy. Do you really know what Meredith feels? What either of us feel? You haven’t a clue? Why can’t you be real?’

  Allegra folded her arms across her body as if she was in pain.

  ‘What? What’s wrong now?’

  Allegra’s normally flawless face was patched with blotches; yesterday’s smeared mascara making her look like a clown.

  ‘You’re saying I’m a fake? What I do isn’t real?’ She delivered the words as if they were a personal affront. Fumbling in her pocket, she pulled out her tarot cards.

  ‘Oh, please.’ Verity almost laughed. ‘Go on then, consult the oracle. See what the cards have to say. May as well, seeing as how you haven’t got a clue.’ She fixed her mother with a glare, daring her to respond.

  Allegra stared back, her face still, the tears stopped in their tracks. She inhaled several times and her nostrils flared. When she spoke, she hissed. ‘How dare you speak to me like that? How did you get to be so selfish?’

  ‘If I’m selfish, then what does that make you? The only person your ever think about is yourself.’ Verity held back her own tears, stared at the toast crumbs. ‘I wish you’d gone to London when Nain did and left us here so we could have a half-normal life.’

  Allegra swept up the cards and shoved them into her pocket. Her eyes glittered.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you know what they say: better be careful what you wish for.’

  Verity put her plate on the draining board and opened the back door. She could smell the sea and the scent of lilac drifting on the gathering light.

  ‘Now where are you going?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  As she walked across the sloping lawn to her grandmother’s garden, she thought about wishes: how some were good and others hopeless: the kind that, however hard you longed for them to work, would never come true.

  Sixteen

  In the morning, Meredith’s hair was decorated with dusty-winged moths.

  Delighted, she shook her hair and they fluttered up.

  ‘Thank you, my lovelies’ she said, ‘now off you go.’ She waved her arms, herded the moths to the window and watched as they disappeared.

  The voice from her dream hovered in the back of her mind. Pushing it away, Meredith thought perhaps she should try and forget about ghosts and focus on her made-up story.

  Maybe Verity’s right, and it is all in my head.

  The echo of half-formed whispers insisted otherwise.

  She put on the new frock her grandmother had made for her. The material was pale green scattered with daisies, with a full skirt and when she twirled it floated as light as a moth.

  Standing in the hall behind the half-open kitchen door, she heard Verity talking to Allegra.

  ‘I picked some more lilac; shall I arrange it for you?’

  ‘Well you can try.’ Her mother’s voice had an edge to it. ‘Very nice, although I’m not sure how successful you’ll be. It’s not like you have a natural aptitude for flower arranging is it, darling?’ She laughed as she said the words.

  Meredith frowned.

  Why is she always so mean to Verity?

  She watched her sister fling the flowers onto the table, find a jug and fill it with water.

  ‘Do it yourself then.’ Verity banged the jug down.

  Water splashed over Allegra’s sketchpad and she snatched it away. ‘For God’s sake, Verity!’

  Meredith guessed this was the tail end of an earlier argument. Coming into the room she saw the empty gin bottle on the table. Her mother’s face was grey with fatigue.

  Hung-over, I bet.

  Allegra scrutinised three tarot cards, placed in a line on the table.

  ‘Pages,’ she said. ‘Goodness, two of them: pentacles and cups.’

  Glancing at the cards Meredith said, ‘Get the fancy gear. And why’s he got a fish in his tankard?’

  ‘It’s a cup, darling.’

  ‘Looks more like that old tin coffee pot of yours.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. The tarot’s—’

  ‘Gobbledegook?’

  ‘That’s not very nice, is it? The page of cups is sensitive and creative, like you – you’re a Pisces…’

  ‘I know I am, so what?’

  ‘If you’d let me explain, you’d understand.’ Allegra paused. ‘Two pages – you see? They represent children and news.’ She gave a nervous
cough. ‘I hope you two won’t go talking about me behind my back.’

  ‘Why would we do that?’ Meredith kept her voice neutral.

  ‘I’m joking, you goose.’ Allegra stared at the cards. ‘But pages… I’m only saying.’ She patted the chair next to her. ‘You look gorgeous in your new frock. That shade of green really suits you.’

  Meredith ignored her. ‘Pentacle boy looks a bit more normal. Is he creative too?’

  ‘Not particularly. He represents earth.’

  ‘Which means he must be very clever indeed because it’s Verity’s sign; she’s a Virgo.’

  Meredith watched her sister out of the corner of her eye.

  Trust me…

  ‘Meri, it doesn’t matter…’

  Meredith tapped the last card. ‘What about this one?’ Her eyes shone like stars in the rain.

  ‘The Six of Wands.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Success, my angel. Success after conflict!’

  Seeing her sister wince, Meredith said, ‘Or you could wave the wands and make some kindness?’ Propping her elbow on the table, she caught her chin in her hand. ‘You could make a lot of kindness with six magic wands.’ She pushed the card across the table, regarded her mother with her star eyes and the air in the room held its breath. ‘If you wanted to.’

  The words tasted sharp on her tongue. Bitter as pepper and she let them swirl around her mouth. Reaching for the sprigs of lilac, she began placing them in the jug.

  ‘It’s pretty,’ she said. ‘It was kind of Verity to get it for you, wasn’t it?’

  Meredith knew more than her mother guessed, and as if she sensed it Allegra swept the cards into the velvet bag and made for the back door. As she turned, her eyes narrowed and she let them rest on her youngest daughter’s face. ‘You’re such a puzzle sometimes, baby.’ She opened the door. ‘I’m off to the conservatory. See what the muse has in store for me.’

  Meredith said nothing. She shifted closer to Verity and the tang of pepper was warm on her tongue.

  Seventeen

  ‘You have to wonder,’ Meredith said, ‘what must have happened to make Angharad so unhappy.’