Snow Sisters

by Carol Lovekin

  He followed her gaze. From the beach the house appeared blurred; only the roof was visible. It looked like a house from another landscape, a wash of watercolour through the trees.

  A lone gull sailed across the sky, ragged wings tilted.

  He turned back to her. ‘Can I see you again?’

  She carried on rolling her cigarette. ‘It’s a free country.’

  Allegra had disappeared to paint.

  ‘Let’s watch telly,’ Meredith said.

  They made French toast and baked beans and settled in front of the television, plates perched on their laps. A cartoon wound to an end. Verity set her plate on the floor, then wandered over to the window. She pressed her head against the glass, and watched her mother strolling up the garden lost in thought, her bag looped by its strap over her shoulder, the easel under her arm.

  ‘She’s back.’

  ‘Who cares,’ Meredith said. ‘Come on, Grange Hill is starting.’

  As her mother came closer, she looked up, saw Verity, and shaking her head rearranged her face into a smile holding no greeting. Verity understood she was somehow guilty of spying; of witnessing a private moment.

  She concentrated on the television.

  When Allegra came into the room it was as if she brought a secret with her, the scent of sweat and sea and flames. The skin on her normally pale face was flushed; as she breathed in her nostrils flared and Verity sensed something wild and agitated about her.

  Flinging her shawl onto a chair, Allegra advanced across the room and turned off the television.

  Meredith let out a wail. ‘Mam! What are you doing?’

  ‘Have you really got nothing better to do than watch that rubbish?’ Allegra glared. ‘Television will rot your brain.’

  ‘It’s Grange Hill, Mam,’ Verity said, ‘not—’

  ‘I despise television.’

  ‘Everyone watches television.’

  ‘Well, I’m not everyone.’

  You can say that again.

  ‘Verity’s right,’ Meredith said. ‘Normal children watch television. You do too, you just pretend you don’t.’

  Allegra regularly stayed up late watching films and arts programmes. Now and then they caught her out, glued to some second-rate movie. She would always have an excuse, although neither of them thought she needed one. They knew there were times their mother couldn’t bear her own company or to be alone at night, and that she would rarely admit it.

  ‘Meredith, that’s very cheeky!’ Allegra was laughing now, her sooty, kohl-rimmed eyes glittering. She was wearing a velvet waistcoat over her frock and a glittery clip in her hair. She rolled a cigarette, ran the tip of her tongue along the gummed edge of the paper. Her tongue was pink and it looked to Verity like a newborn kitten.

  Allegra raised her head and her look was challenging. ‘And you can take that disapproving look off your face.’

  There it was again: a hint of mockery in her voice and Verity reacted. ‘Why do you always think I’m having a go?’

  Meredith turned on the television. ‘Shut up Verity. Both of you, can I please watch my programme?’

  ‘Good grief, Verity, chill out. We were just teasing, weren’t we Meredith?’

  Verity waited for Meredith to say something, even if, in her current mood she probably wouldn’t.

  The look on her mother’s face was almost triumphant. Verity felt a knot in her stomach. She bit down on her lip, on the words she refused to say and made sure she didn’t slam the door behind her.

  It wasn’t only because of what Allegra had said; there was something else behind her mother’s look and she had brought it with her, from the beach.

  Whenever they hid from their mother, Meredith tried not to feel guilty.

  Allegra would call out for them and search all over the place. She rarely came into the blue garden. It was as if an invisible barrier made it impossible for her to go further than the gate. When the girls returned to the house with forget-me-nots and bluebells, and the ends of conspiracy tangled in their hair, she would accuse Verity of some vague defiance, of leading her sister astray.

  Angry with her mother and with herself for not sticking up for Verity, Meredith found her in the blue garden, under the wisteria tree. Patches of snow still clung in gaps between overgrown plants.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. She makes me—’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  When Verity said Allegra was a drama queen, it wasn’t about them, and wasn’t Meredith’s fault, Meredith’s heart tripped over itself with love for her sister.

  ‘Does she know where we are?’

  ‘No.’ Meredith picked a dandelion clock and blew on it sending tiny parachutes of time into the air. ‘I told her you’d probably gone to the beach and I was going to find you.’

  ‘You don’t have to lie for me.’

  ‘That’s not a lie, Verity, it’s an alibi.’

  Verity laughed. ‘You’re impossible.’ She turned to her sister and made her voice serious. ‘You don’t have to be like her, you know.’ It was dim beneath the wisteria and the only thing they could see was each other’s faces. ‘You can be you and in the end it will make you happier.’

  Twenty-nine

  Meredith’s dreams darkened.

  Chilled to the bone, surrounded by shadows, she sought the warmth of her sister.

  ‘Can I get into bed with you?’ She climbed in beside Verity anyway. ‘My dreams have changed. I don’t have the words.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘Doors open and close, it’s dark and she’s crying. Sobbing, it’s awful.’

  ‘Did you see her?’ Verity almost hoped Meredith had.

  ‘No. I told you, you don’t see ghosts.’

  I think maybe you do…

  ‘It’s more a sensation; that she wants me.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know. She says she’s made from treachery – and a secret.’

  Verity didn’t say how the word treachery bothered her.

  ‘I don’t mind when I’m awake – or half-wake and dreamy,’ Meredith went on. ‘Her voice is … I don’t know – normal? When I go to sleep though, it follows me into my dreams. Not the actual words – it’s like when all sorts of sounds get mixed up.’

  ‘A cacophony?’

  ‘Yes.’ Meredith managed a small smile. ‘I’m going to steal that one.’

  ‘It sounds dreadful.’

  ‘It was, for her. Not for me though – it’s what she needs to do.’

  ‘And you definitely can’t see her?’

  Meredith hesitated. ‘Tricks of the light don’t count. And I told you; it’s not like that. She doesn’t want to hurt me. It’s not like a haunting – it’s not like being watched or anything.’

  Oh yes it is…

  ‘Meri, you’re scaring me.’

  ‘No. We can’t be scared.’ She turned in the bed, propped her chin on her hand. ‘Did you know they called them the “mad-doctors” – the ones who looked after the poor people in the asylums?’

  ‘That’s creepy.’

  ‘I read it in your library book.’

  In spite of her earlier agitation, Meredith looked elated. Verity was the one who was frightened. Her heart beat faster and her skin was clammy with goose bumps.

  Meredith patted her arm. ‘Don’t worry, Verity. She trusts me.’

  Air drifted in through the window, fragrant with the scent of lilac and bluebells.

  Verity drew in a long breath. ‘But can you trust her?’

  Upstairs, the house remained cold.

  ‘It’ll be the heating system.’ Verity said. ‘It’s always playing up. I’ll ask Allegra to phone the man who came before.’

  It’s not the heating, it’s the ghost.

  ‘You can’t use logic to explain away everything, Verity.’

  When did Meredith get to be so eloquent? Or were these even Meredith’s words? Was this the ghost too, real or imagined, speaking through her? Maybe the cold w
as down to the heating system after all and she was over-reacting… It wasn’t and she knew it. Perhaps she was the one going mad.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ she said, not quite trusting her voice.

  Meredith shrugged. ‘If it makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to be involved anymore. I can do it by myself.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Carry on listening? Try and find out what happened to Angharad and help her?’

  ‘Have you thought about where she goes, when she isn’t talking to you? Or where she comes from?’

  ‘No. I never met a ghost before. I suppose it’s in a space between the worlds. Nain said it’s a veil.’

  Verity thought that if there was a veil between the worlds, someone must have torn it.

  It was twilight, the moon had barely begun to rise and behind a bank of loose cloud it was visible only in fragments. It was damp from a recent fall of rain.

  Drawn to the garden again, Verity stood by the half-open gate adjusting her eyes to the dimness. On the other side, the blue garden was still; not a mouse stirred. It appeared uncharacteristically dreary and lifeless. Breathing quietly she hesitated. Taking a deep breath, she took a few steps and aware of a sensation to her left, turned, her heart pounding under her ribs.

  This time, as if summoned, the ghost came from the direction of the rain-drenched, melancholy trees. The wall faded and through a haze of mist Verity could see the wood, smell ancient layers of leaf mould and the sorrowful scent of long-dead animal bones.

  The figure floated through the space where the wall ought to have been, and for a second it appeared incongruous, like something out of a bad horror film. Verity blinked, looked harder and as she did the ghost turned and Verity found herself looking at Angharad.

  Who else could it be?

  It was like seeing from a distance. The ghost was surrounded by a tunnel of grey, a hole in reality, undefined and faint.

  Is she looking at me?

  Something was happening that in the usual way was impossible. Terrified, she wanted to run back to the house. It looked a million miles away and she was blinded by the whiteness of the moon which now broke from behind the cloud. Rooted to the spot Verity stared at the ghost’s face. As the clouds snatched up the moon again it disappeared, everything turned black and this time it was a different kind of blindness.

  If she didn’t get away from the garden she was sure she wouldn’t be able to see again.

  Verity held her breath. In the silence, the ghost’s mouth moved. There was no sound and Verity saw her eyes, blank and sunken; her hair with bits of twigs and leaves caught in it.

  Whatever she was trying to say, Verity couldn’t hear a word.

  Who are you?

  Unable to speak herself, she watched the wretched creature. She appeared bereft, and in spite of the fear making her scalp tingle and her legs shake, it was the saddest thing Verity had ever known. And then the figure turned and looked up. And Verity, who, until that moment had been scared and curious, now felt deeply afraid.

  As the feeling flooded her body, cold crawled from her feet to her scalp. The ghost’s eyes bored into her; beseeching, impossible eyes. Fainter now she dissolved into the wall and a trick of vision meant her image repeated like a fog-laden hall of mirrors.

  Verity’s throat had dried to dust, fear jolted through her until finally she was able to let out a strangled cry. She felt a sweep of wind and the tunnel into the wood closed.

  Angharad’s ghost was gone.

  Thirty

  ‘Can we please go now?’

  Allegra was concentrating on her painting and made a noise that might have had a criticism attached to it.

  The clean afternoon light which, as the day proceeded, had become more perfect, clearly delighted her. Second by second the aspect changed; a fluid movement of current and waves, cloud drift and distant mist. She blinked and the sea shifted, her eyes took it in: a swell of green, an echo of silver in perpetual motion.

  ‘Look’, she said. ‘How lovely it is.’

  On her canvas Allegra had captured washes of pale colour with dashes of black and red indicating the oystercatchers at the edge of the water, a curve of creamy white for the ever-present gulls.

  Tired and still unsettled by the encounter with the ghost, Verity couldn’t summon any enthusiasm for the beach. The memory of it lodged like a stone in the middle of her chest. Sweat ran into her eyes. Wretched in the heat she wished she hadn’t agreed to come.

  ‘It’s boiling, Mam,’ she said. ‘Please, can I go back?’

  The weather had changed overnight, inexplicably and completely, as if summer had found its rhythm and was now edging out the cold, unreasonable spring. Within days it became so hot the birds wilted and throughout the garden wild flowers grew as tall as trees. The heat was impossible and when Allegra went round the house opening windows, the sun struck the glass with such intensity they almost caught fire.

  ‘Stop fussing, child. Do what you like, you usually do.’

  Oblivious to anything the girls were doing, or the change in Verity’s mood, Allegra had planned today’s outing.

  ‘We’ll do something together,’ she’d announced at breakfast – brightly, as if they were a normal family. ‘I’ll make a picnic and we can go to the beach!’

  ‘You always say you don’t like us being on the beach with you when you’re painting,’ Verity said.

  ‘Nonsense, I’ve never said any such thing. Wherever do you get these ideas?’

  A truth, if it’s contradicted with enough determination, can easily turn into a fiction.

  Verity knew better than to defend herself. She had other things on her mind and she hadn’t forgotten what Allegra had said the other night.

  There’s no future here, not for you girls…

  By the time they made it to the beach the morning was already half gone. The sun hung high and hot in the sky. The picnic was a disaster. Brown banana sandwiches drawing flies, everything assembled with haste and no thought given to essentials. The sun – and a forgotten hat – meant Verity was overheated and cross.

  ‘Wear my shawl on your head,’ Allegra said from under a flower-strewn straw hat. She threw the poppy silk across the sand. ‘It can only enhance your current look.’

  Verity eyed her faded shorts with a frown. They looked all right to her. Worn and washed out perhaps, still clean and suitable. She hadn’t wanted to risk spoiling the lovely new frock her grandmother had made. It was the colour of cornflowers and had pockets in the skirt.

  And anyway, why do you always look as if you’re wearing the contents of the dressing-up box?

  Allegra’s eyes darted everywhere but at her painting.

  ‘Who are you looking for?’

  ‘I’m not looking for anyone; I’m looking at what I’m painting.’

  No you aren’t, you’re twitchy.

  ‘Go and see what Meredith’s up to.’ Allegra peered hard at her canvas.

  You don’t fool me.

  Meredith had wandered away, down to the shoreline to talk to the birds. Verity could see her in the distance, a flash of flowered green, picking her way through the rocks, a floppy hat protecting her head. She wrapped the shawl round her hair, angry enough to imagine her mother might have deliberately chosen not to remind her about a sunhat.

  Allegra looked up. ‘I suppose you get points for trying.’

  How can she think I’m doing it wrong? It’s a shawl wrapped round my head. How many ways can there be?

  The sky was luminous, a flat sheet of blue as perfect as a bolt of silk, patterned with a gauze of cloud. The idea they might live anywhere else struck Verity as too outlandish for words.

  Would it be so awful…?

  Could she have meant it? Was Allegra really thinking about leaving Gull House? Verity made her way across the sand towards where her sister crouched by a rock pool. Behind her, her feet left indentations in the wet sand and closer to the shoreline they filled with water. The tide was on the turn,
and soon it would be running up the beach and her footprints would be gone.

  Could we be gone too, like sandy footprints, and would it be as if we’d never been here?

  A sudden need to be nearer to Meredith sent Verity running across the last stretch of sand. Allegra’s shawl unwound from her head, floating in her wake like exotic wings. At the edge of the sea the waves shushed on the flat sand. Meredith had discarded her hat; she was filling it with shells and pieces of white quartz sparkling with crystals.

  ‘Look, Verity,’ she said, ‘Underwaterland.’

  Verity leaned over her sister’s shoulder into the rock pool, watched trails of seaweed, violet and green, pink and gold, waving under the shallow water; barnacles attached to the shiny rocks and thin fish shimmering in the ripples. Sunlight skimmed the surface: an alchemy of water and light. It caught in her sister’s tangled hair turning it to fire.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Underwaterland.’

  Meredith looked up and smiled. ‘I could be persuaded to love the beach almost as much as I love the wood.’

  ‘Well, in that case, I better make an effort to like the wood a bit more.’

  ‘Either way, we’re the luckiest girls in the world.’

  Verity’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Nothing lasts forever, Meri.’

  ‘Some things do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Meredith’s face was lit up by the sun. ‘Like us. Like Gull House.’ She flicked the surface of the rock pool, launching tiny sprays of water into the air. ‘Don’t look so worried, Verity. I’m going to help Angharad and make it all right. And you and me – even Mam – we’re going to be fine too.’

  Drops of water rose and hovered, and for a moment Verity saw them in slow motion, before they landed on her sister’s face like tiny rainbow tears.

  My mother let me know I could not say it.

  Her invisible finger lay on my wretched lips. She could not acknowledge such a monstrous thing, least of all to herself. For a second she dared to make eye contact with me and I saw the loss of my innocence clearly mirrored there. The rest of her denied me. It was easier for her to concoct depravity in me than any weakness in her son.