Snow Sisters

by Carol Lovekin

  ‘My mother thinks she’s never coming back.’

  If willing a person back had any power, Mared and Verity would have succeeded.

  ‘My grandmother said my father left because he needed to be anywhere my mother wasn’t.’

  ‘Is she so bad?’ Carla emptied the last of the crumbs onto the grass.

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘Do you reckon she’s right? About Meredith?’

  Verity said she didn’t know. ‘Allegra’s fragile. She’s forgotten how to be optimistic, or happy.’

  Her heart is her weakness…

  ‘My sister is another one of my mother’s disappeared dreams.’

  Verity watched a crow fly across the sky.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Carla said. The paths in her eyes opened, welcoming Verity in.

  ‘I know.’

  Allegra had been nineteen when she met Idris, the love of her life who lasted only a few years. At the same age, Verity already knew some kinds of love could last forever.

  Saved by work, Verity fell into it with a diligence she hadn’t known herself capable of. Discovering she was right about her small ambition, she remained forever grateful to Miss Jenkins for her trust.

  Over the years Meredith’s absence stretched.

  Verity stopped missing her as a presence; she missed the person she feared she might no longer recognise. So long as she had the snowflake pendant and the red flannel heart, she had to believe her sister’s face wouldn’t fade.

  ‘I’m sharing too little of my adult life with her,’ she said to Carla. ‘There ought to be two of us noticing, being affected by what’s happening to Allegra.’

  ‘I notice.’

  ‘You’re amazing.’

  She showed Carla some photographs of Meredith.

  ‘She’s gorgeous. Like your mother. You can see it. They’re both so quick and stylish.’

  Impractical and volatile was what Verity saw. ‘They’re a couple of absurd show-offs.’

  ‘Beautiful though.’

  It was undeniable.

  ‘You’re definitely my favourite. You must admit, though, they’re both pretty stunning.’

  Verity thought about her mother, lost and heartbroken (and now, she feared, unwell). As children, Verity and Meredith had accepted Allegra’s loveliness – they were used to it.

  She showed Carla the photo of Meredith making snow angels.

  ‘Oh my goodness, that’s a classic,’ Carla said. ‘And that’s real snow.’

  ‘Wales is good at snow. It’s our magic.’

  ‘No wonder you miss her.’

  ‘Every year on my birthday she sends me a gift. Nothing grand – a stone or a feather, a necklace once that broke, and most of the beads fell between the floorboards.’

  ‘You’re always in her heart then.’

  Verity explained how each gift came with a note; lines from songs, random words Verity guessed were aimed at keeping the past alive.

  Underworld and a shell the colour of rock pools. The songbirds keep singing like they know the score, accompanying a little blue bird made from glass.

  ‘She’s never sent my mother a single thing. I stopped showing Allegra; she still can’t bear to be left out. If life isn’t about my mother, it doesn’t exist. And Mam and Meredith are more alike than just looks. Their obsessions were like babies or chickens to them, until they began to cry or peck.’

  Carla laughed. ‘Did you have chickens?’

  ‘Cream Legbars, my grandmother’s favourite. Meredith adored them. It broke her heart when … you know. Leaving and everything, and the chickens had to go. And Mam didn’t give a damn for Meredith’s feelings.’

  ‘And now she’s shut herself away.’

  ‘When we were kids she was everywhere – only she wasn’t – if it makes sense. Like an indignant ghost.’

  ‘The best kind, I love a good ghost story.’

  Verity hadn’t told Carla about Angharad. If her ghost was still around, Verity no longer sensed her.

  ‘Do you ever consider going back?’

  ‘To Gull House?’

  ‘Why not?

  Verity scraped the soles of her boots on the path. The sun shifted in the silver-blue sky and she imagined the same sky in another place, and Meredith, a moth on the wind.

  ‘Maybe, one day. Allegra won’t go back and I can’t abandon her. And in any case, my life’s here now.’ She paused. ‘Meredith said she’d come back when I found the magic.’

  Carla didn’t say anything. It was her speciality.

  ‘She said she’d come back when I found it, the magic we knew when we were kids.’ She frowned. ‘I wonder if she looks the same, if I’d know her.’

  ‘You make it sound like ages. It’s only been a few years. And do people change so much we stop recognising them?’

  The idea Meredith might have changed beyond recognition, that her radiance might have dimmed, was too much.

  ‘I can’t be bothered with it,’ Verity said emphatically. ‘I have to look after my mother, and my grandmother. She’s feeling guilty about Gethin being in a home, even though he’s perfectly okay.’

  ‘You have to think about you as well, about getting your degree.’

  ‘Yes, that too.’

  ‘You can’t save everyone, Verity.’

  ‘No, but I can try.’

  Sixty-five

  It gave Carla no pleasure to be proved right.

  Allegra’s health began to cause real concern, her dependence on cigarettes and gin finally exacerbating a childhood heart condition.

  Her heart is her weakness … it’s where she keeps her truth…

  As her light dimmed, Carla did her best to get Verity to face things.

  ‘Your mother’s very ill,’ she said.

  With Meredith between nomadic destinations, it had been comforting to have someone to lean on when Allegra refused to take the doctor’s warnings seriously. Whether this was out of fear or her life-long talent for dismissing anything inconvenient – or simply against her better judgement – was anybody’s guess.

  Alarmed by her daughter’s deterioration but short on patience, Mared almost gave up. And when it came, the force of her grief at Allegra’s death was devastating.

  Mothers aren’t supposed to bury their children.

  And Mared watched her daughter die. She was there, at her hospital bedside when Allegra’s poor, beaten, shattered heart stopped.

  The depth of her own wretchedness overwhelmed Verity.

  Allegra died from heart failure. She was fifty-nine and it was too young. It didn’t matter what the doctors said about an old defect, Verity listened and nodded and pretended to agree. She knew the truth; it was possible to die of a broken heart.

  The funeral was a quiet affair lacking the flamboyance Allegra would no doubt have chosen. No one spoke about the fact Meredith wasn’t there. The space next to Verity, a seat left vacant for the missing daughter, loomed like a reproach.

  The letter Verity sent might have gone astray. She told herself Meredith could have moved on again.

  Maybe it’s because she doesn’t know…

  She didn’t believe this for a moment.

  At the funeral, Verity didn’t cry. She sat in the crematorium, listening to a stranger talk about her mother, the artist, and tried to understand her better.

  She was an artist – a brilliant one – it was her talent and her tragedy.

  ‘We didn’t hate her,’ she said to Carla. ‘She was just too much, too certain and larger than all our lives. Is it terrible that I’m still struggling to forgive her for Meredith leaving?’

  ‘You’ll find a way,’ Carla said. ‘You aren’t as unkind as you think you are.’

  Verity knew better. ‘I’m not sure I can excuse her.’

  ‘Allegra didn’t accept she was responsible. She was too narcissistic to realise it.’ Carla stopped. ‘Sorry, that’s unforgiveable, it’s not my place.’

  ‘No, you’re right.’ Verity allowed hers
elf a smile. ‘I knew there was a word for what my mother was. Now I know, maybe I can learn to be kinder.’ A tear came into Verity’s eye and it was the first time in her life she cried for her mother.

  Mared’s sadness was unbearable. She shrank before Verity’s eyes and though she picked up what pieces were left, some of them didn’t quite fit. In the weeks after Allegra died, Verity sat with her grandmother watching her watch her tea go cold. Mared’s hand stroked the wild silk poppies of Allegra’s shawl, sliding it through her fingers like a rosary until Verity wondered how the colours didn’t rub right away.

  Carla did her best and it was good enough. She made chicken soup and washed clothes, visited Gethin even though he didn’t know who she was. And when he died and Mared was too stunned to cope, it was Carla who helped organise the second funeral.

  The years passed and Mared’s silver hair thinned and yellowed. Her skin shrank on her bones. She stared out of the window, watching the street, searching for a flash of colour unfurling under the grey London day. She was so still she could have been dead, yet behind the stillness she was as alert as she’d ever been. She noticed what she could be bothered with and never failed to hear Verity’s quiet tread across the carpet, the cat padding into the room.

  Her death was a different kind of dying, another version of a breaking heart, as if she had no more use for life.

  One day she was gone and there was another funeral to organise. With the arrangements made, a kindly man at the funeral parlour sympathised, asked if there was anything else he could do.

  ‘Thank you, no,’ Verity said. ‘I come from a family of mourners.’

  It was a bright day better suited to a wedding.

  Verity and Carla, older, still making love work, stood beneath a flowering cherry tree in the crematorium grounds, watching the petals fall like pink snow.

  ‘I can’t believe she didn’t come.’

  There are certain things that even if they don’t appear to have changed, are never going to be what they once were. Like moths or gardens made of blue flowers, or girls who have to run away in order to find out if the dreams they once trusted still exist.

  Present

  Gulls wheel on the thermals, calling and seeing the things birds see.

  The view is timeless. I’m reminded of how it was when we were children.

  This is our castle and no one can scale the ramparts…

  A vast cloak of ivy and bramble smothers most of what remains of the ruin. There’s no longer an obvious way inside. I drag a swathe of ivy to one side, clear a space, sit in the crook of two walls on the exposed remains, lean against crumbling stone and close my eyes.

  It was always more her place than mine.

  There is a sound from the trees, a rustling movement and my eyes flick open. I turn, look around.

  Nothing.

  For a moment I worry about the invisible caretaker, a tramp…

  A bird calls and I don’t recognise it.

  Even the birds are different …

  In my bag the empty water bottle emphasizes how thirsty I am. And the torn envelope reminds me of the moths in Meredith’s old bedroom. I can’t get the dusty fingerprints out of my head, the smeared handprint on the mirror. The cigarette ends. Telling myself to get a grip, I take a deep breath and behind me, in the folds and shades of green, something definitely moves. A branch snaps and a deep shiver runs through me.

  I’m not alone and I don’t know if I’m afraid.

  ‘Who’s there?’ My voice is pathetic, it trips me and I’m overcome by an intensity of knowing.

  My fingers reach for the dip below my throat, find the snowflake pendant. Around me, dozens of paths reveal themselves – the green is illuminated and the old trees watch me. Letting the pendant drop against my skin I close my eyes and when I open them again everything is where it’s supposed to be.

  Uncertain still, I stare into the dark trees, through the creepers, thoroughly unsettled and I don’t know what to do. Ferns wave and the trees are making faces and hers is everywhere, made of leaves, a pagan green woman with ivy trailing from between her lips and her hair wild as green dandelion clocks.

  She steps from between the crowded trees, and I see her hair is red.

  I am dumbfounded, until I look into her eyes…

  … and they are hers.

  The colour and shape of my sister’s eyes stare at me from this pagan woman’s face.

  ‘Meredith.’

  I do not make it a question because I know it’s her.

  She stays where she is. She’s wearing a trailing green scarf with snowflakes on it.

  ‘Verity.’

  My name on her lips sounds odd to me, as if I’m hearing it for the first time.

  She is smoking a cigarette. The smell of it unfurls away from her.

  ‘You don’t smoke.’

  She regards the cigarette as if it’s nothing to do with her. ‘Apparently I do now.’

  I swallow; my mouth is as dry as sandpaper. ‘How did you know I’d be here?’

  ‘Where else would I look for you?’

  ‘Why would you look for me at all; after so long?’

  ‘I never stopped.’

  ‘You didn’t come back when she died.’

  A shadow crosses my sister’s face.

  ‘Nain’s dead, too.’ I’m deliberately cruel and I know it. I’m fighting a mixture of fury and another emotion threatening to wash me away. What does she expect? I hold my ground, dare her to cross it. My fingers holding the envelope are hot and I may set it on fire.

  ‘Oh, Verity, please don’t hate me.’

  My heart lurches, unkindness takes wing and is gone.

  Pulling the envelope from my bag, I say, ‘I found this, in your room.’

  My sister holds out the note. ‘Yes, it’s a clue.’

  I take it; gaze at her message, the pencil faded to a palimpsest, still legible to Meredith because her heart has held its meaning and kept it alive.

  ‘It’s all been you? The finger-marks on the mirror, the fag ends…?’

  ‘All me.’ She flicks the cigarette away, pulls a key from her pocket and holds it on her palm. It’s the one from the conservatory.

  ‘No tramps?’

  She grins. ‘Is that what you thought? Oh, Verity, tell me you aren’t still as cautious as a cat.’

  The note drops from my hand and she is in my arms.

  ‘Meri, oh, Meri.’ My voice shakes and it sounds like it belongs to a girl made of glass. ‘It’s really you.’

  ‘It’s really me.’

  ‘I don’t hate you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You stopped writing.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s been so long.’

  ‘Twenty-one years, eleven months and six days.’

  I pull away, grip my sister’s hands and gaze into her perfect silver-grey eyes, touch the torn edge of a green scarf dotted with snowflakes draped carelessly round her neck.

  ‘You don’t do maths.’

  She flicks her hair over her shoulder. The dreadlocks are gone. It looks the way it did when she was a girl, wild as mutant dandelion clocks, a conflagration of reds.

  ‘That’s not maths, Verity, it’s counting.’

  I have been waiting for so long, I’ve lost count. Meredith hasn’t. She’s stepped from a green wood, from across the blue sea; she has smoke curled in her hair, like our mother, and she can keep count. And I realise my memory is intact. She’s still part of me, my wild sister and I know the shape of her heart. She’s under my skin, threaded into my heartbeat, her shadow is stitched to my edges.

  My glass bones shimmer, reflecting every dream I’ve ever had in the past twenty-one years, eleven months and six days.

  Come back, Meredith, bring me stories from the other side of wherever you are, from other seas and other sands; tell me about mountains and castles and fields of magical flowers.

  My body is light as a feather, the glass is gone and I know if I
fall I won’t break.

  ‘You’re here.’

  ‘I’m definitely here; I didn’t leave. I made a spell story for us before I went, so we’d never be apart.’ She puts her head on one side and for a second the lights in her eyes flash like Catherine wheels. ‘It was my best one too, I made it from snow and prawns and dragon’s tears, stars and a twig baby’s smile.’

  Itblows through me, my sister’s spell story; I hold my breath and catch it. I can hear a bird and I know it’s a thrush.

  If love went away for too long, I always thought it might not come back. I was wrong.

  ‘What happened to Angharad?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later, it’s your turn now, Verity. Tell me your story.’

  The sunset on the sea turns it to wine, impossibly shot with gold from a sky layered with pale cloud.

  Gulls, their flung wingtips hovering, bank away and from the edge of the wood we watch them fly out over the garden toward the ocean.

  I won’t allow her to apologise. ‘We’ve both done what we needed to. None of it was our fault.’

  My sister nods. ‘We thought we’d grow up stupid and have to get married.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No way! My legion of lovers is a story for another day.’

  She winks and I am overwhelmed with love for her.

  ‘When did you decide to come back?’ I say. ‘Was it because you thought I’d found the magic, like you said I’d have to?’

  Meredith is fiddling with her hair. ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘You know you did.’

  ‘I wasn’t ready to grow up.’

  ‘You’ve always been grown up.’

  ‘Not as grown up as you.’

  We stare at one another and we’re young again, two little girls hiding in their grandmother’s garden, determined not to be found.

  Meredith shades her eyes. ‘Would you believe I can swim under water now and hold my breath for ages?’

  ‘Like a pearl diver?’

  Pearls are for tears … what did she expect…?

  Our grandmother’s voice fills the air and emerging from the trees we make our way to her garden. Pausing at the gate I push down on the latch. When the gate sticks in the ruts I bend down, clear knots of grass. I tug the gate forward, enough to make a space we can slide through.