Sisters ... No Way!

by Siobhán Parkinson

  Take away the eau de cologne, please, she said, wrinkling up her nose in disgust. The smell makes me want to get sick.

  It’s not exactly Chanel No. 5, but I thought that was rather a strong reaction, considering the bottle wasn’t even open. I popped it in the pocket of my jacket and said goodbye. I didn’t have time for my own breakfast, but I didn’t mention that.

  When Alva appeared in the shop at lunchtime, I asked her how Mum was. She looked puzzled.

  She’s fine, she said. Not a bother. She was cleaning the oven when I left.

  Wednesday 23rd July

  Mum looked a bit peaky this morning at breakfast, but she said she was fine. She was quite rosy-cheeked by this evening, though, when I saw her next. Alva had gone to Pizzaland with her friends, blowing all her bookshop money in one go, no doubt. I made an omelet for Mum and me, with cheese and parsley. We often have one when Alva is out, because she doesn’t like eggs.

  Whew! Eau de cologne, Mum said, as I leant over to put her half of the omelet on her plate, and she went quite white. In your pocket, Ashling. Take it out, throw it away!

  I patted my pocket, and sure enough the little phial I’d put there yesterday morning was still there. I drew it out, and Mum made a face.

  OK, I said, I didn’t know you hated it that much. Here, I’ll get rid of it altogether.

  I tossed it into the bin.

  Is everything all right between Dad and Naomi? I asked, now that I had Mum on her own in the house.

  No, she said. Poor little Gavin.

  She wasn’t going to say any more, and I could see that she didn’t want to be quizzed, so I just went on eating my omelet. I hope they’re not splitting up or anything. Dad’s crazy about Gavin. He couldn’t bear it if Naomi left him and took Gavin with her. I presume she would, if she did.

  Thursday 24th July

  I found Mum crying in the hall when I came home from work today. She was sitting on the telephone seat, and she was stroking the telephone with both hands, as if it were alive, as if it were a puppy or a sick child. It must be Dad, I thought. Or Gavin. He must have kidnapped him.

  Mum! I gasped, What is it, what’s wrong? Is it Gavin?

  Yes, she spluttered. Sort of.

  What? What? Has Dad done something stupid?

  Yes, she said again, dabbing at her eyes with a paper hanky. Sort of.

  Oh Mum! I gasped, dropping to the floor at her feet. That’s terrible. Did you ring the police, or what?

  The police? The police? Ashling, what are you talking about? Why would I ring the police?

  Because if Dad’s run away with Gavin, he has to be stopped.

  Run away? With Gavin?

  And then, this is rather terrible, but she started to laugh. It was that sort of hysterical laughing that people do when they’re just on the edge of crying, and it was horrible to listen to.

  When you’ve quite finished, I said, coldly, because I was feeling very left out of the joke, maybe you’ll explain to me what’s going on.

  Oh, my poor Ashling, Mum said, and she pulled my head onto her lap and started to stroke my hair. I’m sorry. I just mean that I can see how upsetting all this is for Alva, and Cindy as well, and just looking at little Gavin here the other night, bawling his head off because his parents had been rowing… Well, it all began to seem so muddled somehow, and I thought the best thing would be to stop seeing Richard. That’s what I meant when I said it sort of has something to do with your dad and Gavin.

  I pulled my head out of her lap and put my two hands up and caught her gently by the ears, the way I used to do when I was a small child. I rocked her head from side to side and knocked my forehead gently against hers. Oh, Mum, I said. It’s not fair. Your happiness is at stake here. I felt a bit like a character in a soap opera, saying that, but I meant it.

  Happiness, she said, as if it were a word she hadn’t heard before. Happiness, she said again, as if she were turning it over in her mind, the way you might turn over a strange new fruit from some exotic land.

  Yes, well, she said then, as if putting the fruit down again, I have to put you and Alva first.

  Don’t be silly, I protested. Alva will get over it. She’s just being bolshy. It’s her age. Cindy too. They’re bullying you into giving Richard up. It’s not fair.

  And what about you? Mum asked then. How come you’ve suddenly stopped seeing Bob?

  I sat back on my heels, surprised.

  You thought I hadn’t noticed, didn’t you? she said

  Well…

  Did you have a row with him, or is it just that you feel things are muddled too?

  Well…

  I was a bit feeble, I have to admit. All I could say was well, all the time. I nodded, though.

  You see, Mum went on, sometimes when life gets too muddled for us, the way we cope is to tighten things up, get rid of anything that is extraneous to what are really and truly the most important things in our lives, and then we can see more clearly. Extra baggage only weighs us down in situations like this.

  Sometimes I worry that Mum takes all that guidance stuff a bit too seriously. Extra baggage? Had I been seeing Bob as extra baggage? I just shook my head while Mum made this little speech. I didn’t want to recognise myself in this.

  Come on, she said then, a change in her tone, I’ve got some lupins to divide. Will you help me?

  You know I hate lupins, I said.

  I know you do, Mum said. But for me?

  When you put it like that, I said, what can I say?

  Sunday 27th July

  Yesterday was one hell of a day. It was my turn to empty the bins, and I was just doing it, going from room to room with my refuse sack, turning all the wastebins upside down into it. But then I found something terrible. I got a dreadful shock. Alva is only just fourteen, after all. I had to sit on the edge of the bath, because my legs were trembling. It was a pregnancy-testing kit, or rather the empty packet of one, in the bathroom bin. The first thing I thought of was that evening when Bob and I drank the loving cup of ‘mead’. We drank to fertility. I didn’t like the idea at the time, but it was me I was concerned about; I never thought it could happen to Alva. I tore the packet up into tiny pieces and wrapped it in toilet paper before putting it in the refuse sack. I don’t know why I did that.

  I lay awake half the night, worrying about Alva. She is far too young for this. How could she be so stupid? And after the way she has been brought up, too. Mum has always been so careful to be absolutely open and clear about these things. It’s not as though she didn’t know, as though she hadn’t been told often enough about the consequences of irresponsible behaviour. And there was I thinking that she didn’t know what she was talking about when she said she was going to a rave! Maybe she’s been to raves before. Maybe she’s in with a crowd that take E, or smoke dope, or drink, or anything. God knows what she gets up to when she’s off with those friends of hers. They look innocent enough, nice girls, especially Sarah. But you never can tell, I suppose.

  Not that there is any point in worrying about all that now. The damage is done. The thing to think about now is how we are all going to cope with this. How is Alva going to get through this? She’s only a child. She’ll be devastated, physically and emotionally. Oh my god!

  My head was in a spin all night. I didn’t know what to do. Should I speak to Alva first, or would that freak her out? Or should I tell Mum, and let her deal with it? Would that be betraying Alva? Well, Mum will stick by her anyway. We both will. We’ll all bring it up together. It will be like another little sister. Or a little brother.

  That reminded me of Gavin, and I started to cry then. I’ve never felt so confused. I need to talk it over with someone. I wish I could talk to Bob about it. He’s so sane.

  I suppose I could.

  I think I will.

  I’ll ring him, I decided, the first moment I get the house to myself. Then I went to sleep.

  Monday 28th July

  Bob answered the phone himself. I gabbled the
whole story at him, at high speed, and he just listened. That’s a very helpful thing to do in real life, but over the phone it’s quite disconcerting. You keep thinking the other person has gone or you’ve been cut off or something. I kept stopping to say hello? hello? are you still there?

  But he was still there. At the end of it – I told him everything, all about Dad arriving in the middle of the night, Mum going out with Richard, Alva working in the bookshop, Cindy being so awful, what I found in the bin, everything – he said um.

  Bob! I practically screamed at him. Is that the best you can manage? Um?

  I’m thinking, Ashling, he said. He didn’t even sound exasperated. I would have been exasperated with me if I were he.

  Oh Bob, I do love you, I said then, and I did, just at that moment, for the way he just said um so thoughtfully, for the way he didn’t get exasperated.

  What? What did you say, Ashling? What did you say?

  He sounded very excited.

  Well, I was just saying how I’d wrapped the thing up in loo paper…

  No, no, about me, about me, Ashling.

  About you saying um?

  Yes, yes.

  And about how I love you for the way you say it?

  That’s it, yes. That’s it. Boy!

  Nobody says Boy! any more, I said. You sound like a Cliff Richard movie.

  Wow! he said then. Ah jaysus, fuck-it, he practically roared down the phone. Wow!!

  Bob! Watch your language. You’re on the phone. Anybody might be listening.

  Paranoid as usual, Ashling. But sorry about the language. Are you on your own?

  Of course I am. You don’t think I’d be telling you all this if there were people around. Mum and Alva have gone to the garden centre.

  Right then, I’m coming over. Don’t go away. But just while I’m getting there, has it occurred to you that you only found a package. The test might have been negative. OK? Bye now. And don’t move. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.

  Of course it hadn’t occurred to me. Bob is so rational. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe it had been negative. Still, I thought, it’s pretty bad that your fourteen-year-old sister needs a pregnancy kit, even if it turns out that she isn’t pregnant. Pretty damn awful. I mean, you see documentaries about these things, but you don’t think it will happen in your family.

  Bob was here in less than fifteen minutes. He knocked at the door. He always does that. The doorbell in their house is broken, has been for years, so he has got into the habit of knocking instead of ringing. The sound of his knock was like music. I didn’t answer immediately. I wanted to hear him knocking again. But as soon as he knocked a second time, I realised it was cruel not to answer, so I flew to the door and flung it open. He had a huge bunch of dog daisies in his hand. I adore dog daisies. I can’t imagine how he managed to pick so many in such a short time. He thrust them at me. For the woman who loves me, he said.

  Is that not supposed to be for the woman I love? I asked with a laugh.

  Steady on, he said. We have established that you love me. I have made no such declaration.

  Yet, I said. Come here and give us a kiss.

  Well, everyone knows what a kiss is like, so I won’t describe it, but it was pretty good.

  Then we had a long, long chat. I filled him in on the details about what’s been going on in this family since we last spoke, I mean, since we last had a proper talk, not counting tense conversations in the bookshop. Then I asked him what did he think I should do about Alva.

  He put his teacup down at this point and he said, Ashling, you’ve been telling me all sorts of things, but you have never once mentioned that Alva has a boyfriend.

  Well, she must have, obviously. I suppose we’ll have to get him in on this too. And his parents, oh dear. I hadn’t thought of that.

  No, not necessarily. She may not have a boyfriend.

  You mean it might have been a one-night stand? Oh god, Bob, that’s worse, I said.

  Well, yes, there is that possibility, but let’s not get carried away. Let’s look at the facts. We don’t know that Alva is pregnant. We don’t know that Alva has had the opportunity to get pregnant. We don’t know whether the test was positive or negative. All we know is that you found this packet. We don’t even know that it was used at all. It might have been a free sample. It might have been a dare. It might have been a joke. Somebody might have picked it up on the street.

  And come home and put it in the bathroom bin?

  Well, no, that doesn’t seem very likely, but we don’t know that it belonged to Alva.

  Well, who else…

  Exactly, he said, looking very steadily at me.

  Oh Bob!

  It began to dawn on me who else might have used it.

  Oh god, Bob!

  I started to cry then, with the shock of the realisation, I suppose. I cried and cried. My shoulders were shaking, my whole body seemed to go into spasms of sobs. Bob patted my back desperately and pulled my hair out of my eyes. He covered my face with kisses, and he murmured, Stop, Ashling, hush, hush, stop. I didn’t mean to upset you. Stop crying, hush.

  But I went on crying and crying through it all. When at last I’d finished, and blown my nose several times and wiped my face, Bob said: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, that was a dreadful thing to say.

  You didn’t say anything, Bob. You just made me think.

  I didn’t mean to be insulting. I can’t imagine what made me say that.

  It’s not insulting. It’s just a mess.

  It’s still possible that it is Alva. He said it as if that would be better.

  No. It’s Mum. She’s been sick in the mornings. One morning she was too sick to get up. Oh Bob!

  I could feel tears starting to well up again. I felt as if my whole world had split open, as if nothing was in the right place any more, as if I was the only thing in it that stayed in the same place, that everything else was heaving and bubbling around me.

  Well, if it’s your mum, she’ll tell you in her own time, won’t she? It’s not the end of the world. She’s been pregnant before. She can cope.

  But she’s broken it off with Richard! Oh, this is all such a mess!

  That may have been before she knew.

  Yes. She must have had an inkling, though.

  But she didn’t know.

  We still don’t know, either. It could have been negative, as you said. And there’s still an outside chance it could be Alva, I suppose. What’ll I do, Bob?

  I can’t imagine really why I expected Bob to be able to tell me. He’s only eighteen, after all, and he hasn’t much more experience of life than I have, except that you always think blokes have more experience than we do, even if they don’t. But he was the only one I could think of that I could discuss this with. Fidelma, my best friend from school, is away in the south of France with her family, and anyway, I don’t think Fidelma would be any use in a situation like this. I don’t suppose anybody would be really, except a person’s mother, and in this case, that didn’t apply.

  Sit tight is my advice, said Bob. Let her tell you when she’s ready.

  But if it’s Alva?

  You don’t really believe that any more, do you? She’s a bit naive, but she has her head screwed on, and if she did do something stupid, you’d be the first person she’d turn to, right?

  I suppose so.

  Just wait and see, Ashling. Sit it out for a bit. It may all come to nothing. Try not to worry about it so much. She’s a grown-up. She’s come through bad times and got over it.

  But for some reason I kept seeing an image in my mind of poor little Gavin, with his dungarees pulled on over his pyjamas and his fist in his mouth.

  Cheer up, Ashling. I’ll make a fresh pot of tea, will I? Nothing like tea in a crisis, is there?

  How could I ever have been mean to Bob? And there hasn’t been a word of protest from him. Prince Charming he may not be, but he’s one of the good guys, that’s for sure. Extra baggage! What a terrib
le thing to say about him.

  He’s taking me to see Sense and Sensibility on Monday. He says I must see it, and he doesn’t mind sitting through it again. Isn’t that noble of him? Isn’t he just the sweetest, kindest, most supportive person? Also, I love the way his hair curls over the top of his shirt collar.

  Tuesday 29th July

  Mum got a phone call in the middle of the night last night. At least, it was about one o’clock. We were all asleep. I shot awake as soon as I heard the phone. It seemed to be ringing in my heart. I mean it literally seemed like that. My heart seemed to go bleep-bleep, bleep-bleep in my chest cavity. My head felt wild as I sat up on my elbows, my dreams still chasing around in the dark corners of my room, and my heart bleeping like a pacemaker in a magnetic field.

  Gavin! was my first thought. Dad and Gavin. Well, that was a natural conclusion. That’s who last woke us up in the middle of the night.

  The phone was still trilling away hysterically. It seemed much louder in the night than it does in the daytime. I sprang out of bed as if it was an emergency – for all I knew it was – and ran downstairs. We haven’t got an upstairs phone. Alva is always going on about it, saying Mum should have one in her room. I’m beginning to see her point. I could hear Mum’s door opening as I got to the bottom of the stairs, but I ploughed on, desperate to stop the noise. I was sure the neighbours would start pounding on the walls.

  Richard! I gasped, when I heard his voice. Is anything wrong?

  Alva? he said in a chuckly voice.

  It’s Ashling. Is anything wrong?

  No, of course not. Is your mum there? I’m on a phone card and this phone is gobbling up the units.

  On a phone card? Why? Where are you? Are you sure everything is all right?

  Lisbon, he said, less chuckly now. Will you get Margaret please?

  Lisbon!

  Hurry up, Ashling!

  By now Mum was behind my shoulder, shivering in the cold of the hall at night. I handed the phone to her without a word. Then I ran upstairs and pulled the duvet off her bed, and I lumbered down again with it, and tucked it in around her as she sat there, hugging the phone to her collar bone and murmuring into it. Thanks, she mouthed. I noticed a pink streak along her cheek, where her she had been sleeping on a stray strand of hair.