Sisters ... No Way!

by Siobhán Parkinson

  Mum said Alva was never to say a thing like that again about Cindy, that this was very hard on Cindy, and after all –

  Yeh, yeh, Alva said, she’s recently bereaved and she’s in grief, yeh, yeh, I know.

  Then she said she would take back the bitch part, but not stuck-up, noxious or spoilt.

  Mum let it go at that. Alva said afterwards to me that she only took back the bitch part because it was hard on dogs.

  Friday 17th October

  Alva is still awfully upset about not being a bridesmaid at the wedding. I think some relations of Richard’s are going to be the official witnesses. So I said, why didn’t we get two lovely glamorous new outfits, as if we were bridesmaids, and we can stand next to Mum in all the photos, and nobody need ever know that we hadn’t actually signed the register, which is all that being witnesses really means anyway. Alva said sulkily that she supposed that would do.

  I can’t imagine where the money is going to come from for two glamorous outfits for me and her, after all the money we spent getting Mum’s outfit. Yes, I finally persuaded her not to get married in one of the hideous dresses, and we got her a nice cream silk tunic-blouse and a pair of loose cream woollen trousers with a drawstring. It looks very simple and elegant, but like all simple things it cost an arm and a leg.

  Dad gave Mum a string of pearls as a present when they got married and she wore them on their wedding day. They’re the only jewellery she has, apart from her fake pearl ear-rings and her engagement ring, so I said she should wear them for the wedding, they would look great with the silk shirt. She said she couldn’t possibly do that. I suppose I can see her point. So then she thrust them at me and said: Here, you wear them, Ashling. I can’t really own these any more. You have them.

  They are a bit old-fashioned for me, but they are lovely all the same. I’ll wear them for the wedding, and then I’ll put them away until I’m older.

  Anyway, the three of us are going into town on Saturday with the Access card, and we’re going to get something decent for me and Alva to wear. By the time the Access bill comes, Mum will be married, and I suppose Richard can pay it. It will be nice not to have to worry about money. That’s something.

  Tuesday 21st October

  The wedding was a very short, quick ceremony. Actually, it was more like a procedure. It was disappointingly unceremonious. Cindy didn’t show up until it was all over, which I thought was a bit off of her. We went for coffee afterwards, and then we went back to their house, and we were just opening the champagne when she arrived, her face all red and her hair all wild and a big long scarf flying, as if she’d been out in the wind. Well, I suppose she had been. It’s that time of year. But she didn’t look like a wedding guest. Alva and I got two really nice dresses, in the end. Richard insisted on paying for them. (I didn’t tell him we had just been going to put them on the Access bill and hope he’d pay it anyway.) Mine was a deep green silk with a sort of kingfisher blue sheen, with a V-neck at the front and a plunging back, and I wore a blazer over my shoulders, because it wasn’t really an October dress. Alva’s was a deep rose pink, in a very similar cut. She’s warm-blooded, so she managed without a blazer, and she looked very elegant.

  The woman who was the bridesmaid is Richard’s sister and she doesn’t have any arms. He might have told us. It’s hard not to stare.

  After the wedding meal, which we had at a local Italian restaurant, local to Richard’s house, I mean, Richard and Mum went home to Richard’s house. Alva went to stay for a few days with Sarah, and I am staying with my friend Fidelma. I don’t know what Cindy’s doing. I think she’s staying somewhere for a while too, to give Mum and Richard a bit of honeymoon time together, just till the weekend.

  Our house is going to be put up for sale. Dad doesn’t know yet, and we can’t put the house on the market until Mum talks to him, I think. That gives us a bit of a breather, and we have an illusion of a home. I mean we still have a doorkey, and most of our things are still there, and we drop in all the time to get stuff we need, but it’s more like a stage set now than a home. It feels sort of sad when we go in there. It still smells like home, but it is so silent. Mum will miss the garden. She put so much work into it. And especially the walnut tree; it was her special tree. It never produced any walnuts, of course, but that isn’t the point. It’s all so sad. It’s like the end of my childhood.

  Saturday 25th October

  Alva and I went home today, to collect some of the things we want to take to Richard’s house. We are going to have to start thinking of Richard’s house as our house now, but it’s hard to do that when our real house is still there, with half of our things still in it. Our pyjamas and toothbrushes and clothes and things are at Richard’s already. Mum has been doing lots of little forays in the car in the evenings after school, and she has moved most of the basic necessities already, but I decided I wasn’t going without Betsy (my double-bass), and Alva wanted her Boyzone poster, so we met there this morning.

  Alva insisted that I would need my Boyzone poster too, so I let her take it, and I took the Monet print down as well. I felt a bit like a thief, which is ridiculous in our own house, with our own things. I jumped when the doorbell rang. I thought it must be the police.

  It was Joan, from across the road.

  I just thought I’d pop in! she squealed excitedly when I opened the door. Oh this is all so thrilling, Ashling! Isn’t your mother the sly one, sneaking off and getting married like that, and nobody any the wiser!

  I didn’t ask her how she knew. I didn’t want to talk to her about it. I felt like slamming the door in her seedy, floozy face, with its madcap-looking halo of fuzzed-up, moussed, dyed hair.

  But then she produced an envelope and pressed it into my hand. She said: I was going to buy your mother a wedding present, but I didn’t know what to get, because I know she’s not exactly setting up home from scratch, it’s not like she needs a toaster or a clock or a mugtree, so then I thought I’d give you a little present instead, just a little thank-you for all the babysitting, I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.

  And then she kissed me. It was a rather unpleasant kiss, sort of moist and hurried and lipsticky, and I wanted to wipe it away immediately. My hand went almost automatically to my face, but then I stopped myself. It would have been terribly rude to wipe the kiss away in front of her. That wasn’t the only reason I stopped, though. As soon as my fingers reached my cheeks they touched wet, and I realised I was crying. I don’t exactly know why.

  I nodded my thanks at her and shut the door. There was a cheque for thirty-five pounds in the envelope. When I saw that, I cried even harder.

  Alva came downstairs carrying swathes of muslin.

  What’s that, Alva? I asked, wiping my face. Where are you going with all that stuff?

  Our mosquito nets, remember?

  I did remember then. When we were small children Mum did up our rooms for us, and she hung mosquito nets over our beds, for decoration, because we were going through a phase of playing princesses, and they gave a sort of four-poster effect. They were rather pretty. I hadn’t seen them for years. They never went back up after the rooms were repainted when we got older.

  I found them in the hot press, Alva said. I thought it would be nice to take them to Richard’s, for our room.

  I thought it was a ridiculous notion, silly and sentimental, and anyway they had got yellow and tatty by now, but I could see Alva was quite charmed by the idea (I think sometimes she’s still stuck in the princesses phase), so I helped her to fold them up and put them in a holdall.

  Mum must have had a similar, but more practical idea, because when we got to Richard’s house, there they all were, Mum and Richard and Cindy, having tea in the kitchen, and there was our old chequered tablecloth from home on the table. We got it in France one year, when Alva and I were children, and we’ve used it and used it, and it’s still almost as bright as ever. It was like a little piece of my childhood here now in this new house. I was very to
uched by it. I’m sure Mum did it on purpose, as a sort of little welcome for us. She poured us tea from Richard’s teapot, and we sat down and ate barm brack (Alva’s favourite type of cake, good old Mum) off our old tablecloth and talked politely to Richard and Cindy, telling them all about the trouble we had getting Betsy on the bus. They laughed at that. It was nearly like being a family. The tablecloth definitely helped.

  Monday 27th October

  It’s all a bit fraught around here, but I suppose that is only to be expected. The house is quite large, but Alva and I seem to have got the smallest room. Mum says they are going to do a job on the attic soon, and we will have a new room up there. I think Cindy is jealous. She would like to have been offered the attic instead of us, but I am quite sure if she had been, and we were to get her old room, she would have been even more miffed. She’s determined to be injured, no matter what happens.

  Meanwhile, we have our own washbasin which helps. There’s a queue for the bathroom in the mornings. I think Cindy stays in there deliberately long, to keep us late. It’s tough on Mum, who needs the bathroom more often than the rest of us these days, but she can’t very well complain. It’s still not really her house.

  Wednesday 29th October

  It’s my birthday soon, my seventeenth, and Mum is insisting I have a big splash. I think she is desperately trying to make up to us for all the stress lately, and she thinks a big posh party will help. I don’t want a big posh party, but Mum is so dead-set on it, I’m going along with it. It gives her something to concentrate on apart from Cindy and how badly she is behaving. And she is being a total cow. Alva and I are really trying. At least I am, and I am encouraging Alva to try too. But we are not getting very far. Cindy is like an ice-maiden. She hardly talks to us. It’s like being the lodger in a rather stiff boarding house.

  Alva still cries in the night, a lot. She waits till she thinks I am asleep, and then she starts. It’s dreadful to hear her. Sometimes even the thought of the baby doesn’t help.

  Sunday 9th November

  The birthday party was great. Mum really went to town on it. We had streamers, and a three-piece band, and a disco in the conservatory and punch and a big ice-cream cake, and even a kissogram. I think Mum enjoyed it even more than I did. She was revelling in having a house large enough to throw a big party in. It was her first event as hostess in Richard’s house, and that was important to her too. It’s a sort of benchmark, I suppose, a statement about who lives here.

  I was quite relieved when Cindy said she didn’t want to come. I couldn’t very well have left her out, now that we all live together. However, she said she was going to her aunt’s for the weekend, and she was sorry, she just couldn’t make it. Anyway, she said, she didn’t have a ballgown. I don’t know where on earth she got the idea we were all going to be wearing ballgowns. I had said people were going to dress up a bit, you know, not just come in their old jeans and sweaters, just for the fun of it, but she decided that meant it was a formal affair and she said it wasn’t her style.

  Of course some people did come in their old jeans and sweaters, but most people made some sort of an effort. Some of the girls coloured their hair, blue and pink and silver, that temporary colour, you know. Others put their hair up and put sparkly stuff in it. Some of them got hold of quite swish dresses, and borrowed stuff from their mothers, jewellery and so on, and high-heels. Alva and I both wore our wedding outfits. They weren’t too weddingy, and they worked fine as party dresses. It was a bit of gas, when you are used to seeing people in holey jeans or baggy tracksuits. Even the boys managed ties, if not jackets. One boy had his face painted. It was really great. All sort of silvery and glittery.

  I felt a bit sad that Bob wasn’t there. I suppose I could have invited him, just for old times’ sake, but I thought he might refuse. I couldn’t blame him if he did, but I couldn’t bear the thought of it either, so I didn’t ask him in the end. I still miss him a lot.

  Cindy arrived back from her aunt’s wearing a pair of outsize novelty slippers that she had borrowed from her aunt. She looked very odd, standing on the doorstep with what looked like two puppy dogs on her feet. She had some daft story about losing one of her shoes at a bus-stop or something. She was lucky it was a dry day, because those slippers would have disintegrated in the rain. We had a bit of a laugh over the slippers. When she drops her guard at a moment like that, when her sense of humour is tickled, she can be almost human. Sometimes, I think we might even get to be friends.

  Thursday 20th November

  I answered the phone yesterday, and this voice asked to speak to Cindy, a young man’s voice. For a second I thought it sounded like Bob, and I said: Hey, is that Bob?

  As soon as I said it, I could feel myself blushing like mad. I felt I’d made a complete fool of myself, gushing at a stranger like that on the phone.

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Complete silence. Then the person hung up. I shrugged and hung up too. Looper, I thought. Certainly not worth being embarrassed about.

  Then the phone rang again, and somebody asked to speak to Cindy. It still sounded a bit like Bob, but the accent was different this time. It sounded German, I think. But even so, I asked: Oh, did you ring just a minute ago?

  I didn’t feel embarrassed this time. I felt he was the one acting a bit odd. There was this silence again, and then the person said, very cautiously, No? Like that, with a question-mark at the end of it. I said: Well, anyway, Cindy’s not in just at the moment. Who should I say was looking for her?

  Dr Martin, the voice said, very slowly and articulately. Dok-torr Marr-tin, like that.

  He sounded a bit young to be a doctor.

  OK, I said, and your number?

  Another silence. Then I could hear pages being turned, as though the person was looking for a number. How come this person doesn’t know his own number? I thought.

  Anyway, he gave me the number eventually, and I wrote it down and I stuck the message up where we leave phone messages for each other. It wasn’t all that very strange, really, I suppose, but I felt a bit uneasy, at the way I had jumped to the conclusion it was Bob, just because it sounded his sort of age. He must have a deeper hold on my imagination than I realised. And if it wasn’t Bob – and I don’t really think it was, that was just a bit of wishful thinking or something on my part – well then why was he behaving so oddly?

  There was another message for Cindy today, I think from the same person, in handwriting I didn’t recognise. It must have been Richard’s, I suppose. This time the message said something about a podiatric appointment. I wonder if Cindy has something wrong with her feet. Maybe that’s why she was wearing those funny slippers the other day. Maybe she has corns or something. Poor thing if she does. Cindy and I are getting on much better lately. I think she is beginning to accept the situation. It can’t be any easier for her than for us; maybe even harder, actually, when you consider that her home has been invaded.

  Sunday 23rd November

  What a day this has been! I’d better start at the beginning.

  I was practising upstairs in the afternoon. The neighbours around here don’t seem to mind when I play. I can get loads of practice done, which is good, because we are having our Christmas concert early this year, and I have a lot of stuff to learn. The only problem is that our room is a bit small for two beds, two wardrobes, two dressing-tables, a double-bass, a stool and a music stand, so it’s a bit cramped. I haven’t much room for my bowing elbow.

  Anyway, the doorbell rang as I was practising. I had just answered the door a few minutes previously, and I’d had to drag a ladder around to lend to the woman next door, who, I am quite convinced, just wanted to get a good look at us. I decided I’d had enough interruptions, and somebody else could answer it this time, so I just went on playing. I heard the door being opened shortly after that, and minutes later I could hear Alva pounding up the stairs. You always know when it’s Alva. She has a particular way of pounding. She burst into our room, swinging a b
lack boot by its laces, and shouting Ashling, Ashling, oh Ashling, and she flung herself down on the bed.

  I thought the woman next door must have fallen off the ladder and broken her spine at the very least, Alva was so agitated, though I couldn’t see where this boot came into it. I noticed it looked like the one Cindy brought home that day when she arrived wearing the doggy slippers.

  Alva kept rocking back and forth on the bed and shaking her head and just saying, Ashling!, so I forgot about the boot, propped Betsy carefully against the wall and grabbed Alva by the wrists and shook her. Alva, I said, come on Alva, spit it out.

  It’s Bob, Alva whispered.

  What is? What about Bob?

  At the door, Alva said. Don’t go down, Ashling. Don’t!

  Why ever not? I asked. Don’t be so melodramatic, Alva. But how did he know where to find me?

  Ashling! Alva squawked, in a half-strangulated voice, as I left the room. Don’t go down! It’s not for you!

  When I got to the top of the stairs, I froze. Bob was in the hall. I could see the top of his head from my vantage point on the landing. I’d know that head anywhere. He had Cindy in his arms and he was kissing her. My dear, sweet, kind old Bob, kissing the noxious Cindy! (Not that I think she’s noxious any more. She’s just as confused and upset as we are.) I stood and watched. I couldn’t help it. It was a long kiss. I thought my heart would burst.

  Then it dawned on me that this was the person Cindy had met at the bus-stop. She’d had a daft story about meeting some bloke and losing her boot. And of course it had been Bob who’d rung for Cindy last week, I thought, in that way your mind grabs hold of irrelevant details when you’re under stress. He must have been surprised when I answered, that’s why there was that long silence. But I don’t think that meant he knew I lived here. I could have been just a friend of Cindy’s or a neighbour or anything, who happened to answer the phone. I might have been a babysitter, even, if Cindy had younger brothers or sisters. Of course, he couldn’t be sure it was me, and he didn’t want to ask, but he wasn’t taking any chances. That’s why he left a codename. That’s why he didn’t give his own number, either. It must have been a friend’s number he used. He knew I’d recognise his, if it really was me. All this fell into place like a jigsaw as I stood and watched that endless kiss.