After a quiet hour on the road I sense we are slowing down, weaving into smaller lanes, taking us to the village that I have been told lies just north of the border. I steal a glance outside for the first time since she told me she was bringing me here. I see little more than overgrown hedgerows and distant mountains, all blanketed by a low layer of oppressive grey cloud that appears set to swallow me up. There is no hiding place here. No orange city glow to remind me I’m in London. I can’t even see the sun. But I see the sign, smudged with dirt and surrounded by pink foxgloves: Welcome to Horton. And I know this is the place. We are nearly there.
By the time we reach the entrance to the family estate, I have nibbled a tear around the edge of my thumb, a childhood habit that never quite disappeared. The skin lifts and blood rushes to the surface as we pass a slate sign engraved with the words Mam Tor. I wrap my fingers over the wound, scared to look up and see what is outside, because somehow I know that we have arrived. We follow a long driveway, the ground lumpy and poorly formed. We slow down as we approach the gates and I force myself to take a look. Beyond the lofty corridor of trees I see a house. I feel a wave of nausea as we drive towards it.
The property is a double-fronted monstrosity, big enough to house five families. As we pass through the gates I spot a conservatory on the left, and beyond a field full of trees that I assume is an orchard and to which a layer of fog clings. I look right to find another building, a block of garages, six in total. Six fucking garages.
‘It was built by my father’s construction company in the seventies,’ Elle says in the style of a tour guide, before laughing to herself. ‘Sorry. I mean our father.’ My lips flicker into a sort of smile/seizure combo. The windows bulge out in mock-Victorian bays, and behind I can make out swathes of drapery, big and heavy, smothering the frames. Beyond that I see nothing, like the whole place is just one giant black hole, waiting to suck me in.
Elle pulls up outside the garage block, the gravel crunching under the tyres. She gets out, slams the door, making the car shake, then breaks into a half-hearted jog, springing light as a feather towards the double-fronted doors in her ultra-high-fashion sportswear and trainers. And in the shadow of this house, her expensive clothes and shoes matter like never before.
Because before, it was easy to tell myself that my birth family were poor. Poor, and all as mental as Elle. That there was some benefit to not being with them. But it isn’t true. At least not the part about being poor. The realisation of their wealth makes me want to vomit, and I wonder, if I did, whether Elle would hold back my hair and wipe my cheeks like she always used to.
It matters because I was always the kid in the hand-me-downs, the unbranded clothes that scratched at your skin and never quite fitted properly. Discarded things for the discarded child. Aunt Jemima wasn’t inclined to spend her family’s money on me, choosing instead to stick to the allowance my father sent her, which never seemed to stretch very far. One time I was handed down a pair of Reeboks, brown and scuffed from previous wear, but nevertheless Reeboks. And for the first time in my life I felt proud. I walked into the school gym that day on top of the world, like I was dancing on the clouds. But this house shits all over those shoes. This house is so big that whoever lives inside it could have afforded hundreds of new Reeboks.
I get out and slam the door, trapping the edge of my woolly jacket. I yank it out and watch as a thread pulls out in a silvery slither. I breathe in, tell myself to calm down. ‘You’re here for the truth,’ I whisper to myself. I look through the window of the car, past the reflection of my face and the house, and see that I have left my bag inside. I pull on the door handle but the car is already locked. ‘My bag,’ I call to Elle, and wait as she reaches backwards and clicks the button on the key. The lights flicker on and off and I test the door handle again. Still locked. I hear her laugh, taunting me as she disappears into the house.
I crunch my way across the driveway, the sound of broken bones underfoot. I look back as I hear the screech of metal to see the iron gates closing me in, the trees of the driveway twisting and curling into a gnarly canopy. Beyond the conservatory the land rises abruptly in the shape of a hill, peppered with rocky outcrops, the ground black and saturated after recent rain.
Elle has left the door ajar, a heavy oak thing that I push open. Behind it I see nothing in the hallway except for space filled with elongated shadows and clouds of dust. I hear the ticking of a clock somewhere in the background and I push the door open a little further. Not to go in, just to allow some of the late-afternoon light to slip in through the gap. I don’t want to go into the dark.
Oil paintings adorn the walls, a mixture of noble faces that all somehow look the same. The eyes, perhaps, which I note are not unlike mine. Ancestors? Family? There is a Chinese urn mounted on an obelisk next to the door, and the whole place bears the mark of a museum, right down to the musty scent. In some ways, that’s exactly what it is, a museum of my history, the one I was never allowed to know. I am like an archaeologist, Indiana Jones without the cool hat and trusty sidekick, digging at the earliest years of my life. I gaze along and find a sweeping staircase that snakes its way into the upper levels of the house. I don’t want to know what is up there.
Elle breezes back through in that light, springy way, clutching a fresh bottle of Evian. She hits the light switch and a harsh glow spreads out from the chandelier, patterns dancing about like cut-out paper snowflakes.
‘What about your bag?’ she asks. She is deadly serious too, as if she really expected me to be carrying it.
‘The car is locked. You locked it.’
‘Well, you’ll need it, won’t you?’
She offers me the water bottle, but as thirsty as I am, I refuse. ‘No thanks,’ I say, one foot inside the house. She glides towards me, pulls me inside, and then pushes the front door shut. For a second there is silence, just the two of us alone. And then I see him, stationary, watching me from halfway up the staircase.
‘Irini.’ It has to be him, my father, although I can’t see properly, his face cast in shadow. I open my mouth to speak as I feel Elle’s grip tighten around my arm. I move my lips, but no words come out. What would I say? Where would I begin? I make a sound but it is just a squeak. ‘You’re here.’ He sounds … warm. ‘Why don’t I arrange some tea and we can—’ he begins, but Elle doesn’t give him a chance to finish, and he takes a step back as she swings around to face him.
‘She’s tired from the trip,’ she tells him. I feel a shiver run through me, rough like a fissure through ice, as she pats the top of my hand, leading me away. Never once does she take her eyes off him. I look down as she guides me, her grip tight, snatching stolen glances here and there. Despite my desperation to ask him Why? Why me? I say nothing. ‘Let me show you to your room.’
‘Yes, maybe that’s for the best,’ he calls after us as we walk away, edging his way down two more steps. ‘We can talk when you’re feeling up to it.’ I feel like my heart has stopped, and I can’t open my mouth. I gasp, but no air gets into my lungs. He really wants to talk to me.
Elle drags me into the kitchen and closes the door behind us. It is brighter in here than in the hallway, and the air feels cleaner, less stale. I’m still thinking about my father, but as I take in the bare windows and the detailed tiling of the floor, a memory hits me. Comes out of nowhere, smack in the face. I stagger back, perhaps only saved from falling by Elle’s grip. I see myself as a baby, dragging my limp little body along the black and white floor, laughing as somebody calls out Well done! from behind me. A woman’s voice. Strong arms, I think. I always had strong arms. They had to be strong because I couldn’t walk. I remember how cold the floor used to feel, with the exception of one tile near the sink where the heat from a hot-water pipe escaped. Is this real? Is it possible I have memories of this place?
Elle pulls me onwards, breaking the vision. I look back before we slip through another door, the memory, if that’s what it was, already gone. With a jerk of my arm she lea
ds me along a maze of corridors that meander through the house like a jagged network of tunnels, gradually getting darker and tighter until we arrive at a stairway. I can feel the dust in my throat. It’s like we have stepped into an unused wing of an old castle, a place of work and servants. I can even hear the boiler ticking over. In comparison to the stairs leading away from the hallway, this is a small staircase, straight, running up the side of a wall. There is little in the way of decoration; no portraits, paintings or fancy heirlooms adorn these walls.
We climb the stairs, covered in a deep red carpet that looks like it has been here since the house was built. The cornicing is decorated with edges and curves, ornate filigree to excite the senses. Everything feels old, antiquated somehow, as if it has been unused for years. It is so different from my house in London, where I have done all I can to bleach it of personality. We arrive on a landing, dimly lit like the hallway. There are a couple of panelled doors with elegant wrought-iron handles leading from it, plus one dead-end corridor no more than a metre deep. There is a tall dresser with high shelves against this wall, covered in photos. I lean in to take a look, but Elle steps in front of me.
‘Bathroom,’ she snaps as she points in one direction. ‘Bedroom.’ She points in the other. Her casual and lofty demeanour has vanished. There is a weight on her shoulders, bearing down on her from above. She is hunched and quiet, and she slips back down the stairs without so much as a goodbye. I watch as she leaves, unsurprised by how quickly her mood has changed. It’s another reminder that she is still the same old Elle. I turn and look at the pictures, wondering if I am in any of them. But when I hear Elle and my father’s raised voices in the kitchen, I am overcome by an urge to get away. I might want the truth, but this feels like too much too soon.
I push open the bedroom door, jiggling the handle, which is stuck. When the door gives way, I see that the inside of the bedroom is not much better. It smells damp and mouldy. The bed looks small, and as I sit on the edge of it, a cloud of dust encircles me. There is a smattering of old furniture, a lame butterfly painting on the wall, colours muted, or faded. Some sort of hook above the bed that was probably part of an old lighting fixture. The window is a narrow slit, poor-quality double glazing with a diamond pattern on the glass. The whistle of a light breeze glides past outside, and as I try to open the window, I see just how flimsy the frame really is. The kind a child might fall through if they leaned against it. I open the window and let in some air. It is a welcome relief. Finally I breathe.
Just off to the left, behind the six-car garage, I see workmen busy on scaffolding. I watch as they hack at the conifer trees that line the entrance to the nearby woods, and I search my mind for another memory. Do I remember those trees? I try to imagine them without three decades of maturity, squat like bushes. Maybe the garage wasn’t even built back then. But nothing else comes to me, not like in the kitchen. I spot another maintenance man working in front of the garages, wiping over the car that I arrived in. He has the doors open, and I see my bag inside. My two jumpers and changes of underwear. My cigarettes and Valium. And my phone. My loose connection to the outside world, the one without a history, where memories don’t jump out at me because they simply don’t exist. I am struck by the realisation that I should have made things better with Antonio before I came here. Because right now he is the only remaining connection to the person I want so much to be, which makes him the only life raft I have. I look to the door, willing myself downstairs. I really want that phone, really should talk to Antonio. But now that I’m here in this room, I feel trapped.
I look around and spot an old phone on the bedside table. It is black, the flex fragile and in places exposed. An old rotary thing. I edge back on the bed, dust billowing upwards as the mattress creaks and groans, my knees bent up because the bed is so short. I pick up the handset to call Antonio. But instead of hearing the tone of a working line, I hear voices.
‘Yes, she is here,’ says the first. A man. Him? My father?
‘So, she insisted?’ asks another man.
‘Yes.’ There is a long pause, the sound of breathing. ‘But it won’t be for long. Hopefully she will remain manageable.’
‘You’ll soon be rid of her, Maurice. Not long to go now.’
Maurice. Yes, Maurice. That was his name. Maurice and Cassandra. The almost parents.
‘Quite. How quickly can you get here to finish the paperwork?’
I slowly push my finger against the switch, replacing the receiver on the hook. I slip down on the bed, put my hands over my ears.
‘I don’t want to be here,’ I whisper, but even as I say it I know that it isn’t really true. Deep down, I know why I came. To discover the truth that nobody would ever tell me. Not Elle, not Aunt Jemima. I came because I need to know why. I have always needed to know why. Why did I have to leave this place and my family to go and live with a woman who didn’t want me? Why did they keep Elle and send me away? And now, after all these years, what is so wrong that they can’t wait for me to leave? I came for the part of me that’s missing, for the part of me that got left behind, and for the part that I always knew I would never be able to find anywhere but here.
5
The first time Elle found me was at my school when I was thirteen years old. I had delayed my exit because there was a boy, Robert Kneel, who had taken a dislike to the way I walked, which at the time was with a considerable wobble to the left and a rectifying stride to the right. That, coupled with my mildly hunched back, had earned me the nickname Bison, an unpleasant alternative to Peg Leg Irini.
Kneel was a skinny little runt, arms too long for his shirts, his ankles visible below his trousers. He was poor, and it showed. His skin was always a sickly grey pallor, like he wasn’t getting enough iron in the free school dinners that he had to eat because his parents couldn’t afford to feed him. Every day without fail he would hang around outside the school gates waiting for me.
I thought I had waited long enough, but forty minutes after the bell he was still there. By the time I saw him, there was no going back. So I put my head down, began walking faster. Hhhhhhhuuuummmmmmm came the noise, the sound of a bison, guttural and as deep as his half-broken voice would permit. Hhhhhhhuuuummmmmmm began his band of three followers, soon erupting into a chorus of chanting. They let me pass, a twist in the game that unsettled me even more, but they were soon on my tail.
That was when Elle appeared in front of me, a vision like I had never seen before. She was seventeen at the time. Her pink hair was in bunches, and the ring in her nose shone as the sunlight caught it. At first I thought she was a stranger, but then I noticed a small triangular scar on her forehead that jogged a subtle memory from my childhood. The memory was of our only other reunion, when I was nine years old. It was my parents who’d arranged that meeting, but they lived to regret it. Afterwards, Aunt Jemima said we had to move house so Elle wouldn’t be able to find us again. She would have moved to a different country had Uncle Marcus agreed. Then Elle found one of our cousins in Edinburgh and followed her back to our new house. Finding my school after that was easy.
‘Hi,’ she said to me, as cheerful as you could imagine. The crowd of boys pulled up behind me, their hands on their knees as they caught their breath. She said it like we were old friends, as if I knew her.
‘Hi,’ I said back, my voice wobbly because I was close to tears, my cheeks flushed pink from effort, pain and embarrassment. But she walked past me, heading straight for Robert Kneel, and all that cheer drained from her face. The boys tried to run, realising the game was up, but she caught Robert by the hood of his jumper. That was what the tough kids did in 1996, wore illegal jumpers under their uniform blazers. Even the dirt-poor ones.
‘You are a little cunt,’ she said to him as she slapped him across the face. He fought and wriggled, his legs flailing and kicking, and all I could think was that tomorrow, when she wasn’t there, I was really going to get it. I thought maybe he might even kill me.
‘Get off,
you crazy bitch,’ he shouted. He had barely finished speaking when she threw him to the ground. And I mean threw him, like she was bowling or plate-smashing or something where there was an intent to break. I felt myself squeal, jump back as he hit the ground. One of his front teeth shot from his mouth like a bullet, followed by a trickle of blood down his chin. She turned to me and smiled, raised her eyebrows a bit, then kicked him right between his legs. He cried out in pain, but she just laughed. I couldn’t believe it. I looked around for witnesses, as if I was the guilty party. But nobody was about. No houses overlooked this stretch of road. She had picked her spot well.
‘Little cunts don’t need balls between their legs,’ she said as she kicked him again. ‘I’ve been watching you for weeks.’ She kicked him twice more before grabbing my hand and starting to run. I trailed behind her, my backpack bobbing up and down, covered with my cousin’s scribbles from the year before.
We arrived at a green Volvo estate that was parked just around the corner. I remember thinking how lucky it was, because my hip wouldn’t have taken much more effort. I sat in the passenger seat, watching her as she drove us to McDonald’s, unable to believe what she had just done. We ate Big Macs and shared six portions of fries, Elle laughing about how much she had hurt Robert Kneel. I laughed along, but not very convincingly. I couldn’t focus, the untameable fear of what would happen the next day at the forefront of my mind. Afterwards she bought me hot apple pie, and in my eagerness to appear grateful I burnt my lip. All the while we ate, she burnt matches down to her fingertips. At one point I could even smell her nails as the flame licked against them.
‘You know I’m your sister, right?’ she asked later as we sat on a bench feeding gravel to hungry ducks. I could feel her eyes upon me as I watched the ripples on the water, but what should I say? I wasn’t sure, so after a long silence I nodded without really knowing it. ‘That means we have to spend time together.’ She reached over to my face and turned it in her direction, picked strands of my hair out of my eyes. I stared at her nose ring, unsure where to look. ‘They don’t want that, you know. Not since the last time. You remember what happened the last time, right?’
If You Knew My Sister Page 3