If You Knew My Sister

by Michelle Adams

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Tell me more about your family.’

  He finishes swallowing, takes a sip of his wine. ‘Well, I don’t remember my parents together all that much. Dad was a good guy, but they couldn’t make it work. He claims that she was difficult and controlling; she claims the same. Said he was a womaniser.’ He shrugs his shoulders and gulps down more wine. Now I realise why he seems like such a good person. He doesn’t want to be like his father. Perhaps. ‘They are both great people, but not when they’re together. Like I said, they made some bad choices.’

  ‘What kind of bad choices?’

  He sets down his knife and fork, aligns them on his plate. He’s thinking about telling me, but something holds him back. I want to tell him that I won’t judge him. That I know what a shitty childhood feels like, and that I’ll understand. That was something Antonio could never fathom. But I keep quiet, and end up feeling guilty for having asked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say after the long silence, my cheeks flushing. ‘That was nosy. You don’t have to tell me anything.’

  ‘No, no,’ he says, flying into action. ‘It’s OK. It’s just, well, I’m always worried how it sounds.’ He allows himself a brief glance out of the window for courage before turning back to me. ‘I didn’t take their divorce all that well. Went a little out of control. I had to spend some time with a therapist. In a clinic.’

  I answer quickly so that he doesn’t have a chance to wonder if I’m uncomfortable. ‘Maybe that was one of their good choices. For you to get well.’

  His head drops before he turns away, gazing out of the window. He doesn’t offer anything more and instead fills his mouth with food.

  I change the subject. ‘So what about Elle? Have you known her for a long time?’ It is a risk, because in some ways I don’t want to know things about her. I know so much about her already, terrible things I wish I didn’t. Yet I can’t help myself, because there are whole years that passed by when we were apart.

  ‘A while. A year maybe. I met her at a charity fund-raiser.’ He stops when I nearly spray him with wine, bringing my hand up to catch the drips that escape through my surprise. Charity? Elle? ‘You OK?’ he asks. When he is sure I am not about to choke, he continues. ‘It was about a year ago. A kid at the gym got cancer and needed to go to the States for treatment. Had some rare type of bone cancer.’

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ He shrugs. ‘Not more than eighteen, nineteen.’

  ‘Probably Ewing’s sarcoma.’ I might only put people to sleep for a living now, but there was a time when my knowledge was good.

  ‘That was it. I remember now. How do you know about that?’

  That’s when I realise I have given away another snippet from my life. No turning back now, I think, on this road of truth. ‘I’m a doctor.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, glancing at the dodgy FEEL jumper and two near-empty wine glasses. For the first time, I feel judged. But there is no point in being angry about it. After all, he knows Elle, and that we share the same blood. ‘I didn’t realise. I thought—’

  ‘That I was like Elle?’ I finish on his behalf. ‘A bit empty?’ We both smile and I shake my head. ‘No. I am nothing like her,’ I say, aware that I don’t really believe that is true. We are alike, both craving the attention of those who make us feel good.

  ‘Anyway, that’s where I met her. She was heading up a cake stall of things she had made.’ That I doubt, remembering the cook and her salty eggs. I can imagine Elle standing over the woman in the kitchen, demanding and shouting out her orders. ‘Greg started fussing over her, had fancied her for ages. You know, it’s easy to be drawn in by Elle at first. She’s a bonnie wee lass.’

  ‘Yes, she is very pretty,’ I admit.

  ‘But it doesn’t take long to realise that there is more to her than that. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Oh!’ He palms at his face in despair. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Being rude about your sister, yeah, way to go, Matt.’ He gives himself a sarcastic little cheer, raising his fists like he is a self-appointed champion jackass. I realise he is trying to impress me, and that I like it. ‘Anyway, she was cold for a long time with him. But that just drove him on. Then they started hanging out.’ He hangs his head, nibbles on an otherwise well-manicured thumb as if he is embarrassed to continue.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your sister. She is kind of…’

  ‘Weird?’

  He shifts a bit, trying to get comfortable in his seat, before relenting. ‘Yeah, but also kind of scary. She sleeps around with people at the gym, runs hot one minute, cold the next. Drives like a total maniac. But Greg is an idiot, and he thinks there’s something between them. He is a total slut too, though. Oh, hang on, I didn’t mean that she is.’

  ‘Yes you did. It’s OK.’

  ‘It’s not just Greg that she has a thing with, you see. There are others, too.’

  ‘Yeah, I figured that out for myself.’

  He moves in close, leaning over the table to share a secret. He beckons me forward. ‘She had a thing with this other guy. He doesn’t go to the gym any more. They had a one-night stand, but it turned out that the guy had a girlfriend who also used to go to the gym. When it came out about his fling with Elle, it all kicked off.’

  ‘You mean his girlfriend found out and went crazy?’

  He leans in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘No. Elle went crazy. She kicked off with the girlfriend. Said he was hers and that she wouldn’t share. She ripped out a chunk of the girl’s hair.’ He pulls at his own hair and I imagine the poor girl defeated, lying on a yoga mat with the clump of hair on the floor at her side. But I can’t say I’m surprised. If I was prepared to consider whether Elle might have been responsible for our mother’s death, picking a fight with an unsuspecting girlfriend seems pretty mild. Her words from the day I ran from her ring in my head. I’ll fucking stick you with this, I promise you. I’ll fucking slaughter you if you go near him again. It was a moment when I had never needed her more, and when I had never needed more to get away. Attacking a girl at the gym doesn’t even register on Elle’s scale. ‘I warned Greg, but he said he knew she was crazy. That the crazy ones are the best.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know Elle all that well,’ I lie, ‘but I have always known she had problems.’

  He seems troubled by my lack of surprise. ‘So why do you still see her?’

  ‘I don’t. In fact I avoid her for this very reason. But our mother died a couple of days ago.’ He is visibly shocked, all slack-jawed and slit-eyed. He sits upright in his seat as if I have just told him the moon is orange and the sun is white. That, or somebody shoved a stick up his backside. ‘I came for the funeral.’

  ‘She just died?’

  ‘Yes.’ I can see his mind working overtime, trying to figure something out, like I have just put forth a convincing argument about the world being flat. ‘What? You look surprised.’

  ‘I am. Elle told me that her parents died years ago. In fact, now I come to think of it,’ he says, his cheeks flushing as he scratches at the back of his head, ‘she told me that her sister had died too.’

  There is silence for a while. I shake my head and know that he wishes he could take back what he has just said. ‘She’s a liar. Our mother died a few days ago. My father is still alive, and so am I.’

  He is grateful for my stoicism, grips on to it in order to help us move forward. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ He reaches over, touches my hand.

  ‘Thanks, but since I came here I’m struggling to see what it is that I have lost. I always hoped that one day I would return to my family home and find a family. At least find out why I was given away. But I’m not sure there was anything left for me to find. According to you, my sister labelled me as dead a few years back. And as far as my parents are concerned, I’ve been dead to them for even longer. Since I was three years old. Even now my father has hardly spoken to me.’ I nibble at my lip, and the
n at my already sore thumb. My hip starts to throb and I reach down, try to rub some heat into it. ‘They gave me nothing to lose,’ I say, pulling my hand away from his.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ he says, reaching further across, his fingers brushing against my forearm. ‘They gave you lots. That face, for one.’ He is smiling, really trying to make it all right. Like he just ripped my past away from me and is now responsible for giving it back.

  ‘Matt, they gave me away and kept Elle. I was never wanted by them, and I never will be.’ I pull my arm away again, link my fingers together and rest my chin on my hands. ‘Other than the truth about why they rejected me, I want nothing from them, or anybody else.’

  He tries not to look hurt as he returns his hand to his lap. ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘Why not?’ I ask, my chin cocked forward like I’m ready for a fist fight.

  ‘Because we are our parents, Irini. We are what they make us, either by their presence or through their absence. Has a day gone by that you haven’t thought about them? I bet not. And when they die, there is a part of us that dies with them whether we spent our lives together or not. They take part of us back, the bit that always belonged to them and that we never realised was theirs to keep. When it’s gone, it leaves a space in us. It’s all right to be hurt by that, but you can’t deny it.’

  ‘That’s rubbish. They already created enough space in my life. Their death won’t change anything.’ As soon as I have said it, I want to take it back. It leaves me sounding needy, spiteful, hurt. I don’t want to be any of those things, and I suddenly wish Elle was here, just like all those times before when I have wished she was still around to make me feel wanted. ‘I just mean that nothing can change the past. They didn’t want me. It’s simple.’

  And then he says something that changes everything, like a light switch illuminating the darkest corners of my life. An eye suddenly open. Awake. ‘But for three years they did want you. They kept you, loved you, no doubt.’

  I think of my father’s face this morning, unable to look at me, ashamed. It might be the first time that I see there is another version of events apart from the one I have created. In my version of my life it was always about me and what I have lost. I never considered anybody else in this sad little story. I never assumed they didn’t have a choice. I never considered that maybe they had lost me just like I had lost them.

  ‘If I was you,’ Matt continues, ‘I wouldn’t be asking why they didn’t want me. I would be asking what happened to make them believe that after three years of being your parents, they couldn’t do it any more.’

  10

  When I was eight years old, Aunt Jemima decided to take me to Kiddiwinks, a parent/child club. She had been going there with her children for the last three years, but they had never taken me before. So it was a big day for us. For me. Out with the family instead of home with a sitter. They told me I was to behave. I was to be a good little girl and act like they had taught me. I wasn’t to cause trouble. That’s what adults tell kids who have a tendency to misbehave. And I had a tendency.

  That was what Miss McKenna had said at the parents’ evening the week before. The new school year had just started and I had been acting up, being disruptive, destroying other children’s work. It had come to a head when I planted a sharpened pencil into another girl’s hand. Straight through it went, like a knife through soft cheese. Margot Wolfe. I thought she was a precious little cow. She always looked too perfect. She had better clothes than me, a better bag than me, and her pencils were all new whereas mine had been sharpened down, things filtered out from my cousins’ belongings. I was the kid in hand-me-downs with snot slipping across my face. And I hated her for it.

  So when parents’ evening came, it was a big deal. I had to go too, and I was kind of excited because it was the first time I remember having to do something as a parent/child combo. I knew they weren’t my parents, but that didn’t matter. All the way there I was looking forward to it, and the bloody hole in Margot Wolfe’s hand was barely even a memory. I didn’t realise my behavioural issues were going to be discussed.

  After Miss McKenna laid out the case that I was uncontrollable, an effort that brought her close to tears, the headmistress, a stocky woman with big calves, suggested a psychotherapist. I remember Uncle Marcus stating that it was a familial problem, which made Aunt Jemima drop her head in shame. Shame that she was part of the family with the problem. She was my paternal aunt after all. It was her genes, and her brother’s decision to get rid of one of his kids that had thrust me into their midst. Uncle Marcus even suggested it was a genetic abnormality, that I was the same as my sister. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time.

  But, they stressed, making absolutely certain that it was understood, they weren’t my parents. What were they supposed to do? This night wasn’t even for them. It was for parents and teachers. They had been lumped with me, like a kitten found in the back garden that you don’t really want but you haven’t got the heart to watch starve to death. So you take it in and pretend to like cats, hope it will become tame. That’s what Aunt Jemima and Uncle Marcus were to me. The reluctant guardians who watched helplessly as I left a trail of kitten shit all over their nice organised lives, full of ordered and pretty children with good hips who didn’t wear hand-me-downs and who had been wanted from the start.

  So Kiddiwinks was an effort to make me a better child. The psychotherapist said it would help. I was supposed to learn how to integrate, as if all that was needed was a few simple play dates. We were supposed to ignore the fact that I knew my parents didn’t want me, that kids at school called me Peg Leg Irini and that I shared the Harringford genes. Soft play with kids I didn’t know. The apparent answer to all my childhood problems.

  But even at eight years old I was sceptical. Climbing over rubber cubes and swinging from nets, sliding down spiral slides and bouncing on trampolines is all fun and ball games when you’re able-bodied. But I wasn’t able-bodied. I could walk by that point, didn’t even need my frame. I was still lame, but most people ignored the limp and the slight tendency to veer to the right. Climbing wasn’t fun, though. Clambering wasn’t fun. Running wasn’t fun. Still, when they encouraged me into the soft play area like an animal into a circus ring, I was expected to perform. I saw them watching with horror at my lack of integration, that elusive something that apparently could be found at the bottom of a ball pit. So I smiled and waved and made an effort. I pushed myself deeper into the land of foam and watched Aunt Jemima pray for a miracle. I managed to climb over one obstacle, then slipped head first into a pit of balls. The only other option had been a climbing net made of rope, and there was no way I was following my cousins over that. So in I went, letting myself sink. I thought at least I could hide there until it was time to leave.

  But when they couldn’t find me, all hell broke loose. I called out but they couldn’t hear me over the commotion. My dodgy leg wouldn’t balance with all those plastic balls underfoot, and I couldn’t swing it back round to gain any purchase on the good leg. The police were called, along with the fire brigade. They had to dismantle part of the play area and empty the balls out one at a time from the top. They reached me after another hour. Of course they assumed I had done it on purpose. Attention-seeking was what they said. Family trait, Uncle Marcus claimed, one judgemental eye cast towards Aunt Jemima.

  That was the last time we went to Kiddiwinks. We scrapped the search for integration, and the psychotherapist who suggested it in the first place. We have three children of our own, you know. We can’t afford for you to see a therapist, just because you can’t learn how to behave. There was no money for hare-brained schemes like that, not even with what my father was sending.

  So, out of fresh ideas, they began to wonder if a reunion with my sister might help. Aunt Jemima told me at the time that Elle had begged them for it. I was so excited. This was, after all, what I wanted. For my family to want me. Elle had apparently made all sorts of promises about how good s
he would be if only they would let her see me. I guess they still had hopes for who she might become.

  My father brought her to Aunt Jemima’s house. My mother came too, but all I remember of her was listening as she cried in the hallway while Aunt Jemima did her best to comfort her. I had worn my best dress in the hope that my mother might like it. Aunt Jemima had braided my hair with a red ribbon tied on the end. I thought that if she could only appreciate the effort I had made, she might realise her mistake and take me home. But they ushered us outside to play in the garden before she even got a chance to see me.

  For a moment at least they must have got distracted, because within fifteen minutes I was standing half-naked on the railings of Slateford Aqueduct, watching Elle floating face down in the water below. It was my turn to jump, just like I had promised her. I wanted to impress her, but I remained unconvinced how that could happen if we were both dead. Maybe that’s why I didn’t jump, and instead let myself be coaxed down by a friendly passer-by. Any ideas regarding family reunification were scrapped after that. Instead, Aunt Jemima moved house, taking me with her, and hoped that might be the answer.

  The story of my childhood assault on Margot Wolfe gained notoriety in the following years. Margot, of course, hated me for what I’d done, and would show everybody the scar that Peg Leg Irini had given her. And yes, it still hurt, even after all those years, thank you for asking. Even though she deserved it, I hated the sympathy that Margot Wolfe got. I hated the fact that she hated me. So after Elle found me four years later and we put Robert Kneel in hospital, I decided to finish what I’d started when I was a kid. Reunited with Elle, I felt unstoppable. Nobody even knew that we were seeing each other. I saw being with Elle as a way forward, and a chance at something better. A chance to put the past behind me and become somebody who was wanted. It was time, I thought, to teach Margot Wolfe a lesson. I had no idea the lesson would end up being mine, and one I would live to regret for the rest of my life.