by Fiona Harper
‘Found any missing literary masterpieces?’ her father asks with a twinkle in his eye. He always makes this joke and Heather always gives him the same response.
‘Not yet. But I’ll keep hunting.’
The shared moment of humour doesn’t do its job, though. Instead of connecting father and daughter, it only highlights the distance between them. Maybe it would be better if Heather did this when she was on her own – video chatted from the safety of her own flat without Faith scrutinizing her every word – but she never does that. She’s pulled the app up on her iPad a few times but always stops short of pressing the screen to connect.
Thankfully, the kids are eager to show off to their grandpa again, allowing Heather to relinquish centre stage. Alice conducts her little brother in a rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’, bringing the call to a dazzling finale.
When the monitor is blank again, Matthew goes off to settle the kids in front of the TV, but Faith hangs back.
‘Are we going to join the others?’ Heather asks. Even though she comes here every month, she’s never sure what to do, what the right or natural thing is.
‘If I have to watch even one more episode of Peppa Pig I might just shoot myself,’ Faith says drily, but then she turns to look at Heather. ‘We’ll go through in a second. Before that I have something I need to discuss with you…’
Heather’s stomach swoops. She and Faith never ‘discuss’ stuff. They’re polite, cordial, and matter-of-fact with each other, none of which involves sharing anything of any depth. After all the rows they had both before and after their mother died, they’ve allowed a crust of civility to harden over their relationship, and they both like it that way. ‘Ok-ay…’ she says warily.
‘Do you still have Mum’s things?’
A flash of cold runs through Heather, as if she’s just sprinted full-pelt into a wall of ice. Faith has blindsided her and being forced to think about ‘that room’ without her carefully constructed mental defences in place pulls her chest tight and her jaw even tighter. ‘W-what?’
‘Mum’s stuff,’ Faith repeats, frowning slightly. ‘You have some old family photos, right?’
Heather can’t speak. Her mouth has gone dry. Thinking specifically about what sits in her spare room has a tendency to do that to her. She nods.
‘Well, Alice has a school project. She needs photos of both Matthew and me as children, and I wondered if you could root one out?’
It would be odd for most people not to have photographs of themselves when they were young, ones passed on by parents, maybe when they moved out of home for the first time or started a family. Heather wishes she could play that card now, just tell her sister to go and hunt through the storage boxes in her vast attic, but she knows she can’t. It’s not that the photos don’t exist, just that they’re lost. Buried. At least, that’s what she assumes.
‘I… I don’t even know if I have them,’ she stammers, hoping against hope that Faith will let this drop.
Faith gives her a sideways look. A ‘Heather’s being difficult again’ kind of look that only a big sister can bestow. ‘Well, can you at least have a rummage around, see if you can lay your hands on any? After all, Mum didn’t leave any to me, just to you.’
Ah, there it is. The dig. She knew this was coming. Faith always wheels this out when she wants to guilt Heather into doing something, even though they both know being left out of the will was an act of kindness. If anything, Heather should be using that to hold Faith to ransom.
The thought of going through her mother’s possessions makes Heather feel physically sick. She wants to yell at Faith, tell her to do it herself, but she can’t let Faith see inside that room. She’d be even more disappointed with Heather than she already is. But Heather can’t rummage (just thinking the word makes her stomach churn) in there either. She’s stuck.
Faith sees the war going on behind Heather’s carefully schooled features and snorts. ‘You’re always so precious about Mum’s stuff, although God only knows why!’
Heather flinches. Not precious, she thinks, anything but. She’d rather let dust balls grow to the size of watermelons under her sofa than go in that room and really look around. It holds too many secrets. Too many horrible, horrible things.
Faith puts her hands on her hips. ‘It’s for Alice!’ she says, exasperated. ‘I know it’s a stretch to get you to do anything for me, but I thought, since it was for the niece you supposedly adore, that maybe just for once you’d act like you were part of this family and show some loyalty.’
It stabs Heather in the heart to hear this. She does adore Alice, even though she suspects the six-year-old is on the verge of mastering her mother’s disapproving look every time her aunt steps over the threshold. She so badly wants the kids to love her, for them to be able to come for days out and sleepovers, but once again that stupid room is getting in the way of anything good happening.
‘You don’t understand,’ she mutters.
Faith’s voice is silky smooth. ‘No, of course I don’t. How could I? Because Heather is special, Heather is different, no one understands her.’ She shakes her head. ‘It’s probably my fault,’ she says more to herself than to her sister. ‘I should have been tougher, shouldn’t have let you play the victim for so long, but I just…’ She trails off, shaking her head again.
Heather glares at her sister. She’s always known that the blame lies at her own door. She doesn’t need Faith to remind her.
Faith breathes out, regains some of her usual composure. It’s unlike her to lash out like this, to actually put words to the resentment Heather knows simmers under the surface. Pointed looks and a here-she-goes-again attitude usually describe Faith’s demeanour when dealing with her younger sibling.
‘Look…’ she begins, softening slightly. ‘I know you have… issues. But you don’t have to let them define you. I haven’t! Mainly because I got help, talked to people. There’s a really good person at our church. I’m sure she could fit you in if I asked her nicely.’
‘No.’ Heather’s response is firm and low.
Faith just stares at her. ‘Fine,’ she eventually says, her eyes narrowing. ‘But I’m starting to suspect you actually enjoy being this way, because you won’t get help, you won’t let anyone close.’
Seeing no change in Heather’s shut-down expression, Faith gives up and heads for the living room, obviously preferring the hated Peppa Pig instead of the company of her one and only sister. ‘Just find a bloody photo for Alice,’ she says over her shoulder as she walks away. ‘Because if you don’t, I’m going to come and dig one out myself. It’s the least you can do for this family.’
Heather shivers and wraps her arms around her middle. That can’t happen, she thinks. It just can’t. She’ll find some way of putting Faith off, maybe even scour the internet for old pictures that could have been Faith when she was younger and print them off.
She slopes into the living room and perches on a chair in the corner, more there for decoration than because it’s comfortable to sit on. Faith steadily ignores her as the children jump up and down, acting out parts of Peppa’s story as it unfolds brightly on the screen. The cartoon shows a made-up world where everyone fits in, where every story has a happy ending, and every child gets kissed goodnight before they fall soundly asleep in their own bed.
After four episodes, Matthew clicks the TV off. The children moan in unison, then Alice turns round and spies her aunt. Heather has been trying to blend into the wallpaper, just counting down the minutes until she can leave without Faith throwing another hissy fit.
‘Aunty Heather, you promised you’d play a game with us!’
Heather nods. Thank goodness. One shining moment in an otherwise crappy afternoon. Anything to distract herself from looking at the back of Faith’s head, when she knows her older sister is just sitting there, stewing. She smiles warmly as Alice comes running towards her, trailed by her little brother.
‘What do you want to play? Snap? That Dis
ney-princess board game I got you for Christmas?’
Alice shakes her head and then glances at Barney, who is grinning, her obvious accomplice.
‘We want to play hide-and-seek,’ she says firmly.
The smile freezes on Heather’s face. ‘What?’
Alice rolls her eyes, a perfect reproduction of her mother. ‘Hide-and-seek, silly! You know, one person counts while the others hide? And then you have to try and find us. Only, I’m counting first because it was my idea, which means it’s my game.’
Heather shakes her head, her neck so stiff that the side-to-side movement is only barely perceptible. ‘I can’t play hide-and-seek,’ she whispers.
Alice folds her arms. ‘You promised,’ she says, with the air of someone producing a winning card.
Heather shakes her head again. ‘Sorry, darling. It’s just that I hate… I just can’t…’ She looks helplessly at Faith, who has now turned her head and is watching the exchange, frowning. Her sister just tightens her jaw and says nothing. ‘I’ll play anything else you want,’ Heather adds. ‘As many times as you like. For hours and hours!’
It’s then that Alice’s eyes fill with tears. Her bottom lip wobbles impressively. ‘But you promised!’
Heather’s eyes threaten to fill too, but she manages to squeeze the tears away. Who knows what Faith will say if she has a total meltdown this afternoon, on top of everything else? ‘Sorry,’ she whispers.
Alice runs off crying, followed by a bemused-looking Barney. Heather catches Faith’s eye. ‘Everything has to be on your terms, doesn’t it?’ she says in a low voice, thick with disapproval. ‘Always by your rules and within your boundaries.’
‘That’s not true!’ Heather blurts out, surprising herself.
Faith just looks back at her. ‘Then go and tell the little girl who’s sobbing her heart out on her bed you’ve changed your mind.’
Heather stares back at her, unable to respond.
Faith huffs and stands up. ‘Exactly,’ she says. ‘Like I said: on your terms or not at all. I honestly don’t know why you bother coming to these Sunday dinners if you’re going to be like this.’
One tear slides down Heather’s face, but it doesn’t melt her sister’s frosty expression at all. Faith marches towards the door and, just before she leaves the room, she rests a hand on the jamb and turns round, shaking her head in both disgust and pity. ‘You know, sometimes you’re just like Mum.’
CHAPTER FOUR
CASSANDRA
The doll is queen of this house. She stands on the corner of the highest bookshelf, surveying her kingdom. The stuff climbs like a mountain towards her, a worshipper reaching for its god. Her eyes are clear and blue, haughty, her glossy brown ringlets perfect, her miniature faux-Victorian dress pink and delicate. Who can compete with the cold porcelain skin of her face and arms? Who can match the rosy cheeks and coral painted lips?
THEN
‘One… Two… Three… Four…’
Heather runs as Faith starts counting, her heart jumping in her chest. She has to find the best hiding place this time, one her sister will never guess, because Faith always wins at hide-and-seek. She always catches Heather quickly, shaking her head and telling her younger sister she’s an ‘amateur’, even though Heather isn’t really sure what that is. Someone who’s really bad at playing hide-and-seek, she supposes. She just hopes she knows as many big words as Faith does when she’s ten years old.
Heather thinks hard about a hiding place as she runs away. She can’t just race around giggling, like she did last time. She makes herself slow down. It’s not hard, though, because no one can run really fast in their house. There’s too much stuff in the way.
As soon as Faith started counting, Heather set off down one of the ‘rabbit trails’. Heather’s not quite sure why her sister calls them that – she’s never seen any bunnies in their house.
The trails are the paths between the stuff. They have lots of stuff. There are books and papers, plastic containers full of things Heather’s mummy doesn’t like her to touch. There are clothes, lots and lots of clothes. They’re piled high on the armchair and the table where the family used to eat their dinner. There are toys too, some old and broken, which Heather’s mummy says she’ll fix one day, and some still with tags on that Heather couldn’t play with even if she wanted to, because they’re so high up she can’t reach them. Some of the piles of stuff are so big that sometimes, when she looks up, they seem to lean over and look at her, trying to decide whether they should fall on her or not. She doesn’t like it when they do that.
There are also lots of things Heather’s mummy says she’s going to get around to throwing away when she’s not so tired. Maybe that will be when Heather’s daddy stops working so much and spends more time in the house. She overheard her parents arguing about that the other night. She also once overheard Aunty Kathy joke their house was like an Aladdin’s cave, only full of crap instead of treasure.
Heather’s not allowed to say that word Aunty Kathy said. Patrick Hull said it once at school and Miss Perrins made him sit in the corner then had to have a quiet word with his mum when she came to collect him.
Miss Perrins has had quiet words with Heather’s mummy quite a few times too, but not because she says anything naughty. Heather’s not exactly sure what the quiet words were, because Mummy and Miss Perrins were talking in the hallway, but it looked important and Miss Perrins’ face wasn’t smiley like usual.
She thinks it was about her school uniform one time (Mummy lost it under all the other clothes in the house and Heather had to wear her denim pinafore dress to school instead), and another time was when Heather was really itchy and the little insects from Fluffy the cat kept biting her tummy so she kept scratching instead of doing her spellings. Sometimes they hid in her jumper and came to school with her, and then they bit the other children too. Faith called them ‘bloody little hitchhikers’ but her teacher didn’t hear her say that so she didn’t have to sit in the corner. There were more quiet words after that, because the boys started calling her ‘Hobo Heather’ at playtime and wouldn’t stop chasing her.
Heather’s mummy has never been cross with her about the quiet words, though. Afterwards, she just comes home, lies on the sofa in front of the TV, and cries. She hugs Heather and tells her she’s a good girl, that it’s not Heather’s fault and that she’s going to do better from now on.
Heather is trying her hardest to move silently through the dining room when she hears Faith stop counting. It’s difficult to stay completely quiet, because of all the old plastic cartons and scrunchy cellophane that seem to collect on the floor in their house, and her feet slip on bits of paper and clothes that fall off the top of the piles.
‘Hea-ther!’ Faith calls in a sing-song voice. ‘I’m coming to get you!’
Heather starts to move faster. She’s not even thinking about giggling now and her heart is beating extra-hard. She’s got to find somewhere, somewhere small, somewhere Faith won’t expect.
Heather turns and heads up the stairs. Her feet are smaller than Faith’s and she finds the gaps in the piles of books and papers lining each step without making them fall over. When her foot hits the clear patch of carpet where the stairs meet the landing, she turns left and darts into the room there. This used to be her bedroom until the stuff filled it up. Once upon a time, the stuff was only downstairs and in her parents’ room, but it started to spread. Somehow the piles just kept getting bigger and bigger. Heather wonders if the big piles have babies. She asked Faith this once and her sister told her not to be stupid, but it makes sense to Heather. How else do new ones keep appearing?
So now the pile babies sleep in her room and Heather sleeps on the armchair downstairs.
She looks around the room for a good spot. She remembers that Daddy took his guitar out from under the bed and sold it to a man down the street. There’s a hole where it used to be that’s just big enough for her to climb into. Once inside, she pulls a bit of blanket down from
the edge of the bed to cover herself.
Something on top of the blanket, maybe one of the piles balancing on the bed, comes crashing down and Heather freezes. Faith goes quiet too, and Heather hears footsteps coming closer and closer. Faith’s coming up the stairs! Heather holds her breath and closes her eyes, wishing she could turn herself invisible.
‘Hea-ther,’ Faith sings again. ‘You know I’m going to find you, don’t you?’
Heather wants to giggle so badly. She presses a hand over her mouth to hold it in. She can see Faith’s feet. She can just about make them out from under the edge of the blanket. Her sister is standing in the doorway.
Go away, go away, go away, she wishes inside her head.
Just as Heather thinks Faith is going to yank up the blanket and say, ‘Ha! Found you!’ her sister’s feet move. They turn and walk away. Heather’s so surprised she doesn’t breathe out again for ages, not until her chest starts to feel funny and then she gulps in air.
She can hear Faith walking around, calling her name, but her voice sounds different now. Not so pleased with herself. More fed up. Heather smiles to herself and curls up even tighter under the bed. Today she will win hide-and-seek and Faith will be the amateur!
Heather stays there for ages. Faith looks in all the other rooms upstairs and then she goes back down to the ground floor. Even when Mummy calls to say lunch is ready, Heather doesn’t move. It could be a trick and, even if it isn’t, she doesn’t want Faith saying she gave up. She’s not coming out again until Faith does what she makes Heather do when she can’t find her: stand in the middle of the house and shout that Heather is the queen of hide-and-seek and Faith is the loser. Heather wants that way more than a ham sandwich, even if her tummy is starting to rumble.