Her sisters stopped and looked at her. Emmy continued, ‘Now I’m passable. I don’t want to be passable!’
‘You still want Tom Bradleigh to fancy you?’
‘No!’ Emmy actually gagged. ‘Not at all – I’m not angry that he only thinks I’m passable, I’m angry that he even thinks I’d want to be on his radar! How dare he call a woman passable as if she’s met his criteria! I’m so – flippin’ – angry.’
‘You should tell him next time,’ Rae coaxed. ‘You’re a grown-up now. Tell him what a massive bellend he is and then whack him in the nuts with a blunt object.’
‘But I’m angry at me too!’ Emmy burst out. She clenched her fist. ‘I am so okay in my real life. I’m confident at work, with myself; I’m happy, but this place just makes me retreat backwards. It sucks the life out of me and I become the same tongue-tied dweeb I always used to be and it’s infuriating!’
‘You were never a dweeb, or a nerd or any of that,’ said Noelle. ‘Rae’s right – you were just shy and young.’
‘But I’m not young now, I’m old. Sort of. I just need the little kid version of Emmy to back off and be gone for good. I’m better without her.’
‘I’m not,’ Rae said with uncharacteristic softness. ‘I like all the Emmys in my life. I need them all.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I do. If eight-year-old Emmy hadn’t read a book about poisonous berries and run off to find Mum to take me to hospital after I scoffed my way through that lily-of-the-valley bush in the woods I might not be here. If teenage Emmy had told my friends that time she caught me dancing to her S Club 7 CD my life would have been over. And you would have had every right to – I ribbed you for loving them.’
Noelle joined in. ‘I always liked how my big sister Emmy confided in me about her shyness, and how hearing her stories actually helped me begin to accept who I was.’
‘One of my favourite Emmys,’ continued Rae, ‘was the Emmy that ran into my bedroom when she was about nine years old to tell me how earth is just this tiny planet in the very corner of a galaxy, in a universe where there are billions of galaxies. Because she knew that any pain and heartache that happens in a small town is shit, really shit, but it can be put into perspective.’
‘Actually, my favourite Emmy was the one that defied them all and did her best and smashed it, and got out, and now has her dream career,’ Noelle added. ‘And she’s paving the way for girls, because she’s part of the ten per cent of women engineers in the UK.’
Emmy chewed her hair a little, wide-eyed. ‘How do you know that fact?’
‘I’m really proud of you. But I’m also a lawyer and I like to have my facts straight when I boast about you to people.’
Eventually, Emmy spoke up again, warmed to the heart by their remarks but still on edge. ‘Thank you. I just don’t want to feel how I used to feel about myself. I get worried if I think I’m slipping back.’ She spat out her hair and sought something to distract her, spotting a familiar sight across the street. ‘Hey, does anyone want some penny sweets?’
Annette’s Newsagent’s was like stepping into a time warp. The outside was the same, the inside was the same, the smell was the same and, lo and behold, the old lady behind the counter was the very same. Annette was still going strong. Ish.
The shop bell dingled as they walked inside, and Annette looked up from her magazine. She stared hard at the three girls, lost in thought and sucking on her dentures despite them all mumbling a greeting.
They peered around the shop, though the one-penny sweets were sadly no more – replaced with jars that were instead kept safely behind the counter.
A bark of recognition leapt from Annette’s mouth, just as the sisters were checking the sell-by dates on some packets of Space Invaders. The three of them looked up.
‘Mah!’ Annette barked again, a crooked finger pointing at them. ‘You put those down.’
‘We were just looking at them,’ replied Noelle. She lowered the bag and stepped away. She didn’t mind – they were indeed rather out of date.
‘I know you three, you can’t come in here and fool me just because you’re out of your school uniforms.’ Annette shuffled around the counter towards them, the bones in her hands clacking noisily against the wooden top as she helped herself around.
‘We’re not school kids,’ Rae said. ‘But thank you?’
‘You’re those Lake girls, from out there in the woods! I’m old but I’m not blind yet. I see you, and I see where those hands are.’
Emmy pulled her hands from her pockets and looked at them. ‘What about our hands?’
‘Always thieving in my shop, you are.’ Annette was circling them, herding them towards the door like she was a sheepdog and they were confused lambs.
‘We haven’t been in here for years,’ Emmy stuttered.
‘Please could you tell us exactly what you’re accusing us of?’ Noelle asked, smiling sweetly.
‘Of thieving! Pinching! Dirty little hands from that dirty great house. I won’t have you in here, I’ve got a business to run.’
‘Okay, lady, calm down, we never stole anything from you,’ protested Rae, pushing to the back of her mind the time she sneaked a Solero out of the shop by stuffing it up her sleeve. She’d been so nervous about eating it within sight that it melted by the time she got far enough away. The wrapper had burst and mango-coloured ice cream had stained the entire right-hand sleeve of her school shirt. Her mum was maaaaaaaaaaad…
‘Mah!’ Annette barked again in response, wafting her arms towards the doorway.
And with that the Lake sisters were bundled out through the door like three drunks at a Western saloon. Behind them, Annette shut the door, locked it and switched all the lights out, despite it only being midday.
On the pavement, Emmy swallowed and kicked at the ground. She wanted to go home. No, not to the house in the woods, to Oxford. She was ready to get the hell out of Maplewood, and she’d been here less than twenty-four hours.
‘Let’s just go back to the house, I’ve had enough of this place for today.’ Emmy turned away from her sisters and walked down the road, her shoulders hunched and her gaze low. Pursing her lips like a drawstring was all that kept her from yelling out in frustration.
She stomped along for a couple of minutes, completely enveloped in her own thoughts, before she began to sense her sisters weren’t following. She spun around, looking for them, just as a taxi rolled up beside her, her sisters in the back. Rae leaned over from the middle seat and opened the door. ‘Get in. I’m treating us to a cab home.’
‘It’s less than thirty minutes’ walk!’
‘Thirty minutes of my life I’m not wasting wandering about Maplewank. No offence,’ she added to the taxi driver. ‘We used to live here too so we’re allowed to say it.’
Emmy conceded to the logic and climbed into the cab, buckling up and staring out the window. Rae stared straight ahead. Noelle stared out of the window on the other side.
‘You’re a happy bunch,’ commented the taxi driver.
‘We are, usually,’ replied Rae. ‘This town sucks the life out of us.’
‘Oh. Sorry about that.’ The taxi driver focused on the road, and the girls focused on the silence.
From her spot in the taxi, Noelle watched the trees and the pavements rush by. The houses this close to town were large and pretty; smart-looking with no peeling paint and no spiders, and therefore, in her eyes, no character.
Maplewood, you’re not making this easy.
She was trying to be positive, she was trying so hard. She wanted to love her home again like she’d done when she was little, before things had got complicated. And she really did need these two months to recuperate. She’d gone into environmental law with the hope of changing the world for the better. She had succeeded for the most part, but sometimes it felt like all she wanted to do was grab people by the shoulders and plead into their faces: I’m doing this for you. You can’t just wreck the world you live in
and then expect me to try and convince you not to do it. Just STOP IT.
It was exhausting. It was overwhelming. But she could do it; she was just very ready for a bit of time out with her family. She wasn’t sure she had the energy to spend the next two months trying to get the others on board, especially when she wasn’t sure she was all that on board herself any more.
And why did those Space Invaders have to be out of date? She just wanted a packet of Space Invaders, no strings attached.
Up ahead at the side of the road were two people stood chatting, a dog in between them, and Noelle watched them as the taxi drew closer.
She sat up, her breath catching and her hand slapping against the window as they whooshed past the figures. She whipped her head back, watching through the back window as the people retreated into the distance.
The world muffled around her and became slow motion and disorienting. She felt under water. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think, she could only stare into the distance through strands of hair that stuck to her face.
Jenny.
Was that really Jenny? Was she really still in Maplewood? And had she seen Noelle, had she looked up and then followed the taxi with her eyes as it drove further away?
‘Are you okay? Noelle?’
Noelle dragged her eyes from the window long enough to glance at her sisters, who were looking at her, concerned. She ignored Rae’s question and went back to looking out the window.
‘Did you see her?’
‘Who?’
‘Did you see Jenny? Outside? Was it her?’
Emmy and Rae contorted themselves to look out of the back window too, but the car had curved around the corner, leaving the centre of town and the houses and the person who might have been Jenny far behind.
‘Jenny still lives in Maplewood?’ Emmy asked. ‘You haven’t spoken to her in a long time, right?’
Noelle wanted to sink back under the water and lose herself. ‘Not since the day I left her on her own.’
Jenny. Noelle still remembered everything about the first time she kissed Jenny. They were both nervous kids, afraid of growing up, and afraid of how much growing up they’d have to do if kissing each other meant what they thought it meant. They’d met at secondary school, with Jenny fitting in, oh, only a scrape more than Noelle did, and by the age of thirteen they’d found each other. Noelle finally had a friend – a hard thing to achieve thanks to the stigma attached to her family, to her sisters – and she loved how Jenny seemed into the same things. Not occupied with making boys notice her or being popular. She liked animals and the outdoors, and when Jenny came over to play Noelle felt herself light up. As the two of them lay in the meadows talking and laughing, it was like the sunbeams were soaking into her skin, and then collecting inside her soul.
At fourteen, Noelle knew. She’d always been so aware of herself and the world around her – she’d known all along, if she’d only let herself admit it to herself. The way she felt about Jenny was no longer just friendship.
Rae was getting ready to leave home and the life Noelle knew was changing, so she took the plunge. ‘Help me,’ she’d said to her older sisters, through salted, tear-stained cheeks, while Emmy was helping Rae pack up her bags to take to London.
They’d both dropped what they were holding to rush over, and they listened and soothed as Noelle opened up about who she was. ‘Well,’ Rae had said, ‘no shit, Sherlock,’ but stopped herself from saying any more.
‘What do I do?’ Noelle asked them. ‘What if she doesn’t want to be friends any more?’
‘What if she’s been waiting for you to say it first all along?’ Emmy had replied, sitting her sister down on the bed.
When Noelle had told Jenny how she felt they’d both cried, and Jenny had torn down a poster of Justin Timberlake that hung on Noelle’s walls and called her a liar. Noelle had sobbed that she was a liar and tore up another poster, this time of Daniel Radcliffe as a young Harry Potter. Underneath, was a hidden picture of Mandy Moore and Jenny had started laughing. Not cruelly, but because she was happy and confused and delighted and scared that Noelle was the same as her.
They’d talked – deep, heart-achingly teenage conversations that Noelle couldn’t recollect the wording of now, about whether they should be girlfriend and girlfriend or whether they only thought they wanted that because they were friends, and they didn’t know anybody else who was gay. But again, Noelle knew. She was drawn to Jenny for her kindness, her laugh, the way her blonde hair glinted almost white in the sunlight, and she wanted to be more than friends.
At fifteen they kissed, and it was the start of… everything.
Chapter 7
After a brief stop for supplies at Spar – Rae’s demand – the taxi pulled up at the end of the driveway. ‘You three live down there?’ the driver asked, turning to look back at the three sisters. ‘I’ve never seen you before.’
‘Strange but true,’ said Rae, pushing her sisters out the doors and climbing out as fast as possible. She handed the driver a twenty and marched off before he could give her any change.
Rae unlocked the door. ‘In,’ she commanded, and once her younger sisters were inside, with the shopping bags dumped on the kitchen counter, Rae faced them. Before her, Noelle was fiddling with one of the plastic bags and staring into the distance in thought. She looked like she’d seen the Ghost of Christmas Past. Emmy was glum, retreating into herself. And, sure, Emmy was never exactly one bottle of Grey Goose away from a party, but she was usually happy in a practical kind of way.
Rae sighed, missing Finn. If anyone could put a smile on a group of miserable cows’ faces it was him. ‘So Maplewood still sucks, and half the town still live here, including Jenny, which I think might be causing Noelle to have a nervous breakdown. To hell with them. We’re staying in. We have some food now and a lot of drink, and I’ll bash the shit out of anyone else that dares to come over here and make either of you sad.’
‘But what if it was Jenny?’ asked Noelle. ‘Shouldn’t I go back out and look for her? No, I shouldn’t do that. Well, maybe I should. No, she won’t want to see me.’
Emmy gently pulled the bag away from her. ‘I think you need a bit of time to digest this, Noey. Do a bit of online stalking first; see if she still lives here. It might not have even been her.’
Noelle nodded, but she was sure it had been Jenny. That white glint of hair was something she’d never forget, and had never seen in quite the same way on anyone else.
Rae was already glugging large quantities of wine into glasses. ‘Hunker down, kids. Grab those House Beautiful magazines, Noelle. Take the crisps, Emmy. We’re going to drink, and do up this house, and then get the chuff outta here. Agreed?’
Emmy picked up a glass and raised it to her sister. ‘Agreed.’ They looked at Noelle.
For a moment, Noelle fiddled with her hair like she always had, casting her eyes towards the front door. Finally, she grabbed a wine glass. ‘Okay, agreed.’
Later that afternoon, the girls were teetering about sloshed and surrounded by ripped-out pages from interior design magazines. The CD player in the corner of the living room was blasting Megahits 96 (from Emmy’s personal collection) and the three of them were screeching along to ‘2 Become 1’ as if they were the three Spice Girls members that never made it past the first audition.
Noelle sniffled when the song ended, and got up to pause the music.
‘Cock off!’ cried Rae at the silence.
Noelle hovered by the stereo. ‘That song is so real. It’s so, like, I think I might need some love like… like…’
‘Like a Spices Girl – a Spice Girl,’ Emmy nodded, hiccuping. Woo, it didn’t take much wine to go to her head.
‘Like Emma Bunton.’ Noelle pouted. ‘When she wore platforms she looked a bit like Emma Bunton, you know.’
‘I know,’ nodded Emmy. ‘She was lucky to have you.’
Rae topped up the wine, her lips stained deep purple. ‘What are you two on about? Is this abo
ut Jenny? Should we call Jenny?’
‘No! Be sensible,’ said Emmy.
‘Yes!’ said Noelle. ‘I want to know if she, I don’t know…’
Rae climbed up off her spot on the floor, still clasping her wine glass. ‘Don’t call Jenny now. I don’t think drunk calling is a good idea. See, Emmy, suck on that – I’m being sensible as shit. We can call Finn if you like, and practise on him?’
Emmy tried to perch on the arm of the sofa and listen intently to her older sister. Only one butt cheek made contact but she just went with it and hovered in a squat position. ‘Practise what?’
‘Practise what she’d say to Jenny.’
‘I don’t know what I’d say to Jenny.’
‘She doesn’t know what she’d say to Jenny,’ pointed out Emmy.
‘I want to call Finn. Let’s call Finn.’ Rae was already getting her phone out. She placed it in the middle of the carpet and lay down in front of it, encouraging her sisters to do the same. It rang, on speakerphone.
‘Hello, sweetheart!’ boomed Finn’s voice, which always sounded smiley. ‘How are you?’
‘Finnnnnnnnn, we miss you, you’re on speakerphone, say hello to Miss Emmy and Miss Noelle.’
‘Hello, ladies,’ Finn chuckled. ‘Been on the vino already, have you?’
‘How does he know?’ whispered Emmy, extremely loudly.
Noelle banged her fist on the carpet. ‘HA.’
‘Finn? Finn? Finn?’ Emmy commanded attention.
‘He’s listening, you moron,’ said Rae. ‘Emmy’s had, like, one glass of wine, babe.’
‘Uh-oh!’
‘Finn. Did you ever play Dream Phone?’ asked Emmy.
‘Can’t say I did, Emmy,’ he replied.
‘I did!’ Noelle stuck her hand in the air and then found the crisps on the way back down.
Emmy stuffed a few crisps in as well, while she spoke to Rae’s husband. ‘Finn, Dream Phone was this game we used to have. It was Rae’s, actually, because she was the one with the boys —’
My Sisters And Me Page 6