‘NOT WITH THE BOYS,’ Noelle interrupted, and gave her big sister a thumbs up. ‘Just older and knew things.’
Emmy continued. ‘Dream Phone was a game where you had this phone and you put the phone in the middle, just like this!’
‘Except the phone was pink,’ added Noelle, spraying crumbs on to Rae’s iPhone.
Emmy nodded. ‘But the phone was pink. Yes. And the phone played voices, like of boys, and you had to guess who fancied you, and it was a really good game, and actually boys didn’t really call us on the phone ever, so my make-believe boyfriend for years was called Bruce.’
There was silence while Finn waited to see if that was the end of the story. The girls stared at the phone. Eventually, Emmy spoke again. ‘And this is like Dream Phone because you’re on the phone and you’re a boy and you fancy Rae and we’re all here…’ She stopped and took a drink and thought about her old flame Bruce. She wondered if he was still up in the attic, waiting to take her out for pizza.
‘Okay then,’ said Finn. ‘Dream Phone sounds like a good game, I’ll have to look into that one. So how are you doing?’
Rae took over before Emmy could start babbling again. ‘This town is shit, Finn, and it’s full of shit. Everyone is just as much of an arsehole as we remembered, so we’re not going out any more. Send food!’
‘Do you guys want to come home? I can come and get you all? We could torch the house and claim on the insurance, then just buy your mum a new place?’
‘Nope,’ said Rae. ‘Thank you, though, you’re a good husband. We’re going to stick it out; we’re just not going to bother trying to make friends while we’re here.’
Emmy scrambled back down to the phone and interrupted her big sister. ‘You know what Steve Irwin once said? He said, “Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.”’
‘Thanks, Emmaline, that’s really relevant,’ snorted Rae.
‘I love Steve Irwin.’ Emmy sat back. She thought that quote was actually extremely relevant.
Rae continued down the phone to Finn. ‘We have found one potential friend though, we might have found Noelle’s first girlfriend.’
‘Her name is Jenny,’ shouted Noelle at the phone, as by this point she was slumped backwards holding two bags of crisps against her chest.
‘That’s good,’ said Finn. ‘Did things end amicably?’
‘Nooooooope,’ Noelle replied, sitting back upright and pushing the crisps to the side. ‘Shall I call her, Finn?’
‘Right now?’
‘Yep.’
‘Do you have her number?’
‘I have the number she had at school, but she shared her mobile with her mum at the time.’
‘I think you should wait a bit.’ Finn’s voice was soothing and decisive. But… he was biased, because he knew she’d been drinking wine all afternoon. You know who wasn’t biased? Her Magic 8-Ball.
‘Be right back.’ Noelle hopped up and scuttled out the room.
Rae picked up the phone and took it off speaker, while Emmy retreated back to their dad’s armchair. ‘Thanks for listening, bear,’ she said to her husband.
‘Of course! Are you okay? Really?’
Rae looked at Emmy, who was lost in thought, then looked at Noelle, who was edging back into the room shaking the Magic 8-Ball and checking its answer several times over. She took a deep breath. ‘We will be.’
Rae awoke early the following day, her throat scratchy from dehydration rather than from singing, for a change. Although, there had been quite a lot of singing, thinking about it, hadn’t there?
She crept down the stairs and, once in the kitchen, opened the blind and let the dawn light fill the space. Wood shards from the half-chopped door, wine stains and crisp packets were strewn around the room. And a saucepan filled with cold sticky pasta sat on the draining board from when they’d decided they were hungry and twenty minutes later decided maybe they weren’t. Pulling her phone from her pocket, she called Finn again.
He answered on the second ring, sounding sleepy. ‘Hello, missus, how’s that head of yours?’
‘It’s fine, thank you,’ she rasped, filling a mug with water with her spare hand. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘It’s not a problem at all – I like hearing your voice. So, did she call her? Did Noelle call Jenny?’
‘No,’ Rae said. ‘We didn’t even know if we had her current number, so on reflection it would never have happened anyway. I’ve told you about Jenny, right?’
‘I know the name, and Noelle’s mentioned her before in a passing, ex-girlfriend, coming-out-story kinda way. Why didn’t it end well?’
Rae peeped up towards the stairs to check her sister wasn’t listening. ‘You know how we joke that Noelle is like a permanent nineteen-year-old? A bit dreamy and idealist, grown-up enough to let the bad thoughts flow off her, young enough to not be disillusioned?’
‘Yep.’
‘Well, even when she was younger she was like that too. Like, early teenage Noelle, I mean after she came to terms with who she was, was always very wise and adult-like. She got it into her head that she and Jenny needed time apart to be free spirits or something, so she kinda jumped ship without saying goodbye. I think she meant well – I think Jenny hadn’t wanted to split up but Noey thought she knew what would be best for both of them. Obviously now she realises it was a bit of a dick move.’
Finn whistled down the phone. ‘Jenny’s going to scratch her eyes out if they cross paths!’
‘Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. And Emmy is being exactly as I thought she’d be, all introverted and afraid, which is both sad and infuriating. But she was funny as fuck after a couple of drinks last night. It was nice to see her let her hair down. A little. Like, a few strands. But she’s struggling a bit, and I feel like I might have to be her mum again while we’re here, and I was never a very good fake mum.’
‘Is she asking you to do that?’
‘Not yet, but I don’t want her wandering around like a sad-sack. We have a lot of work to do here. How are you, though? I miss you.’ God, she missed him. She had only been away two nights and already she felt a world apart from her whole world.
‘I miss you too,’ he answered, his voice soothing. ‘I’m starfishing all over the bed but it’s lonely without you.’
‘Same. Two months, bear, are we going to be able to do this?’
‘It’s only going to be, what, four or five weeks until we see each other, and you know that if you need me I’ll be down in a shot. And how are you?’ her husband asked.
‘I’m okay.’ Rae gazed around the room. ‘It is weird being back. The house feels so different, but still the same… you know? Fifteen years have gone past, though, since I used to walk through this door every day. Come down these stairs each morning. Sneak out of my window. Watch old Westerns with Dad and annoy him by cheering for the baddies. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to drag it into the here and now, with so many memories clawing us back. And I don’t know if I have it in me to be the driving force the whole time, if these two are distracted.’
‘Don’t take off though, stick it out.’ He knew her so well. She’d told him everything, and he knew that growing up she’d sometimes got to the point that she needed a time out, and would vanish for a few days. She couldn’t let that happen this time. ‘You three are going to do a great job,’ he continued. ‘The amount of Location, Location, Location you watch, you’re going to nail it. Sometimes literally!’ he laughed. ‘What’s the plan for today?’
‘First, coffee and a trip to the recycling centre to get rid of all these wine bottles.’ She prodded at the pasta, a spark of renewed energy igniting inside her. Finn could always lift her spirits. ‘Then I think we need to make a really good list.’
Emmy woke up with a hangover and a determination. She wore the hangover like a war medal: she was a grown-up now, and she could enjoy a drink now and then, and she could not be dragged b
ack to the frightened girl she once was. She had to not let that happen, because at less than forty-eight hours in, even she was finding herself a bit unbearable.
‘Fake it till you make it,’ she repeated to herself in the mirror, as best she could see without her contacts in yet. If she didn’t believe in her soul that she was at peace with this place, then she would try her hardest to front it.
In the room next door, Noelle was in a slightly different mood. She lay in bed thinking of all the imaginary conversations she would have with Jenny in the imaginary scenario she’d created where they reunited. She was thinking about the ways she would apologise, the way she would explain herself; at one point, she thought of pointing out all the good things in Jenny’s life since Noelle left her, as a way of showing it was a good move, except Noelle had very much kept her distance and so didn’t really know anything about Jenny’s life since she’d gone.
She was basically working on an opening argument.
The thing about making a to-do list is that it can be a really effective form of procrastination, especially when the to-do list gets so long it has to be divided into sections for every room. It was getting to the stage the sisters needed to stop fannying around with lists and start making some actual decisions. The result was that chaos had descended on the house.
‘We don’t have an endless pot of money,’ Emmy was saying, her hands in the air. ‘I’m not paying out for a brand-new toilet when ours is fine, just so strangers can poop in it!’
‘The bathroom so needs doing,’ Rae countered. ‘It’s grotty AF. And Mum left us a pretty decent budget for this. In fact, I think it’s about time we install a second bathroom and stop living like a commune. I’m on Team Poop.’
‘But we can’t do everything! You’re already on Team New Kitchen, Team Fireplace in the Middle of the Room, Team Landscape the Garden. You’re not the project manager.’
‘Why don’t we just write down everything – everything – that we would like to do and scale back from there?’ said Noelle, who was half listening and half scrolling through Facebook on her laptop for clues on Jenny.
‘Because she’s stubborn and annoying and she won’t scale back,’ Emmy cried.
‘I’M STUBBORN?! You do know we’re down here to make over the house, right? Not just preserve it as it was while at the same time complain about how much we hate everything about it?’
Emmy was taken aback. Her sister had a point. Why did she always have to have a point? ‘I’m not… I just… we need to be realistic and you’re just being, like, a fairy, like, money princess.’
‘Good one. You’re being a knob.’
‘Oh hush, both of you,’ said Noelle, looking up from her laptop. ‘You’re both silly-billies. Here, use my Magic 8-Ball.’
Emmy took it from Noelle. ‘Why?’
‘Use that to decide how we kick things off, if you really need to.’
Rae snatched the ball from Emmy and spoke at it. ‘Is Emmy a knob… Ha! “Signs point to yes”! I think we should use this for all our decisions.’
Noelle snapped the laptop shut. She couldn’t concentrate on cyberstalking with all this racket. And jokes aside, she really did want to give Jenny, the possibility of Jenny, her full concentration, otherwise she’d have sleepless nights thinking about ‘what ifs’ for weeks. She needed to know if she was going to run into her again during these two-and-a-bit months. And, more importantly for her heart, if she was going to always be looking out for someone who wasn’t really there. ‘Come on,’ she said, grabbing her legal pad and marching the other two up the stairs. They stopped outside their mum’s room.
‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ she said, snapping into her cheerfully persuasive lawyer voice, like Mary Poppins on a mission to clean the nursery. ‘We’re going to start with a quick tour of the whole house and note down the structural changes and cosmetic changes needed for each room. I don’t want to hear about colour schemes or budgets or any of that detail, please and thank you – this is all about the basics.’
Rae shook the Magic 8-Ball. ‘Is Noelle right?… “Signs point to yes” again, it’s clearly broken, but let’s go with your little plan anyway.’ She caught Emmy’s eye and they shared a sheepish smile, the knob-calling forgiven.
Noelle continued, ‘After that, well, we’ll probably stop for food. Then after that I think we should start with the clear-out.’
‘Noooooooooo,’ Rae wailed, at the same time Emmy whooped.
‘Our rooms are full of old crap, we need this clear-out,’ said Emmy.
‘We’ll start with your room, then, I’m having fun rediscovering the girl I was. Actually, we should start with Noey’s room, that’ll take at least a month.’
‘I’m no hoarder!’ said Noelle.
‘Aren’t you?’ Rae replied. ‘Who can tell under all the mountains of crap that cover every surface within minutes of you arriving anywhere?’
‘That’s true, but I was thinking we should start with the loft.’
Emmy looked up at the loft hatch, thinking of the spider settlement that was bound to have created a city up there. ‘Why? Nobody who rents the place is going to go up there.’
‘Because it needs to happen, and we might want to store other things up there that Mum, or us, will want to keep but we don’t want left out. It’s not a big attic, so we have to clear it out first.’
Rae sighed. ‘You’re so logical and lawyer-y. Fine. Where shall we begin the tour?’
Noelle opened the door in front of them. ‘Mum’s room.’
‘Mum and Dad’s room,’ Emmy corrected her, without really thinking. She hadn’t meant it in a pedantic way, it’s just that this room still felt very his. She’d never stopped to think before about the fact that he didn’t share that bed any more. That he didn’t sit with his skinny, hairy legs dangling over the side, drinking a cup of tea and watching the sun come up through the trees through their big bedroom window. She wondered if her mum still slept on ‘her’ side of the bed. She wondered if the bedside table on his side still contained his reading glasses and his leather bookmark, and a drawer full of letters and cards and notes his daughters had written him over the years.
She looked away from the bedside table and cleared her throat a little. ‘I don’t know if Mum wanted this room to be rented out. This is still hers. Should it be off limits?’
‘I don’t know, I didn’t think to ask her,’ replied Noelle. ‘I know she doesn’t want us to rifle through all her things, but I expect she’d like a fresh coat of paint on the walls, and maybe a new carpet down.’
Emmy nodded, forcing herself to get on board. ‘Those windows need replacing for sure, the glass is all discoloured. They – she – has a gorgeous view from in here. Regardless of whether it’s for her or for tourists it would be good to get that back.’
‘Maybe we could add a stained-glass panel at the top?’
‘She’d like that.’
Noelle made some notes. ‘We could always have a lock added to the door, and then it’s her decision.’
‘What about a new bed?’ Rae asked.
‘No,’ both sisters said with firmness.
‘No, it’s her bed, she should make that decision when she’s back,’ Emmy elaborated. ‘Same with the furniture in here. I don’t think we should change it at all.’
‘So just a little cosmetic, plus the windows,’ said Noelle, heading out of the room with Rae.
Emmy hung back, just for a moment. When she heard the gasp of Rae entering Noelle’s room she took the second of alone time to scamper to her father’s side of the bed, where she sat facing the window. She closed her eyes and let her feet dangle.
Once, Emmy had fallen from the roof. She was fourteen, and she’d climbed up so she could stargaze. She knew it was silly and dangerous, but she’d had a tough day and she just wanted to remind herself that there was more out there than this, that she just needed to hang on a little longer.
But she’d slipped, and fallen. Thankfully, due
to the house’s long sloping roof, the worst that happened was that she broke her leg. When she came back from the hospital her dad carried her straight into this room, which he’d decked out temporarily with her favourite bed cover, her soft toys, and a stack of her books – books about space, books about adventures and interesting places, books about strong young women making it on their own. Emmy’s best friends were inside the pages of these books. ‘This is the best room to see the stars from,’ her dad had said, knowing she didn’t need a lecture to know not to climb up on the roof again. Her parents slept in her room for two weeks.
Soon enough, the sound of her sisters bickering next door brought her back and she left her mum and dad’s room, closing the door quietly behind her. Inside Noelle’s bedroom, as expected, it was like one of those museum installations to show you how an apartment feels and looks after an earthquake.
‘So we’re just going to torch Noey’s room,’ Rae filled her in. ‘It’s the only way.’
Noelle was taking the berating good-naturedly, like she always did, and she laughed as she used her foot to sweep a pile of clothes under the bed. ‘Pish. There, sorted. My room needs nothing doing.’
It actually didn’t need much. A huge clear-out, a coat of paint and a new slick of varnish on the wooden floor, and this room would be back to sparkling. Because despite her mess, Noelle had a way of keeping everything that lay underneath pristine. Even the bed was in good condition, but they would replace all the mattresses anyway.
On to Emmy’s room. Emmy stepped in first. ‘Pretty much everything can be chucked,’ she said, and immediately had a flash image of younger Emmy looking up from the bed after devouring one the Baby-Sitters Club books.
‘Well… we’ll get to that,’ said Noelle. ‘For now, I think we tone down the yellow walls, new curtains, this zig-zag carpet should go, if that’s okay, perhaps replace the hot air balloon lampshade, and scrubbing the stickers off the wardrobe doors are on you.’
‘Fine.’
It was finally Rae’s turn, and she waltzed into her room, her arms wide and proud as she showed off the shrine to her teenage self. As the oldest, she had the biggest room. The walls were a deep mauve and the skirting boards silver. A semi-deflated blow-up chair sat in the corner, and there was a whole shelving unit filled with candles, candlesticks, incense sticks and other knick-knacks from her nineties pagan phase. A huge My So-Called Life poster hung on the wall, along with a lot of smaller magazine pull-outs of grunge bands, pierced boys and Gwen Stefani. ‘I think my room should just stay as is.’
My Sisters And Me Page 7