My Sisters And Me

by Lisa Dickenson

  If she just kept treating it like a big summer camp, like they were hunkering down and working towards a goal and spending quality time together, bonding and growing closer, this time at home would fly by. Maybe Emmy should suggest some activities to keep them stimulated in between the decorating? They could go out at night and look for constellations? Not on the rooftop, though.

  Here in the bedroom, she had her Star Wars sweatshirt on, and her headphones in as she listened to pop songs. She could pleasantly ignore both the outside world and all the little reminders of Past Emmy, and focus on having a bit of time out for Now Emmy. Because Now Emmy was cool.

  Yes, Emmy was fine. Emmy was going to stay right where she was.

  Chapter 9

  ‘Do we have anything for breakfast?’ Noelle asked Rae with a yawn a few mornings later. She hadn’t slept well these past three nights, instead waking frequently from repetitive dreams of kissing Jenny and then kissing Mandy Moore, and then both women turning on her right when she needed them, because she had to pack a whole houseful of things into a suitcase before the Prime Minister arrived.

  And so here she was, rubbing her eyes and looking at her big sister to make her some food because she couldn’t remember where the bowls were and she was feeling a bit sleepy and pathetic.

  Rae was wearing an ancient Buffy the Vampire Slayer sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up, and was already covered in paint speckles. On the kitchen wall behind her were about fourteen splotches of paint in various shades of moorland green. Over the past two days, the sisters had spent a fortune on tester pots during their many trips back and forth to B&Q for DIY supplies.

  ‘Just cornflakes again, or there’s the crust of the bread if you want toast. I’ll pop over to the big Tesco again later on and get some more nosh.’

  ‘Actually, what I’d really like would be a bacon sandwich.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll pick up what we need.’

  ‘A really buttery bacon sandwich…’ Noelle eyed her sister as she sat down on the counter. ‘Maybe by a fireplace…’

  ‘You want to go back to The Wooden Café?’ Rae asked with surprise.

  ‘I’ve got cabin fever.’

  ‘We’ve been out every day!’

  ‘But just to hardware shops and supermarkets. I want to go for a walk.’

  ‘How about we drive over to the coast and have a walk on the beach? You like beaches and all that shit.’ The thought of hanging out near more judgemental Maplewood arseholes made even Rae appreciate the thought of a coastal ramble.

  ‘She wants to go Jenny-spotting,’ Emmy said, wandering into the kitchen while scraping her hair up in a bun. She sat next to Noelle at the counter and squeezed at a spot on her chin.

  ‘I do not, I just want to… well, yes, go Jenny-spotting. My online investigations – Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. – show nothing definitive but I think she’s still down here. If not in Maplewood, I think she’s in Devon.’

  Rae put her hands on her hips. ‘Don’t you remember what happened the last time we went into the centre? Don’t you remember how pissed off we got? And then how pissed we got? We said we were going to just stay away and do our own thing from now on.’

  Emmy, who had been very keen on her summer-camp way of thinking of the whole trip, was about to agree with Rae when a thought occurred to her. ‘I think we should go back,’ she said.

  Rae turned to her. ‘You think we should go back? Your attitude changes daily, I can’t keep up.’

  ‘It does not. Well, yes it does. But I realised that I don’t want to regress back to “old” Emmy who was too afraid to leave the house. We’re grown-ups now. We will not be bullied. I doubt Mum and Dad lived in solitary confinement out here in the woods for the past eleven years since Noelle flew the nest, so I’m damned if we’re going to.’ She was sounding braver than she really was, but she’d been listening to her Jennifer Lopez back catalogue since six a.m. so she was feeling pretty empowered right now.

  ‘Come onnnnnn, Rae,’ whined Noelle. ‘I’m bored of talking about paint rollers and clearing things up.’

  ‘We’ve barely made a dent in the place!’

  ‘But we have two months. Let’s be brave and go back into town. This time we’ll be prepared.’

  ‘I’m going to argue back if anyone says anything mean,’ declared Emmy.

  ‘All right, She-Ra,’ sighed Rae. ‘Let’s go. But when we get back I need a decision on some of these paint swatches. The house looks like some kind of patchwork, tie-dyed sheet from Noey’s closet.’ Ugh. Getting serious about paint was not in her job description. Emmy might be wanting to keep a distance from the girl she was, but Rae felt like maybe it was time she lost a little of the boring adult and brought back a little of the party girl.

  The women walked stiffly and with caution. They moved like they were practising walking in a super-casual manner, as they made their way into town for the second time. Noelle’s eyes flicked back and forth looking for any clue, any sign, of her first love. Emmy held her head high and strode with purpose, but it was clearly very unnatural. And Rae was kicking at leaves and banging sticks on walls like she was daring the residents to issue her with an ASBO.

  It was another sunny autumnal day and the leaves were falling rapidly from the trees, creating long orange walkways beside the roads. They’d just reached the first of the shops, and Rae was midway through kicking a huge sweeping ball of leaves up into the sunshine, when she saw something up ahead that caused her to stop dead. There, on the other side of the street, and looking very intently at a bench, was…

  ‘Gabbi!’ Rae hollered across the road at her old friend. The woman turned, surprised, and it took her a moment before recognition swept over her face.

  ‘Rae Lake, well I haven’t seen you in a long time!’ she smiled, reserved, as Rae dodged the traffic to cross the street to her.

  ‘Gabbi Reynold, what are you still doing in this shithole?’

  The man next to Gabbi, a scrawny chap in his early twenties wearing a Tesco Everyday Value suit, gulped. Gabbi stuttered, ‘Oh, I’m really settled in Maplewood; there’s no place like home, right?’

  ‘Urm…’ Rae remembered many nights with her group of girlfriends, all of whom she’d lost touch with now, where they’d sit and smoke at the top of the cliff that looked down over the town, planning their futures – all of which involved getting out ASAP.

  ‘What are you up to now?’ Gabbi asked in a polite voice.

  ‘I live up in London – well, near London. I’m an opera singer.’

  ‘You always had a set of lungs on you.’

  ‘What about you, what’s with the suit, Hillary Clinton? I think the only time I’ve seen you in a suit was when we all had to go to cou —’

  Gabbi laughed loudly, cutting Rae off. ‘How long are you around for Rae? I had better get on, I’m actually working at the moment, but it would be good to have a proper catch-up?’

  ‘I’m around for a couple of months, actually.’

  Gabbi hesitated, eyes wide. ‘Okay, here’s my address.’ She scribbled on a piece of paper the scrawny chap handed her. ‘Come over this afternoon for a coffee?’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Rae, clearly sensing she was being dismissed.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said the scrawny chap, turning back to Gabbi. ‘Mayor Reynold, as I was saying —’

  ‘Mayor Reynold? Mayor of Maplewood?’

  Gabbi edged away, taking the scrawny chap by the sleeve and pulling him with her. ‘See you this afternoon, Rae.’

  ‘You sure will…’ Rae walked back to her sisters, who were emerging from the sweetshop with an enormous bag of swag. A new sweetshop, not Annette’s ancient old cobweb shop.

  Emmy handed her a sherbet dip. ‘Was that your old friend Gabbi?’

  Rae nodded, too shocked to talk.

  Emmy chewed on her Chewits. ‘She looks well. I always imagined your friends to grow up looking sixty when they were only thirty, the amount you all smoked.’

  ‘Hey!
I look all right, don’t I?’

  ‘Of course. I mean, Noelle is the beautiful glowing angel of the family, and you look like you were her tribute in The Hunger Games. Similar, but a little more weathered. These are compliments.’

  ‘God, no wonder you don’t have a boyfriend. Anyway, Gabbi is motherflippin’ Mayor of Maplewood now! I can’t believe Mum never mentioned it.’

  ‘How well did Mum know your friends though? There was quite a gaggle of your band of misfits, and it’s not like they came over to the house to play a lot.’ Emmy answered.

  ‘She’s the mayor?’ Noelle stepped into the conversation, having finished her gobstopper. ‘Good for her, this country needs more women in power.’

  ‘Just when you think this town hasn’t changed at all, you find out the girl that used to throw up around the back of the council offices after a big night of drinking Hooch now runs them.’

  ‘Maybe she still throws up behind them, then,’ said Noelle. ‘You know, after the office Christmas party or whatever.’

  A siren blooped next to them and a police car pulled up to the kerb, the fluorescent yellow reflecting the sunlight back into the girls’ faces. Emmy felt her guard go up, and Rae clenched her teeth. ‘What the…?’

  ‘Excuse me, ladies. Please put down the strawberry bonbons and put your hands where I can see them,’ an officer said, stepping out of the car and swaggering around to face them, his aviator shades blocking half his face.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ said Rae. ‘What the hell are we supposed to have done? Do you want to check our receipts for this one pound fifty’s worth of sweets? This is bullsh —’

  ‘JARED!’ Noelle suddenly squealed, and the policeman took off his glasses, grinning.

  ‘JARED!’ the three of them screamed, and jumped on him, wrapping their arms around him. Emmy’s mind raced and her mouth beamed as she lost her sight and sound by being pulled in and squished into his chest. She also lost all her words. Jared was here.

  ‘Who do you think you are, some FBI agent?’ Rae swatted him on the arm. ‘I was about ready to assault a police officer!’

  ‘Your face though!’ Jared grinned broadly, his arm still slung around Emmy’s shoulders. He was taller now – they both were – but while they’d been similar heights growing up, he’d grown more and was now a good five inches above her.

  ‘Jared,’ Emmy breathed, and she wriggled an arm free to reach up and touch his face. Yep, really, really here.

  ‘Hey, Emmy.’ He smiled down at her and it was like it was a million years ago and she’d just, actually, finally, got home.

  She made herself find her voice. ‘So you’re a policeman now?’ She couldn’t stop looking up at him. And looking him up and down. ‘You bulked up.’

  ‘I had a second growth spurt at uni, and I looked more like an awkward beanpole than when you knew me. So I hit the gym and came back to save this town from the likes of you dastardly women. What are you guys doing back?’ He directed this at Emmy, his face so familiar it lit sparkles inside her.

  ‘We’re doing up Mum’s house, it’s going to become a holiday let because she’s always away on holiday,’ she answered. Wow, it was good to see him. She wished she could find something more meaningful to say so he knew that.

  ‘Noooo, don’t change a thing about that house, it’s the coolest house in Maplewood.’

  ‘You are literally the only person that thinks that,’ said Rae.

  ‘I think it too,’ Noelle piped up, before sticking another bonbon in.

  Jared let his arm drop from Emmy’s shoulders and instead he rested a hand on her back, his other hand on Rae. ‘Sorry about your dad passing. I moved back here just over a year ago, and I meant to drop you an email then actually, to get back in touch and let you know the craziness that was me coming back to live in Maplewood. But right around then was when your dad died. It didn’t seem the right time to have a reunion, and then I just kept meaning to get in touch, but I’m rubbish. I was meant to be at the funeral but I got called to a car accident over on the A30. I drove over to your house the next day but your mum said you’d all gone back already.’

  ‘Yeah, we didn’t stay long,’ Emmy mumbled, a thread of worry forming in her stomach. Should she have stayed longer? ‘Thank you, and thank you for the flowers you sent. And sorry for never saying thank you for the flowers. Did Mum seem okay afterwards?’

  ‘Oh yeah, your mum was pretty convinced his ghost was still there getting annoyed with her because she’d whacked the heating up since he’d died. She actually seemed excited about getting a new boiler.’

  The girls laughed; typical Willow.

  ‘Jared, you remember Jenny, right?’ asked Noelle.

  ‘Of course, she still lives here.’

  ‘Okay, that answers my next question.’ Noelle disappeared into herself.

  ‘Does everyone we used to know still live here? Did we leave and you all decided it was finally worth living in Maplewood?’ Rae asked.

  Jared laughed. ‘No, there are a few people from school, a few that came home to start families or whatever. I think you’ll see a lot of familiar faces, but there are so many people I haven’t come across in years.’

  ‘Will you come over?’ Emmy asked, and all of a sudden she was aware how different that sounded adult-to-adult than all the times she’d asked him over when they were kids. ‘I mean to catch up, with us all, properly? It would be good to see you back in your rightful place – making us cocktails from Mum’s drinks cabinet.’

  ‘Using only tiny amounts from each bottle so we didn’t get caught.’

  Noelle was snapped back to reality. ‘Maybe I could even have some this time around!’

  ‘Maybe Emmy could too,’ Rae smirked.

  ‘Hey, I used to try it,’ Emmy protested. ‘It’s not my fault you always took gulps and didn’t leave much for anyone else.’

  ‘I’d love to come over, when do you want me?’

  ‘Today, today, today!’ the three women chanted.

  ‘I’m just finishing my shift and I need to return the car and get changed; I could be there in an hour?’

  ‘Give us two hours, we’re actually on our way to breakfast,’ said Emmy.

  ‘The Wooden Café?’

  ‘Where else?’

  With that, Jared climbed back in the police car, stuck his sunglasses back on his face, and with a friendly grin and a siren bloop he drove away. Emmy stood waving on the kerb.

  ‘Goodbye Jared, I’ve loved you since before I even had my first period,’ Rae whispered in her ear.

  ‘Shut up, I do not love him.’

  ‘He looks good though, doesn’t he?’ said Noelle.

  ‘Come on,’ Emmy said, putting her sweets into her handbag. ‘If Jared’s coming over, even though I don’t love him, I still think we should finish breakfast and get back in time to move our bras and other crap out of the living room. And for Noelle to maybe finally move that suitcase away from the bottom of the stairs.’

  Over the years, all three sisters had been distant from their home town but never from their parents. They’d all seen each other over the months, but often at the houses of the three sisters, and the number of times the girls had come back to Maplewood had reduced to maybe a few a year. It occurred to Emmy now that her mother and father hadn’t really spoken much about the town, or who was doing what, or who of their friends still lived nearby. Had they been sheltering their kids, mindful of how much it hurt to think about home? Jared though – why wouldn’t her mum have told her Jared was back? And told Noelle that Jenny actually lived there?

  They walked on to The Wooden Café, Noelle and Rae chatting about their memories of Jared always being at their house. Emmy smiled, listening to them. Jared had always made her feel safe, and now he was a big strapping policeman. She wondered if he’d still be up for sleepovers in the woods? And then she got all flushed and tripped over the pavement, because Emmy Lake was not one to have inappropriate thoughts about a friend.

  A
police officer, though…

  Chapter 10

  ‘I’m going to ask him all about Jenny,’ Noelle declared, after the girls had done a sweep of the house and moved their discarded underwear, their teenage diaries and the amassed crisp packets out of the way.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ asked Emmy, hugging a bottle of red wine in an attempt to warm it up. They were putting together a simple lunch of antipasti, but as it was the end of a shift for Jared, Emmy wasn’t sure if he’d fancy a drink with his meal or not. ‘What if what he says about Jenny isn’t stuff you want to hear?’

  ‘What wouldn’t I want to hear?’

  ‘I don’t know… that she’s happily in a relationship.’

  ‘I hope she is happy – I don’t expect her to have waited for me. I just want to know what she’s been up to, what she’s like now, if she ever mentions me, or if she’s ever, I don’t know, said anything about how she’s never loved anyone like she’s loved me and having me back in her life is her greatest ever wish.’

  ‘Is that how you feel?’

  ‘Yes, probably. She was my most serious relationship.’

  ‘You dated Sarah for a couple of years?’

  ‘On and off, but it was never serious, it was more companionship, and long-distance at that. Jenny knew me.’

  ‘She knew you then,’ commented Rae, wandering into the room and taking the bottle from Emmy, and pouring them all a glass (one ready for Jared as well). Then Rae remembered she was driving over to Gabbi’s later, so reluctantly swapped hers for a fizzy water.

  ‘Even so, she was my first love, and as such I now want to know everything about her.’

  Rae swirled her water. ‘But what if seeing her again shatters the dream? What if she’s boring as fuck, or doesn’t care about the environment? What if she, like, takes milk bottles and chucks them into rivers?’