My Sister and Other Liars

by Ruth Dugdall

  ‘What’s the one about bee’s milk? I can’t remember,’ she said, frowning.

  Mum sighed.

  ‘What bees make milk?’ Jena said with increasing urgency, sitting very straight as she spoke, her hands clasped in her lap. I saw that the strain was showing, and the pleasant sensation that she was the same old Jena slipped away. I was losing her again.

  Then she clapped her hands in frustration and her face relaxed with relief. ‘I remember! It’s boobies.’

  Mum stood up, wincing as she put weight on her right foot, then controlled her face so she showed no pain.

  ‘I need to go and talk to Dr Gregg.’

  ‘But, Mum,’ I said, panicked. ‘She’s fine now. Don’t tell him about the fit.’

  She kissed my forehead, then did the same to Jena. She had that determined look on her face, the one that said she would fix everything.

  ‘I’m just looking after my family. That’s my job.’

  After Mum left, Jena got twitchy. She jumped from the bed and hopped from foot to foot like a child, then she fell back on the bed, her skirt riding up. Her shins were red from sunburn she’d got last weekend. Mum had got so mad with the staff for failing to put sun cream on her; even though Jena’s hair was dark, her skin was lily-white and she burned easily. She was studying me like I’d done something different with my face, perhaps my lips, but she couldn’t figure out what.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ she asked.

  ‘At home,’ I said. ‘He’ll visit you tonight.’ Since she’d moved to the hospital, my parents and I had taken turns to visit Jena, so she never spent too long on her own.

  She picked up Sid the Sloth and rubbed his nose to her sad face.

  ‘How’s your head, Jena? Mum said you banged it on the wardrobe.’

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  ‘You had a fit, Jena. You’re still confused.’ Dr Gregg told us that whenever Jena said something that was incorrect we shouldn’t get frustrated, we should just calmly explain her error. He told us her brain was like a computer, trying to re-boot, and some of the stored data may come back corrupted.

  ‘I’m not confused.’

  Her eyes became hooded, her brows heavy, and she shook her head, watching as I unzipped my rucksack and removed the Black Magic box of photos.

  ‘Do you remember this, Jena? It’s your special box. I found it in the attic, with your stuff.’

  Her eyes skidded from the box back to my face. ‘You’re wearing lipstick!’

  I ran my lips together. ‘Only chapstick.’ My desert-island make-up was black kohl liner and cherry chapstick. I never bothered with much else.

  ‘Don’t wear it. You’re too young to look sexy.’

  I opened the box and started placing the photos in a line on the carpet, but she grabbed my chin, pinching my skin between her fingers.

  ‘Sam, I’m serious. Please listen.’

  ‘I’m sixteen now.’ I felt irritated that she was still trying to baby me, given how everything had changed, and wanted her to focus on the task I’d planned. ‘Can’t you get that, at least, into your head?’ I felt rotten as soon as the words left my mouth. Jena was treating me the same way she always had; it was me who had changed.

  I finished laying out the photos from the Black Magic box – ones Jena had either collected or taken, images from her life before the attack. She knelt beside me, and reached for a picture of me as a baby.

  ‘Ah look! I remember you when you were this big.’ She held her hands about a foot apart, then rocked Sid the Sloth as if a baby were lying there.

  ‘You were so sweet.’ Jena smiled happily, turning inwards to look at the crook of her elbow, where she noticed a bobble of wool on her sleeve. She started to pull it, watching the thread unravel.

  ‘Jena, do you know a man called Douglas Campbell?’

  She looked up, shocked, and her fingers began to peel the skin on her leg.

  ‘Why?’

  I took her hand away from her leg. ‘He was on Orwell Estate the evening you were attacked. He says you’d planned to meet him, via Facebook, but you never showed.’

  She frowned and looked away. ‘I can’t say. I don’t remember.’

  ‘Okay, what about this?’ I showed a ripped-out photo from an estate agent’s brochure, a ‘To Let’ advert for the flat above Our Plaice, the chippy on Orwell Estate. Jena took it from me, the flaky skin on her shin forgotten, and held it close to her eyes, staring at the lace curtain hanging in the front window.

  ‘That’s your flat. You signed a twelve-month lease, and you’d just finished painting the walls; it was ready for you to move in on 26 April. Do you remember?’

  Her usual nervous energy had gone and she looked almost normal.

  ‘But I hate lace.’ She began to swing her legs, her face closing back up. ‘Lace curtains make me think of dirty movies.’

  ‘You were going to change them. You just hadn’t found any curtains you really liked.’

  ‘I had something else in that window. A dog. White with a black patch over one eye. So lovely.’

  My heart lurched with hope.

  ‘Yes, it was a gift. Can you remember who gave it to you?’

  I held my breath and waited for her to remember Andy, Dad’s best friend. Jena and he were in a relationship, a secret one on account of the age gap and him being her boss. But they had planned to marry.

  ‘I bought it myself, Sam.’ She scratched the side of her head above her ear until there was blood under her fingernail.

  ‘No, you didn’t. Come on, Jena. Think!’

  She squeezed all the muscles in her face to show me she was trying, though it was just a game to her.

  Jena had wanted everything to be perfect in her flat.

  At twenty-nine she was old to be leaving home. But she had only been thirteen when I came along, and I suppose she got into the habit of helping Mum with me, and we were very close, so that stopped her leaving.

  She left school at eighteen, and had applied to art college in Birmingham, but I stopped her going. I was only five, and any talk of my big sister abandoning me sent me into a tantrum. In the end, she promised to stay. Dad got her a job with the entertainment team at Pleasurepark, working for Andy. He was a charmer, and I always thought he was a bit smarmy, with his year-round tan and his gold watch that sat before his wrist bone so everyone noticed it, but she was always whispering to me about him and all the promises he made her – fancy holidays and fast cars that never materialised.

  This flat was going to be her first taste of independence. At night, when she was telling me stories like she’d always done, she’d describe to me the big wedding she’d have, with a pink colour scheme. But when she kissed me goodnight, she’d remind me it was a secret. Mum or Dad couldn’t know; their relationship was a secret, on account of him being almost thirty years older than her.

  Our mum was just seventeen when she married Dad, and her parents were so angry they stopped talking to her. They had never been part of our lives, all because they didn’t approve of Dad being fifteen years older. Jena was afraid of causing the same family rift, and with good reason. Both our parents were fiercely protective of us, and Jena wasn’t encouraged to have boyfriends.

  Andy was Dad’s mate; they’d worked together at Pleasurepark for decades, and Jena told me she met him secretly at his flat. The wedding was already planned; she’d even had the dress made by someone she worked with. And he’d given her money for the flat.

  Her bright future was about to start. She’d have liked a dog, but the landlord said no pets, as there was no garden, just a backyard that was shared with the chippy and petrol station, and was full of Biffa bins.

  The weekend before the attack, Jena took me swimming, and afterwards she showed me the flat. It was almost ready, and with her artistic talent she’d made it lovely, painting the walls a delicate pink and accessorising with cushions she’d embroidered herself. She planned to move in on the day after my sixteenth birthday. There was a room for me too;
she wanted me to think of it as a second home.

  ‘You’ve got to close your eyes.’

  I put my hands to my face so all I could see was pink light around my fingers.

  Jena put her hands on my shoulders and guided me forward. I stepped cautiously, but she said, ‘Trust me, Sammy.’

  Then I heard a noise, like a whimpering puppy, and my eyes flicked open. The whimpering had come from Jena, who had dissolved into happy giggles.

  In the centre of the empty room was a wicker basket, cosy with a red fleece blanket, and in the middle of the blanket with one paw slightly up, as if it wanted to shake hands, was the sweetest Staffie puppy.

  I shrieked, because I thought it was real, but when I reached the basket and picked it up, I saw it was just a really good imitation.

  Jena opened her arms to me, and I stepped into the hug, feeling her warmth, the pottery nose of the dog nestled into my neck.

  ‘It was a moving-in gift,’ she said. ‘From Andy.’

  I didn’t wonder why he wasn’t there, why I’d never seen them together, as I knew the relationship was secret. But now I did wonder: why hadn’t he visited her? When she was in the coma, and on Eastern Ward, only immediate family could visit, but he could have come to our house to ask after her.

  I’d seen him once, at the corner shop near my school, just after Jena came out of her coma. I was leaving, when I saw him by the magazines, flicking through one on photography, and I said hello. He didn’t recognise me at first, and I said I was Jena’s sister. ‘How’s she doing?’ he asked. And it was such a normal, small question that I couldn’t even bring myself to answer. How could I sum up the pain of thinking she would die, the elation of her regaining consciousness, the hell of her living on a dementia ward? So I said, ‘Fine.’

  And he just smiled and said, ‘Glad to hear that.’

  If this was love, it didn’t amount to much.

  Now she said: ‘I’d like my dog back, Sam. I want to go home.’ She lifted the photo of the flat to her heart. ‘What bees make milk? I can’t remember. I’m scared, Sam.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ I tried to calm her. ‘No one’s going to hurt you, Jena.’

  I took the photo from her, and put it back in the Black Magic box, which I returned to my rucksack. As I did, my camera fell out and Jena stared at it.

  ‘Why have you got my camera?’ she demanded. She’d forgotten that Dad gave it to me on that terrible day, that it caused the argument.

  ‘It’s mine now, Jena,’ I gently reminded her. ‘It was my birthday present. But I promise I’ll look after it.’

  ‘No! Give it here!’ she said, angrily. Even now, her jealousy was close to the surface. I tried to zip my rucksack up, to hide the camera from her sight, but she grabbed for my bag and tugged hard; I had to yank it away, and she fell back, her head knocking against the wall.

  Her eyes slid out of focus, watering, and she twitched. Oh please, don’t let her fit.

  ‘Tell me! Is it boobies? No! It was Andy wasn’t it? No! Oh Mum . . .’ She was confused; nothing she said made proper sense. A blue vein throbbed in her temple and her face went ashen.

  ‘Okay, Jena. It’s okay.’ I made my voice low and soothing, but inside was a renewed sense of rage. ‘The police have arrested someone. They just need more evidence to make it stick. If only I could find the raincoat, or you could remember, Douglas Campbell will go to prison for a very long time.’

  ‘I’m scared, Sam.’

  She was shivering, and I held her, as she used to hold me when I had a bad dream. ‘He can’t hurt you now. I promise.’

  Her eyes fixed on mine, fully understanding for thirty seconds before she twitched again and her eyes rolled back in their sockets. The twitch became a convulsion, and she fell forward, into my arms. But she was bulky; I couldn’t hold her, and she slid to my side, pulling me along with her. We fell off the bed, like two sailors tied together and thrown overboard. Jena was half on her stomach, one arm under her as the other jerked in time with her thrashing legs, saliva dribbling from her lips, a gurgle in her throat.

  Trying to hold her with one hand, I reached for the chair and yanked it out of her way, pushing the bedside cabinet nearer the window with my feet. I tugged the pillows on to the floor and kicked them against the skirting board, buoys to buffer Jena’s head.

  Her whole body was seizing and thrashing. I was scared, wretched with regret. The snot ran from her nose, and I could smell the sickly, malty scent of piss.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m here, Jen-Jen.’

  I tried to touch her, but my hand was thrust away. I held her head, hugging it in my lap. Blood started to seep from her tight mouth; she’d bitten her tongue. Oh God, please don’t let her choke. I turned her head down, and a froth of scarlet blood spread on the carpet, spiking me with fear as I rooted around blindly for the emergency cord that hung from the ceiling, an orange string that would bring help, then stilled my hand. Afraid though I was, I didn’t want the staff to know about this fit. I didn’t want Jena sent back to Eastern Ward, with the crazy dementia patients.

  Holding Jena as the convulsion ebbed, trying to control my panic, I gently eased her head back on to my lap and stroked her face, which was webbed in saliva and tears, my finger pulling down her lip to check her tongue was intact. Her eyes were closed and she was pale and sleepy. I tried to rouse her, stroking her cheek.

  ‘Jena? Can you open your eyes?’

  She tried, but all I could see were the whites before her eyelids closed again. I sat up, awkwardly pulling her with me to try and put her into bed, but she was too heavy. I looked again at the emergency cord, but steeled myself. I didn’t need help; I could do it alone. I pulled the duvet on to the floor and gently covered her.

  ‘It’s okay, Jen-Jen.’

  Her mouth twitched in what could have been a smile.

  ‘Everything is going to be okay. I’m going to get the evidence Penny needs. I promise.’

  Clive waits for more, but I have nothing left to give. He pats my shoulder, the only physical comfort I can allow, but he knows better than to ask me if I kept my promise.

  ‘Well done, Sam,’ he murmurs. ‘I think the board will be pleased.’

  A reminder that my time here is running out. That on 1 February a panel of three, including Clive, will decide my fate. Clive hands me the plastic container, the six grapes that I have won, and leaves me to eat them alone. This, I know, is his way of telling me he trusts me and believes I’m making progress.

  But Clive is wrong. When he’s gone, I hide the grapes in my shoe. And then I weep for what I’ve given up, my silence, and the pain that is being released with every word I speak.

  I’m not the only one who’s angry that I’m suddenly talking.

  Later, when the girls are gathered in my room, it seems light-hearted enough. Joelle takes Stacey’s pink Jackie O sunglasses and puts them on, walking around like a supermodel. Fiona starts to sing, a song playing on the radio in the staff room: This girl is on fire. They grab each other, singing louder, and start bouncing on the bed. Stacey grabs my pillow and starts whacking them on the legs, belting out the chorus along with Alicia Keyes; even Mina joins in, not singing, but clapping her hands lightly to the song. She’s just a girl, and she’s on fire.

  Giggling, clasping each other, they land in a heap. I’m laughing too; this is a good moment.

  Next to me, Stacey’s patent handbag bulges open with a magazine and a can of Diet Coke. Under it, I spy a Snickers bar and wonder if she has laxatives in there too.

  Mina remains in the corner, slightly more relaxed than usual, until Fiona and Joelle turn their attention to her, and begin to ask her questions about her father. They want to hear her story again. It’s like a horror film for them; they forget it’s real.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ I tell them, and they look defensive but they stop. Mina gives me the smallest smile.

  Stacey plops down next to me on the bed, opens her can of Diet Coke and offers me a swig. I shake my he
ad. I watch her knock back the can, then re-apply her candy-pink lip gloss.

  ‘What was that meeting you had yesterday, in the corridor, with Clive?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘He’s such a dork. Why has he taken an interest in you suddenly? What’s going on?’

  ‘I just said: nothing.’

  ‘But you’ve got your board hearing coming up. Getting scared, are ya?’ Stacey smirks and it makes her ugly. ‘Joelle said you’d have to talk one day, but not to us.’

  Joelle looks like she wants the ground to swallow her up. Her face is crimson. ‘I only meant you’d rather talk to a professional than us.’

  ‘But that’s not what you said, Joelle,’ crows Stacey loudly. ‘You said Sam will only talk to someone who’s very highly qualified because she thinks she’s special. Because she thinks that her story is more tragic than ours, or at least more important because she’s famous.’

  ‘Infamous,’ I correct. Quietly. The press coverage had been fierce, especially in the beginning.

  ‘And a special group of people are meeting to talk about her, on 1 February. Isn’t that right, Sam?’

  I should never have confided in Stacey about the board meeting. I know she’s just lashing out because she’s upset I won’t open up to her, but it’s a low punch.

  I gaze up at the ceiling, and try not to think.

  CHAPTER 8

  5 January

  Manda wakes me with a gentle shake and a warm smile.

  It’s been decided: no tube feed this morning, I am to eat breakfast with the other girls, since I’ve been doing so well. She doesn’t go into details about this, and I don’t ask. Did she lie about how much of the shortbread I ate? Or has Clive waxed lyrical about how well our therapy is going? Does he want me to take this step to prove to the board I’m getting better? Manda is delighted enough for both of us, but I don’t feel ready for this. ‘Only,’ she adds sagely, as she leaves, ‘we won’t be removing the tube just yet. So look upon this as a trial period.’