My Sister and Other Liars

by Ruth Dugdall

  ‘What apprenticeship? Hope you’re not getting ripped off, son?’

  ‘They call it Community Payback, so I don’t get paid, but I’ll get a certificate.’ Rob bristled and said, with spite, ‘I want to make something of myself, carry on and train as a mechanic. Don’t want to waste my life.’

  Still feeling sick, I took a seat on the ledge by the open window, fiddling with the kamikaze plane. I sensed Douglas watching me, then turning to speak with Rob.

  ‘So, how long has Sam here been your bird?’

  I couldn’t stand that sort of thing: ‘bird’, ‘missus’, ‘other half’. Talking about me like I wasn’t there. But at least he had no clue that I was Jena’s sister.

  Rob caught my eye, and said with a smile, ‘Doesn’t matter how long; it’s how we feel about each other. We have a lot in common.’

  ‘Early days, is it?’ Douglas offered me his hand to shake. ‘Well, thanks for coming to pick me up, love.’

  Blue letters were tattooed on his hands and I could see an E between two knuckles. It probably said HATE, with LOVE on the other hand. Orange stains along his fingers.

  He made himself comfy on the bed, while Rob and me watched, exchanging a glance. We were together on this: his dad was a wanker.

  ‘Chuck my jacket this way, son.’

  Rob grabbed the scruffy denim from the back of the chair and threw it at him, harder than necessary. From the inside pocket, he took a packet of chewing gum and slowly started to unwrap a stick. ‘Takes my mind off fags,’ he said, sliding it into his mouth. ‘So, how old are you, Sam?’

  ‘I was sixteen eight weeks ago.’

  He chewed thoughtfully, and I wondered if he realised what date that was. ‘About to leave school are you? Then what’ll you do with your life?’

  Make sure you’re locked up, you bastard. ‘I was going to go to college and do A levels. Now I’m not so sure.’

  ‘What’s that you’re fiddling with?’

  ‘My camera.’

  ‘Show me.’

  I wanted to say no, but courage left me, and I lifted the strap from my neck and handed the camera over, tensing as he peered at me through the lens. He pressed the shutter and took a picture, touching the Leica with his clawed hands.

  ‘Where d’ya get this?’ he demanded.

  ‘Birthday present.’

  He examined it closely before handing it back. I saw the indigo letters tattooed on his fingers.

  I was wrong. The word on his flesh wasn’t LOVE or HATE.

  It was JENA.

  CHAPTER 25

  22 January

  Pearl wakes me up by jumping on my bed, landing painfully on my left foot. ‘Ah shit, Pearl. Where’s the fire?’

  She’s like a girl a toddler would draw: mad fuzzy hair with a circle of smooth skin on the crown, sticks for limbs, Hello Kitty nightdress riding high on her bony thighs. Big toothy grin.

  ‘The weatherman says it’s going to snow later this week. And Sian says you’re getting your tube out today.’

  I don’t know which of these pieces of information is causing her to be so manic. My fingers reach for my tube, touching where it’s taped behind my ear. ‘You sure Sian actually said that?’

  Pearl nods, smiling wildly.

  ‘I want a tube.’ Her eyes are big and shiny, but her face is skin on bone surrounded by a halo of hair. I wonder when she last pulled some out.

  ‘No, you don’t, Pearl. Keep eating.’

  ‘I am,’ she says, giggling. ‘But I’m getting away with it. The staff think I’m doing great.’ She grins at me, showing a neat row of enamel-stripped teeth.

  The pride in her voice sickens me, but who am I to judge? I share that desperate need for love and attention.

  ‘Can I get a hug, Pearl?’

  She places her head on my shoulder, one arm over my body. Her hand drifts to her head, and she wraps a finger around a strand of hair. I loosen her grip, but keep hold of her hand.

  ‘Just think about nice things. Think about snow.’

  We hold each other in silence on the narrow bed, two starved waifs, and I wish more than anything that I could help Pearl, but it’s impossible. I can barely help myself.

  ‘I’m sad to see you so despondent today, Sam. Why do you think you can’t recover?’

  Clive always asks questions like this, so glaringly obvious I can’t even bring myself to answer. Today, I can hardly lift my head. I don’t want to engage with the world, let alone him.

  ‘Sam, please consider; just eighteen months ago, you were fearless. You were investigating a crime that even the police couldn’t solve; you resolved to find Jena’s attacker.’

  ‘And look how that ended up.’

  He shifts in his seat. ‘The point I’m making is that a warrior spirit must still be inside you. Where is she?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Nonsense, you just need to give yourself a chance. When you talk about your family, or about your friends here on the unit, I can see the powerful emotions play on your face. You look like you could achieve anything; you glow with life.’

  Ah, the beauty benefits of an indoor life, eighteen months away from the damage of both wind and sun! But what he says pleases me and I relax, just a little.

  ‘It wasn’t just a warrior spirit that kept me going. It was Jena. She remembered her attacker.’

  ‘She told you so?’

  ‘No,’ I say, thinking back to that day when I saw Jena’s painting. ‘She showed me.’

  Douglas got settled on the bed, and began unwrapping another stick of gum, folding the silver paper until it was tiny. Rob said he was going to get some food, and I decided it was a good time for me to make my exit.

  I wanted to stay, to find out more about Douglas, but I needed to see Jena too. Conflicting pulls, not sure which way would help most. All I wanted was some information, a way forward. Now that Douglas was free, it was even more urgent.

  At the hospital, Jena was in the art room, working at an easel with Flora at her shoulder. I could tell she was really concentrating from the way her mouth was nipped tight, and the fixed focus of her eyes. Mum had that same look on her face when we were in the supermarket and she was working out whether to buy their own brand of cornflakes or splash out on Kellogg’s. I lifted my Leica and tried to capture Jena, not as evidence for Penny but for me, proof that Jena was recovering. In the moment before I pressed the shutter, I saw my own face in the lens of the camera.

  The sound of the shutter closing was so loud, Flora jumped. It took Jena a few seconds to register who I was, and then the smile burst.

  ‘Sammy! Give me a hug.’

  Jena held me so hard it knocked the wind from me. ‘Okay, take it easy. I’m feeling a bit fragile.’ Sick since I woke, and the journey to the prison hadn’t helped. Somehow, it wasn’t getting better.

  ‘Come see what I did.’

  She gently led me to the easel. I froze; in the picture with me in the foreground, Jena had started to add to the figure behind. She was filling in the blank face of her attacker, though it still wasn’t clear that this was the same man I had met from prison earlier.

  ‘Oh, Jena . . .’ But words failed me. I kept staring at the empty space where a few pencil marks suggested a nose.

  ‘I’d like to start here.’ She pointed with her pencil to the area where eyes should be. ‘But I don’t have any black paint.’

  ‘I’ll get some.’ Flora swished her way across the classroom and disappeared into her cave of art supplies.

  Dumb and frozen to the spot, not wanting to move in case I should break Jena’s concentration at a crucial point, I watched as she fell back into her art, mesmerised by what she was creating. I was spellbound as she drew a pencil line that became a jaw. Another curve became a cruelly dropped eyelid. The face was still mostly blank, and I was waiting for something definite, something that clearly identified this person as Douglas Campbell.

  Flora returned, and handed Jena a tube of oil paint that she’d manage
d to daub on her shirt cuff. She touched my arm.

  ‘Are you okay, Sam? You look peaky.’

  ‘Bit sick. Just too hungry, I think,’ I stammered, forgetting that it was a secret, that I’d stopped eating. My secret weapon, which made my thinking run in only straight lines, a thread I had to concentrate to keep hold of, but the only one I could follow. I’d missed several GCSE exams now; an academic future path was closed. Justice was my only ambition.

  ‘Why don’t you go get something to eat and come back when she’s finished? It’s best not to distract her.’

  I couldn’t leave, and I didn’t deserve food. That would come after, when I had got something tangible for Penny. The raincoat would have been perfect, but an artist’s sketch of the attacker, drawn by the victim, would surely work too.

  Jena’s face, as blank as the one on the canvas, was calm, but her arm moved rapidly as she swapped her pencil for a paintbrush and layered the paint, building the light and dark of the burly figure, with dark paint specks around the edge of the picture, which I took to be the storm.

  It took me back to 25 April. My feet slipping in the mud beneath me, as I watched through the rain and saw Jena fall to the ground, her head cracking on the concrete.

  Jena scrutinised the splatter effect.

  ‘This brush is too thick!’

  She was annoyed; she dropped it on the floor and started to drum on the edge of the easel.

  Flora found a finer brush in a paint-ridged pot, and Jena grasped it, turning back to her painting, her hands moving quicker as she painted the pinky-red flesh of the face.

  She washed her brush clean, and began to fill in the neck with a pale ivory colour, stroking and smoothing in such a way that the hairs on my arm tingled.

  Flora put her hand on my arm. ‘Gosh, Sam, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Not a ghost.’

  It had to be Douglas; there was no possible alternative. And when Penny saw it, when she identified his face in the painting, then she’d have to re-arrest him. It was strong evidence; Jena was giving a visual description of her attacker.

  But the details still weren’t clear enough; the face was undefined. Jena needed help, to join the pieces together. I had to prompt her, but with what? The stolen photo might have worked, but she’d torn it in two, and then Mum had taken it.

  Then a better idea came to me: Jena needed to see Douglas Campbell, face to face. That would be powerful enough, surely, to make her memory snap back in place. Then she could complete her picture, Penny would re-arrest Douglas, and the world would be normal again. I could re-do my GCSEs and start to eat.

  If only I could get Douglas and Jena in the same place.

  CHAPTER 26

  22 January

  Have you ever had that feeling, when something physical is being done to you, how you rise above the pain and let your mind go elsewhere?

  I’m lying in the medical room (we girls call it the ‘Weighing Station’) on the plastic couch, and Manda is tugging the tube from my nose. Around me, the walls are pristine-white, and there are stainless steel gurneys, shiny medical cabinets and the dreaded calibrated scales.

  ‘Just another pull should do it.’

  She leans over me, hair falling loose. It’s a tricky process and she breaks into a sweat, concentrating so hard that her eyes become crossed as the tube rises from my stomach, through my nasal passage.

  I look down on the discomfort. My thoughts drift.

  Jena’s name is tattooed on my heart. So is Mum’s. And Dad’s.

  And they are with me now, all three of them, not just in my memories or images in a photo. In my dreams, in my waking thoughts too. I feel unlocked, like my heart is open and warm, and fluttering out are feelings and thoughts that had been frozen.

  I’m afraid that without the tube Ana will take over again. I’m suddenly afraid of dying, without resolving everything. 1 February is approaching; I can’t escape it: the day when everything will be decided by the board and the day Mum will be buried. Big things, looming, and it’s too late to change anything. My body is giving up; my organs are breaking down, even as my heart and mind thaw to life.

  They won’t release me; I don’t deserve it. Once I tell Clive the next part of the story, he’ll agree. It’s not just that I’m mad, I’m bad too. Sick to the core.

  It wasn’t hard to persuade Douglas that we should eat at Pizza Hut the next night, the place I knew Lance was taking Jena for his belated birthday celebration. I’d spoken with Rob, and he agreed; placing Douglas and Jena together was a perfect way to see his guilt, to capture it on camera if I could, and to witness whatever it was he would say to her. Rob wanted his dad away from his mum – Scotland or prison, it was all the same to him. We were united in our purpose, and it was intoxicating, having someone so much on my side.

  We held hands tightly, trailed by Douglas, who walked into Pizza Hut on 21 June like the world could wait, feet dragging, arms hanging and shoulders hangdog. The bastard had just been released without charge, but still wasn’t happy; he’d spent the day since his release grumbling about the conspiracy against him and expecting sympathy. Rob was as sick of it as I was.

  The town centre was empty except for a few latchkey kids on micro-scooters. Anyone with money or sense was at Cardinal Park, the leisure complex by the docks with a multi-screen cinema and snazzy restaurants. All the high street offered was boarded-up shops, a Poundland and fast-food joints. And Pizza Hut, a restaurant where it was forever Christmas: red chairs, white walls, green salad bar. Bright lights and glass windows, beyond which waitresses in red caps carried over-large pizzas (red tomatoes, green peppers) to groups of teenagers or weary families.

  Plastic benches, booths, laminated menus, and the smell of burning cheese. On the table a flyer advertised the Summer Sizzler Family Feast for £20, and that’s what we ordered: a gigantic pizza, garlic bread and Cokes.

  Douglas drooled over the pictures. ‘I had dreams about pizza when I was in my cell.’

  So much for rehabilitation; it seemed all he thought about was food.

  Then it happened, the very reason we were all there, though only Rob and I knew it. I nudged him, and gave a slight nod so he saw her: Jena had arrived.

  She didn’t see me. Too busy messing about with Lance. They were giggling, and Jena was lit up like Angelina Jolie on the red carpet at the Oscars. I tried to remember when I’d seen her so happy. Her dark hair had been washed and carefully braided, her face was lightly made up with soft colours, a peach blush and a touch of mascara accentuating her green eyes, and she’d lost that drooping quality. She looked beautiful, and though I guessed that Flora had helped with the make-up, I knew the real reason was Lance. He had his arm protectively round her shoulders and was talking to her, making her smile, and I thought how the few times I’d seen her with Andy, mainly when I’d been to see one of her shows at Pleasurepark, she’d always seemed nervous and desperate for any attention he gave her, whilst he had been charming and a little too smooth, always well-dressed and smiling, but never very warm.

  The accident had robbed Jena of so much, of her job and her flat and the secret future she might have had with Andy, but it had given her this: a pure relationship built on simple terms. For a fleeting second, I felt it had been a good exchange.

  The waitress led them to the booth in the corner, down-mouthed like she’d just won the last prize on the tombola; no tip tonight. Flora followed in a billow of lilac satin, hair clipped up into a colourful bird’s nest of plastic grips, taking the table nearby and looking around as if she’d just landed on the moon.

  The glum waitress slid a pepperoni pizza on to the table and a plate of garlic bread, hard as cardboard. Douglas closed his eyes.

  ‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us grateful.’

  He crossed himself, then dived in, biting the bread with sharp teeth, spraying crumbs, then wolfing a slice of pizza, cheese stringing from mouth to plate, filthy nails dug deep under the crusty d
ough.

  I took the smallest slice, and started to pick the cheese off. The rest of the pizza was sucked down in record time. Douglas was already eyeing the dessert menu, in a sticky plastic box on the table.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind Death by Chocolate.’

  I stood up. ‘Won’t be a minute.’

  I didn’t look towards Jena and Lance’s table, but went straight upstairs to the loo.

  The droning fan wafted the smell of piss and pine around the warm room. Sat on the loo, knickers still up, I thought about my next move and felt a tide of sickness rising, even though my stomach was empty. I needed to keep calm and think. Douglas and Jena had to see each other. But what if she freaked and had a fit? What if he attacked her again? I put my head between my knees. If only I was ill, then someone would take me home and put me to bed. So ill I had to be knocked out. Made to forget. I held on to the toilet seat; the floor swum upwards.

  Jena looked so alert and happy, and I was about to wreck that. It had been easier when she was safely locked away on Eastern Ward. For a moment, I understood why Mum had wanted to keep her there.

  I left the cubicle, splashed cold water on to my face and faced the mirror above the sink. ‘Samantha Hoolihan, get a grip. This is the moment you’ve been planning, so don’t fuck it up.’ The water was icy; that was why I was shaking.

  The door opened, and I heard Flora say, ‘Mind that step, Jena.’

  Before I had chance to move, Jena was in front of me.

  ‘Sam!’ She held me too tight, saying happily, while kissing me on the cheek, ‘I’m having pizza!’

  ‘Everyone’s having pizza.’ I tried to free myself, suddenly hot after shaking with cold.

  Flora, in various shades of purple with clashing green, looked like an exotic bird that had got lost.

  ‘Come on now, Jena. You can see Sam another time, because she’s with her friends tonight. And you’re with Lance. So let her go now.’

  ‘Your cheeks are wet, Sam.’ She wiped my face with her fingertip, making me shake even more. She looked at me with such concern that I wanted to hug her hard and tell her to run away. I braced myself until the feeling passed.