by Lois Lowry
“Granny,” said Jess, “you're a legend.” And she wasn't kidding.
Jacqueline Wilson
It's a beautiful gravestone. A little girl angel spreads her wings, head shyly lowered, with neat stone curls never in need of brushing. Her robe is ornately tucked and gathered, a little fancy for an angel frock, as if she's about to attend a heavenly party.
I step over the miniature rosebush and feel along the carving on the gravestone with one finger. I whisper the name.
Angela Robinson.
(My name.)
Beloved Daughter.
(Not me.)
Born 1984. Died 1991.
My sister. She died in 1991. I was born in 1992, eleven months later. Another Angela, to replace the first. I suppose that was the theory. Only it hasn't worked out that way. I'm not a little angel.
I reach out and slap the gravestone angel hard on her perky little nose. She smiles serenely back at me, above re-taliation. I hit her harder, wanting to push her right off her pedestal. A woman tending a nearby grave looks up, star-tled. I blush and pretend to be buffing up the angel's cheeks with the palm of my hand.
I haven't been here for a while. Mum used to bring me week in, week out, every single Sunday when I was little. I brought my Barbie dolls and some scraps of black velvet and played funerals. My prettiest bride Barbie got to be Angela. I sometimes pinned tissue wings on her and made her flap through the air in holy splendor.
One time, I dressed her in a nightie and wrapped her up in a plastic carrier bag and started to dig a little hole, all set to bury her. Mum turned round from tidying Angela's flowers and was appalled.
“You can't dig here. This is a cemetery!” she said.
The cemetery seemed a place purpose-built for digging, though I knew enough not to point this out. Mum was going through a bad patch. Sometimes she seemed normal, like anyone else's mum, my mum. Then she'd suddenly burst into tears and start a crying spell.
I was always frightened by her tears. There was nothing decorous about her grief. Her eyes were bleary and bloodshot, her face damp and greasy, her mouth almost comically square. I'd try putting my arms round her. She didn't ever push me away, but she didn't always gather me up and rock me. Sometimes she scarcely seemed to notice I was there.
She still has crying spells now, even though Angela has been dead for fifteen years. I'll invite Vicky or Sarah home from school and we'll discover Mum crying in the kitchen, head half hidden in the dish towel. Birthdays are bad times too. And Christmas is the worst. Angela died in December. A quick dash … an icy road … a car that couldn't brake in time.
One Christmas, Mum got so crazy she bought two sets of presents. One pile of parcels for me, one for my dead sister. I don't know how Mum thought she was going to give the first Angela her presents. She could hardly lob them right up to heaven. I imagined Angela up on her cloud, playing with her big blue teddy and her Little Mermaid doll and her giant rainbow set of felt-tip pens.
After a few weeks my own teddy's plush was matted, I'd given my Little Mermaid doll an unflattering haircut, and I'd pressed too hard on my favorite purple pen so that it wouldn't color neatly anymore. The first Angela would have looked after her presents.
The first Angela didn't leave the bath tap running so that there was a flood and the kitchen ceiling fell down. The first Angela didn't get into fights at school and poke out her tongue at the teacher. The first Angela didn't bite her nails, tell fibs or wet the bed.
My grandma would actually tell me to ask Angela for help, as if she'd already acquired saintly status.
“Pray to your sister to help you stop having temper tantrums. Ask Angela for advice on how to stop biting your nails. See if Angela can help you with wetting the bed— your poor mother can't cope with all the extra laundry.”
Dad was furious when he found out, and he and Gran had a big row. Then Mum and Dad argued too, and for a little while Dad wouldn't let me see Grandma anymore. We didn't often see my other gran or any of Dad's family—I think someone had said something tactless about my name way back at my christening and Mum wouldn't speak to them again.
We're still not on very friendly terms with that side of the family—so it was a surprise when the wedding invitation came through the letter box this morning. Mum opened it and stared, fingering the deckle edge.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said Mum. She tried to crumple it up, but it was too stiff.
Dad looked up from his newspaper.
“Is that a wedding invitation?” he said. “Let's have a look.”
“It's nothing,” Mum repeated, but Dad reached across and snatched it from her.
“Good lord! Becky's getting married,” said Dad.
“My cousin Becky?” I said. “Is she the one who used to be best friends with Angela?”
Dad usually frowns at me when I mention the first Angela, because he doesn't want to set Mum off—but now he just nodded.
“And we're invited to the wedding?” I said. I got up and peered over Dad's shoulder. “To the ceremony. And the wedding breakfast. Doesn't that sound weird? It's not a real breakfast, like bacon and egg, is it? And a disco in the evening. So … are we going?”
“I don't think so,” said Mum.
“I think we ought to go,” said Dad.
“You go if you want. But I don't think I can face it,” said Mum, rubbing her eyebrows with her thumb and forefinger, the way she always does when she has a headache. “Angela and Becky were just like sisters.”
“So why shouldn't we see Becky married?” Dad said. “I've hated the way we've barely seen the family all these years. I know it's painful, I know it brings back memories— but life goes on. It's not fair to me to cut me off from my family. And it's not fair to Angela either.”
“Not fair to Angela?” said Mum. It took her a second to realize he meant me.
“I don't want to go to Becky's wedding,” I said.
I didn't want all the family looking at me, shaking their heads, whispering. I was sure they'd all compare me with the first Angela. I knew they'd say I wasn't a bit like her.
“There,” said Mum. “That settles it.” But she looked doubtful. She picked up her teacup, but then put it down without a sip. The cup clattered in the saucer. It was obvious her hand was trembling.
“We'll all go,” Dad said firmly.
“Oh please, don't, both of you,” I said, getting up from the table. “I'm going to school.”
I rushed off before I could get caught up in the argu-ment. I tried to forget about it at school. I mucked around with Vicky and Sarah, I got told off for talking in class, I got the giggles in singing, I played the fool on the hockey pitch doing a sword dance with my hockey stick, I wrote a very rude but very funny joke on the toilet wall—while Angela hovered above my head, her wings creating a cold breeze.
I didn't get the bus home with Vicky and Sarah. I walked right through the town and out to the cemetery instead.
I don't know why.
Maybe I want to talk to Angela. And yet here I am as-saulting her, slapping her stone angel around.
“I'm sorry,” I whisper, and I reach out and hold the angel's hand. Her fist stays clenched. She wouldn't want to hold hands with me. The bad sister.
I'm very late home. Mum is at the window, white-faced. She's already phoned Dad and he's come rushing home from work.
“Where have you been?” Mum says, bursting into tears.
“How could you be so thoughtless?” says Dad.
Mum can't bear me being even ten minutes late, be-cause she's so scared there will have been another accident.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” I gabble. “Look, I went to the cemetery, OK?”
“Oh, darling,” says Mum. She gives me a hug.
Even Dad looks sheepish.
I feel guiltier than ever. They think I'm so devoted to my dead sister. They have no idea I sometimes can't stand her.
“Let's have tea,” says Mum.
“We needn't go. I'll write a note to explain—and we'll send her a nice present,” says Dad.
“Well. Maybe we should go. I think I was being a bit… selfish,” says Mum. “We should wish Becky well. Angela— you know, Angela—she'd have wanted to go, wouldn't she? And it's right, we have this Angela, our Angela, to think of.”
“But,” I said, “I don't want to go.”
It doesn't matter what I say. We're going. And that's that. Dad phones his sister. Mum writes an acceptance note. Dad buys a crystal decanter and glasses as a wedding gift. Mum chooses a new suit, blue with a black trim.
“You'll have to have a dress, Angela.”
“Me?” When I'm out of school uniform I live in jeans and T-shirts.
“Come on now, Angela, use your head,” Mum says impatiently. “You can't go to a wedding in trousers and trainers.”
She drags me all round this grim department store looking at the most terrible outfits. I moan and complain. Even-tually we fetch up in Topshop and I get a dress and a purple jacket and new shoes. I get quite excited at the way I look. Older, for a start, and although the shoes pinch like hell, it's really cool to be wearing sexy high heels.
“You look lovely, Angela,” says Dad, when I dress up. I feel lovely too.
Not on the wedding day, though. My hair won't go right, for a start. It sticks out in a terrible frizz and won't be subdued. I've got little spots on my forehead and chin and I slap on so much makeup to cover them that it looks like I'm wearing a beige mask. I have to wash it off and start all over again. I splash water on my dress and I'm scared it will mark. I'm not sure it really goes with the jacket now. My shoes are still beautiful, but whenever I try to walk I go over on my ankle.
I'm going to look a right sight at the wedding. I stare at myself in the mirror. The first Angela peeps over my shoulder, her fine eyebrows raised.
Mum's having second thoughts too. When we set off, her eyes are red and her nose is shiny and she clutches her lace hankie as if it's a cuddle blanket. Dad puts his arm round her and gives her a quick squeeze.
Everyone stares at us when we get to the church. People hang back as if our stale mourning is contagious, but then my aunt gives my dad a hug and soon everyone's whispering and waving and Mum manages to smile bravely and wave back. I keep my head down, glancing up under my bangs every now and then at all these relations who are practically strangers. I haven't got a clue who half the peo-ple are.
There's a good-looking lanky guy with dark hair who peers round at me curiously. He's wearing a shirt the exact royal purple of my jacket. He grins, acknowledging this. I grin back foolishly. And then the organ music starts up and Becky and my uncle come walking down the aisle.
The guy keeps looking at me during the ceremony and the reception. (I'm allowed my very first glass of cham-pagne.)
He doesn't come and talk until the disco starts. He stands behind my chair, fingering the jacket I've slung over the back.
“Snap,” he says.
“Snap,” I reply, casually.
“Would you like to dance?”
Would I! Though the glass of champagne and my new high heels make me walk very warily onto the dance floor. He is really gorgeous and he's asked me to dance. He's quite a bit older than me too, probably nineteen or twenty. A student. Smiling at me. I hope he doesn't know I'm only fourteen. I don't think he's family.
“What's your name?” I mumble shyly.
“James. And you're Angela.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, I live next door to Becky. I knew your sister.”
My heart misses a beat.
“You're not a bit like her,” he says.
I knew it.
“Not that I can remember her all that well. I was only a little kid when she … But I remember that last summer be-cause she came to stay with Becky. She had all this pretty blond hair and big blue eyes, yes?”
“Like a little angel,” I say. I've stopped dancing.
“Mmm,” says James. He pauses. “Well. Not exactly angelic. I was terrified of her, actually.”
“You were … what?”
“I was this pathetic little wimp, scared stiff of the big girls. They teased me and I blubbed and that only made them worse.”
“My sister, Angela?”
“Becky wasn't too bad, but Angela gave the most terrible Chinese burns. And she had this way of pulling my ears, really twisting them. You're not into ear-twisting, are you?”
I shake my head, still too surprised to joke.
“So Angela really gave you a hard time? I just can't imagine her doing stuff like that.”
“No one else could either. Whenever I told on her she batted those blue eyes and looked so sweet and innocent that no one believed me. I'm sorry. Maybe I shouldn't talk about her like that.”
“No, no—tell me more,” I say, picking up the beat and dancing again.
Up above, sparkling in the strobe lighting, Angela is taking off her halo, folding her feathery wings, little horns sprouting through her blond curls. She's waving her new forked tail at me. My bad sister.
Celia Rees
In August, the great house had looked benign and beautiful; the honey-colored stone glowing in the sunlight, the banks of leaded windows shiny and square, open to the air. Now the stone was mottled and dull. The casements were fastened tight and all the little panes looked blank and black, as if the house was filled with darkness. The gates were now closed with a computer-printed notice cased in plastic and taped to the bars: Open again April 5th. The house had only been shut for a month or so, but moss had begun to coat the carefully raked gravel like velvet. The neat flowerbeds looked ragged, and leaves drifted in heaps across the lawns; the grass was patched with tattered black ink caps and rings of slimy little toadstools.
It hadn't taken long for the house to take on a deserted, even neglected, air. Jules was cold already; the prospect of living here made her shiver more.
“We're not going to live in there,” her mum said, peering through the bars with her. “We've got a flat over the stables. All mod cons. Central heating. Furniture from IKEA. You don't even have to go into the old part, if you don't want to.”
“But you do.”
Her mother laughed. “I don't spook as easily as you.”
“Yoo-hoo!” They both turned to see a short blond woman, gesticulating at them. “You can't get through that way! Over here!”
They followed her round to the stable yard.
“This is where you'll be living.” The blonde peered at them. “Didn't they explain?”
“I know,” Jules's mother said. “We were just having a look, that's all.”
“It's Zadie, isn't it?”
“Sadie,” Jules's mother corrected.
“Of course!”
“Nice to meet you again, Monica.”
“And this is?” Monica squinted harder, as if screwing up her eyes would help her remember.
“Jules.”
“Julie! I remember! You were at school with my Katie!”
“A while ago.” Jules scuffed at the yellow gravel. “Yeah.”
“Now, Zadie—”
“Sadie.”
“Yes.” She teetered back on heels a little too high for her rounded frame. “Sorry.” Her big red-lipstick smile did not rise to her pale blue eyes. “Is that the time?” She looked over at the church tower. “Here are the keys.” She handed Sadie a big bunch. “I'm sure you've been over everything with Derek. Here's my card if you encounter any problems. Must run.” She was already stepping backwards towards her car. “I've got a meeting in Cheltenham.”
She let out a cry and nearly toppled over as fur brushed the backs of her legs. Jules had to stifle giggles. The cat must have been under her car, but he'd appeared as if from nowhere to rub himself against Monica's substantial calves. He was big, sinuous and long—obviously a tom—with un-usual markings: his deep, amber fur thickly
barred with black. There was definitely a touch of the Siamese about his narrow face and tilted green eyes.
“That reminds me. You're expected to feed the moggies. I don't know which one this one is….”
“The cat's name is Aloysius,” Jules said.
“How do you know that?” Monica asked, astonished.
“When we were here in the summer, one of the guides told me.”
“Oh, right.”
Monica reached down to stroke him. The cat's ears flicked back, lying flat against his sleek head. He opened his mouth to show long, pointed teeth and let out a sound somewhere between a growl and a hiss. Curved claws, sharp and black, lashed out. Monica snatched her hand away. Blood beaded on her palm, as red as her nail polish.
“Vicious little brute! They're quite wild, as you can see.”
“You should get to know his name,” Sadie said under her breath. “Maybe he's touchy about it.”
“Say what?” Monica looked at her.
Jules felt the giggles breaking like bubbles in her nose, making her eyes sting.
“I just asked if you were all right.” Sadie smiled sweetly. “Do you need a Band-Aid? I've got a hankie….”
“No, thank you. A tissue will do.” Monica fished one out of her bag to staunch the blood and gave a shaky laugh. “We ought to put a notice up. Beware of the Cat!”
Jules used the cover of Monica's feeble joke to let out her smothered laughter. Her mirth died quickly as she thought she caught a movement in one of the upper sto-ries, like someone reaching to open a window. She blinked and … there was no one there. Jules smiled as she followed her mother to the stable block. Definitely too much imagination.
“Oh, it really is too much!” Lavinia stamped her foot, although the tiny buttoned boot made no sound as it hit the ground. “We should be down there! It's such a bore to be stuck in the house while Aloysius has all the fun.” She beckoned the others over, to share the scene below her, and then had to admonish Jessica for getting too close to the window. She was reaching up to open it!
“Don't!” she scolded. “Keep away from the window.”