A Tale of Two Sisters

by Anna Maxted

  I thought of Tim’s tradition of buying me a hamper every year. He liked to feed me up. He also understood my evil fascination with all things churchy and Christmassy, and he’d watch grinning, as I opened the basket and happily sorted through fresh lemon marmalade, date and pecan biscuits, raspberries in liqueur, traditional butter fudge, and champagne truffles. And even when it wasn’t Christmas, he knew what I was like about sharing food, and he didn’t mind – hardly. He knew that I always ordered the wrong dish in restaurants, while he had an instinct for what was most delicious, and when I wrinkled my nose at the first bite, he’d sigh and swap plates. Even when he earned nothing, he was a provider.

  Whereas the previous week, I’d made myself a Scooby-snack with avocado, cheese, and tuna and sweetcorn paste, and Fletch had walked into the kitchen and said, ‘That’s a well-laden sandwich.’

  Then, thanks to him, I didn’t enjoy eating it. I felt like a big greedy girl, who should have been pecking at a few seeds. His idea of a good lunch was hummus and Marmite on a bagel. Yuck.

  Tim also understood that I wasn’t stupid, even though I said things like, ‘Jesus was born in the Middle East, wasn’t he? So why’s he got a Mexican name?’

  Fletch called me ‘Blonde’ even though I had brown hair. He had just started going out with a statuesque twenty-nine-year-old doctor named Cornelia. They bonked all over the house, and I had to shut myself in the bedroom just to feel safe. Not only was she highly sexed, she was witty, clever and, being a Catholic convent girl, spoke Latin. Worse, she was lovely. Kind and sweet to me. I wondered if Fletch had told her about my baby. I didn’t think so; he’d probably forgotten. But I came in from Denise’s house, went straight to the kitchen, poured myself a large glass of vodka and downed it. Then I turned around, and she was standing behind me.

  ‘Oh!’ I said, embarrassed. ‘Medicinal!’ I added. I waved the glass, and started to burble.

  Cornelia listened without saying anything. When I’d finished she said, ‘A lot of people believe that your grief should be measured by the size of your baby. You can only hope that some people have the compassion to try and understand.’

  I said, ‘I look in the rear-view mirror, and I still imagine a car seat.’

  Cornelia held my hand.

  The next morning, Fletch decided he didn’t fancy her and dumped her by text.

  On Monday, I looked at myself in the mirror.

  ‘Pull yourself back,’ I said aloud. Drinking, crashing cars and falling out with family was not what my favourite infant school teacher had predicted for me. (Miss Marsh, a middle-aged Texan with dyed black hair blow-dried in the style of candyfloss. I’d removed a large black spider from the porcelain sink in the art corner for her, and she’d cried, ‘Eliza-beth Montgomery, I see it now – the first woman on Mars!’)

  I would rein myself in. I allowed myself a minute of sentimental thought. That if my lost baby could see me now, she would be disappointed. No child wants a miserable, half-cut mother. I wouldn’t want my baby to think that she had ruined my life. I would prefer to be a credit to her; I would want her to be proud of me. It was essential that her brief existence had meaning – that ultimately it led to something good. Was this sacrilege? Perhaps I was under the influence of the twenty-first century, where everyone has to be a winner, even those poor little ones too ill and frail to make the starting line. Did I have to conjure up a positive spin on my baby’s death? Or maybe I was trying to find a path out of hell, so as not to waste two lives.

  More than two lives. I’d whittled away at my relationship, when Tim and I were made for each other. Aunt Edith had said, and she didn’t say that about just anyone. When Great-Uncle Keith married Scottish Miriam, she’d said, ‘Saves spoiling another couple.’ Possibly, I had driven Tim into Cassie’s arms. Jesus. There was no glossing over that one. It was inexcusable, on either side, whatever I’d done. I had treated him terribly, though. I’d needed my pain to be acknowledged as superior to his, when it was his baby too. As for Cassie . . . But I was still surprised. She was a cold bitch but she was loyal.

  I wasn’t naïve enough to think that every one of us makes it to heaven with their principles intact. Cassie was wretched with George. And she was jealous of us. Once, I mentioned that Tim brought me a cup of tea in bed every morning and her mouth thinned. Then, another time – I must have had a drink or five – I’d said, giggling, that Tim insisted that I wear white knickers, no other colour allowed – maybe pink occasionally because I liked pink. She smiled but her face twisted up. But for my sister to have intercourse (I was no longer a sex columnist, I never had to use the word ‘cock’ again – it just wasn’t me, darling) with my boyfriend, betraying about ten people in one act . . . now that I considered their treason in a less lunatic state, it seemed impossible.

  But I had seen them.

  As I burst into tears again, I realised why the human mind does such a rip-roaring trade in denial. And yet. Creating mental diversions was hard work. I was pooped. Every now and then, a river in Britain bursts its banks and floods a town, and you’ll see the poor people scooping water out of their homes, placing sandbags at the door – and you’ll watch them and think, you have to know that the sandbags and the sloshing out with buckets is futile. The water’s up to your roof! But it’s easy for me to say, observing from a cool distance. When you’re right there in the crisis, you’ll do anything to make yourself feel better, distract yourself from the misery, deny reality, no matter how stupid.

  I was drying my eyes, wondering what I was going to do for a living that would save me from penury and make our parents less ashamed. (Maybe I could become a tree surgeon? Then every time Evelyn Toberman served a conversational ace with mention of Nina Sara’s job as advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Vivica could hit back with ‘my daughter, the doctor’.)

  The doorbell rang, and I peered out of the window and saw – speak of the devil! – the tops of our parents’ heads. The full set! I must be in trouble.

  I opened the door, and Vivica said, ‘Darling, we bought you a Gucci key ring! Daddy saw one of a little London bus, but I thought you might prefer the Gooch! Can we come in?’ She sniffed. ‘Why don’t you open a window? It’s not healthy to live in a sealed house!’

  I stood aside, and they marched towards the lounge, our father following his wife like a foot soldier. As Vivica headed to the sofa, Geoffrey veered off to the kitchen, murmuring, ‘Pot of Darjeeling.’

  I sat opposite my mother on a pouffe.

  ‘I know everyone’s talking about me,’ I burst out. ‘I know you all think I’ve disgraced myself but she’s the one who’s a disgrace! No one is even capable of imagining how it is for me, the—’

  ‘ELIZABETH!’ shouted our father, holding a teapot perfectly centred on a floral tray.

  I stopped. He never raised his voice, ever. ‘Elizabeth,’ he continued, ‘as you can imagine, your outburst at The Do caused a commotion. A shocking accusation such as yours presumably originates from somewhere, and we did ask Cassie to explain herself. She did, to our complete satisfaction. I understand that you haven’t given her the chance to tell you the truth, and that was wrong of you.’

  I glowered.

  ‘Darling,’ added Vivica. She paused to slide a small burgundy box with silver lettering across the coffee table. ‘She wouldn’t do it to you. And nor would Tim. They both adore you. Cassie, in particular.’

  She paused, lit a cigarette without asking if this was allowed. I saw that her long white fingers shook as she flicked the lighter. Her nails were blood red, perfect, not a single chip. I wasn’t like her. She glanced at Geoffrey and he scooted out of the room.

  Vivica inhaled, and said, very quickly, ‘I am capable of imagining how it is for you, darling. I know how it is for you, in fact, because it happened to me.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘You had a—’

  ‘I had an ectopic pregnancy. Seven months after I had you. I had an emergency hysterectomy. The baby, and all baby-growing equ
ipment – out, gone, goodbye.’

  I could feel my eyes bug. I was shocked out of my tiny mind. It did feel tiny, at that point. My pain was so great that no one else was ever allowed to have any. Yet here was my own mother, the finished article of my experience, thirty-odd years later, and fine, quite matter-of-fact about it, able to function almost normally. It was amazing to me that she had gone through this, and survived. To cover the inadequacy of my response, I went into automatic sympathy overdrive. ‘Oh my goodness, Vivica, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. You poor thing, how—’

  She waved away my sympathies. ‘I don’t like talking about it. I was very upset at the time, and I don’t like to recall it. I prefer to forget it.’

  She was so unselfaware – it killed me.

  ‘But, Vivica, just because you choose to ignore your pain, shut it out, it doesn’t go. It’s still there. It’s just hidden.’

  ‘Hidden’s fine. I like hidden. But,’ she said, her tone softening, ‘but I see you, and it all comes back, and I feel for you. I really do,’ she added. She almost sounded surprised.

  You do feel for me, I thought, staring back at her with nearly equal surprise.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, brisker now, ‘the point of telling you this, darling, is to—’

  ‘Sorry.’ My brain was like an abacus, slowly clacking beads. ‘You had a hysterectomy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I shook my head. ‘But Cassie . . . ?’

  Chapter 28

  Vivica leaned forward and crushed my warm hand in her cool one. Her wedding ring dug painfully into my skin. She closed her eyes and said – eyes still shut – ‘Cassie is adopted.’

  I stood up, even though my legs felt hot and weak. I heard those words and I couldn’t sit.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ I said finally. ‘I don’t believe this.’ I stared at Vivica, who was now squinting at me, like you might at a horror movie. ‘This is too big for my head.’

  She opened her eyes properly – they were full of fear. Geoffrey had padded back into the room, and now stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder, and a sincere look on his face.

  I wanted to scream. ‘Why did no one tell me?’ I said. I could hear my voice rising, high and hysterical. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t she? For all these years!’

  I burst into tears. I had always felt like an outsider, never in on the joke. And now, I was proven right. Even though the beauteous better-than-us-all Cassie turns out to be the genetic outsider – good to know that someone didn’t want her – they’d still managed to form a cosy little unit, with a scandalous secret, and keep me out of it.

  ‘Darling, oh, darling!’ said Vivica, rising slightly from her seat but remaining in it. She stretched towards me, waggled her fingers as if she was stroking my head, but she wasn’t. ‘Please don’t be upset. I know it’s a ghastly shock. And you do have a right to be terribly cross. But I do hope you won’t be. It was for the best. We didn’t tell Cassie until she was thirteen – we didn’t want anyone to be upset – and she forbade us to tell you. Not for any bad reason. She was – is – so proud to be your sister. She didn’t want you to think of her differently. She didn’t want your relationship to be any . . . less.’

  I swallowed. ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Vivica. ‘She adores you. Adores!’ (Again, the surprise.) She coughed. ‘She looks up to you, you know. She doesn’t know we’ve told you. But I’ve kept quiet for long enough and I thought it best to make an executive decision. I am a businesswoman, after all. And a mother,’ she added, as an afterthought.

  Geoffrey then spoke for the first time. ‘We cannot stand by as parents and watch our daughters’ relationships disintegrate to such an extent, and do nothing.’

  I nodded. He’d got his words muddled up, and they sounded awkward – but I liked that.

  ‘This is a lot to take in,’ I said slowly.

  Cassie was adopted. Did it change things? My heart pounded. Maybe, yes. I had a sister. But she wasn’t mine at all. I was amazed that Vivica and our father had managed to keep the secret for all these years. You’d have thought that once, after an anniversary dinner, when too many sherries had been drunk, too many glasses of pink champagne, a giggling confession would have tumbled out, the guilt and the pressure of Not Telling having booted it to the surface.

  I would have blabbed it out. The fact would have simmered, always – at the front of my mind, on the tip of my tongue – and whatever I did, wherever I was, whoever I was with, I’d be thinking, you don’t know, but guess what! I would have told. If only to dilute my guilt with reassurance, because you could squeeze a lot of sympathy out of your friends with a story like that: oh, first baby, so big and fat, irreparable damage to the pelvic floor . . . all whipped out . . . trauma . . . secret heartbreak . . . social duty . . . unwanted newborn . . . needed homing. Like a cat.

  Vivica lit another cigarette, while I stared at Fletch’s polished teak floor. I was her biological child, but Vivica wasn’t like me. She was hard throughout, a peanut brittle of a person. She was more like Cassie, despite being no relation. Perhaps I shouldn’t put it like that.

  Now that I knew the facts, I both admired and despised Vivica for her steel ability to choose practicality over sentimentality. She’d been able to tuck away the less-than-perfect truth in a dark corner, banish it from her mind, and create a neat preferable reality, where she and our father were the accomplished parents of two perfect girls – even if the second was considerably more perfect than the first.

  What annoyed me was that Vivica enjoyed the status of being mother to Cassandra Montgomery, a barrister – and I wasn’t a total loss, even the sex column had a certain risqué cache. And yet, the job she’d done as a parent was shoddy. Once, Cassie and I caught a severe stomach bug, and the doctor said, ‘Only starches – dry toast, and jacket potatoes – and perhaps soft-boiled eggs for protein. No dairy, no fruit, nothing fancy.’ Vivica led us from the surgery, cock-a-hoop. ‘Marvellous!’ she crowed to our father. ‘Pray they keep squitting. I won’t have to cook for a week!’

  If she were a builder, I would have reported her to the Trading Standards Authority, and they’d have fined her. Cassie’s achievements were all Cassie, nothing to do with Vivica. Cassie would have succeeded had she been raised by wolves. And my achievements – if you could call them that – were in spite of her. I decided that Vivica had lived a frivolous life. Her job was a selfish enterprise. She spent her salary on haircuts. There was little altruism. I didn’t see her making sacrifices for The Children.

  Maybe that was my problem – I expected every mother to be a martyr. Myself included.

  Was I too harsh? After all, her parenting methods – or madness – had produced two fully functional adults. And now it emerged that Vivica had suffered herself – which as everyone knows is pretty much a free pass to inflict suffering on others. Was she excused?

  I shook my head. Vivica and Geoffrey exchanged glances and shifted in their seats. They could sit and wait. I’d waited, for the day they might have enough respect for me to talk out the mess they’d made of my childhood, and here this day finally was, with the mystery finally revealed, and I was still disappointed.

  True, that lately Vivica was so sweet you could have stirred her in boiling milk and made toffee. And yet, as reparations went, it wasn’t enough. I still felt an aching resentment. I was angry because of her bright, silly breeziness, that she was so blithely unaware that over the years she’d crushed my confidence into bits – like if you trod on a potato crisp, again and again and again. She had no clue of the consequences of her behaviour, no interest in finding out. As for Geoffrey! He was her dumb accomplice – Muttley to her Dastardly.

  When I was seven, Vivica decided she liked the gamine hairstyle of Una Stubbs in Summer Holiday. So she tried it out on me first, cutting my hair so short that all that was required to complete the look was a bolt either side of my neck. (She then decided against.) She’d bought me an orange towelling bi
kini for swimming in the local pool, and lost the top. She was useless with the washing, always shrinking stuff, inadvertently dying it pink, or dumping it in a scrumpled heap – folding and ironing was too much like housework – not always in the right wardrobe.

  ‘Just wear the bottoms, darling. It’s not as if you’ve got anything there.’ She would have said that or similar – I couldn’t recall – but I did remember what a woman said, accusingly, as I crept out of the changing cubicle, bare-chested, hot with shame: ‘This is the ladies’.’

  At the time, I was too caught up in the mortification of being me to feel furious with Vivica, but now I looked back – with all the ammunition that their confession about Cassie had given me – and I was weak with rage. I tried, in fairness, to direct some of it towards our father, but I found he wasn’t important enough, and that was his indictment.

  I had to confront her. Now! It was the only way. I saw myself on Jerry Springer, immensely fat, my hair scraped back in a high ponytail, giving me an elastic-band facelift. Confronting Vivica! The orange swimming trunks! The key ring collection! The Hebrew classes! The boy’s haircut! The bad cooking! The Noel Edmonds’ Prank Phone Calls cassette! Vivica would be sitting in a chair, wearing red lipstick and tight jeans, and everyone would boo her as a terrible mother. The credits would roll with her sobbing, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, my darling daughter, please forgive me! I love you so much! I’ll make it up to you, I’ll . . .’

  What would she do, exactly?

  ‘I’ve always felt different to Cassie,’ I said, as a prompt.