by Imogen Clark
‘So? Why didn’t you?’ Miriam asked again as they pulled up in the parking area outside Clare’s block.
What would she have done if it had been her? Well, if her mother had asked her to destroy the documents then that’s what she would have done. Without question. Unread. Eldest child. Always the rule-follower.
‘I wanted to know what it said, of course,’ said Anna sharply. ‘I know you wouldn’t have read them, Miriam, but I’m not you. I just couldn’t resist.’
Just like Pandora, thought Miriam. Anna lifted her head high as if she was expecting a fight but Miriam wasn’t going to give her one.
‘And would you have told Clare?’ Miriam asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Anna turned in her seat and looked straight at her. Miriam could see her eyes flashing in the darkness.
‘No,’ she said. ‘But now it turns out that I went through all that for nothing because that bloody man has written to Clare from beyond the grave and spilled the beans anyway.’
They sat there a moment longer, each thinking through the implications of what they had just said. Then there was a shout in the street behind them. Miriam opened the door to get out and then stopped, half in, half out of the car as she took in the scene. Clare was walking down the middle of the road, her arms akimbo as she tried and failed to balance on the white line. She had a wine bottle in each hand.
‘The. Leith. Police. Dismisseth. Uth,’ she shouted. ‘See. I’m not pissed. I can walk. I can walk in a straight line. And I can say the Leith Polith. Fuck it! No I can’t!’
She broke into laughter, a manic sound that could just as easily have been crying.
‘Shit,’ said Anna, and ran from the car to where Clare was turning circles in the middle of the road. She put her arms round their sister and steered her gently towards the pavement. Clare seemed to resist at first and then, when she realised who it was, allowed herself to be moved along.
‘It’s my baby sister. Anna the Favourite. Well, she was my sister. Now we’re not all that sure, are we, Anna the Favourite.’
Anna spoke to her. Miriam couldn’t hear what she said but then Clare looked in her direction and pointed at her with one of the bottles.
‘There she is,’ she shouted. ‘My other not-sister. That’s the bossy one. That’s right, isn’t it, Anna?’
Anna pushed down on Clare’s arm and started steering her towards the staircase that led up to the flats. Miriam checked the street for potential car thieves, although she wasn’t sure what good it would do, flicked the central locking and followed them up.
The flat was surprising tidy – much better than Sebastian’s place. Yes, there were signs of a recent decline – a pizza box on the floor, a couple of upturned wine bottles on the coffee table – but the place was basically clean. Maybe things hadn’t slipped too far yet, Miriam thought. If they could just get Clare back from the brink.
Anna went into the kitchen and started to fill the kettle. Miriam was surprised at the ease with which Anna moved about the place and felt a stab of jealously. Had Anna spent more time here than she had? Was there a growing bond between her and Clare that Miriam didn’t share? No. She was being ridiculous and anyway, what did it matter if she and Clare had found a level that worked. It had been a long time coming.
Clare flopped down on the sofa, laying herself out along its length, and stared up at the ceiling. Her lower legs dangled off the armrest.
‘Tea?’ shouted Anna from the kitchen as the kettle started to bubble.
‘Can’t we do better than that?’ asked Clare. ‘Have you not brought a bottle or two with you? Can’t have a proper family reunion without a bottle or two.’ She sat up and pointed at Miriam. ‘One. Two,’ she continued, pointing at the kitchen door. ‘There’s one missing. Where is my not-brother? Where’s Sebastian? We need the full set for a proper family party. Ring him up, Miriam, and get him to come and bring some booze.’
They were going to get nowhere tonight, that much was obvious.
‘Sebastian’s at home with the boys,’ explained Miriam, conscious that she was using her teacher voice.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Clare, nodding sagely. ‘Dead wife.’
Miriam winced at the way that Clare casually mentioned the one subject that she and Anna tripped delicately around.
Anna appeared with three mugs of steaming tea which she put on the coffee table, moving the bottles and stowing them out of sight under the sofa. ‘You’ve run out of milk,’ she said. The tea was varying degrees of brown. Miriam instinctively reached for the one with the least milk even though she hated black tea, for was it not forever her role to play the martyr, not that anyone ever noticed the sacrifices she made?
‘So, Clare,’ she said. ‘Anna told me about the letter from the solicitors . . .’
‘Now there’s a turn-up for the books,’ said Clare with a stagey wink. ‘Might not be your actual, total flesh and blood. Didn’t see that one coming, did you?’
‘Could I look at it?’ Miriam continued. ‘The letter. Please.’
Clare nodded and then began looking around with exaggerated movement like a mime artist but the longer she looked without the letter appearing the more anxious she seemed to become. ‘It was here,’ she started muttering under her breath. ‘It was right here on this table. I had it and then I read it and then I had it and then . . .’ Then she hit her hand to her forehead with such force that it made Miriam jump. ‘The little bastard,’ she said. ‘That low-down, shitty little bastard.’
Miriam looked at Anna but she shook her head. She had no idea either.
‘Who?’ asked Miriam. ‘Who do you think has taken the letter, Clare?’
Clare was swaying slightly in her seat but her eyes were cool and focused.
‘River.’
III
‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.’
Miriam liked that she generally had a quote at hand should the need for one arise. Not that it often did. Her children just rolled their eyes at her when she tried to drop them in, rarely even breaking their conversational stride to acknowledge it, let alone asking where the quote might have come from. School was worse. Not only the students but her fellow teachers looked dismayed when she employed a salient quotation, as if it were just one more thing that they had to absorb. Time was when she could quote entire pages of Shakespeare, chunks of epic poetry, even the odd stanza of modern verse, but not so much now. What was it they said? You had to use it or lose it. Maybe it was too late for her to audition for the Friel piece?
She pulled her wayward mind back to the current problem. Had River really taken the letter or had Clare, as was far more likely, just left it somewhere? What would River want with it anyway? They didn’t even know for sure that he’d visited his mother that night. He hadn’t been near for months, according to Clare. Miriam didn’t think much of her nephew. Anna had always said that the way River cut himself off from them was simply a product of the chaotic upbringing that he’d had, that his faith in the Bliss family had been gradually eroded as Clare rejected offer after offer of help from them. Miriam was less inclined to be charitable to him. She had never seen the side of him that Anna professed was there, this gentler, more open nature that was apparently buried deep down. Still, there was no reason to connect the missing letter with him. That made no sense. No. Clare would have taken it out in the pub and then left it on the table or in the ladies’ loo. Miriam sighed. Did she always have to be responsible for everything? Was this the burden of the eldest child until the end of time? Secretly, of course, she knew she loved being in charge and would be devastated if they all turned round and started fixing things for themselves.
Well, River or no River, the letter was gone. She and Anna had had a good poke around Clare’s flat after she had passed out on the sofa and it definitely wasn’t there. She thought about trailing round Clare’s usual haunts but then abandoned the idea. No need to advertise her sister’s failings. The best bet would b
e to contact the solicitors and just get another copy sent, although probably there’d be some data protection rule that meant that Clare would have to do that for herself. Perhaps if Miriam stood over her, made her make the call—
‘Miss?’ said a voice, pulling Miriam back to the here and now. Year 9, bottom-set English. One of Miriam’s bigger challenges. It was Charlie Bennett with his hand up.
‘Yes, Charlie,’ she said with practised patience.
‘I don’t get it, Miss. What’s the point of reading this book about something that never happened? If a plane did go down on an island then air traffic control and satellites and stuff would find it. And there’s the black box too, Miss.’ Charlie looked round at his classmates for approval.
‘Yes, Miss,’ said Shelley Keane. ‘And where are all the girls? It’s stupid that it’s just boys.’
‘Well, Shelley. That’s an interesting point. How do you think the story might have been different if it had been girls that were stranded and not . . .’
The bell cut across her and the class stood up, scraping chairs across lino before she had chance to finish her sentence. Whatever happened to respect for the teacher? In her day, nobody would have dared to move until the class had been dismissed. A lot of things were different from how they’d been in her day. She felt old.
The class poured out of the door, a few of them turning to say goodbye to her as they left.
‘Finish chapter ten for homework,’ she called after them, knowing that they would pretend they hadn’t heard her.
As she packed her marking into her bag she decided that she would have to go back to Clare’s. She dug her phone out and texted Clare. ‘Coming round now. Are you in?’ She’d go whether Clare replied or not. Someone needed to keep an eye and it had better be her. Anna would still be at work so there’d be no need to trouble her with it. She’d pick some milk up on the way and then she and Clare could have a proper talk about what Clare was going to do.
Forty minutes later she was ringing the bell on Clare’s door with a pint of semi-skimmed and a packet of chocolate chip cookies. She’d had no reply to her text but now she was here she could hear a TV blaring, although that might be coming from next door. She was just ringing again when Clare appeared on the landing. She was wearing her work tabard and carrying a plastic bag filled with hot dog rolls. She looked a bit rough but she was sober.
‘God, not again,’ she said, but she was smiling.
‘I brought supplies,’ replied Miriam, holding up her purchases.
‘Contrary to what you obviously believe, I am not a total write-off. Not yet, anyway.’
Clare retrieved a key and let them into the flat. The curtains were still drawn at the lounge window but the thin fabric simply diffused the light rather than blocking it. The flat looked fine. There was no sign of any tumbling from wagons. Clare opened the curtains and pulled her tabard over her head, throwing it carelessly on to the back of a chair. It missed and slithered to the floor. The urge to pick it up and fold it neatly was so strong that Miriam had to turn away and busy herself with the biscuits.
‘Tea or coffee?’ asked Clare. ‘I assume you’ve brought that stuff because you want a little chat and not just for my store cupboard.’
Miriam flinched just a little. There were never any social niceties with Clare. She said what she meant without any concern for anyone’s feelings. She’d always been the same and it had always got her into trouble, particularly with their father, who had valued good manners over almost everything. Of course, he might no longer be their mutual father. She was finding this all so very unsettling. God only knew how Clare was coping.
‘Coffee,’ replied Miriam. ‘And there’s no need for your attitude. I’ve come to make sure that you’re okay and to see if you want to talk because you’re my sister . . .’ Oh God. There she went again. This whole situation had long tentacles that had the capacity to reach out and strangle everything she had ever known. ‘. . . And that’s what sisters do,’ she finished, hoping that Clare wouldn’t make another sarcastic comment, but Clare, it seemed, had had enough.
‘Coming right up,’ she said, grabbing the milk from Miriam’s hand and disappearing into the kitchen.
‘How’s work going?’ asked Miriam through the wall.
‘Well, it’s shit. Obviously. It’s a shit job that pays shit money and could be done by a monkey with half a brain,’ replied Clare, but there was something in her tone that told Miriam that she was actually quite proud of it.
‘Do you work with nice people?’ continued Miriam, giving Clare the chance to confess to enjoying it just a little bit.
‘They’re all right,’ she said.
‘I think it’s great that you’ve got yourself a little job . . .’ Damn. Why did she have to say ‘little’? It sounded so patronising, so ‘big sister’ of her. No wonder Clare got so angry with them all. There had always been more than a sniff of superiority in the way that they had dealt with Clare over the years. They didn’t do it on purpose, or at least she didn’t – Anna had her own agendas – but somehow most things she said to Clare seemed to be painted with a liberal layer of smug. For once, Clare didn’t seem to pick up on it. She came in with two mugs, the steam coming off the top emphasising the chill in the room.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s cash in hand so you can’t ask for much but it’s a nice place and they treat us fair.’ She placed the mugs down on the table and sat down with a humph. Miriam offered her a chocolate chip cookie.
Miriam had been trying to think of conversational opening gambits all the way there but as it turned out she needn’t have worried. Clare needed no prompting.
‘Well, this is a bit of mess,’ she said. ‘The black sheep of the family might turn out to be half goat.’
Miriam shook her head and laughed. ‘That is the worst metaphor . . .’
‘Thus spake the English teacher. I’ve been thinking about it since I got the letter. As I see it there are two possibilities. Either I am Dad’s daughter or I’m the illegitimate lovechild of this Downing bloke. Do we know anything about him, by the way? The name means nothing to me.’
For a moment Miriam wavered but it was important, wasn’t it, that they were all honest with each other? Lies would just breed more resentment. ‘Anna met him,’ she said.
Clare nodded as if this was totally expected. ‘Of course she did. How very Anna, always right in the centre of any drama.’
Miriam thought that Clare was probably describing herself more than Anna but knew that it would do no good to say so.
‘He wrote when Mum died. His letter was on Anna’s pile to reply to and then later, she went to say hello.’
Clare eyed her. Her stare reminded Miriam of a seagull’s, steady and intent and ready to pounce on a stray chip at any minute.
‘She went to see if I looked anything like him, you mean,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.
Miriam shrugged. ‘Quite possibly, but I don’t know because I’m not Anna and she didn’t tell me. Or Sebastian, before you ask. She’s been carrying your secret all by herself for all this time.’
Miriam felt the need to defend Anna. It seemed odd to her to side that way but then this whole situation was pretty odd. Clare shrugged this away like it was nothing, but that wasn’t fair. It was a massive burden for Anna to carry by herself, something that she’d done entirely for Clare. There was no point raising this, though. Clare might not see it like that, not yet anyway.
‘So,’ continued Clare as she picked at her ragged fingernails, ‘as I see it I either pretend none of this happened and carry on as before or I get the test done and find out. Whether I accept the money – well, that’s a third thing, I suppose.’
How did Clare do that? She always managed to surprise Miriam. If they’d been put on some hideous game show where they had to second-guess each other’s actions, Miriam would never have said that Clare might take the test but not the cash. That was the kind of considered reasoning that she might expect from Seb
astian. Anna would probably find out, take the money and just not tell the rest of them. She really wasn’t sure what she would do if faced with this conundrum. But Clare? She definitely had her pegged as taking the money and having it spent within six months.
‘And,’ began Miriam tentatively, ‘what are your thoughts?’
Clare sat back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling. She was quiet for so long that Miriam wondered if she’d drifted off.
‘I reckon,’ she said eventually, and Miriam felt herself shift a little forward in her chair, ‘I reckon that I have no fucking clue.’
SEBASTIAN – 2017
I
Sebastian was sick of his sisters. They always knew best and they never failed to inform him of the fact. It had been the same since the day he’d arrived, late on the scene after their mother’s phantom menopause. He’d always been babied by everyone – spoilt, really. The family dynamics had shifted with the appearance of a fourth child and a boy, no less. His mother, he knew, had struggled to regain her equilibrium for a while and so his father and Miriam had stepped up to the plate. He knew now that Miriam had resented that but at the time he didn’t think it was odd that his sister was more his mother than his mother was.
By the time he’d hit his teenage years, his mother was back in control, but somehow those early years at home seemed to have given his sisters the right to burrow into his life even though he was now forty and more than capable of running things for himself.
God, he missed Tess. She would have known what to do now, would have said the right thing to both him and The Stryxes, her name for the sisters collectively. A stryx was a kind of owlish vampire favoured by the Romans, Tessa had told him. She’d read Classics to his Maths and was always colouring their lives with mythological creatures. Sebastian had never asked her about the specific characteristics of a stryx but he knew her well enough to know that it wouldn’t be an endearment. Sometimes in the early days he’d felt the need to defend his siblings, but then Tessa would make him laugh about something they’d said and he would suddenly see them through Tessa’s eyes: three middle-aged women, each with their own complicated issues, who argued constantly amongst themselves but couldn’t seem to steer clear of one another. Tessa had always managed to keep them at a distance with a nonchalance that Sebastian marvelled at. She’d smile her wide, open smile at Miriam as Miriam explained some trivial issue regarding the family and then totally ignore what had been said and do what she thought was best for Sebastian and her boys. And she had always been right.