Between Sisters

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘I have no idea how to tell her,’ Coco said sadly. ‘No idea at all.’

  She’d said as much to one of the casualty doctors, who’d looked at her blankly and then sighed. ‘I don’t know,’ the doctor said, her face weary and pale from night shifts. ‘How do you tell anyone this? It’s not my area of expertise. I don’t have kids.’

  ‘Neither do I!’ Coco wanted to say frantically, but for now, she sort of did have kids. One kid. With Jo in a hospital bed seriously ill, Coco was technically acting as Fiona’s mother.

  She simply wasn’t equipped to impart this sort of information.

  ‘If I sleep on the floor and maybe try to tell her in the morning …’ Coco broke off.

  All through the terrible time in hospital, she’d thought of Fiona’s little face when she would finally see her mother. Jo was surrounded by monitors, clamped to a narrow hospital bed, and with the paralysis of her face and her inability to speak except in a weird slurred voice, she didn’t look or sound anything like herself, and when Coco had left, she’d been crying for the past half an hour. How exactly could Coco explain this to a nine-year-old?

  ‘We have to tell her that her mum’s going to get better, that she still loves Fiona even though she’s in hospital, that you and I are going to take care of her, and we’ll all be there when her mum gets out. Children need to know they’re loved, that none of this is their fault, and that the adults are taking care of it all,’ Cassie explained.

  Coco stopped drinking her tea. ‘Is that what you used to tell me when I was small? That it wasn’t my fault Mum had left?’

  Cassie felt the breath leave her body as fully as if she’d been punched in the stomach. It was like having something she’d been avoiding thinking about for years suddenly emerge in front of her like a giant stone wall.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault she left,’ she said, inhaling shakily. ‘It was mine.’ She corrected herself. ‘I thought it was mine. Kids do, you see. They think they made their parents split up or they made everyone upset.’

  Saying ‘kids’ think that made it sound as if Cassie hadn’t felt that it was entirely her fault that their mother had left. Although she had. Totally.

  Somewhere inside, she still did.

  If she’d been different, better, maybe her mum might not have gone. And even if she had gone, maybe if Cassie had been the sort of child she’d wanted, maybe her mother would have come back. It all came down to those simple details. Simple and devastating enough to last a lifetime.

  ‘I thought my being born had made her want to go because I wasn’t right or something,’ Coco said slowly. ‘I know, silly when you’re a grown-up and look back at it, but I thought it was me. She’d loved you, she didn’t go when you were a baby, but she went when I came along. It had to be me, you see.’

  ‘Nobody wanted to talk about it, did they?’ Cassie said slowly, trying very hard to hide her own shock and devastation. Her heartbeat was racing now. Was this a panic attack? She had to cover it up; Coco had enough going on without Cassie going into a meltdown about their personal thirty-year-old tragedy.

  What was wrong with her? She should have gotten over this by now. It had been thirty years ago, for heaven’s sake!

  ‘I always felt Pearl could have told us more but didn’t want to hurt us,’ Coco went on, in between drinking her tea.

  ‘Yes,’ said her sister absently.

  Shay. She needed Shay. They’d barely spoken since he’d come home that evening – she’d been so irritated that he’d been busy with his mother when she’d needed him. He’d gone to bed without hugging her. Was that her fault or his mother’s? Was Antoinette trying to drag him back to the family home …? Was he going to leave too?

  The sisters sat in silence for a while, watching the cat stalking around the room until he found where he wanted to sit.

  Coco reflected that their mother’s absence was the elephant in the room for so much of their childhood. Nobody else talked about it, and quickly the subject had became clouded with the patina of silence. Sometimes, late at night in the room they shared in Delaney Gardens, the sisters could speak of it, in the moonlight, and with nobody else around. It had an ephemeral quality, talking about the mother who’d gone; outside that room, they never discussed her.

  ‘She left Dad too,’ said Coco. ‘Looking back, I think that killed him. Do you ever think that? That he fell apart and never got fixed?’

  It was that thought that finally broke Cassie’s calm self-control. Watching a happy, entirely unaware nine-year-old going to sleep had brought it all back to her: what would happen to Fiona in the morning when she learned the truth? The way Cassie had learned the truth. In her case, that people left and never came back.

  And it was the ones left behind who fell apart.

  Mothers could leave. Mothers left. Wives left. People left. Everything was precarious.

  Coco touched her sister’s hand with the lightest of touches, as if she was reading her thoughts.

  Coco had never known Dad any other way but sad. She could see him now: the bald head with the tonsure of grey, and the sad eyes that could perk up into a smile but never really went into full-blown happiness. Pearl had made up for it. Pearl had had enough joie de vivre for three people – she’d had to.

  ‘We don’t know why she went, Cassie,’ said Coco. ‘We still don’t know why. We know it’s not us, whatever really sent her off. We were kids. If you left Lily and Beth now, would it be their fault? No, it wouldn’t.’

  But Cassie wasn’t really listening anymore. It was as if she had gone to some other place in the past. ‘I can sort of remember her perfume,’ she said mistily, ‘but it eludes me whenever I’m in a department store and I sniff at the older perfumes. Some of them sort of smell right, but are not quite hers. Her hair was long, like yours more than mine – richer, darker, all tumbling curls. She had your sense of style: different, cooler than everyone else. She used to come to pick me up from school in this fun fur coat, golden and shaggy, like a lioness’s, and she looked more glamorous than all the other mothers.’

  Cassie turned brimming eyes to her sister, who was staring at her sadly because Coco had seen none of this. ‘I loved her so much and she left me. She left us. It still makes me scared that other people will leave.’

  Coco, who had no memory of perfumes or the softness of a furry coat any more than she had memories of a happy father, held her sister and wished she could remember something about the mother who’d gone so long ago. She’d always said to people that she’d never missed having a mother because she hadn’t known one, but Cassie had. Cassie had known what it was and she’d suffered the loss the most.

  Cassie had worn herself out trying to make life perfect for them all: for Coco, for Shay, for Lily and Beth. And all the while, there was still this hole inside her.

  Maybe it was inside both of them. A mother-shaped jigsaw piece that had been lost and still needed to be found.

  When Coco had gone to bed, Cassie opened the fridge with shaking hands.

  She tried so hard not to think about her mother, but sometimes the thought of being abandoned just came and poleaxed her out of nowhere. But this – this was huge: like the imaginary stone wall crushing her.

  She’d bought a box of wine (so much more convenient than a bottle), and poured herself a large glass. This might help her sleep, might numb the feelings. More than anything else, Cassie didn’t want to think about the past.

  Shay was driving into work, shattered after sharing a bed with a wildly distressed Cassie, who didn’t appear to have slept a wink, even though she’d clearly had a few glasses of wine, and he knew that normally knocked her out because she wasn’t much of a drinker. His wife was incredibly upset about the news of Jo’s stroke – it was pretty shocking, Shay admitted. It made you think of your own family and want to protect them all like a caveman.

  What would he do if som
ething like that happened to Cassie or, God forbid, the girls? He simply didn’t know.

  He used to think that women were better at dealing with all this sort of stuff but, after last night, he wasn’t so sure. His cool, calm Cassie seemed to have disappeared to be replaced by this slightly wild-eyed woman who’d been about to leave the house wearing two wrong shoes until Beth had told her in a voice heavily laced with irony.

  ‘Mum, like, the fashion police are going to arrest you,’ Beth had said, pointing down to her mother’s feet.

  Shay thought Beth might give Cassie a break, given the night before, but no. Weirder, Cassie didn’t even appear to register the faintest hint of irritation over her daughter’s sarcasm-fest.

  She seemed almost blank. ‘Oh, right,’ was all she’d said as she’d looked at her unmatching shoes and went slowly upstairs to put on matching ones.

  Coco and Fiona were still asleep when Shay left, and he was sort of glad. Coco he could handle, but he wasn’t sure he could face Fiona after she’d heard her mum was in hospital. He didn’t envy his sister-in-law the task of breaking the news to the little girl.

  His car phone rang as he got nearer the office and he pulled in to answer it.

  ‘Hello love,’ said his mother. ‘Isn’t it a lovely day? Lifts your spirits. I’ve been looking at the property supplements, you know …’

  ‘Mum, we’ve had a bad night at our end,’ Shay began, and filled her in on the details.

  Antoinette sounded suitably upset, but she quickly rallied. ‘This is more proof of how our plan will work brilliantly, love,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I could have taken care of the children and Cassie wouldn’t have had to race home from work in a tizzy after all!’

  ‘Er, Mum, let’s keep this under our hats for the moment,’ Shay said quickly. ‘I still haven’t exactly mentioned it to Cassie and she’s very upset right now. Let’s wait a while before I raise the subject with her.’

  On her end of the phone, Antoinette beamed. ‘Darling, you know I’m the very soul of discretion!’

  Coco watched Fiona sleep and wished everyone in the Reynolds household would stop making noise so the child would not wake up. Because when she did, Coco would have to tell her that her mother wasn’t at home but was in hospital.

  Coco had already phoned in twice that morning – once at six and again at half eight when the nursing shift changed over – to see how Jo was, but there appeared to be little change.

  ‘She’s stable,’ said one nurse, while another offered the information that Jo was more alert this morning.

  ‘I can’t come in yet,’ Coco said. ‘I have to tell her daughter what’s happened.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Nine.’

  Fiona slept peacefully, exhausted by the late-night fun Beth had managed to conjure up out of nowhere.

  Coco had hugged her niece that morning and said a huge thank you.

  ‘It was the least I could do,’ Beth said, leaning deeply into her aunt and hugging her back. ‘Poor Fi. I don’t know what I’d do if it was me. I can come home early and play with her, you know.’

  ‘I’ll text you if I need you, Beth,’ Coco said seriously, because she simply had no idea how she was going to impart this news and how she’d deal with Fiona afterwards.

  Cassie had silently left a cup of coffee beside Coco and tiptoed out until, finally, they were alone in the house. Still Fiona slept on.

  Coco sipped her coffee and planned. ‘Honey, everything’s going to be fine,’ she whispered.

  ‘Coco! Why am I still here? It’s school time!’ Fiona sat bolt upright on the bed, eyes wide and startled. Beth’s clock, a giant Dali-esque thing, hung on the wall, clearly proclaiming that it was half nine.

  All intelligent thoughts left Coco’s head and she stared at her goddaughter anxiously.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me for school? Mum will be so cross with you!’

  Coco didn’t think her face had changed that much, but it must have.

  ‘Coco, what’s wrong? You look all funny and sad.’

  ‘Your mum had an accident, darling. She’s fine,’ Coco said, trying to be reassuring, ‘but she’s in hospital. That’s where I was last night. I didn’t want you to be upset until I saw she was OK, and she is …’ Huge lie, there. ‘But she is fine now and we can see her later today …’

  She got no further. Fiona’s little mouth closed, her small face paled until it looked as if she was as ghostly as the heroine in her favourite ghost school storybooks, and her big blue eyes brimmed.

  ‘Is she going to be dead?’ she asked tremulously.

  ‘No, no!’ Coco hugged Fiona to her. ‘She’s not, honestly. She had a thing that went a bit wonky in her brain and she’s talking a bit funny, but they gave her special medicine and she is fine, really. We can go and see her now.’

  She held Fiona tightly, knowing she’d screwed up it somehow, not having explained properly that Mummy wasn’t quite the same, but being desperate to reassure her that Jo was going to live. Because she was.

  ‘Mummy wants me to mind you until she’s better, so let’s get some clothes from your house and then we can go to the hospital,’ Coco said, wishing she’d found someone last night in the hospital who knew how to break such horrible news to children.

  ‘I want to see her now,’ sobbed Fiona.

  ‘You can,’ said Coco.

  ‘Now! Mummy!’

  Coco could do nothing but hold on to her darling goddaughter for dear life because, right now, she was the nearest thing to a parent that Fiona had.

  On Tuesday morning, Phoebe stood a few yards away from the door of Larkin College and watched the beautiful people roaming in as if they hadn’t a care in the world. Clutching takeaway coffees, or weird-coloured juices, smartphones stuck to their ears, wearing wildly fashionable clothes and wildly fashion-of-tomorrow clothes, they sauntered in, bouncing to their own beat, utterly sure of themselves. There were girls with actual designer handbags, rucksacks customised exquisitely, small elegant feet in Converse, Keds and a variety of other cool shoes. One girl wore the beautiful Missoni Converse Phoebe had lusted after but hadn’t been able to afford. She looked like a fashion person: tiny, interesting hair dyed blonde with a hint of pink, perfect eyebrows and a rattle of cool bracelets jangling on her slim, tanned arms.

  There were perhaps slightly more girls than boys walking in, all terrifying in their determination and couldn’t-care-less-ness.

  Phoebe, in the skinny jeans that ended in slightly the wrong spot on her ankles, wearing the non-Converse shoes she’d customised, and her old (made three years ago) green silk parka not entirely right for among these birds of paradise, held on to her takeaway coffee cup as if it were a lifeline. She wouldn’t be able to afford this sort of coffee every morning. Not until she’d got a job, anyway.

  Registration started at ten. Incredibly late, by her standards. She thought of the hens clucking their disapproval loudly about wanting to get out from about 5 a.m. on summer mornings. Maybe she could get an early waitressing job somewhere, but a four-hour shift? Nobody hired people for that length. Cleaning might be an option. A contract cleaners rather than house cleaning, which was more random. She could do late night or early morning office cleaning. Or else waitressing or pub work.

  ‘I want you to get the best out of college,’ Mam had said on the phone that morning when they’d all rung to wish her good luck. ‘Don’t get too much work, lovie. You can’t be too tired to get your college work done.’

  ‘You know how bored I’ll be without all of you if I don’t work! So I’ve left my CV all over the place,’ Phoebe said, longing for home with all her heart and trying to sound cheerful. ‘I’ll find something good, you know me. Keep me out of mischief till I can get home again.’

  ‘And no sending money back to us, you promised. We can manage,’ her mother went on. ‘Thi
s is all for your future.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Phoebe, who had no intention of obeying this command. Some promises simply had to be broken. Without her contribution to the McLoughlin household, things would be very tight. She’d be sending home as much money as she could.

  Ethan was hopeless on the phone. ‘Yeah, school’s crap as usual,’ he muttered, which Phoebe knew was his way of saying he missed her but was bad at actually saying so. He only came to life when he insisted she speak to the dog.

  Obligingly, Phoebe said: ‘Hello Prince, baba, how are you, honey?’ in her doggy voice.

  ‘Prince licked the phone!’ said Ethan, thrilled and suddenly sounding like himself again. ‘He misses you.’

  Phoebe could barely speak. Ethan was easier to talk to when he was monosyllabic. ‘Miss him too,’ she said gruffly. ‘Even miss you, crazy boy.’

  ‘Miss you, Phoebs.’

  ‘Donna is perfectly fine,’ Mary-Kate informed her when it was her go. ‘I’ve been minding her. Please take photos, will you? We want to see everything. And film your bedsit – I want to see the seasick-green colour. Oh, and Mrs Costello too.’

  ‘She’s a lovely woman,’ said Phoebe, mindful of the fact that her landlady might indeed be outside the door with a glass pressed to it, listening to every word. ‘Truly a lady.’

  ‘Did she just walk in?’ demanded Mary-Kate.

  ‘Always a possibility,’ agreed her sister.

  ‘A madser, I knew it!’ laughed Mary-Kate. ‘Get a picture!’

  The phone call had been intended to give Phoebe a boost, but instead it had made her feel very lonely. What was she doing, away in the city trying to become something she wasn’t?

  She watched the people going into the college, people who looked as if they belonged, unlike her.

  She finished the last delicious dregs of macchiato and, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted someone who didn’t look like any of the fashionable birds of paradise. He was young but strong, wearing skinny jeans that emphasised large legs, a longish hand-painted T-shirt, and with an artfully draped pigeon-grey leather jacket covering him up but not entirely disguising him. Phoebe, used to being the tallest in any gathering and knowing she could arm-wrestle any man, recognised the covering-up pathology. The jacket was beautiful but too big. She was doing the exact same thing with her parka: hiding the fact that she was nearly six foot and could only fit in a sample size if two of them were sewn together.