The Endsister

by Penni Russon

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Families are complicated. Stag beetles make more sense if you ask me.’

  Is my family complicated? I’ve never thought so before, except when Mum has to make two lasagnes – veggie and meat. But then Great-Aunt Dorothy turned up, and that felt complicated. There’s Nan and Pop, and they don’t like Dad much, so that’s pretty complicated, for Mum mostly, especially at Christmas. And then there’s Aunty May, who isn’t our flesh-and-blood family, but feels more like family than Great-Aunt Dorothy or Nan and Pop.

  ‘What’s she like? Aunty May?’

  ‘She’s like . . . I don’t know.’ It had never occurred to me to wonder what Aunty May is like. She’s just Aunty May. ‘She taught me how to look after injured native animals. She used to be a park ranger, before she got too old, and she was still the volunteer in our area for injured wildlife. I had to leave Hester behind when we moved here. Hester is a ringtail possum.’

  ‘I wish you could have brought her with you.’

  ‘Hester was ready to look after herself.’

  I wonder if Hester misses me, though I know – Aunty May taught me – that animals feelings aren’t like human feelings, that they belong to nature, not to people. Being too sentimental about native animals, spoiling them like pets, is as bad as mistreating them.

  ‘Aunty May’s in hospital now. Mum says she might not ever go home again.’

  ‘That’s what happened to Dorothy.’ Pippa stands up and brushes wall dust off herself. ‘Want to come and meet my dad? He’s making crumpets from a Jamie Oliver recipe. Bespoke crumpets, he calls them. They’ll either be nice, or they’ll be hideous. Once he made flapjacks that could bounce.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. I’m starving. Definitely dinnertime, I think, following Pippa into the house next door, forgetting all about Hester and Aunty May for now.

  ELSE

  I STORM UP to the bedroom, haul clothes out of my backpack, pull on my favourite jeans and a clean tank top and my cotton unicorn print cardigan, and step into my sandals. I angrily drag a brush through my hair, pile my hair on top of my head and jab some pins in to hold it in place.

  (I mean, I might be angry, but it is London.)

  ‘Where are you going, Else?’ Sibbi asks.

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘No.’

  Sibbi’s eyes widen, and her lip begins to tremble.

  ‘Don’t you dare start crying,’ I hiss at her. ‘What have you got to cry about? No one expects anything of you because you’re the baby. You stay home and play with Mum or Dad while the rest of us do real work.’

  ‘Playing is real,’ Sibbi says. ‘Playing is my work.’

  ‘Not for long,’ I say. I hate myself for being so mean, but I can’t help adding, ‘Boy, are you in for a surprise.’

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  ALMOST ANNIE WATCHES from the doorway. Hardly Alice is sitting on Else’s bed, leaning back on the pillows.

  ‘This is terrible,’ Almost Annie whispers.

  ‘This is marvellous!’ says Hardly Alice. ‘Nothing this interesting has happened in years.’

  Almost Annie flickers, worried. She glances upwards. Lately she has felt it more vividly, the dark dreaming of the house, the murmuring of its shadow-self, up in the attic. It wants to be forgotten, and remembered. It wants to be lost, and found. It wants to rage. It wants to be loved. It wants, with such energy, that it’s wanting sometimes rattles the bones of the house. But then it forgets itself again, and Annie remembers and forgets too.

  ELSE

  I TURN RIGHT and start walking. The street is curved and not very wide, but it seems to be a fairly main road with constant traffic. I follow it around and come to a sort of shopping strip, big brand stores (some familiar from home, like The Body Shop and Nine West, some unfamiliar and British-sounding, like Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Boots). Interspersed amongst these are smaller boutique stores and an organic grocer.

  I add up and subtract the days we’ve spent travelling, allowing for stopovers, and work out that it’s Saturday morning. The street is alive with shoppers. It all looks like a scene from the Shirley Hughes picture books that Olly read me when I was little and that I then read to the twins and Sibbi, Dogger or Alfie Gets in First. Two little girls in ballet practice outfits skim the pavement in their ballet slippers, a few boys (and some girls) in footy gear – or soccer, I suppose – weave between slow adults. There are old people shuffling along together with little dogs on leads, and there are young-and-in-love couples.

  There’s a group of teenage girls my age, wearing similar but somehow different clothes to back home, with similar but somehow different expressions on their faces. Feeling suddenly conspicuous and wrong, I turn away from them, and find myself walking into a churchyard where a jumble sale is being held.

  I line up for a coffee. I get to the front of the queue and give my name for the order and then realise I have no English money, just a few Australian gold coins tucked in the pocket of my jeans. Embarrassed, I cancel my mocha, aware that I sound harshly Australian among all the musical English dialects around her.

  The churchyard is quite small, but I can’t remember where I came in and I start to feel trapped and panicky. I find another exit, by some children’s play equipment, but if I walk out that way, I won’t be able to retrace my steps home.

  Let’s take a recap: massive fight with the olds this morning, absolutely hammered by jetlag, and did I really say I wanted to go to some posh girls school? And last but not least, now I’m lost in a foreign country. With no money.

  ‘Um, hello . . . Else?’ a voice says. ‘You looked like you need this.’

  It’s a girl – or is a boy? No, a girl, a little younger than me maybe. She’s got dyed red hair that points upwards, deliberately or not, I can’t tell. I realise she’s holding out a takeaway cup with Else scrawled on the side.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ the girl says. ‘Here –’ She takes a sip. ‘See? Not poisoned, I promise.’

  ‘Though to be fair, it now has your germs in it,’ I say, but it doesn’t come out sounding as friendly as I intended.

  ‘Sorry! I’m an idiot. You don’t have to drink it, but I’m probably not infectious.’

  ‘It’s fine. It was a dumb joke.’ I take the cup. ‘See. Mm.’ I sip it. For some reason I expect British coffee to taste awful, but it’s actually okay. Comforting. ‘Aren’t you having one?’

  ‘I have to go and play.’

  ‘Play?’ At first I think she means on the playground, the swings and slides and everything.

  ‘Oh, not that sort of play. Music.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ I say, wearily. ‘You play the violin.’

  ‘Wow, that is eerie. Are you psychic?’

  ‘More sort of . . . cursed.’

  ‘My name’s Adelaide. I play with my friend Ren over there. He’s Malaysian, but he grew up in Darwin.’

  I look over at a boy with long, straight hair almost to his shoulders, and a long serious face. He’s tuning a violin. I turn back to Adelaide, who seems to be waiting for me to say something.

  ‘I don’t, like, know him or anything,’ I say. ‘I’ve never even been to Darwin.’

  ‘But you are from Australia?’

  ‘I flew in from Melbourne yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, wow, intense. How long for?’

  I shrug. ‘Forever, I guess.’

  ‘Gosh. Well, we play here every fortnight.’

  ‘You better go. It looks like he’s waiting for you.’

  Adelaide walks over. Ren beats out a staccato rhythm – Da! da-da-da-dum da-da-da-dum – that’s oddly familiar. It’s only when Adelaide starts some long bowing that I realise they’re playing the Doctor Who theme. I almost laugh. It’s pretty cute. They’re a sweet couple. Unexpectedly, tears well up in my eyes. It’s the jetlag, I tell myself. I take a big gulp of coffee and catch sight of a gap between stalls on the oth
er side of the market, which might be where I came in.

  More by luck than good management, I find myself back at Outhwaite House. And for once it’s not me who is in trouble, but Clancy, who made friends with the next-door neighbour and then disappeared over to her house without telling anyone where he was going. The twins have been off somewhere too, cooking up some scheme, or having some small adventure, unknown to the rest of us as usual.

  ‘We’re not at home anymore,’ Olly is shouting as I walk in. ‘You’re all used to a lot of freedom, coming and going when you please. But this is a big city! A foreign country! You can’t just wander off without telling us where you’re going. And Sibbi, you need to say in the house or the garden – the back garden, not the front.’

  ‘Oh, well –’ Dave starts, but Olly flashes him a look, and his words are left hanging in the air. I’m surprised too. It isn’t like Olly to be so protective.

  ‘Not the front,’ Olly repeats. ‘There’s traffic, strangers . . . it’s a whole country of strangers. You could easily get lost or hurt or – or worse! And Oscar, Finn, Clancy, even you, Else. You all need to tell us exactly where you’re going and what time you’ll be back.’

  ‘Me?’ I say. ‘Not me.’

  ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,’ Finn says.

  ‘We get it,’ Oscar adds.

  ‘I really hope you do,’ says Olly, and she glares at me. ‘Life has changed for the Outhwaite family. We all need to get used to it.’

  In my room, I open up my laptop and send Sam an email.

  I left my violin in the van in Australia. Am I the most ridiculous human in the history of the universe?

  I wait, but it must be the middle of the night there or something, because Sam doesn’t respond.

  CLANCY

  ‘MR BROMPTON HAS organised the school tours,’ Dad says at dinner.

  ‘Already?’ Else says.

  ‘We’ve been here a week,’ says Dave.

  Only a week? It’s starting to feel normal to me. I’ve had the odd twinge of homesickness, but England is just there, all the time, out the window, out the front door. And Pippa is there too, when she isn’t at school.

  Mum dishes up bowls of tomato soup. I tear open a seedy roll and reach for the butter and cheese.

  Else rolls her eyes. ‘We don’t need to go on a tour. We’ve got the brochures.’

  ‘You’ll have to take the children,’ Mum says to Dad. ‘I promised my supervisor I’d get a chapter of my thesis to her this week and it’s a mess.’

  Dad frowns. ‘I suppose I can make that work. I might have to push back the meeting with the estate lawyers. You sure you don’t want to come and look over the schools too? I thought you would be interested.’

  Mum hesitates a moment. But she shakes her head, no.

  Mum has hardly left Outhwaite House since we arrived. She resists all invitations to walk down to the banks of the Thames or go to Richmond Park to see the hipster deer. We haven’t been to a single museum or art gallery or historic building or any of the other touristy things Dad brings home brochures for. She’s always muttering about deadlines and milestones, promising to take us tomorrow, next week. Soon. Sometime. Not now. Later. Soon.

  ALMOST ANNIE AND HARDLY ALICE

  ‘DOROTHY WAS MISERABLE at that school,’ Almost Annie frets, as Else stands at the hallway mirror, dragging her fingers through her knotty hair. Of course Else can’t see or hear Almost Annie, but she scowls anyway.

  ‘Was she?’ asks Hardly Alice, distractedly. She and Sibbi are both hunched over Oscar in the living room, watching him play a game on Dave’s phone.

  ‘Oh, you and your memory!’ says Annie. ‘The only the reason she donated so much money was to try to prevent girls being as miserable as she was. She practically built the science wing herself. Though I’d have gone with a library myself.’ Alive, Annie was not a proficient reader – her education cut short when she was sent out to work – but death has given her plenty of time to refine the art, sitting beside Dorothy, reading over her shoulder.

  ‘Mm?’ Alice says, craning her neck to see Oscar’s screen better. ‘I’d have liked to be a scientist. Or an engineer. I’d like to know how these things work.’

  ‘Well, you’d have been a century and a half too early, at least.’

  ‘What do you think stopped us from inventing these things, in our day?’

  Almost Annie shakes her head in disbelief. ‘Our day? You’re fifty years older than I am. At least!’

  ‘Am I?’ Hardly Alice asks, distracted. ‘Oh, honestly, child! Tilt left, not right! If only I could drive it.’

  Hardly Alice loses patience with Oscar and wanders over to stand beside Else, who is at the mirror, fiddling nervously with her hair. Of course Else can’t see Alice’s image reflected in the glass, but Alice sees herself. Her hand rises to her own hair, always perfectly done up on top of her head. ‘I feel this is my day, really. Change happens all the time, but at such a glacial pace, that it is as if nothing really changes at all. Don’t you think? Summer, winter, dinner, breakfast, all of them different, and yet all of them the same.’

  ‘Oh, everything changes. So many changes! People change. They come and go. Children grow up so fast. Once it was Miss Dorothy and her brothers, rest their souls, and now we have Miss Sibbi and Master Oscar and Master Finn and . . .’

  ‘Much of a muchness though, aren’t they? I mean they could all have been here before. A brother, a cousin, a nephew, an uncle, a baby, a very old man. One into the other. Copies. Repeats.’

  ‘All so very different, though,’ Almost Annie protests.

  ‘And yet,’ Hardly Alice repeats, studying her own face next to Else’s, ‘all very much the same.’

  ELSE

  AS WE WALK down the hallways of Kingsley College, the achingly familiar sound of tuning instruments drifts out of the practice rooms and I almost can’t bear it. Even I can see it’s a nice school, close to the river, in a leafy street, though the grounds are flat and treeless, with large expanses of soft-fall and spongy green lawns. The buildings are modern and geometrically interesting, with lots of space and light in the classrooms. The girls and boys wear the same grey shorts; the V-neck jumpers are a cheerful shade of blue.

  ‘It’s great,’ says Dave. ‘So well resourced compared to your old school, don’t you think, Else?’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘It smells funny,’ says Sibbi.

  Mr Nhill, the headteacher, doesn’t bat an eyelid. ‘A select group of our musicians are invited to workshops at the Royal Academy of Music throughout the year. Your dad tells me you’re a keen violinist, Else. Have you got Royal Academy aspirations?’

  I shrug. ‘I’m not that keen.’

  ‘She’s having a bit of a hiatus,’ Dave says, shooting me a death look. ‘With the move and all.’

  ‘I hope you’re practising every day,’ Mr Nhill says. ‘You don’t want to fall behind. What about you boys? Do you play anything?’

  Oscar says, ‘Apparently we could only afford one musical genius in the family.’

  ‘Oscar!’ Dave is mortified. Even I’m embarrassed by the way we are all behaving. I will myself to ask something about the music programme, but I can’t think of a single thing to say.

  ‘Oh, hello there!’ A passing student stops in her tracks. I recognise her strangely upwards-sweeping hair. ‘You’re Australian and I’m Adelaide, remember? We met the other day. At the farmer’s market? I gave you my germs?’

  I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t want Dave to think I’ve been off happily making friends like Clancy, especially not a friend who goes to this school, and definitely not a violin-playing friend.

  ‘G’day,’ says Dave. ‘I’m Else’s dad. What do you think of the school?’

  ‘Oh, you know, it’s school.’ Adelaide makes a face and then meets Mr Nhill’s gaze. ‘Ahem. Which is to say I love it. Love. It. Well-rounded education. Top-notch teachers.’

  When Adelaide is gone, Mr Nhill says,
‘Very talented violinist.’

  ‘Technically proficient, I suppose,’ I say, and feel mean, though it is true that Adelaide played the notes well, while Ren played with more feeling, but less technique.

  ‘Exceptionally technically proficient,’ sniffs Mr Nhill.

  I think of Sam’s return email, that I just received this morning. You are definitely the most ridiculous human in the world, he’d written back. What are you going to do without your violin?

  ‘What do you teach?’ asks Dave.

  ‘I run the music program,’ says Mr Nhill.

  Mr Nhill hates us.

  The twins seem happy enough with Kingsley. There’s enough sport to keep Oscar happy and if Oscar is happy, Finn is happy. Or happy enough. Clancy’s happy because he’ll be back at the same school as the twins since the way their birthdays fall they’ll be able to start high school six months earlier than in Australia. Besides, this is where Pippa goes.

  ‘Am I going here?’ says Sibbi.

  ‘No,’ says Dave.’

  And then Sibbi is happy too.

  SIBBI

  WE ALL CATCH a bus back up Mortlake Road, towards Lady Emily Hartington and Penrose Infant School.

  ‘I suppose it’s convenient that they’re close together,’ says Daddy. ‘You could take Sibbi on the bus, Else.’

  ‘On the bus to where? There’s our house,’ says Sibbi.

  The boys ring the bell and the bus stops right outside Outhwaite House.

  Sibbi waves up to the top windows. ‘Hello, naughty house.’

  ‘Why naughty?’ says Daddy.

  ‘It thinks in bad words,’ says Sibbi. ‘It hates itself.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Daddy. ‘I don’t like the word hate.’

  ‘I told you it was naughty.’