The Alphabet Sisters

by Monica McInerney

  Carrie opened her mouth to protest, but one of Lola’s quelling looks had blasted her way and she shut it again.

  Scooping up the paper swans now and ignoring the state of some of their wings, Carrie replayed the conversation yet again. If only Lola had turned eighty a few months ago. A year ago, even. But no, it had to be now. And she had to insist on throwing a party. A huge party.

  “You wouldn’t be happy with a nice family dinner, you and me and Mum and Dad?” Carrie had suggested hopefully.

  “Of course not. I could die any day, and I want to go out with a bang. And I want Anna and Bett to see the explosion. Besides, I’ve got something very important I want the three of you to do for me.”

  “Important? What’s wrong? Lola, you’re not sick, are you?”

  “Don’t pry, Caroline. I said I want to talk to the three of you about it. Once I have the three of you in the same room together again.”

  The three of them. The three of them who hadn’t spoken to each other for years, let alone been in the same room. Or the same town. Or the same country even. And whose fault was it?

  Hers.

  Who did everyone blame?

  Her.

  But now it had all changed, hadn’t it? The reason none of them had spoken to each other in that time no longer existed. Which would make this reunion of Lola’s even more hideous and humiliating and horrible than it would normally have been.

  Carrie took her anger out on the last of the paper swans, crumpling it up in her hand and then immediately feeling guilty. “Sorry, swannie,” she said out loud, smoothing the serviette and readjusting the little paper beak. It now looked like it had been in a washing machine. She tucked it away in her pocket. The way her luck was going this one would end up on the bride’s place mat and she’d cause a scene. Carrie had already spent enough hours calming the young woman, as she’d fretted about everything from the number of prawns to be served in the prawn cocktails to the mathematical probabilities of it raining on her wedding day.

  Carrie had wanted to snap at her more than once. “You think the wedding day is stressful? Try getting through the marriage.”

  She jumped as the bell at reception rang once, twice, a third time. Right now she’d had enough of guests, too—especially guests who rang the bell more than once. She walked out, plastering a smile onto her face, knowing it was just several teeth short of a grimace. At least she was exercising her facial muscles. Lola would be pleased.

  “Good afternoon,” she said to the waiting couple, her voice sickly sweet. “I’m very sorry to have kept you.”

  Chapter Two

  A week before her flight back to Australia, Bett walked into the record company’s office in the center of London, took off her raincoat, sat down, and slowly, rhythmically, banged her head against the pile of papers on her desk.

  “Great new move,” Jessica said, wandering over. “Can’t see it taking off in the clubs though.”

  Bett looked up, her head still on the desk. “You should have seen this one, Jess, heard the things he was saying.”

  Sprawled on the sofa in the plush Kensington hotel room, the young pop singer had fixed Bett Quinlan with a sincere blue gaze and tossed his head so a lock of blond hair shimmered across his forehead. “I want to grow with my music but stay close to my beginnings. Most of all, I want to keep it real.”

  Bett had blinked twice at him and tapped her pen against her teeth. Keep it real? That could be tricky. With all the makeup and hair gel he was wearing, it was already hard to tell where his body stopped and the cosmetics industry took over. As for staying close to his beginnings—he was barely out of his teens as it was. Any closer to his beginnings and he’d be back in a pram.

  There’d been a long awkward silence before he finally shifted in his seat and shot her another of his well-practiced blue gazes. “Well? Was that answer okay?”

  Answer? She’d already forgotten the question. Her mind had been drifting to Lola’s birthday party. Come on, Bett, concentrate. She gave herself a mental shake. “Sorry, Grover.”

  “Groover.”

  “Pardon?”

  “My name’s Groover, not Grover.”

  “Groover, sorry. Yes, that answer was great, thanks. Well rehearsed. Well delivered.” She ran her eye down the list of sample interview questions in the notebook in front of her, fighting an inclination to pick Groover up, tuck him under her arm, and make a run for it. She could tell people he was her foster child. Her butler. Anything to get him out of the music industry before it had eaten him alive, pretty face, sweet singing voice, and all.

  “Where are our consciences, Jess?” Bett asked now in mock despair. “We’re sending young men to their deaths, armed with nothing but microphones.”

  “Rubbish. We’re sending them on their way to fame and fortune. Don’t tell me you’re getting all pure about music again. You child performers are all the same, pining after more innocent times, when all it took to put on a good show was a few matching outfits and a tinny backing track.”

  “Yes, hilarious.” Jessica hadn’t stopped teasing her about the Alphabet Sisters or the situation with her sisters since the night in Bett’s flat. “You’re very cruel, you know. I thought you’d promised to leave me alone about all of that.” She should never have mentioned it to her.

  “No, I promised to help toughen you up about all of that. Anyway, I can’t leave you alone. I have to give you another assignment. Karl wants you to get onto it straightaway.”

  “He deigned to ring?” Since their boss had floated the record company on the stock market and become an instant millionaire, he hadn’t found it quite so necessary to come into work every day.

  “Well, a quick call. Then he faxed. He’s in Spain, I think. Or Portugal. He told me he wants to work you to the bone till you leave on Friday. Said he must have been off his head giving you that week off to go to your granny’s party.”

  “He was, actually.”

  Jessica put the folder on the desk beside her. “It’s this new band from West London he’s signed. He wants you to whip up a quick article for the in-store mags.”

  “But I can’t write about them. I haven’t seen them play live yet.”

  “That’s because they haven’t played live yet. Probably never will play live. Don’t even know if they can play live. Here, have a look.”

  Bett took the biogs and photo. Five children in heavy eye makeup sneered at her. If they were hers, she’d tell them to wash that muck off their faces and go and do their homework. “What are they called?”

  “Dogs from Hell. Except Karl calls them Puppies from Hammersmith.”

  Five Go Mad in Mummy’s Makeup, more like it, Bett thought. “What on earth’s Karl thinking this time?”

  “He’s hoping it’ll revive punk. He bought the back catalogue of all these old punk bands, and he wants to give them a kick-along.”

  Bett looked at the photo again. “So they’re angry young musicians?”

  “Oh, very angry,” Jessica laughed. “They’re furious. Cross as two sticks. Haven’t stopped stamping their feet since we signed them.”

  Bett turned the sample tape over, then rattled it, as if that would give her a taste of their music. The tape machine was broken and the CD player was currently propping up a bookshelf. “What do they sound like?”

  Jessica emitted a high-pitched screech, shook her head so her hair flew around, then sang in a guttural voice. “ ‘Ravens in the night, kill the beast, anarchy rules,’ that kind of thing. Except on the first demo they sang an-Archie. As in the man’s name. Isn’t that sweet? They can’t even read.”

  Bett pretended to weep as she opened a new document on her computer screen. As she wrote she started speaking the words aloud in a dull monotone, silently saying good-bye to any final shred of journalistic credibility.

  They’re young, they’re angry, and they’re here. London’s newest music sensation, Dogs from Hell, has arrived with a bang and a wallop.…

  She stopped t
here, finding it hard to concentrate. More to the point, finding it hard to care about the sulky-faced brats whom she knew had been chosen for their looks rather than any musical talent. She stared out the window instead, suddenly filled with gloom.

  She’d been working in the press office of this small but very successful record company for two and a half years, writing media releases and puff pieces for record-store magazines, as well as training their artists in interview techniques. At the start it had been a dream job, a combination of her love for music and for writing. But lately it had started to wear her down. She’d been feeling the same way about London, even though she had loved it when she first arrived. Little things seemed to be getting to her.

  The night before she’d been working late, coaching a new rap singer in radio interview techniques. It had been past nine o’clock when she left the studio, caught the tube home, and started the fifteen-minute walk from the station to her basement flat, one of eight in a large three-story Camden Town terrace house. She was tired, hungry, and cold by the time her street was finally in sight. She was five steps from her door when she remembered taking her keys out of her bag that afternoon when she searched for her diary. Four steps away when she remembered seeing them on her desk and thinking, Don’t forget those. And two steps away when she realized she’d left them at work.

  “In you go, then, love.” The locksmith had taken less than ten seconds to open her door. It had, however, taken him nearly two hours to arrive. Bett was frozen.

  “Thanks,” she’d said, through icy-cold lips, handing over nearly fifty pounds. It was easy to see why he was so cheerful.

  “Now, love, far be it from me to put myself out of a job, but have you thought about leaving a spare key with friends or family? In case this happens again?”

  She’d nodded, smiled politely. She’d spent the time waiting for him thinking just that, before realizing with a dull aching feeling that not only did she have no family here, but no friends close by either. Jessica lived on the other side of London. There were several other people, journalists and a band booker in one of the live music pubs, whom she met occasionally for a drink, but she could hardly call them close friends. She couldn’t really leave a key with them either.

  She blinked now and dragged her attention back to the computer in front of her, trying to concentrate again. Cheer up, Bett, she told herself firmly. She gazed around the office, taking in all the band posters, the piles of CDs, the overflowing files of press clippings. Everything was peachy, wasn’t it? She was living in the epicenter of the music industry, she had a great job, she’d never been happier. Not only that, she was about to fly home to Australia, to see Lola and her parents for a week. And yes, all right, Anna and Glenn and Carrie and Matthew would be there, and yes, it would be awkward and uncomfortable, but she was a grown woman and she’d cope. And it would be great to see her niece, Ellen, again, too, wouldn’t it? Yes. Exactly. She shut her eyes tight, then opened them again, stared intently at the computer screen, and started typing.

  Lead singer Mutt Dagger says it’s time that real music took over from the manufactured bands. “Enough of this candy crap. People want truth and energy in their music, and that’s what we’re giving them. This is us telling our stories with our music. And the difference is we’re telling it as it is.”

  Bett pressed Save, then glanced down at the folder of plane tickets beside her coffee cup. She’d spent her lunch hour with her travel agent, running through all the flight details, paying the final installment. It was only afterward she noticed she’d conducted the entire conversation with a piece of spinach from her lunchtime salad on her front tooth, covering it so completely, in fact, it looked like she had lost a tooth, in pure witch fashion. On the way back to the office she’d had an overwhelming urge to ring her sister Anna in Sydney, to tell her about it and hear Anna’s laugh. Except she didn’t make those sorts of calls to her sisters anymore, did she? Calls about disastrous days or wild nights, work trials or love lives or friends or recipes or hangovers or … anything.

  The band combines a youthful energy with pure adrenaline, producing a raw, rocky sound, guitar-edged and bass-driven.

  No, they don’t, she thought. She typed quickly. The band do what they’re told by a middle-aged man who is living out his own musical fantasies and making a lot of money along the way out of kids reared on reality TV programs.

  She started to growl, a constant, satisfying kind of noise from the back of her throat.

  Jessica peered over her own computer screen. “Bett, are you okay?”

  She stopped midgrowl to nod, then started it up again as she kept writing.

  The band’s drummer, Raven Deathmask, is a self-described anarchist and spotty-faced little tosshead who looks like he may still wear nappies.

  Bett pressed Delete and tried again.

  The band’s first album is a remarkable feat of hideous guitar squeals and nonsense lyrics about rebellion when the most any of the spoiled kids in this manufactured band have had to rebel against is—

  Stop it, Bett. She pressed Delete once more.

  Dogs from Hell are a force to be reckoned with, combining youth, anger, and bad haircuts—

  Bett stopped writing altogether. A new, frightening thought had appeared in large letters in her head.

  She didn’t want to do this anymore. It wasn’t about music; it was about packaging. Karl had said as much to her a month ago, on one of his fleeting visits to the office. “Just a license to print money, Bett. Stop taking it so seriously. Pop singers, disposable music, remember?”

  She looked out the window at the rain, the sky dark at four P.M. She thought of her flat. Small and cold, about as homely as a bus shelter. She thought of the Christmas just past. She had celebrated with Jessica and her family at their home in Suffolk, keeping her voice bright and cheery on the phone to her parents and Lola in South Australia. She’d felt miserable inside.

  She pictured the travel agent earlier that day. “It’s such a long way to travel for seven days. You’ll have only just recovered and you’ll be on your way back. Are you sure you can’t stay longer?”

  Her words to Lola the day she’d received her fax flashed into her mind. What had she said? That she couldn’t come back to Australia because she had a life here in London? What she had here wasn’t a life. Not the sort of life she wanted anymore, anyway.

  The letters in her head were now in flashing neon. There were shadows and doubts underneath—what she would do for work and where she would live, not to mention the idea of her sisters—but she batted them away. She stared over at Jessica, amazed at what she was about to say, and even more amazed by how sure she felt about it. Do it, Bett, she thought. Quickly. Before you change your mind.

  “Jessica, can you give me Karl’s mobile number?”

  The other woman glanced up from her computer. “You’re going to ring him? That’s taking your life in your hands. Why would you want to do that?”

  Do it, Bett. Be brave. Go home for good. Bett swallowed. “I think I’m about to resign.”

  In Sydney, Anna Quinlan was finishing her packing. She looked up as her daughter came into the room holding a framed photograph.

  “Should I bring this, Mum?”

  Anna took the photo. It was the two of them, taken twelve months previously, both smiling at the camera, Ellen’s perfect six-year-old face upturned. “Why do you want to take it, Ellie?”

  “So I can show Really-Great-Gran what I used to look like. In case she’s forgotten. In case she decides she doesn’t like me like this either.”

  “Ellie, Lola doesn’t need to see that. She loves you whatever you look like.”

  Ellen’s voice became small. “What if she calls me names, though? Like everyone else does?”

  “Oh, Ellie, she won’t. Don’t think things like that.” Anna tried to keep her voice steady. How was she supposed to handle this? Ask Ellen to hold on a moment while she ran and checked the self-help books? It kept happening—just
when Anna thought she had things running smoothly, out of the blue there’d be a question like this. Or a loud child’s voice in the supermarket like yesterday.

  “Mummy, what’s wrong with that girl’s face?”

  “Shh, don’t stare.”

  Anna had at least had experience of that situation and knew the best thing to do. She had coolly answered the child. “It’s a scar. My daughter was attacked by a dog last year.” She was half tempted to carry a photo album with her. “See,” she’d say at times like that, “she was perfect when she was born. But then I foolishly took her to the park one afternoon and someone had a Rottweiler on the loose and the dog thought my little girl was a toy. And by the time I could drag her away from him, his teeth had torn half her face.”

  Anna smoothed back her daughter’s hair. “Ellie, your dad and I and your Really-Great-Gran and your gran and your grandpa love you no matter what you look like.”

  “My aunties, too?”

  Anna’s voice didn’t change. “Your aunties, too. All of us, no matter what you look like, what you’re wearing, how messy your hair is, and how bad you smell, okay?”

  That brought a glimmer of a smile. “Even if I smell really bad and haven’t brushed my hair for a year?”

  “Two years even. Now, put that away and let’s finish your proper packing.”

  Ellen put her hands on her hips. “I have finished. Can we run through our checklist?”

  Our checklist? Anna had been hearing phrase after phrase of her own coming out of Ellen’s mouth lately. She bit back another smile, not wanting Ellen to think she was laughing at her. Ellen had answered the phone ahead of the babysitter when Anna rang home several nights earlier. “May I help you?” Ellen had said. They had spoken for a few minutes before Ellen had asked, in all seriousness, “And were you ringing about anything in particular?” There was something about these pronouncements, and that solemn little voice and face of hers, that always went straight to Anna’s core. She barely noticed Ellen’s scar anymore. She was aware of it—how could she not be?—but it didn’t change the essence of Ellen. The body was … what was it? Her casing. The wrapping. Everything else was normal.