The Alphabet Sisters

by Monica McInerney

  “Well, that’s it in a nutshell, I suppose.”

  “That must have been terrible for you.”

  She took a sip of wine. “Yes, it was. It’s been hard. I’ve missed them a lot.”

  “Them?”

  “Anna and Carrie.”

  “I actually meant it must have been terrible when your fiancé left you for your sister.”

  Bett blinked. “Yes. Yes, it was.”

  The waiter came then with their main courses. Bett was glad of the interruption, taking the opportunity to steer the conversation back to safer ground. They spoke about the musical, about Lola, and then Richard moved on to the Alphabet Sisters again.

  “Do you miss those days? All that adulation? The tours? The motel rooms?”

  “Well, we’d grown up in motel rooms, so that was never a luxury for us.”

  He laughed. “No, I suppose not. What did you demand? That the promoters give you a three-bedroom suburban house to stay in?”

  “Exactly. And you should have seen our backstage requests. Bottles of lemonade. Comics. Barbie dolls.”

  “Now we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty.” He grinned. “I think I always wanted to be a showbiz journalist. You know, sniffing out the stories behind the stories, the truth behind the public image.”

  “Oh, we were squeaky clean, I promise. Except for the time Anna and I stole a bottle of Dad’s wine. And Lola told Carrie off for swearing a few times, but I think she apologized afterward.”

  “So why did it come to an end?”

  Bett thought about it. She could wave it away. Or she could tell the truth. “Because of me.”

  “You?”

  “I finished it. I refused to do it anymore.”

  “Why?”

  Because of their awful final performance at the local music society Christmas show. The real number one on her embarrassing stories hit parade. “It’s a long story.”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She took a sip of her wine, gathered her thoughts, then started to talk.

  They’d been too old for it, really—Anna eighteen, Bett sixteen, Carrie nearly fourteen. The three of them had stood in age order, as always. Lola had gone all out on their outfits, dressing each of them in red satin, with a green tinsel hat. In the mirror, Bett had been aware that her dress was tighter on her than Carrie’s and Anna’s were, but Lola had just hugged her, told her she was gorgeous, and sent the three of them out onto the stage.

  Midway through “Sisters,” their opening number, she looked out into the audience and noticed the three cool boys of the town. Her heart gave a leap, as she veered from self-consciousness to excitement. She looked away, then looked back. The three of them were actually looking at her, concentrating on her for once, not Anna, not Carrie. She had a rush of confidence, stood straighter, sang louder, smiled wider.

  Then one of them shouted, “Piggy in the Middle.”

  The people in the front of the hall heard. She noticed neighbors leaning and asking what he’d said and then stifling a laugh themselves. The three boys kept it up as a sort of chant, under their breaths. She tried to keep singing, knowing her cheeks were fiery red, feeling as though her skin was about to burst. They nudged a few of their other friends into it as well then, a row of them mouthing the chant “Piggy in the Middle.” Anna hadn’t noticed or, if she had, hadn’t cared—too busy striking an aloof pose, always the lady. Carrie had probably been too busy reveling in the fact she was attracting most of the admiring glances, people nudging each other and whispering, “Isn’t that little one cute?”

  Somehow she got through the other three songs. But she was in tears when they came offstage. Lola was waiting. She had noticed everything. “They’re just stupid, silly boys, Bett. Ignore them, do you hear me?”

  In Lola’s arms, Bett was almost comforted. Then from behind her came Carrie’s voice. “Maybe you could lose a bit of weight, Bett, if you don’t mind me saying. We probably would look better if we were all the same sort of size.”

  Her tears stopped abruptly. She felt as though iced water had been flung over her. “What do you mean by that? I spoil the look?”

  “Not spoil it. But if we are going to do this thing seriously, keep up the Alphabet Sisters, then maybe you do need to think about losing some weight.”

  Bett turned to her other sister. “And what do you think, Anna? Do you think I should lose weight?”

  Anna gave a shrug. “Carrie’s got a point, yes. But it’s your choice how you look.”

  Bett refused to sing with the Alphabet Sisters from that moment on. There had been three more performances booked after the Christmas one, but she point-blank refused to do them. Lola tried talking sense. Anna tried to apologize. Carrie was sent in, pleading, eyes filling with tears. But it was too late for Bett. The Piggy in the Middle taunt had lodged itself firmly in her brain. She was never going to perform with her sisters again.

  Anna didn’t mind too much. She’d already set her heart on getting into drama school and treated the Alphabet Sisters as a joke by this stage. But Carrie was very upset. One of the performances was going to be televised on the local TV network. She’d been looking forward to it for weeks. She kept trying to talk Bett around.

  “Please. You have to do it, Bett.”

  “No, I don’t. I told you, I’m never singing with you again.”

  “But I apologized.”

  “Only because Lola told you to.”

  “But I really am sorry.”

  “You should have thought before you spoke.”

  “You’re spoiling it for everyone else. Not just me. For Lola. For the TV people.”

  “I would have thought you and Anna would love to have the stage to yourself, without me spoiling the perfect look.”

  Carrie had lost her temper. “I didn’t call you Piggy in the Middle, it was those boys. But you are behaving like a pig now. A selfish pig. And I’ll get you back for this, I promise.”

  Bett didn’t tell Richard this, but the truth was that her sisters’ lack of support had hurt far more than the taunts. It had been the start of a horrible period of her life. From that moment on it seemed as though Anna and Carrie had been set adrift from her, into a world of romance, dates, boys, and confidence. Bett had felt like Cinderella and Bessie Bunter rolled into one—overweight, unhappy, finding pleasure only in food and books and her piano.

  “And that was the end of it,” she said to Richard. “We just stopped.”

  He had been listening closely. “They always say it’s the people closest to you who know how to hurt you the most.”

  “I suppose so.” She tried to lighten the mood. “That’ll teach you to ask me a question when I’ve had half a bottle of wine. You should have shut me up.”

  “I didn’t want to. I was very interested. And I’m sorry, Bett. Being a teenager’s not much fun for anyone, but that must have been hard on you.”

  “Yes. Yes it was, actually.”

  “And is that why you think Carrie made a play for Matthew? To get you back for something that had happened years before?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said that Carrie told you she was going to get you back for it one day. And then years later she broke up your engagement and married your fiancé. Do you think it was connected?”

  Was he mad? Carrie and Matthew had genuinely fallen in love. Bett had always known that. She’d seen how they were with each other. It had been an almost instant attraction.

  She stared at him as she realized what she’d just admitted to herself. Behind his glasses, Richard was assessing her closely. Kindly, but still closely. She decided then she’d definitely had enough of talking about herself.

  “No, I don’t think it was connected at all. In fact, I’m sure it wasn’t.” She made a point of picking up the water jug and refilling his glass until it was nearly overflowing. “So, enough about me.” She was pleased with how firm her voice sounded. “This book of yours, Richard. It’s set in the 1850s, did you say?�
�

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Anna glanced at the dashboard clock as she drove through Auburn, the town that marked the start of the Clare Valley. She was making good time. She noticed her hands on the steering wheel. They were actually quite relaxed, not gripping it like it was a lifeline. In Sydney she’d often caught herself driving like that. Then again, in Sydney lots of things had been different. Up there her thinking time had been filled with jagged thoughts of Glenn, memories of rows past and premonitions of arguments they were sure to have in the future, a constant barrage of angry voices and disagreements. But since she’d been in the Valley there had been softer images in her mind. Nicer things to think about.

  The musical, for one. It had surprised her how much she was enjoying it. Not just the rehearsals, but all the production side as well. She’d had a very productive trip to Adelaide today, collecting the final props and costumes from different fancy-dress shops around the city. Everything was slowly coming together.

  She was even feeling a bit better. Not quite so tense. She’d tried to explain exactly that to the doctor that morning, when she’d called in to the surgery for her follow-up appointment. She’d expected to get the cheerful red-faced older man again, not this serious-faced woman, who looked less than twenty-five and seemed determined to find out the cause of every scratch or bump she’d ever had in her life.

  “Look, I’m sure it’s probably just stress,” Anna had said to her. “As your colleague said a few weeks ago, I needed to slow down a bit.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that breathlessness. How many weeks now?”

  “A month, maybe two.”

  “And it’s getting worse?”

  “I’ve been stressed,” she repeated. “It’s probably just panic attacks. And things are getting much better at home.” Not just with her sisters, either. She’d even managed to have a normal phone conversation with Glenn in Singapore. Short, but at least neither of them had hung up.

  “You’ve never had asthma?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Anna, I’d like you to have a scan. Just to ease all our minds.”

  “Is that necessary? It’s just I’ve a lot on, and it means coming down to the city again. I live two hours away.” She gave the young doctor the look that usually stopped other people in their tracks. Not this time.

  “I think it’s very necessary, to put my mind at rest as much as yours. That’s why we have all this technology, to show us what’s not there as well as what might be there.” She made several phone calls, while Anna sat fidgeting.

  The doctor put down the phone and smiled. “We can get you in at the end of next week. They’ve had a cancellation.”

  Anna scribbled the date and the address in her diary. It was two days after the musical. She’d be down in Adelaide anyway returning the costumes. “Fine, thanks.”

  As she walked back out to the car she’d taken her mobile from her bag and checked her messages. There was just one, from Lola, asking her to call. There’d been a little incident with Ellen at school today, but it was nothing to worry about.

  Anna had called the number immediately, her heart beating faster. “What is it, Lola? Not more trouble?”

  “Hello, darling. No, I wouldn’t say it’s trouble exactly.”

  How could Lola sound so calm? Amused even? “More bullying? Or no, not another dog?”

  “No, a sheep. Bumper the sheep, to be precise.”

  “Bumper?”

  “Ellen took Bumper to school today. For show-and-tell. I had a phone call half an hour ago from her teacher to ask if I could come and collect him.”

  Anna had felt a bubble of laughter start deep inside her. “How did she get him there without anyone seeing? I thought Bett walked her to school this morning.”

  “She did, bright and early. Then it seems Ellen walked back to the motel, untied Bumper, and headed back to school. Along the back roads, you’ll be pleased to know.”

  “And her teacher didn’t mind?”

  “The teacher didn’t know until it was Ellen’s turn to stand up in front of the class. She apparently said, and I quote, that she had to ‘slip outside for a moment and fetch something.’ She’d tethered him to a tree at the end of the playground.” Lola was laughing now, too. “You probably also should know that she’s invited everyone in her class back to the motel for her birthday party. And they’ve all accepted.”

  “But it’s not her birthday for months.”

  “I don’t think she specified a date. She seemed more interested in outlining what the food and entertainment would be. Prawn cocktails, hide-and-seek in the motel rooms, and rides on Bumper’s back featured quite prominently, I believe.”

  Anna had been laughing properly by then. “Oh, Lola, I’m sorry. Can you sort it out for me or do you want me to drive back right now?”

  “Sort it out? What’s there to sort out? I’m going to take lessons from her.”

  Anna grinned again at the thought of it. Being in the Valley had been so good for Ellen. She had noticed her daughter growing more confident every day. Happier. More relaxed. The way a child should be.

  As she drove past more vineyards, getting closer to Clare, Anna started thinking of someone who made her feel good and happy and relaxed. Richard. She thought of the late-night glasses of wine and conversations they’d shared. He was so curious, courteous. He had a way of resting his head slightly on one side, like an owl, she’d thought at first, but then it became more endearing than that. He wore glasses, which he adjusted a lot, especially when he was talking passionately about something. He liked cricket, and didn’t like it when she told him how bad the English team were these days. He also disagreed with her opinions on Harold Pinter, Neil Simon, and David Hare, but completely agreed with her in regard to Shakespeare, Beckett, and O’Casey. That had led to her telling him all about her unsuccessful acting career and how it had led to her new very successful voice-over career.

  He had turned on the small TV in the room and made her sit with him until one of her ads came on. They hadn’t had to wait long. He sat in silence as the ad played. Afterward he took her hands and kissed her on each cheek. “You were marvelous, darling. Such a combination of pathos and urgency. It was a truly bravura performance.”

  The ad was for brake fluid, and she had been the voice of the car. She’d inclined her head, accepting the praise, trying not to laugh. “I do actually think that was one of my best moments.”

  “Can I get a video? I’d love to see it again. I’m sure there were some subtleties of your performance I missed.”

  She smiled now, remembering the teasing. Fun teasing, not the sneering way Glenn had often spoken about her work. They’d talked for hours that night. He’d told her more about his life in London. He’d talked about the three-year relationship he’d had with a fellow reporter, until she had ended it the year before. It was another reason why he had decided to leave London. And so she had told him about Glenn, and Glenn and Julie, and Glenn and Julie and Singapore.

  She felt warm, good, thinking about him. And the more time she spent with him, the sexier she was finding him, too. Not in the confident, macho way she had found Glenn sexy. Richard was more quietly confident, slow burning rather than white heat. She found it even more attractive that he hadn’t made a pass at her. He just listened. Seemed so interested. When it was time to leave he walked her to her own room, five doors down. “Sleep tight,” he’d said, before kissing her on the cheek, gently touching her arm at the same time. She had never felt quite so cared for in her life.

  They’d arranged to meet for a glass of wine when she got home tonight. He was taking Lola out to dinner, he’d told her the night before, but expected to be home by eleven. It was half-past ten. She couldn’t wait to see him.

  Bett and Richard stood in the motel carpark. “Thanks, Richard. That was a lovely night.”

  “You’re welcome, Bett. I enjoyed it, too.”

  She wondered whether she should invite him in for
a glass of wine. Or would he invite her in for a glass of wine? But there was no spark between them, she’d realized. She liked him, enjoyed talking to him, even if she had told him too much. But that was all.

  “Well, good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Inside her room, she sat on the bed and pulled her knees under her chin. Her conversation over dinner kept echoing in her mind.

  “It’s been hard. I’ve missed them a lot.”

  “Them?”

  “Anna and Carrie.”

  “I actually meant it must have been terrible when your fiancé left you for your sister.”

  She went into the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror, not liking what she saw. She wiped her hand across her lips, smearing her lip gloss. She leaned in closer and saw her mascara was already smudged. How many years had she stared at that face, felt cross, felt angry, felt powerless? When was maturity going to kick in? When would she get the ability to deal confidently with everything life sent to her?

  She decided to have a shower, needing to stand under the stream of water, wash away some of the troubling thoughts. She turned the shower tap on full blast, wanting to fill the room with steam before she got in. As she went back out to the bedroom area to get her dressing gown, she heard a car pull up next door, the headlights momentarily coming through the thin fabric of the motel curtains. Anna arriving home from her trip to Adelaide, she guessed. Five to eleven, a late enough night for her. Bett undressed, stepped under the streaming water, and shut her eyes.

  After carrying the costumes into her room, Anna simply turned off the light again, shut the door after her, and walked five doors down. She knocked lightly, two little taps.

  He answered immediately. “Anna, welcome back.” His smile was as warm as his voice.

  “Hello, Richard.” She took in every detail of him.

  “Anna? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She was more than fine. She was happy, she realized. She was home at the motel. She knew Ellen was safe in Lola’s room. There had been a note on Anna’s bed in Ellen’s best handwriting. “I love you Mummy,” with a picture of Bumper the sheep and the two of them in bright colors. Anna felt light after months of heaviness. She spoke softly, but surely. “Richard, I know I should be coy. And that we should spend more time together first. And have dinner, and go for walks, and get to know each other better. But I don’t want to wait that long. I want to go to bed with you.”