Lies Like Love
Page 31
Rebecca
After
They tried to make me go to my sister’s funeral today. In the end I had to give in. The black dress Hephzibah had worn last year when Granny died hung heavy from my bones and I wore it like armour. She’d always been bigger. Born first, stronger, prettier, the popular twin. I’d been walking in her shadow for sixteen years and I liked its cool darkness; it was a safe place to hide. Now I shivered in the stark January air. It was the first day of the New Year and my sister had been dead for one whole week.
Granny had been kind and we’d looked forward to staying with her like other kids look forward to Christmas. It was a chance to eat chocolate and watch television. A chance to read books until well past bedtime. At Granny’s we were allowed to laugh out loud and play dress up, she even let us try her make-up. Hephzi loved make-up, the more sparkly the better. Granny made sure my sister got a bra when she was twelve and started to show. Sometimes she’d take us to the cinema and we would watch unsuitable films: Disney princesses, cartoons, Harry Potter. She was The Mother’s mother and she loved us. She used to kiss me and tell me I was lovely. Her little love. No one else ever said that. As we got older we visited her less and less. No need, said The Parents, we could make ourselves useful at their church events instead of lounging about at Granny’s. Years yawned wide with her absence. I know Granny missed us. When she rang up and one of us managed to answer, her voice sounded thin and far away like a paper aeroplane spiralling out of sight. And then she died.
I’ve recorded today as another black day and it’s there, a story inscribed hard on my heart. The tales I keep hidden within are many; if you ever open me up then you’ll read the truth. Look inside, peel back skin and flesh, excavate bone, and there you’ll find a library of pain. Perhaps you will ask me to explain. I am, after all, the curator of this past. But some things are too terrible to tell and those words are buried deep. Those are the words I never even whispered to my sister, those are the words that I daren’t say aloud. I wish they wouldn’t cry in the walls of my room and hunt me down in my dreams.
There’s a scar on my heart for when Granny died and one for the day Hephzi first didn’t want to walk home with me from school. I had to lie to explain away her absence when I arrived back at the vicarage alone; I said she was doing extra maths. This was when we started college in September, four months ago. At college everyone noticed how pretty and sweet and funny my twin was and soon she was being invited to parties and talking to boys. Because I was her sister I didn’t get picked on all that much but I think the other kids laughed at me behind my back. Maybe Hephzibah did too. No one would meet my eyes. Even the teachers found it hard.
But now she’s dead. And it was her funeral today. The coffin was white. The Mother cried. The Father presided over the ceremony. When the good God-bothering folk of the village asked him how he could bear it, he said he had to, that it was his duty to his daughter. And I stood at the front in Hephzi’s black dress and wondered if she could hear what was going on from inside that wooden box and whether she was lonely and cold too. She would know now, for the first time, what it meant to be really left out. Her school friends clustered at the back of the church crying. He couldn’t forbid them from coming but his frozen gaze made it clear that they weren’t welcome. I stared at the floor and loathed them all. Hypocrites. They didn’t help us while she was alive, why were they here now when it was far too late? When the service was over no one spoke to me and I was left standing on my own, waiting for The Parents to finish being consoled.
Alone felt wrong; anyone could see me now that Hephzi was gone. There is usually a pair of eyes somewhere, flicking over me in fascination and dread. I feel those looks like they’re ants, crawling under my skin. Eventually Auntie Melissa, The Mother’s sister, came over and asked me how I was. They’d come all the way from Scotland and I barely recognized her at first, but she ventured an arm around my shoulders and tried to hold me. When I didn’t answer her concerned murmurs and shrank away from her touch she backed off. I didn’t talk to my aunt because I knew he had his eye on me and I was busy telling Hephzi what they were all doing and listening carefully, hoping that she might answer back.
A week without her has been too long.
But now it’s dark and the day is almost over. I’m supposed to sleep in this room still, with the other empty bed just a few feet away. Hephzi’s bed. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, disturbed by my own screams and the racket coming from the wall, and for a moment I can see the slight hump of her body there, turned away from me, like always, breathing softly.
THE BEGINNING
Let the conversation begin…
Follow the Penguin Twitter.com@penguinukbooks
Keep up-to-date with all our stories YouTube.com/penguinbooks
Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your Pinterest
Like ‘Penguin Books’ on Facebook.com/penguinbooks
Find out more about the author and
discover more stories like this at Penguin.co.uk
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, Block D, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Gauteng 2193, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published 2014
Text copyright © Louisa Reid, 2014
‘Medusa’ taken from Ariel copyright © the Estate of Sylvia Plath and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd
Cover Photography © Silas Manhood
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Typeset by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes
ISBN: 978-0-141-34320-4