My aunt and uncle tried to be there for me after I left to go to university, despite their obvious reservations. But the cat-and-mouse game I was playing with Elle, moving house and changing phone numbers, made it hard for them. They would turn up only to find that I had moved, leaving no forwarding address. Eventually we just lost touch. I tried to rekindle it once, not long before Antonio arrived in my life. But it wasn’t the same. I belonged even less as an adult than I had as a child.
‘I have to catch you unawares now,’ Elle picks up. ‘In the early hours of the morning, from an unknown number. I’m not sure what I did to make you hate me so much, other than being wanted by our parents.’
My cheeks flush from embarrassment. ‘They are not our parents,’ I say. ‘They are yours, and yours alone. How many times do I have to say it?’
‘I can see through your lies, Irini, but fine. Whatever you say.’ She tosses her uneaten toast triangle on to her plate. She is straight back to chipper, actually rubbing her hands together like a good plan is coming to fruition.
‘So, as I was saying. My mother came back late yesterday. We’ll have a look at her soon. Then we will buy you some clothes.’ She runs her eyes over my baggy black jumper, then shakes her head as if whatever thought came to mind was intolerable. ‘Don’t worry, my father has plenty of money. I will buy them for you.’ She pauses as if going through a mental checklist of Irini-related tasks, counting them on her fingers. Operation Get Irini Ready for the Funeral. ‘Then we will go to the gym. You’ve got so fat since the last time I saw you. You need to work out. The last thing we need is for you to embarrass us.’
She stands up, walks towards me and with a look of utter disappointment on her face slides the plate away from me as I swallow the last mouthful of eggs. ‘I’ll be back to collect you soon.’
She slips from the room, leaving me alone. I have no way out. I am unravelling. Being unravelled. Rather than give me answers, this place could destroy me. I finger the small roll of skin that curls over my waistband and wonder if you could call that fat. Maybe, but only if you were trying to be cruel.
I stand up and walk towards the bay window to look out across the lawn. The box hedging that lines the grass and the row of trees at the far end of the grounds have been neatly trimmed in preparation for the funeral guests. My eyes drift to a little white cross and I just know that that is where they buried the dog. The one that Elle killed.
It happened after the failed reunion when I was nine years old. I overheard Aunt Jemima on the phone not long after, describing how Elle had stomped their dog to death, blood all up her leg, all the way to the knee. Our parents had found her in the garden trying to dissect it with a butter knife. They held a ceremony the next day where they buried it, laid some flowers, erected the cross. I heard Aunt Jemima suggest that saying goodbye this way might help teach Elle about compassion.
I see my father again, making his way across the lawn. He is holding a tumbler of brown liquor, perhaps a brandy, sipping frantically. He sees me watching and looks at me for a second, then glances away again, shaking his head before it drops to his chest. Despite the fact that now he can barely bring himself to look at me, yesterday he wanted to see me. It wasn’t coincidence that he was there when I walked through the door, and it was his idea to sit and talk. It was Elle who stopped him. She moved me along, put a stop to any hopes he might have had. And she was here again today when he couldn’t bring himself to speak. Is it possible that he is afraid of her in the same way that I am? Do we share the same secrets, or does he hide more of his own?
Now I understand the look on my father’s face as he left the dining room. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t disgust at what he had created. For the first time I see something in my father that I recognise. Something we share other than a love of strong liquor at inappropriate hours of the day. It’s something Elle knows nothing about, and this makes her vulnerable in a way I could never have imagined. It is shame that I see in my father. Not of me, but for himself.
8
I am grateful that we manage to leave the house without paying a visit to the dead body lying in repose in the sitting room. We don’t have time, Elle informs me as she ushers me forward, skirting up behind me, rambling about our plans for the day. Sisters’ Day, as she has labelled it, like we are a couple of twelve-year-olds who are about to learn how to put on lipstick and practise kissing on our teddy bears. We are to travel to Edinburgh, shop, go to the gym to combat my fatness so that I am not an embarrassment, talk and divulge secrets about our lives. Her excitement is on overload, and any earlier irritation that she may have felt seems to have been surpassed. I smile and laugh, mostly on purpose, an effort to make this as bearable as possible. But sometimes I even find myself laughing without trying. It is one of Elle’s good points, her wit.
It was the thing that snared me the first time she found me. I was so used to being the target that to suddenly be on somebody’s team, watching as her insults flew faster than her fists, was like the first breath after nearly drowning. In that moment when she burst into my life when I was a thirteen-year-old victim of just about everybody and everything, she made me feel like I was part of something. United. Safe behind her walls. It was easy to put to one side what had happened four years previously, when our parents had attempted to reunite us.
Elle tours me through five different shops looking for suitable clothes to see me through the next two days. She parades me into each, announcing our presence with elaborate hand gestures and sweeping motions around hanging rails. By shop five we agree on an outfit: brown jeans with too much shine, and a beige jumper with the word FEEL written on it. She argues that if I won’t accept the sportswear-as-everyday-wear idea, then she will flat-out refuse to buy me anything that adheres to my ‘doctorial’ tastes. She relents when it comes to the gymwear, allowing the purchase of a black workout set: leggings and a crop top, neither of which she will allow me to try on. The only thing I insist on is a pair of Reeboks. When we arrive at the gym and change – me in a private cubicle – it is obvious that the new workout gear is too tight. The small roll of soft skin that escapes over my jeans is being strangled like a hernia, bulging over the cinched-in waist.
‘I can’t wear this,’ I say as I walk out, palms spread wide. When I eventually look up, I find her naked. She is balancing on one leg, her hip bones jutting out as sharp as our father’s meat-cleaver nose. She catches me looking at her smooth skin, finely covering her salient bones. She looks like an anatomical drawing, sketched to perfection. She glances at her hip, and then back to mine. I look away, my eyes scanning newsletters about lost dogs and hippy yoga classes pinned to the wall for a distraction.
‘Ha, there you go,’ she says, pointing at me. ‘I told you you’d got fat.’
‘I’ll put my T-shirt over it,’ I huff as I reach for the shirt. But her arm flies up, intercepting me. She snatches the T-shirt from my hand, perfect tits and arms flying everywhere, the left one nearly catching me on the cheek. Her body is as bald as a baby. She tears the shirt, shreds it in two. Rrrrriiipp.
‘Now you have to wear that,’ she says, looking satisfied but flushed as she throws the shredded garment down and stomps on it as if it has caught fire. ‘They are not too tight. You are too big.’ She snatches at her bag, takes out her own workout gear. She pulls on a pair of hot pants but she is all of a dither, pissed off at me. She shoves her bag into a locker, slamming the door shut with such force that it seems to work loose from its hinges. My anger bubbles as I think of the people who will laugh at me trying to exercise my imperfect hip in this ridiculous outfit. But I don’t want a scene, so I remain silent. There are people nearby already aware of our presence, and it would be much easier if this was understood to be an insignificant blip in an otherwise happy sisterly day. ‘Hiding under the baggy layers just enables you to forget that you got fat,’ she says as she takes a pinch of my abdominal skin in her hand, ‘and I am not about to become your enabler.’
A few eyes rema
in on us as she hurries on a skimpy bra top. Socks, shoes. Headband. Mirror check. She snatches my hand before strutting towards the exit door, pulling me behind her. One woman especially appears to feel sorry for me, so I offer a smile and laugh it off. She seems unconvinced, scoops up her bag and moves away from us. ‘I don’t know how you ever managed to become a doctor looking like that,’ Elle calls out loud enough for all to hear, as if my imperfect stomach has any bearing on my intellectual capabilities.
She insists we drink water before we begin, because dehydration is a killer, and then we complete an orientation circuit of the gym. She points out a couple of men she likes, a couple of women she doesn’t, and one whom she knows to have chlamydia because she slept with her boyfriend and he confessed. After a series of stretches in front of the mirror that I cannot complete on account of my less than perfect anatomy, we start on the cross trainers. And I am enjoying myself, kind of. Sisters’ Day, I think. Not so bad. I even consider probing the past, asking her what she knows about why I was given away. I have tried a few times before, the last when I was about sixteen years old. We had been out for the night, both got a bit tipsy. When I dared ask why they’d never wanted me, she grabbed me by the throat and pushed me up against a wheelie bin, much to the amusement of other revellers nearby. ‘Our mother is a whore,’ she told me. ‘You don’t need them. Don’t listen to what they tell you.’ Then she cried and held me in her arms like an overgrown baby, rocking me back and forth as we sat on the kerb. I was so mortified I never dared ask her again. But years have passed now, and she seems in a good mood at the moment. I decide to wait until we have finished the workout.
So we pedal alongside each other, one of her judgemental eyes always trained on me because I am going too slow. She might be thirty-seven, but she has the body of a teenager, and I am impressed. Enough to straighten my back and focus on not limping. I pull up my left shoulder to even up the line of my breasts.
Several men amble up during the workout. They hang out next to Elle’s cross trainer, offering varying degrees of attention, and she smiles and giggles like a schoolgirl as they look her up and down, using their imagination to remove the tiny garments she is wearing. They speak to her chest, and she helps them out by stretching up like a cat for petting. One of them rests his hand on her ass and she pushes back into it. She looks at me in a way that can only be described as pitying, as if I should somehow be jealous of the mauling she is getting. I try hard to focus on the exercise, but the Valium and alcohol from the night before linger in my system, and the coffee I would normally have drunk by now is conspicuously absent. My face is flushed, beads of sweat trailing across it, salt licking at my lip.
After the ass-grabber moves on, the next victim saunters over wearing a T-shirt that says Live to the Max! Elle pays her newest admirer no attention. ‘Looking good, working hard,’ he says. At least this one speaks. He completes a quick circuit of the machine, casting his eyes up and down. There’s another guy with him who looks over at me. He’s a little shorter than the first, his eyes softly formed, with long lashes, his lips pouty and moist. He looks kind rather than beautiful like his friend. I knuckle down and push on, keeping my left shoulder held up. My speed increases like a rocket, and my hip complains, sending shooting pains ripping through my thigh.
‘Always,’ Elle replies, not once breaking her stride. ‘You haven’t been here for a while, Greg. Where have you been?’
‘So you’ve noticed?’ says Mr Live-to-the-Max, working his tongue into his cheek before nibbling on his own lip. Gross. Elle smiles and pushes her tits out even further. He offers her his towel. She refuses, but stops driving the machine and picks up her own, dabbing it across her face and then her bulging chest. He watches her, shifts his weight in a way that makes me think he got hard. It is enough to break my concentration, so I stop and grab my own towel.
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘It’s been too long to remember you. How many others have been on my mind between then and now?’ She rolls her eyes upwards in a daydream, holding up her fingers to count what I’m sure are not imaginary men. Somewhere in the background I can hear the drumming of feet on the floor as an aerobics class starts, an overenthusiastic voice booming across the speakers. ‘More than enough to forget you,’ she concludes as her counting fades out somewhere before the tenth finger. She flicks the tip of his nose, butt stretched right back and angled upwards as if she is just waiting for him to mount her.
‘Only on your mind?’ he says as he slides one hand over her slick, wet thigh. I step from the machine, desperate to put some distance between us. Greg nudges his buddy in the side without taking his eyes off Elle. He says, ‘Matt, where do you think they’ve been? In her mind, or elsewhere?’ His hand disappears from view and Elle squeals as if she is on her way to climax right here in the middle of the gym. There is a pensionable woman behind her with a good vantage point, who without any doubt can see exactly what is happening. She makes a disgusted noise, half snort, half yelp, and brings her hand up to her mouth as if she is about to be sick. She steps from her own machine and heads to the treadmills on the other side of the room.
‘No idea,’ says the one called Matt, uninterested. I’m impressed by this lack of attention for Elle, reassured by his easy Scottish accent. He’s doing that thing that Antonio did when I first met him, paying attention only to me and ignoring everybody else. But he’s different, too. From the first moment, I knew Antonio wanted me physically. He made it clear, like Greg is doing with Elle. But Matt isn’t doing that. He doesn’t feel dangerous like Antonio did. ‘Maybe they were visiting her at the loony bin,’ he mutters under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear. I can’t help but giggle, and I realise what a traitor I am. Only minutes ago I was lounging around in the idea of sisterhood, thinking that we were connecting. Now I’m laughing at her expense.
‘Who’s your friend?’ Greg asks Elle. ‘Not seen her before.’
‘She isn’t my friend,’ says Elle, laughing as if he has just told the best joke in the world. He laughs too, pleased and smug with himself without really knowing why. The kind of guy who would get some of his ribs removed so that he could give himself a blow job. That’s how impressed he is with himself. ‘She’s my sister.’
I can tell that Greg is thinking no fucking way. Elle smirks as she rubs up against him. I bring an arm around my chest, let my shoulder slacken.
‘Nice to meet you,’ says Matt, holding his hand out to me. He looks embarrassed about the loony-bin joke, so I take his hand in my sweaty palm and manage a proper smile.
‘You too,’ I say, noticing that Elle is already halfway to the door with Greg. Fortunately I am flushed from the exercise and it masks my embarrassment. Why it matters to me that Elle is slutting it up all over the gym, I’m not sure.
‘I think we’ve been stood up,’ Matt says.
‘Well you’re in a better position than me, because I’m going to have to wait for her to get back.’ He is laughing too now, but I don’t think he seems like the type who would try to belittle me. He is too movie-good-guy for that, handsome in a simple way, hair foppish, slicked to his wet forehead. ‘What’s so funny?’ I ask.
‘You’ll be waiting a long time. Last time they left together, I didn’t see him until later on that week.’
‘Great.’ I shrug, tossing my towel back down. I take a glug from my bottle of Evian water. ‘What am I going to do now?’
‘I can take you home if you like,’ he offers. ‘Wherever you want to go. My car is just outside. Give me a minute to get my stuff.’ He rushes off without waiting for an answer, but I don’t think I would have refused even if he had given me all the time in the world. I go and get changed, grab my bag.
He comes sprinting from the changing rooms with wet curls and pink cheeks. We head out and walk in silence to his car, and I lag behind a step or two, watching him as he moves. He looks so relaxed. He opens the boot so I can toss my new gym bag in.
‘You see,’ he says, casting his hand l
eft and right. ‘No ropes, handcuffs or bottles of chloroform.’ I laugh. ‘You’ll be quite safe.’ I climb into the passenger seat and reach across for the belt.
9
‘Now, where am I taking you?’ he asks as he gets in the car. Where the hell am I supposed to tell him to take me? It’s not like I have many choices.
‘Do you have Elle’s phone number? Maybe I should try and call her.’ Surely that’s the best plan. I’m not certain I could find my way back through the maze of country roads that lead to the village where my family’s home is. Which is a shame, because I could have used this time to try to talk to my father.
‘Aye, I have it,’ he says, stifling a smile. ‘But do you really want to call her now?’ He gives me a knowing look, like I have been naive not to consider what Elle is doing.
‘Good point. I’ll call her later,’ I say. I make a mental note to call Antonio later too. ‘Maybe we could go for coffee, wait for them together?’ Other than linger at the gym, what else am I going to do? What would Elle do? Certainly not mope around waiting for me, that’s for sure.
‘Sounds good.’ He starts the engine and we pull away.
We drive through twisty lanes away from Edinburgh, the endless countryside without border or restriction, segmented by hotchpotch walls and sudden outcrops of rock like the one behind my family’s house. The sunlight slices in through the window in golden blades of light, intermittently blinding me like some kind of torture device. Eventually he pulls up outside a country pub, an ancient building that has been repainted in a shade of bone grey, decorated with finely cut topiary bushes in spheres. A sign hangs outside: The Dirty Dog, Gastro Pub, like they needed to advertise what they were just in case somebody got confused.
My Sister Page 6