The Forgotten Sister

by Caroline Bond

  She ran straight across the car park, full tilt into a middle-aged woman who, thankfully, had the presence of mind to bend down and circle her arms around the squirming, red-faced Cassie – trapping her safely. ‘Where are you off to in such a hurry?’ The woman’s voice registered amusement as well as surprise. Tom arrived on the scene and stood, pulse thumping in his temples, as the woman focused on Cassie. ‘Whoa, whoa! It’s okay, but you can’t go running around a car park, sweetheart, not with all these cars about.’

  Cassie twisted within her firm embrace, caught sight of her dad, opened her mouth – and yelled.

  Tom froze. His stomach dropped. Not again!

  The woman looked from Cassie to Tom and her expression shifted from concern to suspicion. Cassie continued to wail and thrash. The woman held onto her; if anything, she pulled her even closer.

  Tom tried to sound calm above the noise. ‘She ran off. From the store. A disagreement about biscuits, would you believe?’ The woman’s expression didn’t soften; she obviously didn’t believe him – about biscuits or anything else. ‘Cassie?’ Tom bent down. ‘You need to calm down, honey. Daddy isn’t cross with you. I was worried that you were going get knocked down. It’s all right.’ He risked reaching out to her.

  Cassie drew breath and screamed. People stopped and stared.

  It took a frantic call to Grace, a move back into the shop, up into the office – Cassie still clinging, limpet-like, to a complete stranger – and Grace arriving in a state of panic to persuade the store manager not to call the police, and to convince the woman that Tom really was Cassie’s father and that he meant her no harm. It was only after Cassie had transferred from the stranger’s lap onto Grace’s, calmed down and been allowed another biscuit that they seemed willing to believe them. Tom found himself on his knees in front of Cassie, apologising for frightening her. She listened, nodded and the fear in her eyes slowly faded. When she offered Tom one of the remaining, broken biscuits, the atmosphere in the office finally relaxed and they were free to take their child home.

  It wasn’t until later that same day – when Tom and Cassie were building a den in the front room – that he realised why the woman had been so reluctant to believe that he was Cassie’s father. It wasn’t only the way she’d behaved. It was the way he looked. Tom was white. Cassie was not. Cassie did not look like his daughter.

  The thought rocked Tom back on his heels.

  He stopped playing and sat, looking at the broken skin on his hand, trying to make the woman’s and the manager’s suspicions not matter. Their prejudice and narrow-mindedness weren’t his problem; there would be a lifetime of this, people querying their relationship because of their skin colour. He would have to get used to it. Rise above it. Let it not matter. But Cassie’s behaviour did matter. That was his problem. Why had she wanted to get away from him so badly that she’d sunk her teeth into his flesh? Why had she acted as if he were a total stranger rather than her father?

  Unbidden, Tom’s anxieties about Cassie’s genetic ‘inheritance’ slithered free. Were these flashes of anger and fear her past coming out? Was there another thin, fierce, feral child packed away inside the happy, joyous little girl that he and Grace had fallen in love with? And if there was, would all their love and attention and effort be enough to smother that dark, troubled soul? Would she ever truly be their child, or would there always be a tiny part of her that belonged to someone else?

  Tom suddenly became aware that the room had gone quiet.

  He looked up. Cassie was sitting cross-legged opposite him, her face solemn, her chin tucked down on her chest, a mirror image of his posture. He forced himself to smile. She smiled back and his heart ached. Then she got to her feet up, grabbed the edge of the sheet and started pulling at it, her face a picture of determination. Slowly, awkwardly, Cassie tugged the sheet over their heads, hiding them both, safe and sound, inside their makeshift shelter.

  Outside on the pavement, Ryan said something to Cassie, then he kissed her, briefly, almost chastely. They broke apart and Cassie turned and walked up the drive. Tom hurried across the landing and contrived to be coming down the stairs as she opened the front door. He wanted, he told himself, to check that she was all right. Though why shouldn’t she be? They’d only been out for the day, shopping, though there was no sign she’d bought anything, which was unusual. Really he just felt the need to say something kind to her, something bridge-building and conciliatory, something that would convince her that he really wasn’t the enemy. But all he managed was a falsely cheerful ‘Hi’.

  She looked up at him, surprised by his sudden appearance on the stairs, and in an instant her face shifted from open to closed. Her unnervingly blank expression robbed Tom of all the things he had intended to say and, as a result, all the love that was beating through his heart stayed trapped inside. When she brushed past him on the stairs, with a flat, mumbled ‘Hi’ his only acknowledgement, Tom’s failure was complete.

  He had no other choice than to let her go.

  Chapter 28

  CASSIE PROMISED Ryan, faithfully, that she wouldn’t go anywhere near Leah again, not without telling him.

  He’d listened patiently to her confused ramblings in the car on the journey back from Oldham and made lots of sympathetic noises, some of them in the right places, but as they’d parked up outside her house, he’d made his real opinion clear. He firmly believed that nothing good would come out of chasing after the ghosts from her past. ‘Cass. It’s not worth it. You have a nice family, a nice life.’ His eyes flicked to their obviously very nice house with their nice garden and the two nice cars on the drive. ‘You don’t need to get involved with this skank. You’ve no idea who she really is or why she’s contacted you. Leave it alone. Please.’

  And that’s when Cassie had lied to his face, not because she’d wanted to, but because this new, improved version of Ryan – though something of a revelation, and one that her shaken soul badly needed – sounded just like her parents!

  But Leah wasn’t a ghost. She was real and she was claiming to be her sister. Cassie couldn’t ignore that. No sane person would. And even if she was lying, Leah was some sort of link to Cassie’s birth mum – the photo proved it. Cassie had to follow that up. If that meant lying to Ryan, so be it. So she’d held his cool fingers against her cheek for a few moments, loving his concern, relaxing into this softer, gentler brand of his affection, and she’d let him kiss her goodbye; then she’d turned and walked away without a twinge of guilt.

  She’d let herself into the house and been immediately confronted by her dad, looming above her on the stairs. Tom had said ‘Hi’ and Cassie had sensed, to her horror, that he was wanting to talk. She wasn’t ready. She hadn’t yet had time to come up with the disguise that she was going to have to wear until she had some answers, or at least the right questions. So she did what she’d been doing more and more lately – she blocked him, hurried past with her head down, escaping to her lair at the top of the house, where she closed her door and examined, in private, the wounds inflicted by Leah.

  Chapter 29

  THREE DAYS later Cassie found herself sitting at the back of a long purple bus as it lumbered through the red-brick splendour of Manchester. Her makeshift disguise had held, but only just. Lying to her parents had been difficult; avoiding Erin’s careful questions even harder; reassuring Ryan fairly easy.

  No one knew where she was.

  No one knew what she was doing.

  None of them would approve if they did. It was a slightly unnerving thought.

  To all intents and purposes, Cassie had dropped out of her life.

  The bus swung round a corner and, for a split second, it looked as if it was about to smash into the sharp corner of a glass office block that seemed to rear up suddenly in the middle of the road. But there was no shatter of glass, simply a wheeze of brakes and a hanging, suspended sensation as they cleared the corner, then a muffled rumbling noise as the bus bumped over the tram lines across the square. They
pulled into a stop. People got off and more people got on.

  Cassie had no idea where she was. A journey on a website was nothing like one in reality, especially not one in a place that was so unfamiliar. The other passengers looked and sounded very different from her. The texture and the grain of their skin, their clothes, their accents, even their smell – it all seemed so alien. She tried to avoid meeting anyone’s eye by gazing out of the window, but it didn’t make her feel any less awkward. The bus pulled free of the congested roads of central Manchester and they drove on through the scruffy anonymity of the no-man’s-land between the heart of a city and where the real people lived – where Leah lived. As she sat holding onto the rail, Cassie tried to work out in which direction the truth actually lay: at home with her parents, the people she had trusted all her life, or ahead of her in the unknown streets of Oldham, with a girl who was claiming to be her sister.

  It was a frosty welcome. ‘So what do ya remember?’ Leah’s question put Cassie under pressure from the outset.

  ‘Not much.’ Cassie had spent a lot of time since they’d met searching through her past for any recollection of Leah, but it had been impossible – like forcing yourself to laugh or cry. What memories she did have couldn’t be anchored to any one person or place, not with any certainty. Nothing was certain any more, least of all this girl’s role in any of it. But Leah was waiting for her to say something to justify this second meeting. ‘I think my earliest memories are of Jane, the foster carer. At least I can remember a house that was always too hot. And a big toy box. I was frightened of falling into it and getting trapped.’ Cassie saw that this was not what Leah was asking. She stalled.

  ‘So ya don’t remember me at all?’

  Cassie found Leah’s abruptness unsettling. She was used to the truth being framed and hung up neatly for her to take her time looking at, not being dumped, unceremoniously, in her lap. She swallowed down her discomfort. She had tried, she really had, but she had no memories of Leah. She couldn’t – she wouldn’t – lie about it. ‘No. I don’t remember you.’

  Leah blinked and flicked her fingernail three times. ‘Well, I was there.’

  The distance between them was huge.

  Cassie was the first to break eye contact. She looked around for a distraction from the spiky awkwardness of the situation and found it outside, on the street, just in front of the cafe. A man in a grubby hivis jacket was emptying the litter bin. He was struggling. The black bin bag he was holding kept twisting in the wind as he tried to fill it. Cassie watched as a couple of burger boxes caught on the breeze and escaped his grasp. They lifted, opened and floated away like polystyrene butterflies. He didn’t bother chasing after them.

  Leah watched Cassidie. She studied her face, saw her distress and sensed her desperation. It was time to start building a bridge: slowly, piece by piece, truth by half-truth, white lie by black – only then would she be able to get to her. It was time for Leah the storyteller.

  She tossed out the first scrap. ‘We were sent to Jane’s together… to start with.’ That got Cassidie’s attention. Leah drained the last of her drink and set it down on the table. ‘But they split us up.’ She fell silent.

  The yawning blanks in Cassie’s early life needed filling. ‘So what happened?’ she prompted.

  Leah stared flatly at her. ‘Well, that depends on who you talk to.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘What I said. There’s what I’m guessing they said happened, and there’s what really happened. They ain’t the same thing.’

  ‘So tell me your version.’

  ‘After I get another drink.’

  Leah understood delayed gratification. Leah added two sachets of sugar to her insipid, froth-covered cappuccino and stirred it with the little plastic stick. When she spoke again, she did so with her head down, watching the coffee swirl and slow to a stop. ‘After they took us away from our mum, they put us with that Jane woman. She was an emergency placement. She was supposed to be experienced. Must’ve been, I suppose, or they’d not have given her us two. But she was a cow. A vicious old cow!’

  The two older women at the next table stiffened, and Cassie saw their eyes flick on and off Leah, disapproval hardening their expressions. Leah didn’t notice or, more accurately, she didn’t care.

  ‘She’d had loads of kids. Did it for the money. Her and her creepy husband…always wanting you to sit on his knee – he needed sorting out. They were supposed to look after us until they found a family that would take us both.’

  ‘How can you even remember any of this? You’d have only been, what – seven or eight?’

  ‘I can remember enough. It’s not the sort of stuff you forget. They hated me. They loved you. You were cute. I wasn’t. They said I was trouble.’ Leah paused, then dealt the blow. ‘They split us up. Sent me away. Kept you, until you got adopted.’

  ‘But aren’t they supposed to keep siblings together?’ Cassie asked. Leah shrugged. She ripped open one of the spare sugar sachets, spilling the contents all over the table. The old women at the next table exchanged another look. ‘I mean, brothers and sisters.’

  Leah sent Cassidie a sharp look. ‘I know what siblings means!’

  ‘Sorry.’ Chastised, Cassie shut up.

  ‘They’re supposed to, yeah.’

  ‘So why not us?’

  ‘I just said. First Jane, then your “parents”,’ Leah used air quotes and her expression plainly expressed her dislike, ‘they only wanted you.’

  ‘So what happened to you?’

  Leah split open another sachet and poured more sugar across the table. ‘That’s a long story…for another day. I don’t want to talk about that today.’ She zipped up her jacket and Cassie expected her to bolt off again, but she leant back in her seat. They sat in silence, each inside their heads, Cassie picking at the scab of her parents’ deceit, Leah debating exactly what Cassidie should be told, and when.

  Cassie spoke first. ‘I still don’t understand. Even if they had their reasons for not taking both of us…’ she saw Leah’s eyes darken, but ploughed on, ‘why have they never told me about you? All these years – they’ve acted like you never existed.’

  ‘Why would they say anything? They got what they wanted. You.’

  Cassie felt horribly trapped. Tom and Grace were her life, her stability, her family. They had loved her and raised her. She loved them. But they’d never uttered a single word about her having a sister. Even in the past month, with all the talk about whether she should be looking for her biological mum or not. Nothing. Not a single mention of a sister. Again the creeping ill-ease returned. Leah knew things – things that only someone closely involved with Cassie’s early life could know – yet did that mean what she said was true?

  ‘It doesn’t make sense. Why did they split us up, really?’ Cassie persevered.

  ‘Cos they could,’ Leah said.

  ‘No. It can’t be as simple as that. There has to have been another reason. If Mum and Dad had known about you, they would have taken us both, especially my mum.’ Cassie’s voice sounded childish, even to herself.

  ‘Would they now? Are you sure?’ Leah really was asking. Cassie hesitated for too long. ‘Don’t fucking believe me then!’

  The old women hastily gathered their bags and left.

  Cassie stumbled on, in the face of Leah’s anger. ‘I do. I believe you. I’m sorry. But I’m struggling to get my head round it.’

  Leah suddenly leant forward. ‘It’s not complicated, Cassidie. You were what they wanted. What they all want: little, sweet, nice, no trouble. And I wasn’t.’

  ‘But you were just a little girl. You needed looking after as much as me.’

  Leah blinked, and for a second Cassie caught a glimpse of something buried deep inside her that didn’t match the brittle ‘fuck you’ attitude that she projected. ‘Yeah, well…’

  ‘I’m going to ask my parents,’ Cassie said.

  ‘No!’ It was so loud that everyone turned and looked a
t them. ‘No. Don’t!’ Leah repeated. ‘If you breathe a word about me to them, you’ll not hear from me agen. Ever.’

  ‘But why?’

  Leah’s face was impenetrable again. A trap snapped shut. ‘Cos they’ve no right knowing anything about me.’

  Cassie felt like crying, but she knew Leah would despise her if she did. She wanted the truth, but she was no longer sure who could give it to her; and yet she knew, in her bones, that Leah was somehow the key to the past. She had to give her the benefit of the doubt. ‘Okay. I won’t say anything. I want us to keep in touch, to keep talking, now we’ve found each other. It’s important.’

  Leah picked up her phone. ‘Good. Our little secret, then. No one else’s. And I mean no one!’

  Cassie nodded, but she felt anxious rather than excited by the thought. Then, to her dismay, Leah stood up and started gathering her stuff together.

  ‘I gotta go.’ The tone was mocking again. Combative. ‘I can’t spend all day sitting around here, drinking coffee, even if you can.’