No Sister of Mine

by Vivien Brown

  We all knew it was probably only a matter of time, and it was time I couldn’t afford to waste, cut off from my family, miles away in Wales, and unable to help them, or perhaps risk not being there to say the final goodbye. I handed in my notice, gave up the flat, packed up the bits of my life I needed to hang on to, which weren’t all that many, and went home.

  ‘Things won’t be so easy,’ Josh said on his last weekend visit to Wales before I left. ‘For us, I mean. Living so close to each other. We can’t afford to take risks.’

  ‘What are you saying, Josh? That once I’m back home we’re finished?’

  ‘I hope not, Eve. I just mean that we can’t be, you know, seen together, can we? Going out together won’t be easy. And staying in together, like this …’ He waved his hand around to indicate the bedroom we were lying in, naked, with piles of moving boxes stacked up in the corner. ‘Well, while you’re staying at your parents’ it will be damn near impossible.’

  ‘I do know that, Josh. But it’s not as if I see you often now, is it? What is it? Four or five times a year, if I’m lucky. Much as I wish things could have been different. But we could still meet up sometimes. A hotel somewhere, maybe? Out of town. And I’ll be nearer so, without all the travelling, there should actually be more opportunities. And where there’s a will, there’s a way, as they say. If you still want to, of course.’

  ‘You know I do.’ If I didn’t know him better I would have said he was sulking. Like a kid whose favourite toy was being taken away.

  ‘But I do have to be there, for Mum and Dad, and sleeping back in my old room makes sense, to start with anyway. At least until I can find a job. And a flat of my own. And I won’t pick one round the corner from you, I promise.’

  For the first time I could remember, I actually felt glad when he drove away and I could get back to what mattered most. Taking those last few steps towards getting out of there and back to where, for now at least, I knew I belonged.

  ***

  I felt guilty leaving work before the end of term, but everyone said they understood. They gave me a wonderful send-off. The staff room was decked with balloons and banners, and there was a huge cake, iced to look like a blackboard, and piles of good luck cards. Every class I taught had made me a big communal card of their own, some with quotes from the poems we had been studying or little rhymes they had written themselves, and some of the children brought me gifts, everything from flowers to pens to far too many ‘Best Teacher’ mugs for me ever to use them all. I had been at that school for more than twelve years, slowly moving up from newly qualified teacher to Head of English. But it was time to move on.

  ‘Hello, Miss. Or should I say goodbye?’ It was nearly five o’clock and I was starting to pack my hoard into a hopelessly inadequate carrier bag, wiping away an unexpected tear or two, and I didn’t recognise the voice at first. Not even the face, until I looked hard into it and saw that earnest little girl still peering out at me with now much more confident grown-up eyes.

  ‘Laura? Laura Wilson? It is you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yep, it’s me all right. I hope it’s okay me coming in here. Reception was empty, so I took a chance. Never been in the staff room before! But I couldn’t let you leave without coming to speak to you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad you did. How are you? What are you doing these days?’

  She stood there, leaning against the sink, until I beckoned her towards a chair and sat down opposite her.

  ‘You’ll never guess, Miss.’

  ‘I think we can dispense with the formalities now, Laura. I’m not your teacher anymore, so forget the Miss and just call me Eve. And I can hardly believe you’re so grown-up. You must be, what? Twenty-two now?’

  ‘Twenty-three. And I’m a teacher too. English, obviously!’

  ‘That’s fantastic. You always had that special spark about you. My star pupil, if I’m honest – and there’s no reason for me not to be, now that I’m leaving.’

  ‘Thank you. But it was all down to you, you know. No other teacher ever brought it all to life the way you did. Remember the paint charts?’

  ‘I do indeed!’

  ‘So, I just wanted to come and tell you what an influence you were on me. And that … well, I hope you don’t mind, but now you’re leaving I hear there might be a teaching job going here and I …’

  ‘You’re going to apply?

  ‘I think so, yes. Come back to where it started, tackle the council-estate apathy head-on, try to give something back.’

  ‘That’s fantastic. And mind? Why should I mind? I can’t think of a more enthusiastic and suitable candidate. You’re pretty much the same age I was when I first came here. It will be like leaving a little piece of me behind to carry on the good work.’

  She grinned, her face lighting up with pride. ‘I hope it’s all right to ask but …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re still called Miss Peters. So, you never got married?’

  ‘No. Well, not yet. I guess I’m married to my job in many ways.’ My thoughts flashed involuntarily to Josh, and to the ring my sister still wore, and the real reason marriage had never come to claim me. The wasted years. I forced a laugh. ‘Maybe I’m waiting for the right man. Or the right time.’

  ‘I wondered about you and Mr Barratt, that’s all. I’m sorry. Being nosey, I know, but were you a couple? Did you ever get together? You were the talk of the playground for years!’

  ‘Were we?’ I had always prided myself on knowing what went on at the school, keeping ahead of any gossip, but this nugget of information had thrown me. Simon and me? The secret office romance? I laughed. ‘No, Laura. You were all very wide of the mark there. Best friends, yes, for a long time. Still are, I suppose. But Simon’s married now. To someone else. A lovely man called Gregory! And they’ve moved away, back to Buckinghamshire, where both their families come from.’

  ‘Oh! I didn’t see that one coming!’

  ‘Good! As you’ll find out now you’re in the profession too, we teachers do need our private lives. Got to keep a few little secrets back!’

  She giggled. ‘Oh, yes, I intend to. Well, I won’t keep you. I had to dash here to catch you before you left, and I’m sure we both have things to do. The dreaded marking, in my case. But I wanted you to have this.’ She reached into her bag and withdrew a small rectangular parcel, beautifully wrapped in silver paper. ‘A leaving present. And a thank you. Eve …’ She hesitated, as if finding it hard to call me by that name. ‘You were the best and most patient teacher I could have wished for, and exactly what I needed back then.’ She leaned forward and gave me a swift and gentle kiss on the cheek before a final wave of her hand in the doorway as she left the room.

  I sat for a moment, gazing down at the present, drinking in the unfamiliar but welcome silence of the staffroom now everyone else had gone. A hoover started up out in the corridor, breaking the spell, as I pulled at the edges of the paper.

  It was a book. A book of poetry. Keats, of course. What else could it have been? And with a little silver bookmark tucked inside. I eased the pages open, my gaze resting on the poem she had marked for me. ‘To Autumn’.

  And, as I read about the missing songs of spring and the mourning gnats and the soft-dying day, I remembered the conversation Laura and I had shared when she was just a little girl about to watch her granddad die and, not caring who might come in and find me, I sat and sobbed my heart out.

  ***

  I still felt uneasy being back in our old room, seeing those two single beds standing there, Sarah’s and mine, side by side. This was where it had all begun, the betrayal, the family rift, the whole ridiculous chain of events that had led us – Sarah, Josh and me – to where we were now, trapped in a stupid love triangle that only two of the three sides knew existed.

  The June sunshine streamed in through the open curtains as I dragged my cases in and, even though I hadn’t brought a lot, it was going to be hard to find space for everything. The rest of my stuff had be
en stashed away in a small lock-up storage unit on a nearby industrial estate until the day I found a place of my own. Leaving Wales had felt rushed but necessary, yet now I was back I wasn’t at all sure what to do with myself. I hadn’t been jobless or homeless before, and camping out in my parents’ spare room felt horribly studenty and decidedly wrong for a woman my age.

  I could see Mum was in constant pain, but she was trying to keep her spirits up. According to Dad, she was getting herself up to sit in an armchair for a short while every morning but by midday had usually retreated back to her bed. There was no question of her making it down the stairs or to sit in the garden in the sun. A nurse called every day, often more than once, and there was talk of one staying overnight. The medication, I noticed, was lined up on the bedside cabinet in military fashion, which I was sure was Dad’s doing. His way of making sure everything needed was immediately to hand and that nothing could ever get forgotten. I have to admit that he looked after her, and waited on her, and ran about after her every need, in a way that very few men would find easy. Just seeing the word morphine on a label sent shivers through me. I tried to imagine Josh in a similar situation, having to cope with Sarah, or even me, lying there so sick and helpless, having to watch a nurse administer something like that, in stronger and stronger doses every day, and I just couldn’t conjure it up.

  I decided to take over the cooking and cleaning, starting with a big shop the morning after I got back. Sarah had enough to do, with work and Janey and her own home to look after, and whatever else I may have felt about her, I couldn’t deny that she had done a great job keeping an eye on things at Mum and Dad’s, pretty much single-handedly. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of months and, when I did, it was clear that the stress was taking its toll. She was thinner in the face, her hair straggly and in need of a decent cut, and she was looking much older than her thirty-two years.

  ‘How bad is Mum really? How long has she got?’ I asked, the first night I was home, when Dad and Sarah and I sat in a silent circle around the kitchen table, picking at a supermarket shepherd’s pie. I didn’t really want to hear the answer but burying my head in the sand was not an option now.

  ‘No one can tell us that for sure, Love.’ Dad put his cutlery down and wiped the back of his hand over his closed eyelids. ‘Could be a few months if we’re lucky …’

  ‘And if we’re not?’

  ‘Weeks, I guess. There was talk of a hospice, but I couldn’t do that. She belongs here, at home. And, much as I want her to live forever, I don’t want to see her suffer any longer than she has to. Or to be so dosed up on pain relief she doesn’t know we’re here.’

  ‘Does she know? That it’s just a matter of time? That there’s no cure?’

  He paused, gazing up towards her room, and answered in little more than a whisper, as if she might hear us. ‘Yes, Love. She knows.’

  None of us had much of an appetite. I think more of the meal went in the bin than actually got eaten that night.

  ‘Let me help you sort out the bedroom,’ Sarah said afterwards, when Dad had gone upstairs with two cups of tea to sit by Mum’s bedside. ‘There’s still some of my old junk in the cupboard that I can shift to make you more room. Most of it hasn’t been touched since I left home.’

  I tried to put up a protest but she was so keen to help I just followed her up and let her get on with it, watching as she tipped old school books and bits of plastic jewellery and outdated music tapes into a couple of rubbish bags, and removed a few of her old long-forgotten clothes from their wooden hangers.

  ‘You were right about the junk, weren’t you? Why didn’t Mum ever sort this stuff out?’

  ‘Didn’t like to touch what was mine, I suppose. And no need, while the room wasn’t being used. Do you remember how you used to hide the vodka at the back of the wardrobe? Never found it, did she? Remember how she’d do a big hoovering blitz every now and then, then just leave us to get on with it? This was our personal space and she never did like to invade it.’

  An image of a teenaged Sarah, and Josh, sprawled across my bed and most definitely invading my space, in the worst and most personal way possible, flashed into my head, as it had so many times before. But what was the point of dwelling on any of that now? Life had moved on and I had more than repaid her, many times over, for what she had done.

  As drawer and shelf space slowly became available, I filled it, pulling underwear and toiletries and assorted bits and pieces out of my cases and finding somewhere to put each of them, gradually making the bedroom – and this time all of it, not just half – mine again.

  ‘I see you still use the same face cream you always did,’ Sarah said, picking up my bottle of Oil of Olay and waving it at me. ‘And still the same Calvin Klein perfume. I remember the smell of that hanging over Janey’s cot when you put her to bed the day we had that housewarming party. “Essence of Eve”, Janey still calls it if we get a whiff of it when we’re walking through the perfume department in Debenhams! A real creature of habit, aren’t you?’

  ‘I guess I am. Why change something if you love it? Why get rid of something if it works?’

  ‘Like that school you’ve been working at for ever! It can’t have been an easy decision to give that up. Any luck finding a new job?’

  ‘There are a couple of possibilities I’ve seen. One’s just English, one’s deputy head …’

  ‘Wow. You are moving up in the world, aren’t you? We’ll have to curtsey to you soon!’ She did a little bob, almost tripping over her own feet and we both laughed.

  If only things had been different, I thought. Despite everything, sometimes I still really missed my sister.

  ***

  Dad had wanted to leave work, try to retire a couple of years earlier than planned, to look after her, but Mum had insisted he just asked for extended leave. Six months. A year maybe, although they both knew that was optimistic. He would need something to go back to, she’d said, something to occupy his mind and keep him busy after she’d gone. And she was right, of course. He knew it, but just couldn’t quite face the idea, shaking off her suggestion as if it was all a load of nonsense and she was going to live forever.

  I sat there beside him on the sofa after Sarah had gone, and he told me what she’d said. I didn’t know what to say, just held his hand. It was warm and solid, like the rock he had always been, but there was nothing he could do to hide the tears in his eyes. From me, anyway. Upstairs was different. He may have been breaking inside, but no way was he going to let Mum see it. Dad was a diamond, that was for sure. We were all so lucky to have him.

  ‘And how about you, Love? No boyfriend on the scene? There’s nothing your mum and I would like more than to see you settled and happy before … well, you know. She’s never going to see you wed, but it would have been nice to know you had someone to look after you. We did think that Simon—’

  ‘Dad! I’ve told you so many times. Simon was never going to be the one. He’s very happy with Gregory, and I am very happy for him. And you don’t have to worry about me.’

  ‘I don’t? So there is someone then? Someone special?’

  ‘Maybe. But it’s complicated.’

  ‘Love often is, Eve. Just as long as he’s a nice chap, and not married or anything like that. I’d hate to see you hurt again.’

  ‘I won’t be.’ I let go of his hand and stood up, not sure I liked the way the conversation was heading or the lie I had been hiding from him, from all of them, for so long. ‘Now, what do you say to a nice cup of tea and a biscuit?’

  ‘I say yes please. And maybe a drop of whisky in it, eh?’

  ‘I thought you were teetotal these days.’

  ‘What your mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her,’ he said, giving me a wink. And, with that thought in mind, I went to boil the kettle.

  I hated keeping secrets, especially ones that could hurt so many people. But he was right. As long as they knew nothing about it, nobody would get hurt, would they? But this wasn’t the me I wa
nted to be. The deceitful daughter, who had spent far too long putting herself first, when there were so many more important things to think about, so many innocent loving people who didn’t deserve what I was doing to them, even if they didn’t know a thing about it. Being here, at home, made everything feel real all of a sudden. The guilt hung over me like a cloud. Family mattered. Life and death mattered. Not sex. Not revenge. Not this soul-destroying game Josh and I had been playing, hidden away from the world, pretending to be something we weren’t and would never be.

  Josh was never going to leave Sarah or Janey, never going to choose me, not after all this time. I knew that only too well. I had always known it. And now I was here, thrown back into having to face my sister day after day, watching my father suffering and my mother dying. Perhaps it was finally time to put an end to it, swallow my pride and my tears and do what I should have done years ago. Let Josh go. What on earth was I doing anyway, hanging on to a life that would never give me a husband or a child of my own? Pinning my future to a man who had no intention of sharing it with me. He’d cheated on me before, and now he was cheating on Sarah. What was I thinking, wasting my time, my life, on a man like that, a man neither of us could ever fully trust? I should have listened to Simon right back at the start when he’d told me I deserved better. He was right. If I wasn’t careful I was heading for a lonely old age, one where I would look back when it was too late and realise what I had missed. I needed to give myself – and maybe Sarah too – a chance to be happy.

  It didn’t take long to track down the whisky bottle, stashed away in Dad’s usual hidey-hole behind the chess set in the sideboard, and I poured a large slug into both mugs. Dad wasn’t the only one in need of a stiff drink.

  Chapter 20