No Sister of Mine

by Vivien Brown

  ‘Yes, I think, in the circumstances, that will be okay. Let me just find my coat and we’ll take a little stroll. I’ll sign us both out.’

  There was a small park just two streets away and we headed there, finding a wooden bench off the main pathway and sitting down side by side.

  ‘Look, Janey, Love, I know it must be hard for you, the way things are at home. Your mum and dad have things to sort out and, whatever happens, they both love you, and none of this, none of it, is your fault, okay?’

  ‘I know all of that. Mum’s said it, in just about those exact same words, but it’s what grown-ups always say, isn’t it? When they’ve screwed up.’

  ‘I suppose it is, yes. Well-meaning though, I’m sure. You do have to try not to let it worry you too much though, not to let it affect your school work, or make you unhappy. Things will work out all right in the end. They generally do.’

  ‘I know.’ She sat very quietly for a while, one hand finding its way into mine, as we watched a pigeon peck away at the remains of someone’s discarded sandwich lying beside an overflowing bin. ‘But that’s not what’s worrying me. Well, not just that. And it’s so hard to talk to either of them while they’re like this. All they really care about is their own problems.’

  ‘Oh dear. I’m sure that’s not true, and not how they want you to feel. But if there’s something else bothering you and you really can’t find a way to tell them, well, you’ve always got me. I’m a good listener.’

  ‘But can you keep secrets?’

  I smiled inwardly. Me, keeper of such a huge secret for so many years! Yes, I could keep secrets, but I wasn’t at all sure that I should.

  ‘That depends on the secret, Janey. Why not try me with it and we’ll take it from there.’

  She lifted her head and looked up at the sky as if gathering her courage and then just blurted it out.

  ‘I think I’m pregnant.’

  ‘What?’ I could feel a sudden rush of panic flow over me, and my hands started to shake. This was the last thing I had been expecting.

  ‘You heard. I’m pregnant, Auntie Eve. What shall I do? Mum and Dad will go mad, and there’s school, and …’

  All I wanted to do was hug her, this sweet little girl I had loved all her life. I pulled her towards me and buried my face in her hair. Janey was only fourteen. Too young, too innocent, her whole life ahead of her. I could hardly take it in. Her shoulders shook and I could feel she was crumpling, struggling to cope. Oh my God, I was so close to crumpling too, but that wasn’t why she had come to me. She needed help, advice, comfort, someone to take control …

  ‘Right. First of all, are you absolutely sure?’ I tried to switch to sensible, capable, adult mode. ‘Periods can be a bit hit and miss in young girls. It might be nothing. Have you done a test?’

  ‘I was too scared to ask for one in the chemist’s.’ She looked up at me, her expression lost, her eyes pleading, and so like Josh’s. ‘What if someone sees me, or tells Mum? Even in the supermarket I didn’t have the nerve to put one in my basket. You never know who’s looking, and they cost so much.’

  ‘Okay, Sweetheart. First thing we have to do is make sure, okay? Let’s not start worrying before we have the facts. How late are you?’

  ‘I haven’t had a period for two months. And I keep being sick.’

  ‘And – I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but you have actually slept with someone? Had full sex with him? Because this can’t happen just from a kiss and a cuddle, you know.’

  ‘I’m not five! I do know how it works.’

  ‘I know, and I’m sorry, but I just needed to check, that’s all. And this person – this boy – does he have a name?’

  Janey shook her head.

  ‘I’m sure he does, but you’re not ready to tell me, eh?’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘Janey, you’re underage. It’s against the law.’ I swallowed hard, trying not to picture my niece in the arms of some leering, lecherous boy. ‘We will need to know who did this to you.’

  ‘Did this to me? You make it sound like I was raped. I … we … wanted to do it. Together. I wasn’t forced.’

  ‘Okay. Look, we can come back to all that later. For now, let’s get you tested, and decide what’s best once we know for sure, okay?’

  She nodded and snuggled closer into my side. ‘Thank you, Auntie Eve.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For not shouting at me. Not giving me a lecture. For helping me.’

  ‘I’m not sure I have helped you yet.’ I closed my eyes for a moment, letting the awfulness of the situation wash over me, then took a deep breath and looked at my watch. I had to stay strong, for Janey, no matter how sick and helpless I suddenly felt. ‘Half an hour left until we have to be back. Chemist’s?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You can wait outside. I’ll buy it, let them think it’s for me.’

  ‘Do you wish it was?’

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘You don’t have any children and Mum said you’d like to. Maybe, if I have the baby, I can give it to you?’

  I wanted to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the idea, but it was all just too tragic, too real, to do that. Instead I wrapped my arms tightly around my niece and held her close and wondered which one of us was going to cry first.

  ***

  ‘We have to tell your parents, Janey.’

  ‘No!’ We were in my flat, after school, staring at the pregnancy testing stick that was showing an undeniably positive result.

  ‘Come on. Your mum will be wondering where you are. Let me drive you home and we can tell her together. Putting it off won’t make it go away, you know.’

  ‘But not now, not today. I need to think about it first. Talk to someone about what I want to do.’

  ‘An abortion clinic, do you mean? Or a counsellor? Because I can come with you. Or your mum will. You really are way too young to make this kind of decision on your own. You do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I want to talk to the … the father. He should know first, before Mum and Dad. He should have some say in what happens, shouldn’t he? To the baby, and to me.’

  ‘Maybe. That depends, Janey. On who he is. Is it someone from school? From your class? Because if he’s your age, he’ll probably be even more shocked and frightened than you are, I shouldn’t wonder. And his parents will have to know. And quite possibly the police.’

  ‘Police?’

  ‘I told you, Love, it’s against the law. You’re only fourteen.’

  ‘Then I won’t tell anyone who he is. You can’t make me. It’s not his fault, and I don’t want him to get into trouble.’

  ‘Oh, Janey. You were grown up enough to get into this mess. Now you’re going to have to be grown up about dealing with it too. Honesty is what we need now, and a clear head. Abortion is one option, and the one I would advise you to at least consider, but if you decide to go ahead and have the baby, and keep it, then you’re going to need all the help you can get. With school, with money, being woken up in the middle of the night … and while you’re living at home, it will be a lot of work and disruption for your mum as well as for you. And how will you involve the baby’s dad if you don’t want anyone to know who he is? It won’t work. It can’t work.’

  She looked at me with that stubborn expression I had seen before, when she didn’t want to go to bed, didn’t want to do her homework, thought she knew best. ‘It’s my baby.’ She gulped and laid a hand over her stomach. ‘Mine. Nobody else’s.’

  ‘Not his? The mysterious father?’

  ‘Well, yes, his too.’

  ‘Look, Janey, this is not the sort of secret I can keep. I’m sorry, but your parents have to know. I’ll let you have tonight, to think, to talk to the dad if you must, but tomorrow I’m going to have to talk to your mum. Or your dad. Whether you want me to, whether you come with me, or not. Do you understand?’

  She nodded, wip
ing the back of her hand across her cheek.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want it?’ she pleaded. ‘You could adopt it so it stays as part of the family.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that, Janey.’

  She dropped her head and stared at her feet. ‘Can we go now? I don’t want Mum getting angry about not knowing where I am again.’

  ‘Of course we can. But tomorrow …’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She stood up and turned her back on me. ‘Tomorrow you’re going to wreck my life.’

  My heart went out to her. So young, so unworldly, so bloody scared. ‘Okay, I’ll give you until Sunday, so you can have a proper think, maybe even tell your mum yourself, but then I’ll have to do it. You do know that?’

  She nodded, reluctantly.

  But as for wrecking your life, I think you’ve done that for yourself, I was itching to say, but I didn’t.

  I reached for my car keys and drove her home, neither of us speaking on the way. Come Sunday, unless Janey found the courage by then, I would have to go and see one of her parents, or both of them. I’d probably find it easier talking to Josh. Yes, I’d start with Josh, and just knowing that I was about to see him again made me feel almost as wobbly as knowing what it was I was going to have to say.

  ***

  I should have known she would run away from it. She wasn’t answering her mobile and, although as she’d got out of my car on Friday afternoon, she had promised to meet me outside her father’s flat at eleven on Sunday, she didn’t show up.

  I sat in the car and waited, radio on, tapping my fingers against the steering wheel. Ten minutes, fifteen, twenty … At half past eleven I climbed out, locked up and walked slowly towards Josh’s door. At least, I hoped it was Josh’s door and that she hadn’t deliberately given me a false address. I wouldn’t put it past her.

  The florist’s shop was closed. I looked up at its aged sign. Petalicious. Something about such a frivolous name plastered across such a weathered old wooden shop front made me smile. I peered past the half-closed blinds at the big vases of flowers and sprigs of foliage hovering there in the gloom. The place sounded vaguely familiar and I thought it might have been the shop Lucy had worked in for a while when she first left school.

  I heard the click of a lock and the door to the side of the shop opened.

  ‘Hello, Josh.’

  He looked shocked to see me. ‘Eve. Wow! I didn’t expect this.’ He ran his hand through his hair, which was probably the longest I’d seen it since we were in our twenties, and stood aside to let me in. ‘Come in and go up. Excuse the mess. Bachelor pad, and all that. When Janey’s not around, anyway. She does try to tidy things up when she’s here.’

  ‘She’s not here now?’ A sudden hope had welled up in me that she had arrived before me and had been here all the time.

  ‘Nope. Not my turn this weekend.’ He closed the door and followed me up the narrow staircase. The combination of plain scuffed walls, threadbare carpet and low-wattage lightbulb with no shade gave it a gloomy air. ‘Which is good, because it means I get to see you by yourself. Now, I’m hoping you’ve come because you can’t live another minute without me but I’m guessing that’s not really why.’

  We passed through a tiny square landing and into a cramped living area, his hand resting on my back now as if to steer me in the right direction.

  ‘Josh, I …’ I hesitated. Now I was here I felt uncertain. Could I really tell him about Janey? Should I be the one to do it? Perhaps I needed to give her another chance to do it herself. Wherever she was hiding away, probably in her own bed, she couldn’t stay there forever. And when she surfaced she’d have to face up to what was happening. A secret like that couldn’t stay secret for long. What harm could another day or two do? She might even be confessing all to Sarah at that very moment.

  ‘It’s okay. I feel a bit tongue-tied too. It’s been a long time. Too long.’ He guided me to a small sofa, pushing a pile of papers aside so I could sit down. ‘Let me get you a coffee. Or something stronger maybe? And then we can talk.’

  ‘It’s a bit early for something stronger. Coffee’s fine.’

  He went through an archway into a tiny kitchen with no door, and I watched as he poured water into a kettle and quickly rinsed a couple of mugs he’d fished out from a pile of washing up in the sink. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, the shape of his head, the way he moved, the easy familiarity of those long fingers wrapped around the mugs, everything I remembered and cherished and still loved. When he came back and squeezed down into the seat beside me, it was all I could do not to spill my heart out. Instead I concentrated on not spilling the coffee.

  ‘Is it really over between you and Sarah? No going back?’

  ‘No going back, Eve. Why would I want to? There’s nothing there worth saving.’

  I put my coffee down on the tiny foldaway table beside me and turned towards him. ‘You do know how I feel about you, don’t you?’

  ‘I thought I did, but the last few times … well, you made it pretty clear we had no future. Family first, and all that.’

  ‘Maybe I was wrong. If Sarah really doesn’t want to put things right. If she really doesn’t want you …’ What was I doing? This was not what I had come here for. The timing was all wrong. I needed to wait, until they were divorced, until he was free, until Janey had shared her news, had the baby …

  Before either of us could say anything else, he bent his head towards me and I felt his lips close over mine. The warm rush of remembered feelings flooded through me. This was what I had missed so much, what I still dreamed about, the one thing I had thought I could never have again. I had traded this man, this love, against keeping my family, and family had won, but now everything was different. Maybe, just maybe, I could have both.

  ‘Whatever it was you came here to say,’ he said, pulling back and nuzzling his face into my neck, ‘I’m sure we could say it so much better without words.’ His fingers were on my buttons now, slowly undoing them one by one, his touch sending little shivers across my skin, and then he reached for my hand and started to pull me to my feet. ‘Come to bed, Eve.’

  And I would have done it, would have let myself fall right back into that big warm glorious pit of coupledom I had been longing for, but as he pushed me down gently onto his bed my gaze fell on the bedside table, and the two wine glasses sitting there. Two glasses? By the bed? I shrugged him off me and sat up, trying to get a closer look. One of them had a mottled pink mark along the rim. Lipstick. It couldn’t be anything else.

  ‘What’s this?’

  He was right behind me now, kneeling with his hands on my shoulders, his face buried in my hair, so I wasn’t able to see the guilt I knew would be written there. His hand shot out and scooped up both glasses. ‘Just stuff I haven’t got around to washing up yet. You know what we men are like!’ He was trying to laugh it off, probably hoping I hadn’t spotted the lipstick. Maybe he hadn’t even spotted it himself, but the speed of his reaction said it all.

  ‘Who is she, Josh?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The woman who was here, drinking wine? And very recently, I would assume, unless your washing up habits really are that bad. Oh, please tell me it wasn’t last night, that you weren’t about to have sex with me in a bed that’s still warm from the previous occupant. When did she leave, Josh? This morning? Must have been early, because I’d been outside quite a while before I came in and I didn’t see anyone go.’

  ‘Eve. Don’t.’ He put the glasses down again and held on fast to both of my hands. ‘She was nobody. Nobody, okay? Just someone I had a drink with. Someone from work. But she didn’t stay the night. Honestly. And, even if she had, you surely couldn’t blame me. You didn’t expect me to live like a monk, did you? We were over. Me and Sarah. Me and you. I had nothing left. Nobody …’

  ‘What’s her name?

  ‘God, Eve, you’re sounding like Sarah now. Like a bloody wife. It doesn’t matter who she is, or what her name is. It’s none of you
r business.’

  ‘Yes, I get that now.’ I was trying to do up my buttons so I could leave with a shred of dignity, but I’d got one in the wrong hole, and the water building up in my eyes wasn’t helping. I couldn’t see a thing through the mist. ‘So, all this wanting to see me, to talk to me, what was that all about? I thought you wanted me back, Josh. Stupid fool that I am, I thought we might …’

  ‘We still can!’

  He was still talking, pleading, but I didn’t hear the rest. I picked up my bag and ran, out of the bedroom, down the stairs and out of the flat, into the street, slamming the door behind me. As I burst out, all dishevelled and with tears running down my face, I don’t know who was more startled. Sarah and Janey, as I bumped right into them halfway up the path, or me.

  Chapter 30

  SARAH

  I’d found Janey being sick again that Sunday morning, and something about her pale face, how quiet she had been lately, her rebellious sullen moods, started to ring a very worrying bell. Thoughts I really didn’t want to have flew into my head. No, she couldn’t be. Surely not? She was fourteen. Still at school. She had never been with a boy … But how did I know that? How did I know what she had been doing? I couldn’t watch her twenty-four hours a day. All the afternoons she was late back from school, that time she’d lied about being with her dad, staying overnight at her friend Becky’s … I should have taken more interest, made sure I knew where she was, talked to her about contraception. There were so many places kids could find to have sex if they really wanted to. In the park? In alleyways? Cars? God, I should know. I’d done it myself when I was not much older than she was.

  I tried to quash all the questions and recriminations that were bouncing around in my brain. Facts first. I led Janey back to her bed and sat down, heavily, on the edge. ‘Janey. Tell me if I’m wrong. Oh, please let me be wrong.’ I grasped her hand and tried my best to adopt an understanding, caring face rather than that of the angry, spitting-feathers mother tiger that I could feel myself turning into. ‘But you couldn’t be pregnant, could you?’