Letters From My Sister Page 2

  ‘Katie, it’s your father.’

  I stand rooted to the spot. This must be the message from last night. I knew something was up.

  ‘I need to talk to you. It’s …’ He coughs. ‘ … It’s really quite urgent.’

  I swallow hard. Oh my God, something has happened to Mum. Or Bells. Has someone in the family died? Aunt Agnes? He must wonder why I haven’t called him back.

  Sam looks at me curiously. ‘Your old man never calls here.’

  Sam is right. Dad always calls me at the shop. Why didn’t he call me there today if it’s so urgent? ‘I don’t know,’ I mutter, pressing my lips together.

  ‘It’s your mother, she’s been working herself into the ground,’ Dad continues, ‘you know what she’s like, and we haven’t had a proper holiday for years. We went to the doctor’s and he strongly recommended a break. I’m taking her away. So,’ he lingers on the word, ‘we need to talk about Bells.’

  Bells. Don’t say anything more, Dad, please. Hang up.

  ‘Who’s Bells? Is that your dog?’ Sam asks.

  ‘Wine?’ I say, praying he’ll walk away.

  ‘Katie, you know I hate pets.’

  ‘Your mother and I are going to France for two weeks,’ Dad continues, ‘but we can’t leave Bells on her own.’

  Sam is shaking his head now. ‘Sitting next to Mum’s dog, Doogle, is like sitting next to an old fish. F. Breath Esquire, I call him.’

  ‘Sam! Go! Drink!’ I demand now, feeling myself burning under my skin as I put my hand out to press the stop button, but Sam puts his hand firmly over mine. ‘What is it, Katie? Jesus, I thought I had a weird relationship with my parents.’ Sam has always been cagey about his family. ‘Who’s Julian?’ I once asked him. ‘My father,’ he replied, in an unusually stiff formal voice which invited no further questions.

  ‘I really need to talk to you,’ Dad continues. ‘I’m out all day tomorrow so can you call me back tonight?’ There is a lengthy pause. I wish Sam would go away. His presence feels like a loaded gun.

  Dad inhales deeply, making Sam laugh. ‘It’s only a bloody dog, isn’t it, Katie? Anyone would think he was talking about the future of the euro,’ he says, finally disappearing downstairs.

  *

  It’s two o’clock in the morning and I can’t find my cigarettes. The evening was dismal because I couldn’t stop thinking about Bells. Sam would never have known I wasn’t enjoying myself. I smiled in all the right places and laughed when Maguire relayed his filthy jokes. But Sam can’t massage this problem away. Why did it have to happen now, when things are running so smoothly? Oh Sam! Where have you hidden them? I stare at the cupboards. There’s nothing in Sam’s kitchen. All the surfaces are kept carefully bare; in fact there’s nothing much anywhere except for the art sculpture in the corner of the room, made out of what look like coloured milk bottles. Sam tells me it reflects the mood of the modern world.

  I open one of the cupboards and run my eyes over the shelves. Maybe Sam tucked the cigarettes into the pressure cooker as we never use it? Nope. I stand on tiptoe and run my hand along the top of the cupboard. I could kill him. If I want a cigarette, why shouldn’t I smoke one?

  I open each drawer, slamming it shut when no cigarettes are revealed, my conversation with Dad preying on my mind.

  ‘Katie, we know it’s a lot to ask, but I need your help,’ he had said to me earlier this evening.

  ‘It’s all so sudden though, why didn’t you tell me how tired Mum’s been?’

  ‘I can’t hear you, speak up.’

  I had to repeat the question again, keeping half an ear on what Sam was doing. I could hear him upstairs opening our wardrobe, bath water running.

  ‘Oh, Katie, you know how proud she is. We’d never go away unless I organized it. Look, it’s just for two weeks.’

  ‘How is she?’ I asked, biting my lip. ‘Dad?’

  ‘She’ll be fine, as long as she has a break and we take some time off now.’

  ‘Right,’ I acknowledged. ‘I know you need a holiday, but I’m not sure I can look after Bells. It’s such short notice.’

  ‘It’s all booked,’ Dad said firmly.

  It’s so unlike him to go ahead without asking me. How does he know I’m free? I might be going on holiday too, or abroad on business. ‘Is there anyone else we can ask?’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Aunt Agnes. She’d love to …’

  ‘Bells wants to stay with you.’

  ‘Why?’ My voice was a loud whisper. ‘I can’t have her here.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  ‘What about my shop? I’m sorry, but I can’t drop everything. Let’s call Aunt Agnes.’

  ‘Now listen here, Katie. Your mother and I have never asked anything of you until now. We need this time together and Bells specifically asked if she could be with you in London. I told her she must write to ask you herself. Didn’t you get her letter?’

  ‘It must have got lost in the post,’ I lied, picturing it unopened and hidden in my diary.

  ‘Oh, Katie!’ He raised his voice in exasperation. ‘Why won’t you write to her? She’s always asking after you. “How’s Katie? Never see Katie.”’

  I could hear Bells saying that and my heart melted for a split second. Dad must have felt it too because his voice softened. ‘It would mean so much to her, and to us.’

  Back to reality. ‘Dad, two weeks is a long time. It’s not even my own home.’

  ‘I understand you’d have to ask Sam. We would help towards costs and …’

  ‘No, it’s not about money, Dad.’ Sam came downstairs in his towel at this point, asking why I was taking so long. The bath was ready. A thought came to me. I could persuade him to go on a golfing weekend with Maguire and the lads. ‘I could have her for a weekend?’

  ‘And where will she stay the rest of the time?’

  ‘Can’t she stay in Wales?’ was my desperate last attempt.

  ‘Well, she could, but that’s miserable, quite frankly,’ he said, his voice loaded with frustration.

  I understood all of this, but … ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I really can’t. If I had my own apartment …’

  He cut me short. ‘That’s not the real reason, is it, Katie?’

  I was quiet.

  ‘Isn’t it high time you shared some responsibility for your sister? Are you going to pretend she doesn’t exist for the rest of your life? You can’t always leave it up to your mother and me. What would you do if something happened to us? Bells would be your responsibility then. Have you ever …’

  ‘Hang on, Dad, what did you mean, if something happened to you? Like what?’

  ‘If you won’t have Bells to stay, you call her and tell her yourself,’ he continued, his voice was trembling with anger now.

  ‘Dad, what did you mean before?’ I pressed him. ‘Everything’s OK, isn’t it?’

  ‘All I meant was, your mother and I aren’t always going to be here for Bells. I’m not trying to scare you, but let’s face it, it’s something you need to think about.’

  But I don’t want to. Emma has said this to me too. She wishes I would spend more time with Bells. ‘After your parents, you are her next-of-kin,’ she says.

  ‘Katie?’

  ‘All right, I’ll have her to stay.’

  There was this great sigh of relief. ‘That’s wonderful, thank you,’ Dad said.

  *

  Frustrated in my search for cigarettes, I stick the kettle on instead. Is it unfair to expect Sam to have Bells to stay for two weeks? If it were my home, well, that’d be different, I reason to myself. Oh, God, who am I fooling? Yet I’m furious that my parents have put me in this position. It cuts both ways, Dad. I have a life to lead. I have a career. I can’t drop everything for Bells like you and Mum have. That was always the motto in our household.

  I massage my forehead, desperately trying to think of an alternative. Should I phone Aunt Agnes? Bells would have a much nicer time staying with her. I used to love my
holidays there.

  How am I going to do this? How will I introduce Bells to my friends? To Eve? To Sam?

  I dig into my handbag to find my diary. In it is Bells’ letter. I open it. The address, date and time are neatly underlined in the right-hand corner.

  To my sister Katie Fletcher

  Mum and Dad to stay in France and it would be very kind you have me to stay in summer holidays. To stay with Aunt Agnes, Suffolk too far, big thumbs down, would be very loveley to stay with Katie in London please. Its very Longtime, since I saw you and Wales close to London.

  Love, Bells xoxoxo

  I fold the letter and tuck it back into my diary.

  How can I say no?

  CHAPTER THREE

  1982

  I am seven years old. I like staying with Aunt Agnes, who lives in Suffolk, near the sea. She makes the best Black Forest gâteau with flakes of real dark chocolate, and cooks homemade chips with real potatoes in a large deep pan. She is very pretty and wears glasses, attached to small brown beads like a necklace, and a long checked apron when she’s cooking. She has these pointed shoes that look like witch’s shoes and a train set that I play with in her large garden.

  Her husband is funny too. Uncle Roger. Once he sat back in his chair and the whole thing collapsed. ‘This house is like an old lady,’ Aunt Agnes said. ‘It needs a bit of cosmetic surgery.’

  I think their house is spooky. Uncle Roger swears to me that he has seen the ghost of his father at the top of the stairs. The stairs creak, even my bed creaks. The corridors are dark and smell old and I run as fast as I can up and down those haunted stairs and into my bedroom. ‘She’s only a little girl but sometimes I think she’s going to crash right through them,’ I overheard Uncle Roger say once.

  I’m staying with my uncle and aunt while Mum has her baby. Mum finds being pregnant difficult. She has had three miscarriages – Dad explained to me what they were – and during this last pregnancy she has been in bed most of the time. Now it’s time for me to go back home. ‘Your mother has had a baby girl,’ Aunt Agnes tells me. ‘You’ll need to help your mum a lot. She will be very tired.’ She isn’t smiling at all and keeps on glancing sideways at Uncle Roger.

  Why is she being so quiet all of a sudden? Up until now Aunt Agnes has been showing me baby knitwear patterns and asking whether she should just ‘go for it’ and make the booties pink or perhaps ‘sit tight’ in case it’s a boy. Every sentence has begun with either, ‘Katie, if your mother has a girl …’ or, ‘I’m sure it’s a boy. I can feel it in me bones.’ Even when we went to Sainsbury’s she told the girl at the till that she was expecting a nephew or niece. Aunt Agnes flaps her arms around when she’s excited and her eyes flicker like a butterfly. Sometimes she pokes out her tongue when she’s in an especially good mood.

  The Sainsbury’s girl had black all around her eyes and didn’t seem at all interested. As the Club biscuits and mini packets of cereals slid past her she said, ‘Me, I’m never gonna have children or get married. Men, they’re only good when you want something done.’

  Aunt Agnes roared with laughter as she packed everything into bags. ‘What a lot that girl will miss out on,’ she told me in the car on the way back home. ‘When you grow up, Katie, promise me you’ll have lots of children. Fill the house with them. Don’t be lonely like your old Uncle Roger and me.’ Aunt Agnes can’t have children, Mum and Dad explained that’s why they like to pack me off to go and see her in the holidays. Supper that night was spent deciding what names to call him/her. Now Aunt Agnes looks as if she doesn’t know what to say about the new arrival.

  She hugs me on the platform and tells me to be a brave girl. I cannot understand it. I always travel on my own to Suffolk. A guard helps me on to the train and then there is Dad to pick me up when we arrive. There’s nothing to be brave about. The train trundles back to my parents’ home, and I go to the buffet car and pick out a marshmallow biscuit with strawberry filling and a packet of cheese and onion crisps. In between mouthfuls I try to imagine what my baby sister will look like. Will she look like me when I was little? Dad used to say I was blonde and big-eyed with dimpled white skin and chubby legs like baguettes. ‘You used to wear your knickers on your head too.’ He smiled. ‘You pretended they were scarves.’

  Dad meets me at the station as usual, wearing his dark-rimmed glasses and looking even thinner and longer than he usually does. My dad is over six foot two inches. Today he is wearing his scruffy jeans that he normally only wears around the house and his knitted chunky grey jumper that matches his hair. He always complains that he turned grey too early in life. He helps me with my shiny red case as I show the platform conductor my crumpled ticket. On the way home I want to ask lots of questions about the new baby. Yet I feel as if I have a marble stuck in my throat. Instead, we drive home in silence. Dad doesn’t even put the radio on to hear the news. He loves the news. Eventually Dad says, ‘Your mother is tired.’ He tells me I must be a good girl. He is gripping the steering wheel so hard I can see his knuckles turning white.

  ‘We’re back,’ Dad calls loudly. We walk upstairs in silence.

  Mum is sitting on her bedside chair with her old quilted bed-jacket on. Dad often tries to buy her another bed-jacket, but she won’t give it up. ‘It’s like comfort food,’ she says. ‘Sticky toffee pudding.’ I kiss her on the cheek but she doesn’t move, just sits there quietly, like Granny sits in her armchair when she comes to stay. Her eyes look red and puffy, as if she’s been crying. What’s wrong? Shouldn’t Mum be happy if she has had a baby? Instead she looks small and old and her cheeks are cold and dry.

  The crib stands in the middle of the room. It looks lonely and no noise comes from it. Mum looks over to Dad, who seems to be making some kind of secret sign at her.

  ‘Before you see your new sister …’ Dad says slowly. I know then, for certain, that something is wrong, and I’m scared. I walk over to the crib and look down.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘Did you really think you could keep her a secret for ever?’ asks Emma, grinding some pepper on to our hummus. Each Tuesday Emma and I go to a yoga class followed by supper. Sam plays poker with Maguire and a few of his other workmates.

  Emma tilts her head sideways when she asks questions – she does it when she’s watching television too, her forehead furrowed in concentration. Emma and I know almost everything about each other. She was once my next-door neighbour. We went to school together, ballet classes together, until Emma was told she was too ‘big-boned’ to have a future in pirouetting. She’s tall and willowy now, but when she was little she was ‘partridge-shaped’ as my Dad used to say. She stole bags of crisps from the cardboard box in their kitchen and ate them at the bottom of the garden. I was the other way round; the teacher constantly asked me if I was eating properly.

  We used to have a dressing-up box at home and we’d put on my mother’s old fur coats and stilettos and strut down to the shops together with Peggy, Mum’s dog, held tightly on the lead. Peggy would never walk with me, I had to drag her and she bumped along the pavement. I spent most of my time at Emma’s house. When things at home were difficult or if Mum and Dad were at the hospital visiting Bells, I stayed with Emma. Their family house became my second home. Emma is the only person I can talk to about Bells as she grew up with both of us.

  Emma still has that psychologist’s expression on her face, which makes me feel unsettled. Of course this would be her reaction.

  ‘I knew Sam would meet her some day, if we were serious,’ I finally reply.

  ‘Are you serious?’ She dips her pitta into the hummus.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  Emma is absent-mindedly coiling her dark brown hair but her eyes don’t leave mine. ‘Then in a way this is the perfect opportunity to tell him. It’s given you the push you need. Otherwise, when will you?’

  ‘It’s never been a conscious decision not to tell him about Bells.’ I fight my own corner. ‘He knows I have a sister, I haven’t told him much a
bout her, that’s all. It hasn’t come up in conversation.’

  ‘You’re embarrassed, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I’m not embarrassed.’ I blush, feeling defenceless around her, as if she is peeling the protective layers away from me one by one.

  Emma chooses not to hear. ‘You think the longer you don’t mention Bells, the harder it will be to drop her casually into conversation, don’t you?’

  ‘Sam’s not a curious person,’ I defend myself, ‘we don’t talk about family stuff.’ Since going out with Sam I have discovered little scraps of information about his parents. His father worked overseas when he was young. ‘Mum and I were fine,’ he insisted when I asked him if he’d missed his father. ‘We had a great time. Mum had a ball, in fact, when Dad left. Didn’t have to pick up his dry-cleaning or put his bloody supper on the table by seven on the dot. She could go out with her friends. Used to take me to all the parties,’ he recalled with a short laugh. ‘Yeah, we had a grand time, Mum and I. Turned out for the best, I’d say.’ Sam doesn’t like saying anything is wrong or that someone has hurt him. It’s a positive thing in that he doesn’t ever feel sorry for himself or harbour resentment. ‘Life is for living, not for dwelling on, Katie,’ he always says.

  It’s not really as simple as Sam makes it sound. Yet I’ve never felt able to tell him about my family; about how much I hated not seeing more of Mum after Bells arrived. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because Sam doesn’t ask. That’s why I love going out with him. I don’t need to explain anything. I can be exactly who I want to be.

  ‘Eat some of this,’ Emma demands, pushing the plate of hummus and pitta bread in my direction. ‘You haven’t touched your food.’

  I look at the plate dispassionately. ‘I’m not hungry.’ Instead I pour myself another glass of wine.

  ‘I think you’re overreacting to the whole situation,’ she says. ‘You’re not the only one to go through something like this, you know. Dad did exactly the same thing with Mum.’

  ‘Really?’ I look up.