My Sister Page 4

  ‘Yes, she is here,’ says the first. A man. Him? My father?

  ‘So, she insisted?’ asks another man.

  ‘Yes.’ There is a long pause, the sound of breathing. ‘But it won’t be for long. Hopefully she will remain manageable.’

  ‘You’ll soon be rid of her, Maurice. Not long to go now.’

  Maurice. Yes, Maurice. That was his name. Maurice and Cassandra. The almost parents.

  ‘Quite. How quickly can you get here to finish the paperwork?’

  I slowly push my finger against the switch, replacing the receiver on the hook. I slip down on the bed, put my hands over my ears.

  ‘I don’t want to be here,’ I whisper, but even as I say it I know that it isn’t really true. Deep down, I know why I came. To discover the truth that nobody would ever tell me. Not Elle, not Aunt Jemima. I came because I need to know why. I have always needed to know why. Why did I have to leave this place and my family to go and live with a woman who didn’t want me? Why did they keep Elle and send me away? And now, after all these years, what is so wrong that they can’t wait for me to leave? I came for the part of me that’s missing, for the part of me that got left behind, and for the part that I always knew I would never be able to find anywhere but here.

  5

  The first time Elle found me was at my school when I was thirteen years old. I had delayed my exit because there was a boy, Robert Kneel, who had taken a dislike to the way I walked, which at the time was with a considerable wobble to the left and a rectifying stride to the right. That, coupled with my mildly hunched back, had earned me the nickname Bison, an unpleasant alternative to Peg Leg Irini.

  Kneel was a skinny little runt, arms too long for his shirts, his ankles visible below his trousers. He was poor, and it showed. His skin was always a sickly grey pallor, like he wasn’t getting enough iron in the free school dinners that he had to eat because his parents couldn’t afford to feed him. Every day without fail he would hang around outside the school gates waiting for me.

  I thought I had waited long enough, but forty minutes after the bell he was still there. By the time I saw him, there was no going back. So I put my head down, began walking faster. Hhhhhhhuuuummmmmmm came the noise, the sound of a bison, guttural and as deep as his half-broken voice would permit. Hhhhhhhuuuummmmmmm began his band of three followers, soon erupting into a chorus of chanting. They let me pass, a twist in the game that unsettled me even more, but they were soon on my tail.

  That was when Elle appeared in front of me, a vision like I had never seen before. She was seventeen at the time. Her pink hair was in bunches, and the ring in her nose shone as the sunlight caught it. At first I thought she was a stranger, but then I noticed a small triangular scar on her forehead that jogged a subtle memory from my childhood. The memory was of our only other reunion, when I was nine years old. It was my parents who’d arranged that meeting, but they lived to regret it. Afterwards, Aunt Jemima said we had to move house so Elle wouldn’t be able to find us again. She would have moved to a different country had Uncle Marcus agreed. Then Elle found one of our cousins in Edinburgh and followed her back to our new house. Finding my school after that was easy.

  ‘Hi,’ she said to me, as cheerful as you could imagine. The crowd of boys pulled up behind me, their hands on their knees as they caught their breath. She said it like we were old friends, as if I knew her.

  ‘Hi,’ I said back, my voice wobbly because I was close to tears, my cheeks flushed pink from effort, pain and embarrassment. But she walked past me, heading straight for Robert Kneel, and all that cheer drained from her face. The boys tried to run, realising the game was up, but she caught Robert by the hood of his jumper. That was what the tough kids did in 1996, wore illegal jumpers under their uniform blazers. Even the dirt-poor ones.

  ‘You are a little cunt,’ she said to him as she slapped him across the face. He fought and wriggled, his legs flailing and kicking, and all I could think was that tomorrow, when she wasn’t there, I was really going to get it. I thought maybe he might even kill me.

  ‘Get off, you crazy bitch,’ he shouted. He had barely finished speaking when she threw him to the ground. And I mean threw him, like she was bowling or plate-smashing or something where there was an intent to break. I felt myself squeal, jump back as he hit the ground. One of his front teeth shot from his mouth like a bullet, followed by a trickle of blood down his chin. She turned to me and smiled, raised her eyebrows a bit, then kicked him right between his legs. He cried out in pain, but she just laughed. I couldn’t believe it. I looked around for witnesses, as if I was the guilty party. But nobody was about. No houses overlooked this stretch of road. She had picked her spot well.

  ‘Little cunts don’t need balls between their legs,’ she said as she kicked him again. ‘I’ve been watching you for weeks.’ She kicked him twice more before grabbing my hand and starting to run. I trailed behind her, my backpack bobbing up and down, covered with my cousin’s scribbles from the year before.

  We arrived at a green Volvo estate that was parked just around the corner. I remember thinking how lucky it was, because my hip wouldn’t have taken much more effort. I sat in the passenger seat, watching her as she drove us to McDonald’s, unable to believe what she had just done. We ate Big Macs and shared six portions of fries, Elle laughing about how much she had hurt Robert Kneel. I laughed along, but not very convincingly. I couldn’t focus, the untameable fear of what would happen the next day at the forefront of my mind. Afterwards she bought me hot apple pie, and in my eagerness to appear grateful I burnt my lip. All the while we ate, she burnt matches down to her fingertips. At one point I could even smell her nails as the flame licked against them.

  ‘You know I’m your sister, right?’ she asked later as we sat on a bench feeding gravel to hungry ducks. I could feel her eyes upon me as I watched the ripples on the water, but what should I say? I wasn’t sure, so after a long silence I nodded without really knowing it. ‘That means we have to spend time together.’ She reached over to my face and turned it in her direction, picked strands of my hair out of my eyes. I stared at her nose ring, unsure where to look. ‘They don’t want that, you know. Not since the last time. You remember what happened the last time, right?’

  This time I nodded without delay. I didn’t want to think about what had happened that day when I was nine years old, or the ambulance, or the cold, or the fact that Aunt Jemima’s whole family had to move in order to keep me away from her. ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘Good. Because they can’t stop us, Irini. Nobody can.’ She leaned in, kissed me on the lips. I felt her tongue poke into my mouth, wet, sweet as the apple pie she had just eaten, yet cold from her chocolate milkshake. I didn’t move. It wasn’t sexual, more like the way a frog might catch a fly. I just think she wanted to know if I would let her. After watching her kick Robert Kneel in the balls, I would have let her do pretty much anything. Even though I couldn’t deny that background level of fear, she was like a hero to me, and for the next five years the pattern was stuck. ‘Nothing can keep us apart, you have to know that. But this is our little secret,’ she said, before leaving me there with my milkshake and no way to get home.

  Robert Kneel never bothered me again. He was taken to hospital by his parents, where one of his testicles was surgically removed because it was twisted and starting to go black. Everybody called him One-ball after that. The school asked me about the incident, and I admitted to being there. I said I had no idea who the attacker was, and that I got away from her by hitting her with my backpack. It helped that one of the other boys thought her hair was pink, and another blue. The next time I saw Elle, it was black.

  That was the end of it. Elle had got away with it. Of course, Aunt Jemima knew the truth, and there were several fights between her and Uncle Marcus about her brother’s fucked-up family. Aunt Jemima wanted to move again. Uncle Marcus refused. They wanted me to change school. I refused. I should have felt sorry for them perhaps, for all the difficulty my
presence was causing. But I didn’t. After all, they were trying to keep me from my hero. From Elle.

  I should have felt sorry for Robert Kneel as well, but I never did. Even now, as an adult, I cannot muster any sympathy for his loss, even though I dream about him at least once a month. In fact I think he should be grateful for what Elle did to him, because when it would later come to setting up Margot Wolfe, someone else who hated me, he was still away from school recovering from the surgery. Otherwise he might have ended up a one-balled rapist.

  6

  I stand at the window and gasp at the chilly evening air. It is so much colder up here in the north, without the simmering heat of the city concrete to warm me. I scrabble in my pockets, pull out a pack of cigarettes and light one. I breathe in the smoke, suck it down. I look outside again as I exhale and notice that the short man who was straining over the Mercedes has left it unattended, doors wide open. I drag in one last lungful of smoke before stubbing out my cigarette on the wall, then waft the smoke through the window and march towards the door. I brace myself for confrontation, listening out for ghosts as I snatch it open, but I hear nothing and see nobody. I sacrifice silence for speed and rush through the house along the red carpet like some kind of VIP. I thought irony was supposed to be funny.

  I move through the corridors, wishing I had been paying attention to the route when Elle brought me here. There are only two possible turns, but they look essentially the same, and taking the wrong one, stumbling into another household member, doesn’t exactly fill me with fuzzy family feelings.

  I plump for the left turn and strike lucky, arriving in the kitchen. I revisit the memory I had on the way in. Again I see myself as a baby, crawling along the floor. Well done! Brave girl! Now spread your wings, I hear, as if she, whoever she is, is here with me now.

  Into the hallway. I hear voices in the background, coming from one of the adjoining rooms. I’m sure that one of them is the voice I heard on the telephone. Elle isn’t here to divert me away. I could go and speak with him now. But I have to get my phone. So I skip awkwardly to the door, and breathe only once I get outside.

  I can hear somebody moving about in one of the garages as I approach the car. I don’t want to be seen, so I reach in, snatch up my bag and start back towards the house. I rummage inside to check the contents and realise that my phone isn’t there.

  ‘Is this what you are searching for?’ I turn to see the portly man who was wiping over the car. He is holding up my phone.

  ‘Yes, it is.’ I snatch it from his hand. There is a perfect hole in the centre of the screen from which a series of jagged rings fans out.

  ‘You must have dropped it on your way out of the car.’ He pulls a dirty rag from his overstretched belt and begins wiping his hands. We exchange a light handshake, which he steers to a natural end by pointing at the ground. ‘I found it just down here.’ He tucks the rag back into his belt, and folds in a stray piece of his shirt. It is filthy, with a line of dirt engrained into the belly from where he has repeatedly brushed against the sides of the car.

  I crouch down and run my fingers across the ground like a detective looking for clues. I find shards of glass and nod my head affirmatively before standing back up. I push the Off/On switch a few times, and a flicker of life flashes across the screen like the final beats of a heart just before death. The phone is fucked, and my annoyance whinnies out of me like a stroppy teenager. ‘I can’t believe it’s broken.’

  ‘Maybe you stepped on it,’ he says, peering in to take a closer look.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ I hold up my small left foot for his inspection, as if its minuscule size proves innocence. ‘Who knows? Whatever. Anyway, thanks,’ I mutter without sounding remotely thankful. As I begin to slink away, hoisting my tote over my shoulder, I hear him call out to me.

  ‘Miss Irini,’ he says. It is strange to hear my name used in this place. As if I belong, as if I have a place in the life that happens here. I turn, find him investigating the gravel of the driveway with the toe of his shoe. ‘If there is anything you need while you are here with us, I’d be happy to oblige. Any time you want to leave, you just say. I will drive you anywhere you want to go.’ I nod my head, smile in a way that doesn’t look unappreciative. ‘But in the meantime, go easy with Miss Eleanor. She, um . . .’ He pauses, and I wonder what it is that is so hard to say. ‘She doesn’t take kindly to having to answer to anybody. I know it can be claustrophobic in there. The atmosphere . . .’ He trails off, patting the disturbed gravel back into place. ‘Oh,’ he smiles, lets out a little chuckle, ‘listen to me going on when you have only just arrived.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I tell him. ‘But what do you mean?’ I already knew that there were secrets hidden in the creases of this house, and something about the way he looks at me, so pityingly, makes me certain that at least some of them are about me.

  ‘Oh, you know, just a big old house,’ he chuckles, but he doesn’t seem amused. ‘Creaks and bumps in the night.’ I look back at the 1970s-design flat wooden panelling smothering the upper floor, the ugly double bay windows and the Corinthian columns holding up the porch. Even uglier in today’s grey light than I imagine it might be in the summer. It’s a hotchpotch design of whatever my parents might once have thought elegant. ‘Anyway, anything you need, you just let me know. My name’s Frank.’

  ‘OK, thanks, Frank,’ I say as I start to walk away. When I get to the front door, I glance back to find that he is still looking at me, watching me with a level of compassion I find hard to understand when I am nothing but a stranger.

  I arrive back in my room and drop my bag at the side of the bed. I lie down, my legs curled up, my feet brushing against the foot end. I turn on to my back and stare at the ceiling. It is white with occasional patches of brown, water stains that must have been making steady progress for years. My eyes move across the objects in the room, searching for details upon which I can focus. I stare at the image of the faded butterflies and remember the words I heard in the kitchen. Well done! Brave girl! Now spread your wings. After a while I get up from the bed and take the picture down, creating a clean window of lemon paint. I shove it behind the chest of drawers. I take an ornament from the top; a little boy sitting on a mushroom, fussing with the fur of a rabbit at his feet. I open a drawer, place the ornament inside.

  I lift the receiver of the old rotary phone. I dial my home number and hope that Antonio answers. I need to talk to somebody outside this house, and who else do I have? He picks up after three rings.

  ‘Hey you,’ he says.

  ‘Hi,’ I answer, surprised. ‘How did you know it was me?’

  ‘Rini, hi.’ He pauses. ‘Caller ID, distance call. Good guess, I suppose.’

  Silence follows and I know he is still pissed off with me. Not for the argument we had the previous night, but instead for the things that remain unsaid. ‘I made it safely,’ I say, starting with something easy, stating the obvious. ‘But my phone is broken.’

  ‘I’m just glad you’re OK.’ He is quiet again for a long moment, but then I hear him physically soften, his voice sweeter and kinder. ‘How are things?’

  My turn for silence. Realising how fragile things are between us, I settle on a lie. ‘I’m good. No problems.’

  ‘That’s good,’ he says. Yes, everything is good. Perfect. Fine and dandy. Two idiots lying to each other because neither wants to face the truth. The word ‘sorry’ is right there on the tip of my tongue. It feels right to say it, but I’m not sure what it is I’m sorry for. I’m not sure I’d know where to begin. ‘The flight was OK. She picked me up from the airport.’

  ‘Your sister? Oh, really?’ he says, not waiting for confirmation. ‘How is everything?’ he says again. I breathe in deeply before I reply.

  ‘OK, I suppose.’ I pause. ‘She brought me here to the house. I’m in one of the bedrooms now. I’m using their phone.’ For a second he doesn’t say anything, but he quickly tries to cover up his shock.

  ‘What is the r
oom like? Is it comfortable?’

  ‘It’s OK.’ I edge up in the bed and roll over on to the pillow. I have stopped listening out for signs of family life on the other side of my four walls. Instead I watch the tops of the trees sway behind the garages, where the workmen are trimming them back. I can feel tears welling in my eyes and I hope my voice does not betray how I really feel.

  ‘When is the funeral?’ he asks. I hear him light a cigarette and it makes me want one, so I rummage in my pocket, pull out the pack of Marlboro red and take one with my teeth.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, getting up from the bed to light my cigarette. I pick up the telephone base and take it with me as I move towards the window. I pull out more dust and fur balls as I lasso the non-elastic flex out from behind the cupboard. ‘I guess soon.’

  I lean against the window and gaze outside, and that’s when I see my father. Goose pimples shiver across my body. He’s holding something, a beaker with something brown that makes me salivate. He is watching the workmen attend to the trees, casually puffing on a cigar. A car pulls up and another man, short, thick around the middle with bright red cheeks and a flash of orange hair, steps out. My father walks forward to greet him, and they shake hands. The second man retrieves a briefcase from the car. As they turn to the house my father glances up at me. This time there are no shadows to distort what I see.

  I dodge back into the room. I am not ready to put a real face to my idea of what he looks like. I have imagined him so many times, a character playing a role in my fantasies of family. He was always strong, broad-shouldered, and I was always small and in need of his help. Perfect father–daughter. If I grazed my knee I would imagine it was him tending to me while Aunt Jemima dressed the wound, his large hands on my cheeks, telling me that everything would be OK. The same if I woke from a nightmare. But now he is there in front of me, more diminutive than I had hoped. I pull the window shut so that I become nothing more than a shadow behind the glass. We are two strangers, but he must know it’s me. Just in the same way I know it’s him. The call of DNA from our bones.