If You Knew My Sister Read online

  ‘I can’t wear this,’ I say as I walk out, palms spread wide. When I eventually look up, I find her naked. She is balancing on one leg, her hip bones jutting out as sharp as our father’s meat-cleaver nose. She catches me looking at her smooth skin, finely covering her salient bones. She looks like an anatomical drawing, sketched to perfection. She glances at her hip, and then back to mine. I look away, my eyes scanning newsletters about lost dogs and hippy yoga classes pinned to the wall for a distraction.

  ‘Ha, there you go,’ she says, pointing at me. ‘I told you you’d got fat.’

  ‘I’ll put my T-shirt over it,’ I huff as I reach for the shirt. But her arm flies up, intercepting me. She snatches the T-shirt from my hand, perfect tits and arms flying everywhere, the left one nearly catching me on the cheek. Her body is as bald as a baby. She tears the shirt, shreds it in two. Rrrrriiipp.

  ‘Now you have to wear that,’ she says, looking satisfied but flushed as she throws the shredded garment down and stomps on it as if it has caught fire. ‘They are not too tight. You are too big.’ She snatches at her bag, takes out her own workout gear. She pulls on a pair of hot pants but she is all of a dither, pissed off at me. She shoves her bag into a locker, slamming the door shut with such force that it seems to work loose from its hinges. My anger bubbles as I think of the people who will laugh at me trying to exercise my imperfect hip in this ridiculous outfit. But I don’t want a scene, so I remain silent. There are people nearby already aware of our presence, and it would be much easier if this was understood to be an insignificant blip in an otherwise happy sisterly day. ‘Hiding under the baggy layers just enables you to forget that you got fat,’ she says as she takes a pinch of my abdominal skin in her hand, ‘and I am not about to become your enabler.’

  A few eyes remain on us as she hurries on a skimpy bra top. Socks, shoes. Headband. Mirror check. She snatches my hand before strutting towards the exit door, pulling me behind her. One woman especially appears to feel sorry for me, so I offer a smile and laugh it off. She seems unconvinced, scoops up her bag and moves away from us. ‘I don’t know how you ever managed to become a doctor looking like that,’ Elle calls out loud enough for all to hear, as if my imperfect stomach has any bearing on my intellectual capabilities.

  She insists we drink water before we begin, because dehydration is a killer, and then we complete an orientation circuit of the gym. She points out a couple of men she likes, a couple of women she doesn’t, and one whom she knows to have chlamydia because she slept with her boyfriend and he confessed. After a series of stretches in front of the mirror that I cannot complete on account of my less than perfect anatomy, we start on the cross trainers. And I am enjoying myself, kind of. Sisters’ Day, I think. Not so bad. I even consider probing the past, asking her what she knows about why I was given away. I have tried a few times before, the last when I was about sixteen years old. We had been out for the night, both got a bit tipsy. When I dared ask why they’d never wanted me, she grabbed me by the throat and pushed me up against a wheelie bin, much to the amusement of other revellers nearby. ‘Our mother is a whore,’ she told me. ‘You don’t need them. Don’t listen to what they tell you.’ Then she cried and held me in her arms like an overgrown baby, rocking me back and forth as we sat on the kerb. I was so mortified I never dared ask her again. But years have passed now, and she seems in a good mood at the moment. I decide to wait until we have finished the workout.

  So we pedal alongside each other, one of her judgemental eyes always trained on me because I am going too slow. She might be thirty-seven, but she has the body of a teenager, and I am impressed. Enough to straighten my back and focus on not limping. I pull up my left shoulder to even up the line of my breasts.

  Several men amble up during the workout. They hang out next to Elle’s cross trainer, offering varying degrees of attention, and she smiles and giggles like a schoolgirl as they look her up and down, using their imagination to remove the tiny garments she is wearing. They speak to her chest, and she helps them out by stretching up like a cat for petting. One of them rests his hand on her ass and she pushes back into it. She looks at me in a way that can only be described as pitying, as if I should somehow be jealous of the mauling she is getting. I try hard to focus on the exercise, but the Valium and alcohol from the night before linger in my system, and the coffee I would normally have drunk by now is conspicuously absent. My face is flushed, beads of sweat trailing across it, salt licking at my lip.

  After the ass-grabber moves on, the next victim saunters over wearing a T-shirt that says Live to the Max! Elle pays her newest admirer no attention. ‘Looking good, working hard,’ he says. At least this one speaks. He completes a quick circuit of the machine, casting his eyes up and down. There’s another guy with him who looks over at me. He’s a little shorter than the first, his eyes softly formed, with long lashes, his lips pouty and moist. He looks kind rather than beautiful like his friend. I knuckle down and push on, keeping my left shoulder held up. My speed increases like a rocket, and my hip complains, sending shooting pains ripping through my thigh.

  ‘Always,’ Elle replies, not once breaking her stride. ‘You haven’t been here for a while, Greg. Where have you been?’

  ‘So you’ve noticed?’ says Mr Live-to-the-Max, working his tongue into his cheek before nibbling on his own lip. Gross. Elle smiles and pushes her tits out even further. He offers her his towel. She refuses, but stops driving the machine and picks up her own, dabbing it across her face and then her bulging chest. He watches her, shifts his weight in a way that makes me think he got hard. It is enough to break my concentration, so I stop and grab my own towel.

  ‘Not really,’ she says. ‘It’s been too long to remember you. How many others have been on my mind between then and now?’ She rolls her eyes upwards in a daydream, holding up her fingers to count what I’m sure are not imaginary men. Somewhere in the background I can hear the drumming of feet on the floor as an aerobics class starts, an overenthusiastic voice booming across the speakers. ‘More than enough to forget you,’ she concludes as her counting fades out somewhere before the tenth finger. She flicks the tip of his nose, butt stretched right back and angled upwards as if she is just waiting for him to mount her.

  ‘Only on your mind?’ he says as he slides one hand over her slick, wet thigh. I step from the machine, desperate to put some distance between us. Greg nudges his buddy in the side without taking his eyes off Elle. He says, ‘Matt, where do you think they’ve been? In her mind, or elsewhere?’ His hand disappears from view and Elle squeals as if she is on her way to climax right here in the middle of the gym. There is a pensionable woman behind her with a good vantage point, who without any doubt can see exactly what is happening. She makes a disgusted noise, half snort, half yelp, and brings her hand up to her mouth as if she is about to be sick. She steps from her own machine and heads to the treadmills on the other side of the room.

  ‘No idea,’ says the one called Matt, uninterested. I’m impressed by this lack of attention for Elle, reassured by his easy Scottish accent. He’s doing that thing that Antonio did when I first met him, paying attention only to me and ignoring everybody else. But he’s different, too. From the first moment, I knew Antonio wanted me physically. He made it clear, like Greg is doing with Elle. But Matt isn’t doing that. He doesn’t feel dangerous like Antonio did. ‘Maybe they were visiting her at the loony bin,’ he mutters under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear. I can’t help but giggle, and I realise what a traitor I am. Only minutes ago I was lounging around in the idea of sisterhood, thinking that we were connecting. Now I’m laughing at her expense.

  ‘Who’s your friend?’ Greg asks Elle. ‘Not seen her before.’

  ‘She isn’t my friend,’ says Elle, laughing as if he has just told the best joke in the world. He laughs too, pleased and smug with himself without really knowing why. The kind of guy who would get some of his ribs removed so that he could give himself a blow job. That’s how impressed h
e is with himself. ‘She’s my sister.’

  I can tell that Greg is thinking no fucking way. Elle smirks as she rubs up against him. I bring an arm around my chest, let my shoulder slacken.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ says Matt, holding his hand out to me. He looks embarrassed about the loony-bin joke, so I take his hand in my sweaty palm and manage a proper smile.

  ‘You too,’ I say, noticing that Elle is already halfway to the door with Greg. Fortunately I am flushed from the exercise and it masks my embarrassment. Why it matters to me that Elle is slutting it up all over the gym, I’m not sure.

  ‘I think we’ve been stood up,’ Matt says.

  ‘Well you’re in a better position than me, because I’m going to have to wait for her to get back.’ He is laughing too now, but I don’t think he seems like the type who would try to belittle me. He is too movie-good-guy for that, handsome in a simple way, hair foppish, slicked to his wet forehead. ‘What’s so funny?’ I ask.

  ‘You’ll be waiting a long time. Last time they left together, I didn’t see him until later on that week.’

  ‘Great.’ I shrug, tossing my towel back down. I take a glug from my bottle of Evian water. ‘What am I going to do now?’

  ‘I can take you home if you like,’ he offers. ‘Wherever you want to go. My car is just outside. Give me a minute to get my stuff.’ He rushes off without waiting for an answer, but I don’t think I would have refused even if he had given me all the time in the world. I go and get changed, grab my bag.

  He comes sprinting from the changing rooms with wet curls and pink cheeks. We head out and walk in silence to his car, and I lag behind a step or two, watching him as he moves. He looks so relaxed. He opens the boot so I can toss my new gym bag in.

  ‘You see,’ he says, casting his hand left and right. ‘No ropes, handcuffs or bottles of chloroform.’ I laugh. ‘You’ll be quite safe.’ I climb into the passenger seat and reach across for the belt.

  9

  ‘Now, where am I taking you?’ he asks as he gets in the car. Where the hell am I supposed to tell him to take me? It’s not like I have many choices.

  ‘Do you have Elle’s phone number? Maybe I should try and call her.’ Surely that’s the best plan. I’m not certain I could find my way back through the maze of country roads that lead to the village where my family’s home is. Which is a shame, because I could have used this time to try to talk to my father.

  ‘Aye, I have it,’ he says, stifling a smile. ‘But do you really want to call her now?’ He gives me a knowing look, like I have been naive not to consider what Elle is doing.

  ‘Good point. I’ll call her later,’ I say. I make a mental note to call Antonio later too. ‘Maybe we could go for coffee, wait for them together?’ Other than linger at the gym, what else am I going to do? What would Elle do? Certainly not mope around waiting for me, that’s for sure.

  ‘Sounds good.’ He starts the engine and we pull away.

  We drive through twisty lanes away from Edinburgh, the endless countryside without border or restriction, segmented by hotchpotch walls and sudden outcrops of rock like the one behind my family’s house. The sunlight slices in through the window in golden blades of light, intermittently blinding me like some kind of torture device. Eventually he pulls up outside a country pub, an ancient building that has been repainted in a shade of bone grey, decorated with finely cut topiary bushes in spheres. A sign hangs outside: The Dirty Dog, Gastro Pub, like they needed to advertise what they were just in case somebody got confused.

  ‘This OK?’ he asks as he pulls the keys from the ignition.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and he nods his head, pleased with himself.

  We go inside, my hip not doing at all well with the steps after all the exercising. The smell of beer and wine floats past me, mixed with a lavender-scented wood polish. There is an acoustic mix on the stereo playing well-known rock songs: a woman singing ‘Losing My Religion’, followed by a poor rendition of U2’s ‘One’. Matt orders the drinks while I stake out a table and stretch out my left leg. He returns with two large glasses of straw-coloured wine and pulls out his chair. Before we have even exchanged a word, half of my wine has gone.

  ‘Needed that.’ I try to speak lightly, as if this whole situation is normal. To be here with a stranger at the best of times would be tough – I’m not really one for small talk – but today, on Sisters’ Day, it somehow seems even worse. I’m disappointed at how I allowed myself to believe that it might have been different, that maybe I would have spent the day with Elle talking about something worthwhile. That maybe by the end of it I would have been left with the truth.

  Matt eyes up my glass and the remaining wine. After a moment he picks up his own and gulps it back in an effort to catch up. ‘So, tell me. How come I never knew that Elle had a sister?’ He has a cheeky smile; he is confident that this is a safe subject between two strangers. I consider truth or lie, but realise that if I admit anything less than the truth, Elle will call me out on it later and I’ll look stupid.

  ‘Because she doesn’t, not really.’ He scrunches up his eyes, confused, and a deep line forms between his eyebrows. He says nothing, waiting for me to clarify, knowing that the safety net he thought he was in just fell apart. ‘We didn’t grow up together.’

  He appears relieved, nods along, all-knowing. ‘Divorce is hard. My parents too. Weekends with Dad, one holiday a year.’ He shakes his head like the part-time-parent memories are as bad as he could possibly imagine. He’s trying so hard to empathise with me, sharing the tough moments of his past. I could almost feel sorry for him, if it wasn’t all so ordinary. But I know that isn’t the whole story. People always keep something back. He leans in a little and the scent of his shampoo drifts across the table, a familiar smell. White Musk, the smell of my teenage years; it was what Elle used to steal for me to cover up the smell of cigarettes. ‘I wouldn’t choose it for my kids,’ he continues, ‘and I’ll never get divorced. No matter how hard it gets.’ He sips at the little bit of wine he has left. ‘That’s if I ever get married and have kids,’ he adds as an afterthought, and for a moment, just in the way his eye twitches, he seems terribly sad.

  ‘Actually, that’s not it. She lived with our parents. I didn’t. Our parents never got divorced. I lived with other family members from the time I was three years old.’ It feels good to hear it aloud. I think of all the times Antonio has told me that I will feel better once I get it off my chest, and see now that perhaps he was on to something.

  ‘Oh. That must have been hard.’ Matt is kind of lost, stumbling about in the dark, fiddling with the menu card on the table. But I can see there is fight there, a determination that all is not lost. He is wondering how he can still pull this back and make the next few hours bearable. ‘Siblings are really everything, though. I have a sister. Love her to bits.’ He rocks his head to the side, left and right as if his neck is a weighing scale. ‘My parents, not so much. They didn’t make the best choices. But me and my sister stuck together. Don’t know what I would have done without her.’ He smiles, I smile. We’re both smiling, and bizarrely, in spite of everything, I don’t feel so bad. But there are other memories buried in there that he hasn’t shared yet. I know that look, trying hard not to reveal so much of yourself that you scare people away. I like him even more because of the things he might be keeping hidden.

  ‘Maybe we should call Elle,’ I say, wanting to let him off the hook, change the subject. ‘Do you have her number?’

  He looks confused. ‘Don’t you have it?’

  ‘No, my phone is broken.’ I pull it out of my jacket pocket and show him, as if I need to prove myself.

  ‘Looks nasty,’ he says, tracing a finger over the cracked screen.

  ‘Can I use yours?’

  He passes it over. I sit with it in my hand. He directs his attention to my phone, wondering if it is salvageable. He is a fixer, just like Antonio. But after a moment he looks up, realises that I don’t know the number. I think maybe t
hat’s not so weird. After all, who remembers telephone numbers nowadays?

  ‘Check the phonebook,’ he says. ‘I have her number stored in there.’

  I scroll the names, make the call without saying a word. When nobody answers, I slide his phone back over the table, avoiding the beer rings that have been left by a previous occupant. ‘Obviously still busy.’ I raise my eyebrows, realising again that he finds me funny. I smile, without trying, the realisation of which makes me smile more.

  ‘Let’s get another drink,’ I say as I swill the last of my wine down. Matt nods, jumps to his feet as if what I said was an instruction. He returns with two fresh glasses, and I see how the first has already touched him, wobbling down the steps from the bar, the whites of his eyes pink and glassy.

  ‘I think we should get something to eat, too,’ he announces, and I nod in agreement. He quickly settles on a steak with chips. I order a heavy pasta dish in the hope that it will be enough for the rest of the day so that I won’t have to suffer another meal in the dining room at the house. Until the food arrives we chat about the weather and how it has been a mild summer. He tells me about his work, even though I don’t ask, and it turns out he is a successful investment banker. He works with Greg, who I learn has a bit of a thing going with Elle. The food arrives, and he digs into his before I have even picked up my knife and fork.

  ‘So tell me more about you,’ I say, wondering if it sounds like I am flirting. He slices through the steak, takes a chunk of it in his mouth.