Letters From My Sister (8 page)

‘What does she look like?’ she asks softly again. ‘Come on, we’ll find her. She can’t be far.’

I smile gratefully at her. Her auburn hair, the same colour as Mum and Bells’s, is piled on top of her head with an assortment of hairgrips and she is wearing sunglasses, which is strange when it’s so overcast. ‘If you’ve seen someone who doesn’t blend into the crowd, well,’ I sniffle, ‘that’s her.’

She makes me sit down for a few moments to compose myself. I stare over at the playground where there are a few mothers pushing their children on the swings, and a couple of boys kicking a ball around. Under a tree a pair of boys practise their boxing skills. One stands with a padded shield over his hand while the other practises his punches. I tell her about our argument. I tell her about Bells. It’s surprisingly easy telling a stranger about our family. ‘I’m sorry for crying,’ I add.

‘Don’t be. Being sorry for crying is such a British thing. You’re going through a traumatic time, you’re allowed to be emotional. What
is
that whistling noise?’

I turn round and see Mark staggering towards us, holding on to Bells. ‘Thank God,’ I leap up from the bench, the relief overwhelming.

‘Don’t thank God,’ the American remarks, her dark glasses now perched on the end of her nose. ‘I think you should thank that nice young man.’

As I run towards them I can tell something’s seriously wrong. ‘She needs her inhaler,’ Mark shouts.

I try and find it in my bag, and then remember exactly where it is.

Bells is fighting for breath. ‘Her inhaler,’ Mark shouts again as he lifts her into his arms.

‘It’s in the shop. OK, she needs to sit down,’ I tell Mark, who carries her as quickly as he can to the bench. The American lady stands up to make space. Gently Mark sits her down, before letting me take over. I can feel the tightness in her chest as she gasps for breath. ‘Put your hands on your knees … Don’t let her lie down, Mark. She has to sit up and try to relax as much as possible. I’ll be back in a minute.’ He sits with her while I run as fast as I can across the park. I unlock the door with trembling hands and rush to pick up the inhaler. I slam the door shut and just about remember to lock it behind me.

Bells takes the inhaler immediately. I stroke her back. We watch and wait.

‘How’s she doing?’ the American lady asks.

‘If this doesn’t work we’ll have to call an ambulance,’ I say. Please let me wake up. Please let this be a terrible dream. I take in a deep breath, waiting to see if the inhaler helps Bells.

‘I’m all right,’ she says.

I can feel her breathing becoming more even as I continue to stroke her back. ‘You’re really all right?’ I say. ‘Oh, God, Bells, don’t ever … I mean
ever
scare me like that again.’

Mark tells me not to shout, that she’s safe, that’s all that matters.

‘She could have died.’ I turn back to Bells, who sits, looking tired and crumpled, with her eyes watering. ‘Oh, Bells.’ I reach out and pull her close to me. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for shouting at you. It’ll never happen again.’ I feel her arms clutching the small of my back and hold her even more tightly – the way Mum used to hold me when I was younger. So tightly that I thought I would stop breathing.

‘Mark’s right. You’re OK, that’s all that counts.’

*

I pull the duvet over her.

‘Tired,’ Bells says, turning on to her side.

‘Get some rest. I’m going to make you your favourite supper. What would you like to eat? Remember, it’s me cooking,’ I add, smiling.

‘Why you hate me?’ she asks.

‘What?’ Should I pretend I didn’t hear that? I draw her curtains.

‘You hate me.’

‘Oh Bells, that’s not true, I don’t hate you.’ I turn off the main light and shut the door behind me. Outside I lean against it, catching my breath. I feel winded by her question. Bells is no fool, she could hear how hollow that sounded. I can’t keep on talking to her as if she’s ten years old. Pat her on the head and hope she won’t ask me any more difficult questions.

Bells screams then. ‘Too dark!’

I rush back and turn on the light.

I kneel down beside her and make my voice like his. ‘I’m sorry, Bells. I forgot. That was stupid of me.’

‘That’s right, Katie. You don’t write me,’ she says. ‘Mum writes me. Dad writes me. You don’t.’

I’m about to say something along the lines of no one writes letters any more, only Mum and Dad’s generation, but then I realize how pathetic that would sound. She’s right.

‘You don’t visit me.’

‘No, I don’t,’ I say.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, Bells.’ I try to explain, but I don’t even know where to start. ‘I don’t hate you, but I hated watching you in the park. I was so scared. If anything had happened to you, I would never have forgiven myself. I hated seeing you so vulnerable. I do care. I’m sorry for shouting, and …’

‘In Wales cut labels,’ she mutters.

‘Oh, God, I don’t care about the labels any more. And I will start writing to you, I’d like to.’ I realize as I say this that I can’t make an empty promise. Bells deserves more than that.

‘Mark’s nice man. Nice man.’

I smile. ‘He is very nice. I’m so sorry, Bells.’ Without thinking I kiss her forehead and softly touch her cheek. ‘I don’t hate you. I could never, ever hate you.’ I want to tell her that I love her but I don’t feel I deserve to say it. Instead I stand up to draw her shutters and turn off the overhead light. The small stained-glass lamp in the corner of her room is on this time.

‘Nothing around me?’ she asks.

‘Nothing around you.’

‘Promise.’

‘I promise.’

*

‘Thank you, Mark, thank you so much,’ I tell him as I make us both a hot drink in the kitchen. I asked him back to Sam’s place as I felt it was the least I could do. Also I wanted to know how he had found Bells. I’d thought he would say no, that he had to get on with his day, but to my surprise he agreed.

‘Is she all right?’ he asks with concern, turning away from the milk-bottle sculpture.

‘I think so. I ran her a bath, that seemed to relax her.’

Mark tells me he found Bells waiting at a bus shelter. She was clearly in an agitated condition but everyone at the stop was doing their best to ignore her.

I feel such a failure as I listen to him recall the drama, realizing Bells is having a miserable time with me. She wanted to see the bright lights of London and the most gripping thing we have done together is go to Sainsbury’s. Now I know where I met Mark before. ‘That’s right, of course,’ I tell him. ‘You’re thirty-four.’

‘Yes. But you can forget that bit.’ We laugh together for the first time today.

‘If you hadn’t been there anything could have happened,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’

‘It was nothing, honestly.’

‘No it wasn’t. You don’t know me, know us, you didn’t have to help.’

He looks at his shoes sheepishly. ‘I did nothing special. Where does Bells live?’

‘In a community in Wales. My parents are on holiday so I’m having her to stay. Actually, I need to call them. Back in one minute.’ I walk out with the mobile and key in Dad’s number. Still no answer. I call their home number. It’s their answer-machine. What am I doing? They are in France. Stop this, Katie.

I walk back into the kitchen. ‘Is this your place?’ Mark asks, glancing around the bare kitchen. ‘I like this … um … sculpture.’

‘It’s Sam’s.’

‘Oh, right.’ Mark runs a hand through his hair. ‘He’s your boyfriend?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened to Bells? I mean, what …’

‘What makes her different?’ I suggest, sitting down opposite him.

He nods.

I tell him she was born with a cleft lip and palate. ‘My parents would visit her in hospital after each operation. Bells had to be strapped to the cot to stop her from scratching out the stitches.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘She was also brain-damaged at birth. A large part of her brain still works. If you tap into a subject she knows a lot about, then you’re OK. But she’s never been able to lead a fully independent life.’

‘Is she aware that she’s different?’

‘Yes and no. I think she’s comfortable with herself now, she’s her own person, but as a teenager she wanted to be like everyone else. She hated the way she looked. Well, that’s what Dad said,’ I add. ‘You see, I didn’t really see that side of Bells because I left home when I was eighteen and she was only eleven.’

‘It must have been tough for your parents.’

‘Yes, it was,’ I say, wondering if I have ever told them how good they were, still are, with Bells. No, I know I haven’t. I’ve spent too much time feeling left out of the family and resenting all the energy they put into her. ‘To be honest, I’ve never had Bells to stay with me before and I’m finding it hard. I mean, look what happened today.’ As I tell him about the problems she’s had with Sam, I’m surprised by how easy it is to talk to Mark. The words are flowing effortlessly, almost too much so. ‘How about a drink?’ I say, overwhelmed by the events of the day and in desperate need of relief.

As I open the fridge to grab a couple of beers, to lighten the conversation I decide to tell him about the ruined poker night and the switched CDs. Mark laughs.

I tell him how Bells asked a customer’s husband why he had no hair, and that triggers another memory. ‘When I was about fifteen we had a plumber with a wooden leg and a glass eye – Mr Curly.’

‘Mr Curly?’ Mark grins. ‘Sounds like a Mr Man character.’

‘One day Mr Curly was up a ladder in our kitchen when a screw in his false leg came loose and then the whole thing fell off. “Why haven’t you got a proper leg?” Bells said immediately, and then started to howl with laughter while Mum and I were desperately trying to find the screw on the floor. Bells wasn’t being mean, it’s just her way. She says what she thinks. If she doesn’t like someone, if she thinks they’re boring or stuffy, she says so.’

‘Good for her. Saves a lot of time.’

I smile at that. I decide not to tell Mark that Bells definitely does not like Sam.

‘How old is she?’

‘Twenty-two. The thing is, you can’t put a mental age on Bells. Some things she’s very good at, like gardening and cooking, she gets all that from Mum. But if you ask her to visualize something abstract it means nothing to her at all. When my Uncle Roger died, Bells bought some flowers and wrote in the card: “Dear Uncle Roger, I’m sorry to hear you are dead.”’

I notice Mark has a dimple like me. Only special people have dimples, Dad used to say to me when he squeezed my cheeks.

‘It’s getting late,’ Mark mentions. ‘I ought to be …’

‘No!’ I say rather too dramatically. ‘I mean, have another drink.’ I pick up my mobile. ‘I’ll order some pizza. Bells would love you to stay for supper. You don’t live far away, do you?’

‘I’m near your shop actually, in Chapel Road.’

‘No way! That’s where Emma lives. She’s a really old friend,’ I add when I see Mark’s blank expression. ‘What number?’

‘One.’

‘She’s twenty-nine.’

‘My first fake age.’ He smiles.

‘Exactly. Come on, stay.’ The truth is I don’t want to be left on my own.

‘Thanks, but I think I’d better be on my way.’ He scrapes his chair back.

‘Another drink?’

‘Hey,’ Mark says, walking towards me. ‘Look, it’s been a shitty day, it’s not surprising you’re feeling like this.’ He lays a hand gently on my shoulder.

I’m thinking about Bells and what she said to me earlier this evening. ‘Why do you hate me? Why don’t you write me?’ For the first time in years I cry, and he holds me.

‘I don’t think I have ever apologized so much in one day.’ I say, as finally I sit down at the table with dry eyes. ‘To better days.’ I hold my can up towards his.

‘To better days,’ he agrees.

*

‘Bells! Stop!’ I scream.

Mum’s footsteps hurtle down the corridor. ‘Stop her Katie!’ Bells is towering over Mum’s dog Peggy, clutching a chunky pair of black jagged-edged scissors. Everything turns to slow motion as I watch her holding the scissors near to one of Peggy’s ears. She smiles as she opens the handles, Peggy looking up at her innocently. I have to stop Bells from hurting her! I try to move. The scissors are open wide, the jagged silver edges gleam. My feet won’t move. I can’t move. I won’t stop her in time. It’s too late.

‘Stop her!’ Mum shouts at me again.

I wake up in a sweat, gasping for breath. Was that me screaming? I take a look around the dark room. Calm down. Deep breaths, Katie. It was only a dream. Let it all go. It’s all right. I sit up and hug my knees tightly under the duvet. Our bed is empty. Sam isn’t back yet. Where is he? The room feels black and cold. The least he could have done was call to see if I had found Bells, to see if we were both OK. I lean over to the bedside table, turn on the lamp and hold up my watch. It’s one o’clock. ‘Why didn’t he call, Charlie?’ I ask my cheetah, who sits protectively by the lamp. ‘You would have called me, wouldn’t you, Charlie, even if you were busy hunting?’

When I go to bed alone I keep my mobile on the bedside table. I pick it up now and ring Sam. It’s his voicemail.

I walk down the corridor and quietly open Bells’s door. She’s curled up in bed, looking peaceful.

I turn off the lamp and lie down again in the darkness. When I was a child I hated the darkness, just as Bells did, but I couldn’t admit it to Mum. I was terrified there was a crocodile under my bed, a witch behind my door or demons lurking under the window seat.
The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark
was one of my favourite books. Dad used to read it to me. He sat on the end of my bed, still in his suit and polished shoes. Now I shut my eyes and try to think of something nice to dream about.

‘Nothing around me,’ I whisper.

‘Nothing around you,’ I can hear Mum saying.

I turn over on to my side. Where are you, Sam? I miss you.

I have never felt so alone.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Still awake, I turn my pillow over because it’s getting too warm. I feel so tired I can barely open my eyes, yet my mind will not switch off. If only it could go quiet at the touch of a button.

One moment I’m worrying about Sam. What if he’s so drunk he has passed out on some park bench? What if he’s with another woman? No. He couldn’t be. It’s nearly three o’clock now. Then I am fretting about what could have happened to Bells if Mark hadn’t helped find her. Bells will tell Mum and Dad about me shouting at her. Mum will be furious.

Deciding it’s pointless trying to sleep, I put my dressing gown on, and walk past Bells’s room. She’s breathing heavily, still fast asleep. Quietly I shut her door and walk downstairs. I pray Sam has not hidden the cigarettes in too hard a place this time. Thankfully I find a pack in the cutlery drawer.

As I sit by the window, smoking, I think about home again. Bells being here has stirred up so many feelings. Why am I finding it this hard having her around? I knew it would be difficult, but hadn’t anticipated such a string of dramas in only one week.

After Bells’s birth Dad told me that we would get through this together. He told me that life carries on and that things would turn out fine. There are many families who go through exactly what we are going through, he said.

I felt this overwhelming sense that I had to look after Mum. It wasn’t because she was falling apart. Looking back, she was strong. I simply felt responsible for her. I planned what I could do to help. I knew we didn’t have a lot of money because I’d heard Mum and Dad talking about it. Mum no longer had time to work in her studio and Dad was earning a pretty meagre salary in the auction house. So I’d go shopping with her and slip packets of orange Club biscuits and salt and vinegar crisps into the bags without being caught. I told Mum she did not have to give me any pocket money and she seemed touched. I said I would raise money at school by selling horse chestnuts in the playground. I wanted to help on the practical side too. I helped Mum feed Bells and dress her. This was something I could do and I enjoyed it, even if Mum pointed out to me that I had missed a buttonhole or was putting her arms where her legs should have gone. Dad was no better. He was once left to look after Bells for the day and Mum came back to find her cardigan put on all askew and her bonnet back to front. It was what Dad meant by muddling through together. It did work for a while.

I was also very protective of Bells. I knew she was vulnerable, not the same as other small children; my sister was different. I probably tried too hard. I remember insisting I should take Bells out for a walk in her pram. I said I’d only take her down our road – up the hill and back again. As I reached the top and was turning the pram around a group of boys came running along behind me, pelting water-filled balloons at one another. One of them barged into the back of me and my hand slipped. The pram started to roll down the hill, gathering speed alarmingly. Mum is going to kill me, was my overriding fear. ‘Help!’ I screeched to the group of boys. ‘Help!’ One of them stopped and turned around, the pram crashed into him and toppled over. Bells landed in the gutter. She was cut badly on the forehead and her right arm.

‘How could you have let go!’ Mum said, pacing up and down the kitchen. She was throwing her arms up in the air, gesticulating madly.

‘It was an accident,’ Dad intervened, trying to calm her down.

‘An accident? We can’t afford any more accidents.’

When I burst into tears Dad tried to talk to me. ‘Your mother knows it wasn’t your fault, she was frightened, that’s all,’ he said. ‘When we’re scared, we lash out at the nearest person.’

I began to withdraw from Mum when she was spending all her spare time at the hospital. Bells was about two years old then and I was nine. By this stage she needed a series of operations to start healing her face. Piece by piece, the doctors rebuilt the gap between her nose and lip. When the bandages were taken off, it was hard to tell the difference immediately, but slowly Bells started to look more normal.

In the school holidays, when Dad was at work and Mum was at the hospital, I spent most of my time with Emma’s family. Emma’s sister, Natalie, was seventeen then and I can remember thinking how grown-up she was. She was tall and slim, with long black hair dyed with purple streaks. It was so long she could sit on it. She wore Gothic clothes and her eyelashes were coated in thick layers of black mascara. I remember her constantly sucking mint imperials, I realize now to disguise the smell of cigarette smoke.

When Emma’s family was away, Miss Grimes, our local babysitter, filled in. I hated my mother for making me put up with her. Miss Grimes wore the same old brown tweed skirt, boring lace-up shoes and flesh-toned tights that squashed down the black hairs on her white legs. Her hair looked like one of those Brillo pads we had in the kitchen sink. She wore steel-framed glasses perched on the end of her nose. It was hard to believe she lived only three doors away from us; she looked as if she came from another country. One where all they ate was cabbage.

‘She is very nice, poppet,’ Mum told me when I wrinkled my nose in disapproval. ‘The main thing is I won’t have to worry about leaving you.’

Dad loved her because she brought over steamed puddings and lasagnes for our freezer. ‘She’s a one is Miss Grimes,’ he chuckled.

I will never forget the time she came to look after me for an entire night. Mum and Dad had taken Bells to hospital the day before her next operation.

‘You always have your nose in a book,’ Miss Grimes scolded me, leaning over to see what I was reading. She was knitting a sludgy green jumper the colour of the damp rotting moss that sat on our garage roof. ‘You’re far too young for a book like this,’ she said in a shocked voice and swiped it away from me. I tried to grab it back, clutching the air. ‘Oh, keep it then, I’ve already read
Riders
anyway.’

‘You’ll amount to nothing,’ she said to the click of her knitting needles. ‘You’re a little piece of fluff. Your sister has a lot more problems than you but she will be a proper person.’

I shrugged my shoulders and muttered, ‘Piss off.’

She lurched forward and hit me hard on the knuckles with her knitting needles. ‘I beg your pardon?’ She was doing that mad thing with her eyes again. When she was cross or excited they started to roll so all I could see was their whites.

I held in my breath, I did not want her to see that hurt. ‘You look like a mad blind lady!’ I told her, smiling to cover up the pain.

Before I knew it, I was being dragged upstairs and into the spare room. She pushed me inside and turned the key in the lock saying
that
would teach me. I banged on the door, I screamed and shouted but she ignored me as she watched
Corrie.

Miss Grimes unlocked the door the following morning and told me she was sorry. I told her she was a sad old spinster woman. When Mum and Dad returned I told them what had happened. Mum said she knew how much I hated Miss Grimes and that I would do anything to get rid of her. I looked at Dad, who was so often my ally, but he told me not to harass Mum. Couldn’t I see how tired she was?

Miss Grimes continued to babysit for us, despite my telling Mum I was no longer a child. She carried on locking me in my bedroom; she even locked me in the attic once for being ‘insolent’. I never forgave them for not believing me. They closed their ears and eyes to it because they had too much else to think about.

When my father became an auctioneer, his salary increased and we could afford to have someone coming in during the day to look after Bells. This was when Mum started work in her studio again, working round the clock, working, working, working. I think it took her mind off the family problems and immersed her in a different world. Her life was divided between trying to meet Bells’s needs and completing commissions. It felt like she was not interested in me any more and we grew even further apart.

Bells was ‘Mum’s girl’. I know both Mum and Dad found her comparatively easy to live with by now, straightforward in comparison with me. Bells was ‘the artistic one’; Mum encouraged her to draw, paint, write, cook – all the things she’d loved as a child and still loves. Katie was ‘the rebellious one’.

‘What have you
done
to yourself, Katie!’ I can still hear Mum cry in that familiar despairing tone, green eyes glaring, mouth opened wide in reproach. ‘How could you have been so stupid? So idiotic?’ I can see her savagely untying her mucky apron which she then throws to the floor.

I had dyed my hair blue and pink, like an exotic bird. I was copying Natalie, who changed her hair colour as often as Madonna.

I can feel Mum’s arm pulling mine. ‘Which godforsaken hairdresser did this to you? It looks like you have pink and blue worms crawling in your hair.’ By the time we were going home in the car, she was upset rather than cross. ‘Why do you deliberately try to upset me all the time? Katie, what’s happened to you? You used to be such a sweet girl.’

Wasn’t it obvious? Did I have to get my tongue pierced next to get her attention?

I don’t think Mum has moved on from describing me as the ‘rebellious one’. I think she still believes that I lead this full-on crazy life in London, burning the candle at both ends. I am still the dissident.

When I think about it now, it seems almost trivial; people go through much worse things after all. But we don’t forget, do we? We don’t forget the smallest slight, let alone the feeling that we have been somehow abandoned. Left to play second fiddle to our own sister. It wasn’t Bells’s fault, I know she never set out to be the golden child in Mum’s eyes, and I know how much she has gone through, but there is still a part of me that blames her for needing Mum so much. If Mum wasn’t at home she was at the hospital. Bells had speech therapy classes every week, or her eyesight had to be tested, or her hearing aid needed to be fitted. There was always some appointment to go to. I suppose I have never spoken to Bells about it because Mum has always instilled in me how lucky I am not to have the same affliction. How dare I be angry or cross when I have my whole life ahead of me?

In many ways my childhood helped me. It made me strive to be independent. Yet I’m still not truly independent, am I? I have this need to be with people; look at the way I move in with every man I meet. I want to be loved; I want to feel needed. I have this gaping hole inside me which I have tried to ignore for years, yet it will never go away. When I hear Bells talking about Mum so freely all that old anger and jealousy returns.

We were close once, there was tenderness between Mum and me.

I light another cigarette and blow a smoke ring in the air. I will never forget Mum not turning up to watch me perform the leading role in our school production of
Guys and Dolls
. I had reserved two seats in the front row, but something had ‘cropped up with Bells’ was the same old excuse. I pretended I didn’t care. Maybe that’s my mistake? I am too proud. But I can still remember how it felt when my father sat down next to an empty seat.