Tales from the Tower, Volume 2 (31 page)

Neither of us had the brains or the inclination for university. We'd grown up believing Dad's promise that there would be jobs for us in the business as soon as we finished school. It went without saying that we would eventually nab a wealthy younger version of our father who'd provide everything we were used to. So we sat at home and moped and waited for phone calls that never came.

Then Mum brought Jack home . . .

She met him in a hotel one Friday night after work, and after knowing him for just on three weeks she told us that they were going to get married.

‘Jack says there's room for all of us in his house,' Mum gushed with that mad, half-drunk look in her eye that told us she was putting a scheme together. ‘So we can move out of this flat.'

‘I know it's very sudden,' the poor sucker added, reaching out to squeeze our mother's arm, ‘but neither of us is getting any younger, are we sweetie?' Reine and I looked at each other and said nothing. Was it our responsibility to warn him? I don't think so. Anyone with half a brain could see our mother was more reptile than human. Any man would need all his wits just to survive her, and this idiot obviously had none. We found out later that his wife had died only eight months before, so he was
emotionally vul- nerable
 – is that the term? Whatever. In short, he didn't know if he was coming or going.

‘So when do we move?' Reine asked stonily. She'd seen the guy's car and told me it was a piece of crap – a Commodore, I think – so it wasn't like we had any illusions about the house. On the other hand, anything would be better than living in that poxy little flat.

‘What about tomorrow?'

‘I've seen the house,' Mum whispered later, ‘and it's much better than this. You'll have a room each.'

‘Okay,' we mumbled in unison. What she was telling us was that this guy Jack would be the first step on our climb back to the world we once knew. We trusted our mother. She'd always had an eye for the main chance.

They forgot to tell us that Jack had a daughter until the day before we moved all our things over to his house.

‘Ella,' he said, squeezing the last load of Mum's clothes into the car. ‘The sweetest girl in the world.'

‘Oh?' I said warily. ‘Does she mind us . . . coming?'

‘Not at all,' Jack smiled. ‘As soon as I told her you'd be coming to live with us, she offered to move out of her room so you two could have the two rooms near each other – they're bigger, too.'

‘What room will your daughter have?'

‘There's a spare room at the back of the house.' Jack hesitated. ‘It's been a junk room, but we cleaned it out. And it's only a stopgap until I get the bungalow built.'

‘How nice is that?' Mum turned around in the front seat and gave us one of her vicious little smirks. ‘You girls will be sure to say thank you, I hope,' she added in a syrupy voice.

Reine and I mumbled something, but we were both suspicious. What kind of a
retard
would willingly give up her room?

‘So she
offered
to move into the
junk
room?' Reine asked unbelievingly, ‘without having met us?'

‘Yep.' Jack smiled proudly. ‘She's always been like that, generous to a fault, just like her mother. She just loves doing things for people. Wanted to make you both feel welcome.'

‘How old is your daughter?' I asked, trying to keep my voice serious. Reine was doing her squashed-spider mouth, all tight and pursed up, and it never failed to make me laugh.

‘Seventeen,' Jack said, eyes on the road so he didn't notice our sniggers. ‘There'll be no problems, I promise. She has never given me a moment's worry.'

‘Lucky you.' Reine's voice was dripping with sarcasm. ‘So what school does she go to?'

‘The local high school's just down the road,' he said. ‘It's a wonderful school and she always gets top of her class.'

‘Really?'

‘She's loved reading since she was tiny, and she's a great little writer,' he blathered on, oblivious to our stifled hilarity. ‘She writes plays, too. Last year the school drama group chose one of hers for their end-of-year performance.'

‘Oh, that's sooooo nice.'

‘Wow! She must be talented.'

Reine and I had her sussed and we hadn't even met her.
Reading and writing plays, eh?
We looked at each other with raised, knowing eyebrows. We knew the type. Every school has them – tedious, bright-eyed, studious geeks. At school I hardly even
saw
those girls until they stood up at assembly and started crapping on about some boring play or wacko author the library group had invited to the school.
So come along and get your books signed!
Yeah right! It was either that or Indigenous rights or climate change. My friends and I would be down the back paralytic with laughter or boredom as those total losers blathered on. The incredible thing was that they had no idea how totally . . . uncool they were, with their witless little battles to save the world. They were continually bugging people to join their clubs and buy tickets to their stupid performances or raffle tickets for their good works. As far as we were concerned, the world as it was was totally fine. Why would we want to change anything?

‘Ella is going to have a special dinner ready for us,' Jack said when we asked if we could stop for takeaway.

‘Oh goody,' Reine muttered under her breath. ‘She sounds like such fun.'

‘Yeah,' I muttered. ‘God, I'm
dying
to meet her.'

{
1
}

It has to be said right up front that as soon as I saw her I hated her. My sister Reine and I both hated her on sight. When she opened the door to welcome us into that poxy little vanilla-brick nothing house in that nowhere suburb surrounded by other shitty little houses with low fences and dreary gardens and muffled dirty traffic noise . . . we were overcome by it. I remember the way we snorted and chuckled as soon as we were out of earshot. ‘Oh how nice! She wants to show us around!' my sister sniggered.

‘Like there's anything to see!' I giggled, glad to be brought back to reality after the shock of actually meeting the girl. Reine had always been a brilliant mimic, and she'd got the deep breathy voice just right.

She was beautiful, you see, startlingly so, if you want the truth. Funny that I can admit that now, because there was a time when I was unable to say her name without the green monster sticking so hard in my throat that I almost choked. Her hair was deep titian bronze – that colour that you just can't get from a packet or a bottle – full of depth and natural highlights. In one light it was almost blonde but in another quite a deep red. Anyway, it was long and thick and curly. Her eyes were so blue and bright that you couldn't, even if you tried, look away from them, especially if she had them trained on you, and they were surrounded by thick, dark lashes. Above them were perfectly arched eyebrows that had obviously never even been plucked!
Oh God.
Ditto for the rest of her! That was the truly sickening part. Not a hint of contrivance or a trace of makeup.

We hadn't been warned, not by our mother or by the hopeless idiot who was to become our stepfather. No one told us that our stepsister was this incredibly hot chick or tried to prepare us for how it would actually feel to
live
with that every day.

She was in baggy jeans and a torn old red T-shirt and rubber thongs if you don't mind.

‘Hi, I'm Ella,' she said, ‘it's so good to meet you both. Welcome!'

It makes me laugh to remember how damned
friendly
she was, right from that first meeting, smiling shyly, holding out both of her soft white hands as though she really had been looking forward to meeting us! How dumb would you have to be not to hold back a bit? The three of us – Mum, Reine and I – were about to move into her house permanently. She'd never met us before, so how completely stupid not to be just a teeny bit wary. She could have had the upper hand if she'd wanted it! That's what I always come back to when the buckets of blame pour over our heads. She could have had the upper hand! She was seventeen, for God's sake, not ten.

We stood there – Reine and I – transfixed by the per- fection before us. When she turned away to close the door behind us I couldn't look at my sister, but I remember praying,
Please let her have heavy legs and thick ankles under those jeans. If not that then at least give her some other awful defect or better still some fatal disease that will kill her off soon, because I'm not going to be able to handle living with this . . . 
But I could already see that her feet in those old thongs were small and dainty, and before the day was out I knew that she had the lithe athleticism of a ballet dancer and lovely, shapely legs as well. After we'd been shown to our rooms and checked out the bathroom and the kitchen, which was in the middle of the living area, she was still all smiles.

‘Come and I'll show you out the back.'

Outside was even more boring than inside if that was possible. The yard was neat, with a huge gum tree in one corner and a fruit tree in the other, a couple of beds of roses and coloured flowers in the middle of the lawn and some sort of vegetable patch along the back fence, as if they were peasants. A row of small trees and bushes lined the side fence. A wire-netting enclosure attached to an old disused laundry was the only thing that was even vaguely interesting.

‘It's a hospital for birds,' Ella said proudly as she led us over to it. Reine and I raised our eyebrows behind her back and Reine pretended to throw up.
Oh wow! How totally wonderful!
A bird hospital. Can't wait to see that!

‘People bring sick birds from all over the country for Dad to heal,' the girl carried on, oblivious.

What could we say?

There was nothing to look at anyway. Nothing interesting. At the very least I thought there might be an exotic species – like the coloured ones you see in Indonesia and Thailand with the weird beaks, or some of those bright pretty twittering things that would at least be amusing or decorative. But no, there was just this huge, black, morose-looking thing sitting like a lump of wood on a low branch. And a few very ordinary-looking pigeons in a cordoned-off section in one corner, but who'd want to look at them?

‘Is that an eagle?' I asked, pointing to the big mean one with the yellow eyes and hooked beak.

‘No,' she laughed, ‘we're not sure what he is. Dad knows every species of bird but he can't pinpoint this one. We've got a guy coming from the university to check him out next month.'

‘Looks so . . . mean.' I shuddered.

‘Mean,' she agreed, ‘but wonderful too. Look at his beak and his legs, so powerful and they . . .' She stopped, sensing that we didn't really want a lecture on how wonderful the ghastly creature was. ‘It's really important to keep this gate shut, okay?'

‘Why?'

‘Well, he's a scavenger. We know that much. He'll attack other small creatures like cats or other birds.'

Reine looked at me blankly and put her fingers through the wire. ‘Like we were planning to walk in,' she whispered to me.

‘Don't do that,' Ella said quietly.

‘Why not?'

‘It's a wild creature. It will attack if it feels threatened.'

Reine left her hand exactly where it was.

‘It doesn't look too wild to me,' she mocked. But just as she said it the gross black thing turned its head, fixed its bright yellow eye on us, then opened its beak wide and let out this incredibly loud, long screech. It was like someone's nail sliding down the blackboard at school, only much worse.

‘Yuck!' Reine pulled her hand away.

‘How come your dad knows so much about birds?'

‘It's been his lifelong passion,' Ella said proudly.

‘Has he studied them?' I enquired suspiciously.

‘Some people just have a feeling for particular animals.' She obviously thought this was enough of an explanation. ‘Birds have been his thing since he was a kid. He knows a lot of stuff by feel.'

‘Feel?'

‘Remember the horse whisperer?' she went on.

We shook our heads and stared at her.
What the hell have horses got to do with birds?

Ella sighed, like it was
us
being stupid, and I didn't take kindly to that. ‘Dad didn't do formal study,' she went on defensively, ‘and it made the university people a bit wary of him when he asked for help with this bird. They kept suggesting that it might be something ordinary, like a giant eagle or a hawk or something.' She laughed. ‘Like Dad wouldn't know that.'

‘If he's not properly trained, then . . . he's
not
an expert,' Reine snapped and turned back to the house. I followed, leaving miss lovely-goody-two-shoes to trail in after us.