Where Have You Been? (15 page)

Susan wants Carly to know who she is, and wants her to know why. She wants intimacy. Instantly. She tells her sister everything.
Everything.

In the mornings Carly sleeps in, is never up before ten, emerges only after the children and Ed have gone. Pads to the kitchen in her t-shirt (why don't Susan's breasts sit so pertly?
– she's ten years younger, after all), stretching and yawning, demanding coffee in her huskier-than-usual morning voice (oh her demands are gentle, polite, never seem demands, but they are). Then sits sipping noisily, lights her first cigarette (though it could be her second, there have been times when Susan's caught a whiff of stale tobacco in Carly's bedroom, in the bathroom) and sits for half an hour or so, saying little, before she takes herself off for her shower.

Most days Carly stays home – curls up in the lounge reading magazines, watching television, drinking coffee. She rolls cigarette after cigarette. Occasionally forgets herself, and ashes on the carpet, flicks her butts out the window, or leaves them, smouldering, on the windowsill. Susan invites her to come when it's time to pick up the kids, to do the shopping, to join her and Anna's beach walks, social tennis, to go out for lunch. No thanks, Carly says, she's fine, she's happy here, would rather not. Is content just mooching around for now. She's generally finished her mooching by the late afternoon, is up and alert by the time the children get home, ready for drinks and conversation by the time Ed arrives. She doesn't help cook, never even offers: most nights Susan prepares dinner while Ed and Carly sit at the kitchen table drinking and chatting, helping the kids with their homework.

Very occasionally Carly leaves the house after lunch. Comes back around dinner time, sometimes after. There's a particular expression Susan begins to recognise – a tightlipped smile, one side of her mouth slightly downturned – that indicates Carly's disinclination to answer any questions. After the first few weeks Susan stops asking her where she's going, when she'll be home.

In a way it is as if Susan is the older sister, Carly the younger.

After a while Susan begins to feel rather annoyed, tangibly put out by Carly's inactivity, her secrecy. It's a
good feeling, this, Susan thinks. It means the reality of their being sisters is beginning to sink in, proves that this is a real relationship. Flesh and blood. Or ‘blood and gore' as Anna frequently describes her own relationship with her younger sister. Anyway, Susan says nothing, makes no mention of her irritation – it is the sort of thing she knows most siblings routinely experience – that such petty aggravations are stewed over for weeks, and eventually erupt in a huge and ultimately purifying conflagration. But she can't afford any such explosion. Not quite; not yet. So she keeps her feelings to herself, doesn't even mention them to Ed. She enjoys her irritation. She savours it. She has a sister.

The question has been scratching away between the two of them since Carly's arrival, but Susan hasn't been able to bring herself to ask – somehow it seems impertinent, an intrusion – until now.

‘Why did you leave?'

The two women are alone together, Ed retiring early with a book – and, for the first time, fortified by the best part of a bottle of wine, Susan is brave enough to ask, feels she has the courage to bear the implications of Carly's answer.

Carly says nothing. Seems to shrink a little, huddling into the lounge. Her face closes up – eyes narrowed, lips compressed. She shakes her head, gives a slight smile. The meaning is clear.

‘Oh, no,' Susan shakes her head slowly, a little drunkenly. ‘You have to tell me. I need to know. That one thing at least.'

Carly leans forward in her chair. Looks at her sister intently, ‘Susan, you really don't need to know. Believe me.'

Susan really does need to know, but lets Carly change the subject anyway. This time.

Why?

Susan thinks it's important to know why. Thinks that it will tell her something essential; that it will explain everything she wants explained: about the past; about her parents; about herself.

But she knows that Susan's wrong.

Knowing why won't tell her everything. Really, it won't tell her anything at all. Nothing she wants to know, anyway.

Why? It's a question that can never really be answered, though Carly will have to make some reply eventually. There's no way around it.

‘Read us a story,' the children cry at bed time. ‘Read us a story, Carly!'

Mitchell and Stella adore their new aunt. Her sister makes no fuss, bears no gifts, seems to Susan to be quite cool with them, but still, they think she's wonderful. She watches from the doorway as Carly picks desultorily through the selection in their shelves. She takes one of the children's favourites,
The Mousewife,
sits cross-legged on the carpet and begins to read:

‘Wherever there is an old house with wooden floors and beams and rafters and wooden stairs and wainscots and skirting boards and larders, there are mice. They creep out on the carpets for crumbs, they whisk in and out of their holes, they run in the wainscot and between the ceiling and the floors. There are no signposts because they know the way, and no milestones because no one is there to see how they run.'

She reads haltingly and, without any expression, follows the words with her finger. It's as if she's rusty, hasn't read for years. Susan is surprised, has assumed that Carly, like her, would be a fluent reader. One thing she does remember clearly about their mother is her attitude to schoolwork – that she expected and encouraged Susan to read well. Halfway through the next sentence Carly tosses the book over her shoulder. ‘Bo-ring,' she explains to the surprised children. Mitchell claps his hands.

‘We've readed that one a zillion times and I'm sick of it too,' he says, desperate to be agreeable.

‘But you will read us something, won't you, Carly?' Stella is more cautious, doesn't want to miss out, be forced to go to sleep early.

‘I don't know,' Carly frowns. ‘I couldn't see anything very interesting. Nothing I'd want to read...'

‘
Awww.'

‘So how about I tell you a story?'

‘A real-life story?' Mitchell is wary. Ed specialises in what he calls real-life stories – they are long and, from a child's perspective, extremely convoluted. They are somewhat lacking in momentum and almost always have a moral.
Bo-ring.

‘Oh – it's not real life, exactly,' she says. ‘More like a fairytale.'

‘A fairytale?' Mitchell's face falls. ‘I hate fairytales. Fairytales are for girls. Fairytales are really boring.'

‘Oh. It's not about a fairy – it's about someone way more exciting than any boring fairy. Someone different to anyone you know.' She pauses. Waits. ‘Do you want me to tell you?'

‘Tell us, tell us, tell us,' chants Mitchell.

‘Yes please,' says his big sister who is always polite.

‘Once upon a time,' she starts, ‘there was a little girl who lived with her mother and father and four brothers and
six sisters in a tree house in the middle of a great rainforest. Now this little girl was a very ordinary little girl who in nearly every way was exactly the same as every other little girl. She had two legs and two arms and two plaits and five fingers on each hand and the proper number of teeth and exactly the right number of freckles on her nose that was exactly the right sort of nose for a little girl to have and right smack in the middle of her normal little round face. This little girl was so ordinary a little girl that sometimes even her mother got her confused and called her by the wrong name. This little girl whose name was Rose was sometimes called Daisy and sometimes Barbara and now and then Jane and once in a while Sally or Trish or Erica and occasionally her mother would call her all seven at once – would call her Daisy Barbara Jane Sally Trish Erica – Rose. Because these were the names of her sisters (all of them older and taller) and this is the sort of thing that mothers who have too many children sometimes do.'

She pauses for a breath. Susan wonders at Carly's transformation, from halting reader to consummate storyteller. The two children are sitting straight up in bed, their eyes wide, breath held. Susan has never, whatever the story, however entertaining, known them to be so obviously rapt, so spellbound.

‘Well,' Carly continues, ‘what do you think it is that's so extraordinary and exciting about this perfectly ordinary little girl? What could it be that makes her so different?'

The two children make excited guesses:

‘She's got an extra toe?'

‘She can fly?'

‘She's a
nalien?
'

‘She's a genius?'

‘She knows all her times tables?'

‘She's a zillionaire?'

‘She's never naughty?'

‘She's a terminator?'

‘Your mum should be able to tell you,' Carly looks Susan's way. ‘It's a story that our mother used to tell me when I was little like you – and then when your mum was little, I told her.'

‘Tell us Mummy! Tell us!'

Carly waits, smiling.

Susan has no memory of any bedtime storytelling sessions – in fact she can't remember being told stories by anyone other than school teachers and Benita and John on
Playschool,
and whichever way she turns it (is it Goldilocks in disguise, an embellished Cinderella, a tale from the
Arabian Nights?
) there is nothing at all familiar about this tale. She would like nothing better than to participate in this story, to add her memories to her sister's, to be part of some fine bedtime storytelling tradition, but she can't. She has no idea why this little girl is different – for all Susan knows, this little girl could pack shelves in the local supermarket. She is as intrigued as the children.

‘Mum's probably forgotten.' Stella is scathing: ‘Mum always forgets everything and says it's all because of us.'

‘But not stories,' Mitchell corrects her. ‘Even Mum wouldn't forget a story. Not even if she had
namnesia.
' Such faith.

Eventually Susan shrugs, admits defeat. Carly raises her eyebrows, smiles gently (reproachfully?), turns back to the children.

‘This little girl,' she tells them, ‘this little girl can become invisible.'

It is not such a big deal, and it's not that Carly says anything, but Susan feels she has failed an important test. There are an almost infinite number of stories with infinite variations, after all. Surely to forget one is not so extraordinary.

‘I don't trust her.' Anna is never one to mince words, though her bluntness frequently provokes hostility.

‘You've barely met her, Anna. Why don't you trust her?' Susan is panting a little. The king tides have begun and the water has cut deeply into the shore all along the stretch between North and South Curl Curl. All the firm sand is under water and to walk and talk requires considerable effort. ‘What is there to not like?'

‘I don't know, Suse. There's just something about her that doesn't ring true. All that silence about her past. She can't really have forgotten everything. And what about the last twenty years? What's she been doing? Why can't she tell you? I wouldn't trust her, Suse. There's something a bit off about her.'

‘What do you mean, off? She
is
Karen. All that's been established.'

‘I don't mean that. I'm sure she's your sister. That's not what's bothering me.'

‘Then what? What
is
bothering you? It's been fantastic having her. She's great. With the kids, with Ed.'

‘She's trying too hard.'

‘Trying too hard? Oh, Jesus, Anna! How can she be trying too hard? We're all trying hard. She's my sister. We're the only family she's got – the first family she's had for twenty years.'

‘Oh, Susy, how do you know? You really don't know anything about her. She could have three husbands and six kids stashed away somewhere. She hasn't told you
anything.
'

‘Anna,' Susan's jaw is suddenly tense, her eyes sting. ‘Anna, it means a lot to me, too, you know. To have her back. To have a sister.' Even to her own ears, Susan's words sound stiff, defensive.

‘Oh, God.' Anna takes hold of Susan's arm and gives it a friendly squeeze. ‘I'm sorry Suse. I didn't mean to upset you. I just worry. Sometimes you're so good at not seeing things.'

Susan shakes Anna's hand loose. Digs her heels in. ‘Let's turn back.'

‘Already?' Anna sounds bewildered. They are only halfway along the beach, have barely begun their walk. But Susan insists that she has had enough fresh air and exercise for one day. They turn and trudge back. They avoid each other's eyes; don't speak.

When his mother pulls herself up with her customary sigh, and heads off to dish out the dinner, Carly, despite discreetly desperate shakes of the head from both Ed and Susan, offers to help. And when Mrs Middleton inevitably declines – ‘I'll call Ed in presently to help me carve, that's all I expect' – Carly follows her out into the kitchen anyway. Susan shrugs and turns her attention back to the television, but Ed is stricken, can imagine the – at best – frosty treatment she'll receive.

His mother has already told him over the phone, and in no uncertain terms, what she thinks of Carly, who she has only met once, and briefly: ‘A nose-ring, well, alright, a bolt, a stud, whatever you call it! She's a middle-aged woman – she's older than your sister, Ed! – it's disgusting. And her messy hair. Her clothes. Ridiculous. And Stella tells me...' Ed silently curses (for the very first time) the open nature, the honesty that he has always considered his daughter's most appealing trait. ‘Stella tells me she has a tattoo on her buttock. The one on her arm is bad enough, but her buttock!' She spits the word. ‘And how does your six-year-old daughter know that about her aunt, Ed? Can you tell me that? What sort of a woman is she, son, to have living in the house with your children? I don't care if she's Susan's sister. If she
is.
' Her
doubt about this point is clear. ‘You say you don't know anything about her, but I'll tell you something – and it's as plain as the nose on my face. Do you know what I think? I think she looks like a drug addict. A drug addict! And it's not just me who thinks this, Ed. It's your father too. And Derek and Cathy. We can all see it. What sort of influence, what sort of a role model can she possibly be? Oh – and the diseases, Ed. AIDS, hepatitis, gonorrhoea! Don't you imagine for one moment that I'm ignorant of these things. I read the papers. A drug addict! How could you?'