By interfering, she had thrown everything off balance.
Her involvement did not sit well in her heart. Mira was sifting urgently through the photographs for answers. There was a score to settle in her past. She knew, logically, that there was no connection between her own childhood and Rosie’s. Rosie’s was privileged and elitist and cosseted. Rosie was unaware that private schools, like New Hall Preparatory, only educated 7 per cent of the country, and she would definitely be unaware that 93 per cent of the country did not call toilets ‘loos’. Whereas Mira’s childhood had been normal. She had been educated at the local state comprehensive, whose pupils thought the children at the private school down the road were a ‘bunch of knob-ends’. And she had a mother who called a toilet a toilet, and cleaned it herself, by the way. They had been brought up in different worlds. But at the same time she knew there was a deep-seated tug from the core of her that drew her to Rosie. The protective urge was fierce, as though she had known Rosie in previous lives. Before Rosie had moved in, Mira had thought Chloe, with her long locks of rusty red hair, was unique, especially beautiful. When Chloe had sent her goodbye note in the blue plastic bucket, Mira had cried.
The muted colours of the faded Kodak moments in front of her were becoming like pieces of a jigsaw, where the bigger picture on the front of the box was forever mutating into another scene. The emerging picture scared Mira, but she was too curious to stop looking now. Her memory was on rewind, hurtling towards her younger self again, to see that girl whose wide eyes had been as vulnerable as Rosie’s once upon a time.
The cream cardboard of the first page of the album was still blank. She was forever indecisive.
There was silence next door now as she opened the next envelope of photographs, sticky as though fresh from the developers.
The first photograph in the pack was a collision on her senses. The curled edges of a nightmare lay in her fingers. Craig Baxter. The pulse at her throat throbbed. His smooth forehead, his overgrown crest of black hair, the turned-up upper lip, feminine, contrasting with his muscled forearm that wrapped around Deidre’s neck. This, Mira had hidden under her mattress all those years ago. Every night, she had reached for it, snapped on her torch, and gazed at him in the circle of light.
The dining room grew hotter. There was a crease across his middle where Mira remembered folding the photograph in half to hide it properly. She studied Craig’s features, hungry for a morsel. His limbs, slouched onto the beige leather couch, the length of them, the bulk of his thighs, the broad shoulders. A packet of cigarettes rolled up into one sleeve; keys to his car in one hand, the other behind his head; one eyebrow raised towards the camera. At twenty-two, he had been a real man, with a job, a Ford Grenada with two exhausts, and money in his leather wallet. But her sister had him.
There was an ache in her belly as her eyes rolled over his body under the white T-shirt. The cotton had smelt of the smoke which had billowed from the barbeque that day. When the wind changed direction, they had shuffled their chairs round the small patio, like none of them had legs. Craig closer to Mira each time, their thighs almost touching. She had locked her legs together, stared down at her bare feet, at the flecks of rain disappearing into the warm patio slabs. Aware of his hands so close to her body, she sipped at her soda pop too frequently.
‘Mira, get the kebabs going, will you?’ Her mother’s voice, her back to them, eyes in the back of her head.
Everything had belonged to Deidre, even their mother’s love. Mira had been angry, and, in the light of Craig’s attention, entitled to get something of her own. Craig’s attention was revelatory.
In the end, she couldn’t resist his continual advances, the stolen moments, the comforting grip of his hot hand holding hers under the table. The slow steps, to drag out their time together, the fluttering in her stomach. Her shoulder socket pulling as he led her by the hand, the path underneath her feet becoming soft, the smell of the damp leaves, the noise of other school friends passing by so near, unaware of their presence a few feet away. The feel of his lips on hers, mingled with the musty reek of her uniform. She sprayed perfume on her neck and in between her legs in the toilets before meeting him. Thursdays after school became a regular date. Her self-consciousness, the thrill, the greedy joy in his blue eyes, flicking from her chest to meet her gaze as he unbuttoned her school shirt. Mira swooned at the memory. The euphoria of that weekly tryst came back to her as if it was yesterday. After their fumble in the woods, they would walk and talk, like a normal boyfriend and girlfriend, or maybe even like a brother and sister. Nobody questioned them; he was Deidre’s boyfriend.
‘I’ve got to stop off at the newsagents to get more milk. Mum went mad at me when there wasn’t any this morning.’
‘Your mum blamed you for that?’ he asked incredulously, ruffling the tip of his quiff lightly. Mira admired the flattering angle of his face, as he dipped his chin, pouted a little, like a model.
‘Yeah, course. They blame me for everything.’
‘I saw Deidre knock that milk over with my own eyes.’ At last, there was someone to bear witness. He might not have spoken up for Mira at the time, but he had registered her mother’s bias. Craig was rooting for the underdog, but hadn’t quite found his voice yet; like her, she supposed.
‘I’m used to it.’ This wasn’t true. Mira never got used to it. Every injustice carved a sharp groove onto her heart.
‘You should stand up for yourself.’
‘No point,’ she shrugged.
He picked a strand of her waist-length hair, and twirled it in his fingers, a habit of his that sent waves of pleasure through her. When he did this, she mapped her future out with him: her place lying next to him in his bed, the shiny tiles of his flat that she would clean for him, the meals she would prepare for two. The fantasy had kept her going, helped her to get up and out to school in the mornings.
Before Craig, Mira had been in the background, blending in, efficient without a fuss. She had kept it simple, let the days roll by, pottered along unnoticed.
They never made reference to the mammoth nature of their betrayal. Their kissing and fondling existed in a moral vacuum, exempt from any possible consequences, desire burning out any guilt. Mira learned that cheating could take place in a special mental compartment. Her judgement and outrage at others who cheated was as solid as ever. Her own situation was different. Every cheater wants to justify their cheating, to diminish their wrongdoing, and Mira was no different. At fourteen years old, she was naive about the cost of that denial. However much she hated her sister, she had never consciously set out to hurt her.
Now, in her stuffy dining room, all grown up, she contemplated a life with Craig, whom she had loved, and wondered how life could have been if it had not gone so spectacularly wrong.
Mira heard the door behind her open. Barry stood behind her, hair ruffled, in his stripy pyjama bottoms and T-shirt.
‘What are you doing still up?’
‘Couldn’t sleep.’
He sat down on the chair next to her, glancing briefly at the table of photographs.
Mira lugged the album across the table to show Barry. ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’
‘Are you feeling all right about all that stuff today?’
‘The police said they’re dealing with it, so that’s that.’ The embarrassment of her overreaction pinched and plucked at her cheeks.
He let out a breath, as though relieved. ‘As long as you’re okay.’
‘Rosie’s being looked out for now.’