“What? You look a lot prettier. Honest.”
Still, I’m suspicious. She squeezes in beside me on the chair, gazes at her own face with distant, dreamy eyes and starts to sing one of her own compositions. “The girl in the mirror, so sad and so small, she knows who will kill her, she knows them all—” The words are nonsense, but the tune is sad and she sings in a wistful fashion, swishing her hair around. I interrupt:
“Do you think you’re a special person?”
She stops in her tracks, as if she’s been struck. “What do you think?”
“Yes, you are.”
I say this because I do honestly believe that my sister is different. People are drawn to her because she’s so pretty and committed to her talents, and she has that charming way of switching in an instant from dreamlike and ethereal to serious and focused. But I realize that she cares too much about being special, and that the concept of ordinary is repugnant to her. Worse than that—if she thought she was ordinary, she’d self-harm, or take her own life. That’s what I believe, anyhow, and that’s what I intend to write in the dossier.
? ? ?
After lunch, Tilda disappears and I take my bike from the shed and cycle to the river, with my book in my rucksack. As an experiment, I keep my hair pinned back and my makeup on. The journey’s quick, about five minutes, and I find a bench and sit down. In front of me, the river is vast and grimy-gray, and a dirty plastic tub of a boat is bobbing about on a slimy rope.
I pull up the hood of my jacket and read my Agatha Christie. In no time, I’m immersed and only vaguely aware of the shrieks and shouts coming from the bus stop at the pier, inane high-pitched comments blunted by the wind. That’s insane . . . What? Fuck off, fuckface . . . But a loud, Stop it, Robbie, you’re hurting me! makes me look over. A group of teenagers is messing about on the bus-stop bench. I don’t recognize the boys, but the girls are Tilda and Paige Mooney, her favorite Whisper Sister and loyal handmaiden. Paige is like Tilda reflected in a distorting glass, same pale features, same long blond hair, but she’s overweight—Tilda says morbidly obese—and there’s an element of desperation about her. She endlessly tries to impress Tilda, who flips, soaking up the adoration one minute and brushing it off the next. They are kissing and touching with the boys, and I’m curious. I haven’t seen Tilda so blatantly in action before. Then Paige runs away, hand in hand with her boyfriend, to hide behind the fish-and-chip shop, leaving Tilda writhing about with the other boy on the bench. I go over, wheeling my bike.
As I come close I say hello, and she extricates herself with a look that makes it clear that I’m not welcome.
The boy’s staring at me with an open face, curious and interested, and I know immediately that it’s Liam Brookes, even though I haven’t seen him in five years. His hair is darker, almost black now, but it still stands up away from his head and has the same woolly look. His face has elongated, and his body has changed—he has broad shoulders and is tall. “Have you met my sister?” Tilda says.
“Hi, Callie,” says Liam.
“Her face isn’t usually like that. A bit of a makeup malfunction before lunch.”
I ram the bench with my bike. Not dramatically, just enough for Tilda to know I’m angry with her. “You said I looked pretty,” I hiss.
“You do, definitely. I just didn’t have time to make it as perfect as I wanted.”
“What are you reading?” Liam is looking at the book sticking out of my pocket, then expectantly at my face, and I can tell he wants to reconnect with me.
“Oh, she’s always reading murder stories,” Tilda snaps. “Bye, Callie, we’re leaving.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Liam’s. His mum will be out this afternoon.”
I want to say, What? I’ve seen you on that bench, in public, groping and snogging—what the hell will you do in private? A futile question—I know the answer and I suppress the urge to picture it in graphic detail. I ask Liam:
“Do you still live on the Nelson Mandela estate?”
He says he does, and I raise my plucked eyebrows at Tilda, because she’s always disparaging about the estate, but she ignores me, stands up, grabs Liam’s hands, pulls him upright and off they go. He has his arm wrapped round her, and she snuggles her shoulders into him, trip-tripping at his side, her skirt blowing against her legs. The air fills with swirling rain, and I cycle back to Harcourt Road, bringing the news that Liam is Tilda’s boyfriend now.
Mum has lit a fire in the sitting room, and she’s sitting in the comfy chair beside it, marking artwork. I notice anew how small and fragile she is, swamped by the chair and its cushions. The chemo seemed to shrink her, and it made her hair fall out. It’s now growing back in soft nut-brown curls, like a poodle coat, but you can see the contours of her skull and in a couple of places there are little round bare patches, the size of a five-pence piece. She makes her face cheer up at the sight of me, saying, “You look damp and cold, darling. Would you like a cup of tea and toast and Marmite?” And soon we’re drinking our tea by the fire, in a fug of smoky, charcoaly warmth, and I tell her about Tilda and Liam. She says, “Doesn’t he go to a different school now?”
“Yes, St. Christopher’s. I don’t know how she found him again.”
“I think you rather liked Liam, didn’t you? When he and Tilda used to practice for Peter Pan?”
I feel my face go red. “Not really.”
I feel like adding that he’s too nice for Tilda, because mostly she prefers the sort of boys who are trouble—disruptive in class and disobedient. Mum doesn’t press me but fetches the playing cards for gin rummy and we play for half an hour. Then I watch my favorite DVD—Little Women with Winona Ryder as Jo, while Mum makes supper.
? ? ?
A few days later, Tilda comes in from school, drenched by the rain. She’s late, and flushed pink, and she thumps her rucksack on the kitchen table, wriggling out of her wet coat, saying, “Paige is off school, guess why?”
“Food poisoning?” I’m feigning boredom. Mum stirs something on the stove with a wooden spoon, making the kitchen smell of meat and gravy. She looks up. “Paige Mooney?”
“Yeah. She’s the only Paige. Anyhow—she’s pregnant, thirteen weeks!”
Tilda looks at us with wide eyes. She’s expecting a shocked “Oh no!” and “What an idiot!” or a sorrowful “Poor Paige.” But a sickly silence falls on the room. Mum wipes her hands on a tea towel. “How do you know about this?”
“Everyone’s talking about it. . . . Her brother told his friends, and now it’s all around the school.”
Nobody told me—but I’m not representative.