“It must be traumatic,” says Mum seriously. “She’s your friend, so be supportive and don’t gossip.”
“I won’t.” Tilda grabs some biscuits and pours herself a glass of milk, then goes upstairs. Mum follows her, telling me to guard the stew, and I assume she’s going to ask Tilda about Liam, check that she’s being careful. I wish I could listen to their conversation—I’m dying to know if my sister has a full-blown, proper sex life. I’ve read articles in teen magazines about sex being fun, about discovery and “exploring your bodies,” but it’s obvious to me that these are half-truths, that there’s a devastating, emotional side.
Mum returns to the kitchen, briskly taking the wooden spoon from me, and I ask her outright whether Tilda is having sex. “That’s her business,” she says, with a loving smile so I won’t be upset. I stare into the stew, thinking that Mum and Tilda now have some shared secret knowledge that excludes me and I sense that from now on my sister will drift further away from me, like she’s sailing to the far side of an ocean while I’m stuck on the land.
? ? ?
The next day the Whisper Sisters, minus Paige, are rehearsing in Tilda’s bedroom and, for some reason, or maybe it’s an oversight, she lets me sit on the floor in a corner and watch. The three of them sit on the bed, talking in a loud hush because of the seriousness of the subject—Paige’s pregnancy.
“My God,” says Tilda, “her life will be ruined—everyone will think she’s a slut and brainless with it. Liam thinks she did it on purpose.”
She stands up on the bed and starts humming one of the Whisper Sister songs and doing the dance moves, shoving her hips out at angles and making the other girls bounce up and down. Then she flops down again, and in a confiding voice says: “The thing about Paige is she has low self-esteem. You must have noticed. I think getting pregnant will make her feel important. But she doesn’t realize how bad it all is. . . . She’s an attention seeker and I think maybe she actually wants to keep the baby, like it would make her someone. But she’ll never achieve anything, and she won’t get famous. She won’t even become a singer—which is a shame because she has a nice voice.”
She’s high on the drama of the situation and her own role as best friend of the doomed protagonist, acting like she’s steering Paige towards a tragic destiny—she would have the baby and then fall into an abyss of obscurity. By contrast, Tilda’s own destiny is to involve fame, glamour and the recognition that is her right. I make a mental note, for later, when I’ll write up my observations.
Eventually, Kimberley and Sasha go home, and I return to Tilda’s bedroom. She’s lying on the bed, texting, and she looks up. “Stop lurking by the door and come in.” Then: “Are you worried about Paige’s baby?”
“I suppose.”
“Don’t be. I know her; she won’t have an abortion. She wants to be a mother. It’s her calling.”
“What’s my calling?”
“Come here.” She pats the pillow on the bed, and we lie side by side. “Your calling is to be a nice person, looking out for other people and protecting things.”
It sounds boring.
“There has to be more to me than that.”
“There’s nothing more serious than your calling!” She looks at me crossly. “You love where others don’t. That’s what the sheep-skull day was about. And don’t worry. I see your future as happy. You’ll be a mother. You’ll live in an old country house with a family that loves you. There’ll be log fires and dogs, and fields of sheep all around, and I’ll come and visit even when I’m famous.”
In my mind I start to cast Liam Brookes in the country-house husband role, but Tilda puts an end to that by saying, “You know why I can’t see Liam on Saturday? It’s because he goes to the library to study. I think it’s because he doesn’t have a father, and he wants to look after his mother in the future. He says he’ll be a doctor. Imagine! Liam a doctor.”
“What about your calling? Will you be a doctor’s wife?”
“Hmm. Maybe. I imagine Liam working for Médicins Sans Frontières. It’s a French organization he talks about that works in battle zones in Africa and places. I’ll go with him, and write songs.”
“Wouldn’t you be frightened in a battle zone?”
“I’d be concentrating on my songs. And I think the calling part makes the fear go away.”
“Really?”
Then she starts telling me about meeting Liam again, at a party three months ago. “I hadn’t seen him since we were at primary school,” she says. “We fell out then, do you remember?”
“I never really knew what was going on with you two. I remember you had a row or something when you were rehearsing for Peter Pan. And you wouldn’t come out of our bedroom, and then you did that maniac thing, hitting your head on the wall.” I lie on my side now, facing her, with my arm across her belly.
“I annoyed him by saying I was pleased I didn’t live on the Nelson Mandela estate. Then we had an argument about whether the estate was scuzzy and dangerous. It made him hate me for being stuck-up and judgmental.”
“But you made up after that? After the play.”
“Only for a while. Those things I said did too much damage.”
Then she kisses the top of my head and sings a song that goes: “I’m in love, so in love with him. . . .”
I can’t believe she’s been seeing Liam for three whole months without telling me, and I realize that half her outings to rehearse with the Whisper Sisters were actually romantic assignations. I feel the old urge to eat something of hers—but I try to suppress it. Instead, when she gets up to go to the bathroom, I pull down her purple duvet and get right inside her bed, burying my face in her pillow. I breathe in her smell, which is thick and heady, and as I sit up again I notice one long blond hair lying on the pillow, but I manage not to eat it and instead just take it to my room and tuck it inside my pillowcase. Then I write up my notes.
? ? ?
On Saturday I take my bike and go to the library. I find a seat by the window, spread my books out on the table and start reading, trying to ignore a mad-haired old lady in the chair opposite, snoring under a heap of dirty brown clothes. There’s a stale dustbin smell coming from her too, which explains the empty chairs nearby. I open the window and settle back into my reading.