Blood Sisters by Jane Corry
To my warm, funny husband. Every day is different. Also to my amazing children – and Millie, who has changed our lives.
Squeaky-clean school shoes.
Shoulder bags bobbing.
Blonde plaits flapping.
Two pairs of feet. One slightly larger.
‘Come on. We’re going to be late.’
Nearly there. Almost safe.
Pavement edge.
Another pair of feet.
No!
A scream.
Silence.
Blood seeping on the ground.
Spreading and spreading.
Part One
* * *
News just in. A murder is reported to have taken place at an open prison on the outskirts of London. No further details are available at present but we will be bringing you an update as soon as possible. Meanwhile on Radio 2, here is the new song from Great Cynics …
1
September 2016
Alison
Careful. It’s not the size that counts. It’s the sharpness. And the angle. The blade must sing. Not scratch.
I hold the piece of blue glass up to the window light. It’s the same colour as the type you occasionally see in bottles lining the shelves of old-fashioned pharmacies. A nice clean cut. No sharp bits that need trimming, which is always tricky. So easy to get splinters of glass in your skin or on your clothes.
Or in your mind.
Now for the acid test. Does the glass fit the lead outline? My heart always starts to beat wildly at this stage, as though it’s a matter of life or death. Silly, really, but that’s how it feels. After getting this far, you don’t want to get it wrong. It’s not just the waste of glass. It’s the waste of time.
Each second of life is precious. As I know all too well.
‘Would you mind helping me with this, Mrs Baker?’
‘Actually, it’s miss,’ I say, looking up from my demo piece. ‘And please call me Alison. Everyone else does.’
Most of my students are older than this new one standing before me. Shorter too. He’s substantial without being chunky. Six foot one and a half, at a guess. Three inches or so more than me.
As a child I was teased mercilessly for being the tallest in class. I did my best to shrink but it didn’t work. ‘Stand up straight,’ my mother would plead. She meant well, but all I wanted to do was blend in; not to be noticed. To hide my slightly overlarge nose (‘classical’, my mother called it kindly), my thick-framed mud-brown glasses and my train-track braces. Whereas my perfectly put-together sister had that gift of innate confidence that made her naturally poised.
Nowadays I’ve learned there are some advantages to my height. You can carry off clothes that others can’t. Put on a pound or two without showing. Yet, every time I pass my reflection in a mirror or shop window, I am reminded to push back those offending shoulders. ‘Droopy angel-wings’, my sister used to call them.
How ironic.
The man asking the question is neither young nor old. Something else we have in common. The more the years go by, the less I want to put a figure on my age. It makes me panic about the things I thought I’d have done by now and which somehow haven’t happened.
In fact, this is the one place where age doesn’t matter. It’s the steadiness of the hand that counts. Making stained-glass windows might seem like an innocuous craft. But accidents happen.
How true that is.
‘I can’t quite remember, Alison, what you said about stretching the lead.’
The man’s voice is deep as it slices through my thoughts. Well spoken, suggesting an expensive education. Keen. Not many men sign up for these weekly courses I run at the local college. When this particular student arrived at the first session last week, I felt an instant fluttering of unease. And I still do.
It’s not just the way he keeps staring. Or his intelligent questions. Or the confident manner in which he scores his glass, even though it’s a beginner’s class. Or his name – Clive Black, which has an authoritative symmetry, suggesting a certain amount of thought on his parents’ part. Nor is it even the way he said ‘Alison’ just now, as though he found it intriguing rather than everyday.
It’s all of these things. And something else too that I can’t put a finger on. Over the years, I’ve learned to trust my instinct. And it’s telling me, right now, to watch out.
Wearing my protective gloves (mandatory for everyone in class, along with an apron), I pick up a thin, slightly twisted piece of lead, about a foot long. It always reminds me of a strand of silver liquorice: the type my sister and I used to buy from the corner shop on the way back from school.
Block it out. Distract.
Swiftly, I hand Clive a pair of pliers. ‘Take one piece – the flat edge of the pliers needs to be on top – and pull. I’ll do the same at the other end. Lean forward. That’s right.’
‘Amazing how it doubles in length!’ he says in the kind of tone which I’ve sometimes heard children use.
‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ breathes someone else as the class gathers round. I love this bit. Excitement is catching.
I pick up a different trimming knife. The funny thing is that I’ve been clumsy ever since childhood. Yet this is the one area where I never falter.