Blood Sisters(35)

Hair! For a minute, Kitty had a sudden vision of Flabby Face taking her to the hairdresser. She’d been small – her feet hadn’t touched the ground. There’d been a big mirror in front and Kitty had felt really grown up. ‘We’d like her fringe trimmed,’ he’d said.

And then the memory went. Just like that.

He’d seemed really nice then. But after that, he’d gone and … bugger. The flashback had vanished, along with the others, leaving fear and fury in its place. Now the memories had woven themselves into each other like loose stitches in Oh Tee classes. None of them made any sense.

‘Actually, I’d like to say something.’

There was someone else in the room. A soft-voiced, tall woman who had come in behind flabby-face man. She was younger than him. Her blonde hair was very short. A bit like a pixie on children’s television. And what a beautiful skirt! Turquoise was Kitty’s very favourite colour along with pink. How she wanted to stroke it. When you couldn’t talk, touching and hearing and looking were super important. They told you a great deal about people. This new visitor had style. But she was also scared.

Kitty could sniff that a mile off.

Right now, this lovely woman was kneeling in front of her. Eyes locked.

For some reason, a flash of a blonde plait flitted through Kitty’s mind. And a school satchel.

‘I’m sorry I haven’t been before, Kitty. But I’m here now. And I’m going to sort it. I promise.’

‘Who are you?’ Kitty babbled.

‘Don’t you recognize me, Kitty?’ Those eyes were pleading. Terrified. ‘I’m Ali. Your sister. Well, half-sister to be exact.’





25


January 2017


Alison


I study Kitty carefully as I speak. How much can she understand?

It’s been so long since I last visited. Years. I’ve almost made it a few times. Mum nearly persuaded me to come to some concert she was in, not so long ago. But I chickened out on the day. I felt awful. They’d already told Kitty to expect a ‘special visitor’, apparently. Shame on me. But they got round it, Mum said, by taking a picture of her for the local paper. ‘She liked that a lot.’

Can this really be my beautiful, confident sister? The once-svelte figure is almost obese. Kitty looks more like a frumpy fifty-year-old in her grey home-knitted cardigan than a young woman of twenty-six. One of her hands is twisted and the other arm is in plaster. Her face, on the same side, still droops as badly as it had the last time I was here, one eye lower than the other. I glance away, briefly, shocked by my own revulsion.

But I’m drawn to my sister’s hair. During my absence, it has grown back in another colour. Brown curls now peep out from under the helmet that helps to keep her skull intact. Of course, I was there, all those years ago, when her lovely blonde locks had been shaved off for surgery. Wasn’t that why I’d had mine cut short too? Not just to create a ‘new me’ but – as far as possible – to go through the same experience, just like relatives of chemo patients who have their heads shaved in empathy.

I gulp, trying to take it all in. Dribble is coming out of her mouth as she babbles words which mean nothing to me. Pretty Kitty is almost unrecognizable.

Yet I can see flashes of her predecessor. The way she holds my gaze as if challenging me. Those blue eyes which could worm their way into getting whatever she wanted.

It’s my little sister. Or, to be more accurate, my half-sister, though my mother hated it when I called her that. The thing about sisters is that you’re meant to get on. Most parents expect it, even if you’re chalk and cheese. But Kitty and I? We never did.

As I look into her eyes, it’s like looking into the past. I remember one day at the beach. Our mother had gone to the public loo. Keep an eye on your sister, Ali. A freak wave nearly carried her off while she was paddling in the rock pools. Somehow, I’d managed to dive through the crest and catch her by the neck of her swimsuit, dragging her on to the beach and safety. ‘Get off me,’ she’d screamed furiously, apparently oblivious to the fact that I had saved her life. When my mother returned, my sister claimed I’d ‘hurt her’. The sea was perfectly calm by then. There seemed little point in explaining what had really happened. It wasn’t that my mother was unfair: she loved me dearly. But, somehow, my sister always came out top.

Until she didn’t. Brain damage, they said. Never the same again. Miracle that she survived.

Yet, ironically, Kitty has now achieved something which I have deliberately denied myself. A baby. And a man who loves her. It shouldn’t be possible, but my throat swells with some of the old envy. How can my mother even think of an abortion? We’ll manage somehow. We have to, even though I’m deeply apprehensive.

As for David – who no longer has a beard and has gone all jowly round his chin – I can’t even look at him.

‘It’s out of the question for them to have the baby,’ my stepfather is now saying.

‘Rubbish.’ I stand up straight. ‘I will help them.’

I don’t mean to make the offer. It’s totally impractical. Yet I feel like it’s the least I can do. As I speak, I have a vision of seeing Father Christmas one year at our local shopping centre. Kitty had been in her pushchair. Scratchy. Irritable. At the beginning of our trip, I’d been allowed to push her. A special treat. But she’d kicked up a fuss because she wanted Mum to push her instead.