Blood Sisters(39)

‘Show off,’ said Robin quietly the other day on the bus when Crispin was boasting about going to the Radiohead concert in London. I nodded as if to agree. Robin was my best friend. I wouldn’t have minded a girl best friend – Kitty was so lucky to have Vanessa – but it had never happened. Instead, Robin had plonked himself down next to me in our first year at secondary school when I was struggling with a maths sum. ‘Let me help you with that,’ he said. Then he added, ‘I’ve seen you swimming off the west bay in the morning.’

I’d seen him too. There weren’t many of us about at that time. I liked to go early at weekends while the rest of the house was sleeping in. I swam through the year, regardless of the month, as long as the sea wasn’t too rough. I loved the way the freezing waves hit me; washing away Kitty’s continuing hostility and David’s favouritism.

‘Nothing like that brace of cold when you get in, is there?’ he said quietly, before explaining why I needed to move the figure in the bracket to the other side of the equation.

In return, I helped him with a history essay. I was the only one in class who didn’t tease him for that weird patchwork red and blue jacket he wore after school, summer and winter. Neither of us were part of the ‘in’ crowd, or, indeed, wanted to be. Just as I got ribbed for my height, so he was taunted for his surname, Wood, which led to stupid jokes about Robin Hood, as well as his deep voice, which broke long before any other boy’s in the year. Later, when we started to swim together, he proved to be a good listener to my moans and groans about my sister.

The ruined French essay was just the latest in a line of insults and spitefulness which had been going on for years. If Kitty left muddy footprints on the carpet, she blamed me. When we had to sit next to each other in the car, she’d make a fuss and say I was ‘taking up too much room’. And when she was watching one of her stupid programmes on television, she always had the sound up high so I couldn’t concentrate on my homework in my bedroom above.

‘Turn it down,’ I’d complain. ‘I can’t concentrate.’

Mum did her best. But it was my stepfather who was in charge.

‘Alison is far too serious,’ he was fond of saying.

‘That’s not quite fair,’ Mum would reply. ‘The two of them are just different.’

How true. All I wanted was to go to university and read history. But I knew, through listening in to those conversations through my sister’s door, that her eye was set on becoming a famous fashion designer. ‘When we get to London,’ my sister would say, ‘we’ll have a flat of our own.’

‘And,’ interrupted Vanessa, ‘we’ll go clubbing every night. We might even get to sing on the stage too.’

I didn’t like Vanessa. And I don’t think Mum did either. ‘She’s rather spoilt,’ she confided in me once over the washing-up. (Kitty, needless to say, had got out of clearing away because she had a ‘headache’ and was recuperating on the sofa watching television.) ‘It can happen when you’re an only child and don’t have to share.’ Then she gave me a cuddle. ‘That’s why I’m so glad you have a sister. I know Kitty might not show it. But she loves you very much too.’

Hah! I knew better.

Often I wished it was just me and Mum again. No David. No Kitty. I’d looked after Mum in those early days after Dad died. Brought her loo paper when she cried. Pretended I hadn’t been hungry when the cereal packet was empty.

Maybe it would have been different if my sister was … well, more sisterly. But instead, Kitty was constantly scratchy or downright hostile. It was like living with the school bully but never being able to swap classes.

It wasn’t Mum’s fault. She didn’t, as she explained to me, want to ‘upset’ David. ‘I’m lucky to have found another husband,’ I once heard her say to one of her friends.

Meanwhile, my stepfather spoilt Kitty rotten. Another pair of jeans. A locket for ‘being good’ – Vanessa had an identical one. Violin lessons because – that’s right – Vanessa had them. Ballet classes too. Nothing was too much for his princess. Whatever Vanessa got, Kitty wanted.

And now they wanted Crispin.





6 April 2001


We’ve got a new boy at school. Crispin. I’m in love!!!

If only he’d notice me! I’ve tried hitching up my skirt as soon as I get out of Mum’s sight. After that, I put on loads of mascara and lip gloss. And I always try to sit near to him on the bus.

But it’s like I don’t exist.

What am I going to do?





28


February 2017


Alison


I still can’t believe that Kitty is getting married. A dark part of me, which I try to push away, bridles with jealousy because she’s got what I always wanted. A sparkling diamond ring which once belonged to Johnny’s grandmother. A baby on the way. How is this possible?

But then again, doesn’t she deserve everything she can get after what happened to her?

‘They’re going to live in the home,’ Mum told me the other day. ‘The supervisor is being very accommodating. I think it’s because she feels guilty it happened in the first place.’

I have to admit to feeling a sense of relief that I don’t have to carry through my offer to look after them – at least, not now.