Blood Sisters(68)

There was something else too. David had left Mum and gone to London. I should be pleased, I told myself. How often had I wished it was just me and Mum together? But my mother was sad and lonely without him.

‘Tragedies can bring couples closer,’ she sniffed. ‘Or drive them apart.’

Meanwhile, we had to steel ourselves to sort out Kitty’s room. ‘She used to hate it when I tidied up,’ said Mum wistfully. ‘Said I put it all back in the wrong order.’

That’s when I spied it. My history file which had gone missing. It was sitting in a pile of books on the floor. ‘I knew she’d taken it!’ Of course, it was too late now but it still mattered. At least to me.

Mum rubbed her eyes. She hadn’t slept properly since the accident. (Often I found her wandering around the house when I couldn’t sleep either.) ‘No, love. That was me. I put a whole load of your books on Kitty’s floor so I could go over yours with the vacuum cleaner. Thought I’d moved them back again but I must have missed this. I’m so sorry.’

I swallowed the bile in my throat. ‘When was this?’

‘A while ago. Around the time of your exams. David had been going on about how untidy your room was.’ She made a little whimper. ‘To think I thought that was important.’

I could barely speak. ‘I asked you if you’d seen it!’ I wanted to yell. But what was the point? It couldn’t bring back the past.

Yet if I’d known that my sister hadn’t stolen my history file, I wouldn’t have been so angry at her. Kitty might be Kitty as she used to be. And Vanessa might still be alive …

I was so stunned that I could barely take in what Mum was saying. ‘Here – take this.’

‘Take what?’

‘Kitty’s locket.’ She held it out to me. ‘I want you to have something to remind you of your sister.’

The locket that Kitty refused to lend me for the party. The cool metal was strangely soothing against my neck. It made me feel like my sister was close. Yet at the same time, I couldn’t help feeling a touch of satisfaction. Kitty would be furious if she knew I was wearing her locket.

That was when I found Kitty’s paints. And later on that day I opened a tube of turquoise and started painting. The last hand to touch this brush had been my sister’s. Now my hand was slipping into its place, moving across the page almost as if my sister was guiding it. See, she was saying. You can paint too. You were just concentrating too hard on your silly books to notice.

At first my splashes looked like rubbish. Yet the very act of doing something that didn’t tax the mind with facts and dates was therapeutic after the agony since the accident.

Keep going, said Kitty in my head. See the way the light falls through the tree outside? Shade in the shadow. That’s right. Now put some darker green round the outside of the leaf. They’re not all one colour, you know. They’re like you and me. A mixture of contrasts. Let the colours bleed into each other. That’s the joy of watercolour. You never know what’s going to happen.

It was almost as if my sister had willingly transferred her talent into my body by telepathy.

A few days later I decided to tell Mum. I didn’t want to upset her any more than she was already. But I knew this was the right thing to do. ‘I’ve made a decision about uni,’ I told her. ‘I’m not going. Not ever.’

‘But York agreed to defer for a year!’

‘I know. But I don’t want to read history any more. It’s too … too factual. I can’t think straight now. Let’s face it, Mum. None of us can. I want to do art instead.’

‘But you can’t paint. You can’t draw. That was Kitty’s thing …’

Not any more.

‘I went to see one of the teachers at school,’ I continued, my hands shaking. ‘I took my portfolio – well, some drawings I’d done. She said it might be enough to apply for a foundation course.’

‘You’re sure of this?’

‘Certain.’

‘Then maybe you’re right.’ Mum sat down heavily at the kitchen table. ‘Perhaps we all need something different.’

That’s when the idea came. ‘And while we’re at it, I’m not Ali any more. I want to be known as Alison Baker from now on.’

For a minute, Mum seemed as though she was about to say something. Then she closed her eyes briefly. ‘I understand that,’ she said, with a steely note to her voice. ‘You need to start again. Like all of us.’

After our conversation, I went up into my room and opened the locket. It was just as I’d feared. A picture of Crispin – taken from the school newsletter – grinned back at me.

I ripped it up into tiny bits and flushed them down the loo.

The following day I took Mum’s kitchen scissors to the bathroom and chopped off all my hair.

To make up for the new bald Kitty.

With the help of Kitty’s old art teacher at school, I got a foundation place through clearing at a London art school. I chose not to go into a hall. Already, I could envisage the questions from other students. (Where do you live? Do you have family?) Far better to use my grant to rent a small bedsit in Holloway. On my own.

London was a breath of fresh air. Away from everyone who had known me. Away from my mother’s constantly tragic face. Away from the road where we had walked to school. Away from the sympathetic faces who had known Kitty and me in an earlier life. The only things I missed were my mother and the sea. And, of course, my sister.