Blood Sisters(69)

How she would have loved this!

Don’t be silly, the old Kitty seemed to say in my head when someone asked if I was going to the Freshers disco. Of course you’ve got to go. We would! Wouldn’t we, Vanessa?

But when a boy asked me to dance – just as the music went slow – I smelt Crispin on his skin. Heard the tapping of the trees in my head. So I’d mumbled something about ‘needing to leave’ and ran.

Kitty wouldn’t have done that. She’d have been thrilled that someone wanted to kiss her.

So, instead, I stuck with my own company. More reliable. I ignored messages from people in my old life – including Robin, who got in touch every now and then to ‘see how I was’. I knew that if I was going to survive, I had to create a new identity. Without ties to the past. No more Ali.

Just like there was no more Vanessa. Or Kitty as I knew her.

‘You’ve got something here,’ said one tutor after watching me work on a very fine botanical pen-and-ink drawing. ‘There’s a real eye for detail. Have you ever thought of doing stained glass?’

That was my epiphany. An artistic medium that Kitty had never ventured into. As soon as I began to cut into the glass, I felt something light up inside. It wasn’t just my ‘natural skill’. It was what I could do with the glass afterwards.

At first, it was an accident. It’s hard not to cut yourself when you’re making a stained-glass picture. Tiny fragments are a constant hazard. ‘Ouch,’ I said when one got into my skin. The tutor showed me how to extract it with tweezers. It was nothing, I told myself, compared with the pain that Kitty had felt when the car had lifted her up like a swan just as it had done with Vanessa.

Later, when I was tidying up the empty workshop, I picked up a piece of discarded glass and carefully sliced the top part of my arm. The blood was instant. So was the gratification. It wasn’t a deep cut, although it did take a few plasters to stop the bleeding. After that, I was hooked.

Of course, I didn’t do it every day. Only now and then, when things got particularly bad. Especially after my visits to Kitty. Was this really my sister, I would ask myself, watching this plump young woman in a wheelchair who laughed manically or lashed out with no apparent reason?

How I hated that place! So many people whose normal lives had been cut short. Everyone else was much older than my sister. One woman had had a brain tumour removed. ‘Started behaving oddly at work, apparently,’ said a rather indiscreet male nurse. ‘Everyone thought she was just being difficult but then she had an eye test and they found this growth. So they cut it out but it damaged the brain. Never been the same since.’

At first, I would try to visit once a month or so, although not at the same time as Mum. We’d spread it out. David, apparently, ‘occasionally went’, although Mum didn’t like to talk about him. But after I qualified as a teacher (like mother, like daughter) and got my first job at a girls’ school in the East End of London, I went much less. I tried to tell myself I was too busy, or that visiting her – if she could understand who I was – would only make her feel worse. After all, we’d never got on before the accident.

But Kitty never went away: so many of my pupils reminded me of her. There was one in particular who had the same cheeky attitude. The same blonde hair. The same disregard for authority. The same talent. ‘I don’t want to do acrylics, miss. I like watercolours.’

I was softer on her than the others. Let her get away with things. I was nice to her to make up for Kitty. But the others noticed. ‘Teacher’s pet!’ So I went the other way. Became harder. The hurt on her face was too painful. Then I left. Started again at another school. But once more, another ‘Kitty’ emerged. Dark hair this time. Like the new Kitty. The same old confident attitude. I lasted two terms that time.

When I applied for a third school, questions were asked. Why hadn’t I stayed longer in my previous situations? Was I really committed?

‘Maybe,’ said one of my old tutors whom I’d gone to for a reference, ‘you’d be better off teaching adults. We’re looking for someone to run one of our evening groups here. Stained glass. It’s one of your specialities, isn’t it?’

And that’s how it started. The years passed. I became a regular tutor at different art colleges. I had a certain amount of independence that way – so much better than working for one employer. I also ran my own classes in a variety of halls. I earned enough to pay my rent. And I gave the rest to Mum. It was needed for Kitty’s place in the home, even after the compensation had finally been paid through the insurers.

On one of my infrequent visits, I started to tell Kitty about my art students. Suddenly her good arm shot out and thumped me. Right under my eye. I felt the swelling immediately.

‘Kitty,’ said one of the nurses. ‘That’s very naughty.’

No, I wanted to say. It’s all right.

At the same time, she’d begun to babble. A stream of angry nonsense. Or so it might have seemed to anyone else. ‘She’s really trying to say something, isn’t she?’ said the nurse.

Yes. She was telling me that she was jealous. That I had no right to steal her passion. Art’s my thing, she might as well have said. Not yours.

I began to visit three times a year instead of every month. And then twice a year. And then once. Just at Christmas, when she hit me again.