Blood Sisters(98)

‘Dad was angry. Told me Ali’s father not dead. In prison. Murderer. Said I should tell Ali.’

Friday Mum let out a little cry. ‘How could he! I made him promise to keep my secret.’

‘And did you tell Alison?’ asked the Sarah woman.

Kitty nodded her head. ‘No,’ said the machine. ‘Told Vanessa. She was going to tell Ali. I couldn’t let her.’

The room was deathly quiet.

‘So I pushed her.’

‘Who, Kitty? Who did you push?’

‘Vanessa. I pushed Vanessa.’





76


July 2001


Kitty


Kitty couldn’t recall a time when she hadn’t known Vanessa. She’d just always been there. And – most important – she was the same age. Ali was too old to be a proper sister. It was like having an older aunt instead. (Vanessa had had an aunt.) Ali was allowed to do things that Kitty couldn’t, like going to bed late. It wasn’t fair. And as Kitty grew up, she began to realize that Ali was cleverer than she was. That wasn’t fair either.

Vanessa was fun! Her parents let her go out on her own. She kept telling Kitty that she should ‘stand up for herself’. When they started school, everyone else liked Vanessa too. But it was Kitty who was her best friend. It made her feel special. But every now and then Vanessa would be friendly with another girl and Kitty would be scared that she’d go off her.

Then, one night, when Kitty was at Vanessa’s for a sleepover, they saw this programme about two girls who lived next door to each other. They promised to be friends for ever and ever. One of them cut her arm with a penknife and made the other do the same. Then they rubbed their arms together. ‘We’ll be blood sisters,’ they told each other. ‘It means we’ll be there for each other.’

Vanessa had got really excited by this. ‘Why don’t we do that?’ she suggested.

Kitty had been scared but she didn’t want to say no in case Vanessa stopped being her friend.

‘Where are you going?’ asked the babysitter. (Vanessa’s parents were out at the time.)

‘To get a drink,’ Vanessa had said quickly. ‘Come with me, Kitty.’

She found the kitchen scissors in the cutlery drawer. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Be quick. Make a mark on your arm.’

‘I can’t.’

Vanessa’s eyes had gone cold. ‘Then I’ll ask Wendy.’

No! Wendy was one of the other girls Vanessa was friendly with. It had been bad enough when Vanessa had asked Wendy over for a sleepover the other day and not Kitty.

It was only a little nick, but it hurt.

Then Vanessa did the same. She didn’t even cry out.

‘Now we have to rub our arms together,’ she said.

‘What on earth are you doing?’

It was the babysitter. ‘Oh my God … put those scissors down. You’ve cut yourselves! Whose idea was this?’

Vanessa looked at Kitty. ‘Hers,’ she said.

Kitty swallowed. She could deny it but, if she did, Vanessa might ask Wendy to be her blood sister instead.

Luckily the cuts weren’t deep, but Vanessa’s parents had still sent Kitty home that night in disgrace. ‘Was it really your fault?’ Mum had asked.

Kitty had hung her head. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m very disappointed.’

The next day at school, Vanessa took her hand. ‘You passed the test,’ she whispered. ‘We’re real blood sisters now. It means we will do anything for each other. One day I’ll do something for you.’

But she never did. And Kitty was always too scared not to do what Vanessa told her in case she didn’t have a best friend any more.

Then came that terrible day when Vanessa showed her the note.

I don’t want to be your friend any more, it said. I hate you.

The handwriting looked exactly like Kitty’s.

‘I didn’t write this. It wasn’t me,’ she kept saying. But Vanessa wouldn’t believe her.

‘You’ve got to prove it,’ she said. Her eyes had narrowed. ‘Otherwise you can’t be my blood sister any more.’

But how could she do that? The writing was just like hers with that loopy ‘f’ and ‘y’.

‘We could tell your sister that we saw her in the summer house,’ mused Vanessa. ‘I don’t know why you haven’t done that already.’

Nor did Kitty, to be honest. It just felt … well, wrong. That picture of her sister ‘doing it’ with a boy … Ugh! She’d rather forget it altogether.

‘No,’ continued Vanessa. ‘That’s not big enough. You need to tell me a really big secret. That no one else knows.’

Kitty began to feel scared then. ‘But I don’t have one!’

‘Then you’ll have to find one, won’t you. I’ll give you until the last day of term. If you haven’t come up with something, then I’ll just have to be best friends with Wendy instead.’

Kitty hadn’t been able to eat or sleep properly after that. She couldn’t think of any secrets. ‘Are you all right?’ Mum had asked. She wasn’t looking very happy either. She and Dad seemed to be rowing all the time. Then one day when Dad picked her up from Guides (she and Vanessa had recently started) he said he had something to tell her. ‘You’re a big girl. You deserve to know. Remember we’ve always told you that Ali’s father had died when she was little?’