White Bodies(28)

“What are you reading?” Liam is looking at the book sticking out of my pocket, then expectantly at my face, and I can tell he wants to reconnect with me.

“Oh, she’s always reading murder stories,” Tilda snaps. “Bye, Callie, we’re leaving.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Liam’s. His mum will be out this afternoon.”

I want to say, What? I’ve seen you on that bench, in public, groping and snogging—what the hell will you do in private? A futile question—I know the answer and I suppress the urge to picture it in graphic detail. I ask Liam:

“Do you still live on the Nelson Mandela estate?”

He says he does, and I raise my plucked eyebrows at Tilda, because she’s always disparaging about the estate, but she ignores me, stands up, grabs Liam’s hands, pulls him upright and off they go. He has his arm wrapped round her, and she snuggles her shoulders into him, trip-tripping at his side, her skirt blowing against her legs. The air fills with swirling rain, and I cycle back to Harcourt Road, bringing the news that Liam is Tilda’s boyfriend now.

Mum has lit a fire in the sitting room, and she’s sitting in the comfy chair beside it, marking artwork. I notice anew how small and fragile she is, swamped by the chair and its cushions. The chemo seemed to shrink her, and it made her hair fall out. It’s now growing back in soft nut-brown curls, like a poodle coat, but you can see the contours of her skull and in a couple of places there are little round bare patches, the size of a five-pence piece. She makes her face cheer up at the sight of me, saying, “You look damp and cold, darling. Would you like a cup of tea and toast and Marmite?” And soon we’re drinking our tea by the fire, in a fug of smoky, charcoaly warmth, and I tell her about Tilda and Liam. She says, “Doesn’t he go to a different school now?”

“Yes, St. Christopher’s. I don’t know how she found him again.”

“I think you rather liked Liam, didn’t you? When he and Tilda used to practice for Peter Pan?”

I feel my face go red. “Not really.”

I feel like adding that he’s too nice for Tilda, because mostly she prefers the sort of boys who are trouble—disruptive in class and disobedient. Mum doesn’t press me but fetches the playing cards for gin rummy and we play for half an hour. Then I watch my favorite DVD—Little Women with Winona Ryder as Jo, while Mum makes supper.

? ? ?

A few days later, Tilda comes in from school, drenched by the rain. She’s late, and flushed pink, and she thumps her rucksack on the kitchen table, wriggling out of her wet coat, saying, “Paige is off school, guess why?”

“Food poisoning?” I’m feigning boredom. Mum stirs something on the stove with a wooden spoon, making the kitchen smell of meat and gravy. She looks up. “Paige Mooney?”

“Yeah. She’s the only Paige. Anyhow—she’s pregnant, thirteen weeks!”

Tilda looks at us with wide eyes. She’s expecting a shocked “Oh no!” and “What an idiot!” or a sorrowful “Poor Paige.” But a sickly silence falls on the room. Mum wipes her hands on a tea towel. “How do you know about this?”

“Everyone’s talking about it. . . . Her brother told his friends, and now it’s all around the school.”

Nobody told me—but I’m not representative.

“It must be traumatic,” says Mum seriously. “She’s your friend, so be supportive and don’t gossip.”

“I won’t.” Tilda grabs some biscuits and pours herself a glass of milk, then goes upstairs. Mum follows her, telling me to guard the stew, and I assume she’s going to ask Tilda about Liam, check that she’s being careful. I wish I could listen to their conversation—I’m dying to know if my sister has a full-blown, proper sex life. I’ve read articles in teen magazines about sex being fun, about discovery and “exploring your bodies,” but it’s obvious to me that these are half-truths, that there’s a devastating, emotional side.

Mum returns to the kitchen, briskly taking the wooden spoon from me, and I ask her outright whether Tilda is having sex. “That’s her business,” she says, with a loving smile so I won’t be upset. I stare into the stew, thinking that Mum and Tilda now have some shared secret knowledge that excludes me and I sense that from now on my sister will drift further away from me, like she’s sailing to the far side of an ocean while I’m stuck on the land.

? ? ?

The next day the Whisper Sisters, minus Paige, are rehearsing in Tilda’s bedroom and, for some reason, or maybe it’s an oversight, she lets me sit on the floor in a corner and watch. The three of them sit on the bed, talking in a loud hush because of the seriousness of the subject—Paige’s pregnancy.

“My God,” says Tilda, “her life will be ruined—everyone will think she’s a slut and brainless with it. Liam thinks she did it on purpose.”

She stands up on the bed and starts humming one of the Whisper Sister songs and doing the dance moves, shoving her hips out at angles and making the other girls bounce up and down. Then she flops down again, and in a confiding voice says: “The thing about Paige is she has low self-esteem. You must have noticed. I think getting pregnant will make her feel important. But she doesn’t realize how bad it all is. . . . She’s an attention seeker and I think maybe she actually wants to keep the baby, like it would make her someone. But she’ll never achieve anything, and she won’t get famous. She won’t even become a singer—which is a shame because she has a nice voice.”