We had liked Uncle Michael’s deep laugh. He had pretended he was Father Christmas one day. We knew he wasn’t because Mum had told us Father Christmas was ‘bollocks’. But we liked Uncle Michael’s laugh.
Uncle Michael had disappeared, like all of Mum’s boyfriends. They appear and disappear as quickly as the coins Uncle Stuart used to tuck behind his ears. That had been the only magic trick he knew.
‘I will be Romulus,’ Sarah says. She snarls and lifts her hands, curling her fingers over like claws. ‘We’re wolf cubs.’
Our laughter blends, merging into the same sound. The same laugh. Everything about us is the same.
I love having someone the same as me. Even Mum can’t tell the difference between us, because there is no difference. No one can tell us apart.
Sarah howls.
I snarl, then howl back at her.
We laugh again.
Chapter 5
Uncle Harry smokes a lot of cigarettes. Mum says he’s like a chimney, puffing away, ‘fag after fag’. The house smells horrible when Uncle Harry is here and our bedroom fills with smoke, like a winter fog.
We hate him and the smelly cigarettes he rolls up between his fingers and thumbs.
We want to get rid of him.
We hate the way he speaks to us. He calls us names, he calls us brats, and tells Mum to ignore us.
‘We aren’t brats, we’re wolf cubs.’ That’s what we tell him. Then he swipes out a hand at us and we run before he can hit us.
Susan told me to throw away the lump of black squishy stuff that he breaks up into his cigarettes. I did that. He turned the sofa cushions upside down and then the sofa upside down, shouted, and threw things at Mum. He thought she’d taken it, or smoked it. But he didn’t go away.
Susan told me to cut the toe bits off his socks. She has the best ideas. Mum’s boyfriends hate it when they get up in the morning and find their socks and have nothing to cover their toes. We have used that trick four times. Mum’s boyfriends leave because of that trick.
Uncle Harry hadn’t left.
Now, Susan’s dared me to cut his hair when he’s asleep.
It is 7am. We creep across the landing together, tiptoeing over the carpet. Susan is in front of me. Criss-crosses of threads show in the carpet in places. I don’t step on the threads. We play games with them. We play the snakes-are-in-the-carpet game.
My fingers tighten on the kitchen scissors so they don’t slip out of my hand. The oily sweat on my palm is making it difficult to hold the plastic handles and one handle is broken so there is only a bit of the other handle to hold. I need to be quick and quiet. I can’t let the scissors slip out of my fingers.
Susan pushes down the door handle that hangs loose because a screw had fallen out.
Mum and Uncle Harry aren’t awake. They never wake early. When we go to school they are always in bed.
But they come home late. We hear them banging the door shut, laughing, shouting, or fighting as they move around the house. Then Mum’s bed squeaks and creaks.
We cover our heads with our pillows so we can sleep.
Susan pushes the door so it swings wide, then moves out of the way. I tiptoe on, sneaking into Mum’s room.
Mum’s room has shadows like cobwebs all over it; they are made by the early daylight shining through the net curtains.
Uncle Harry has a long fringe that he loves. He hates it if anyone messes his hair up. His friends rub his hair to make him angry.
His fingers touch his hair all the time, pulling his fringe forward and moving it back over his eye in the way he likes.
I am going to cut his fringe off.
A nervous laugh tries to push its way out through my lips. I press them tightly closed so it can’t escape. He will hate it. He is going to be so angry.
Susan waits by the open door behind me as I sneak across the room, a stalking wolf cub.
We have looked at every book with wolves in it in the school library. We love wolves. We draw pictures of wolves at school and sometimes we stand out in the garden together, or open our bedroom window, and howl at the moon.
Uncle Harry is lying on his side with his mouth open. He makes a lot of noises when he is asleep, but it’s not quite snoring. It’s like whispered snores and sometimes his mouth opens and closes like a fish’s.
His fringe is flopping to one side in a weird way, hanging at a strange angle because of the sticky styling gel he puts in his hair.
I creep closer, the broken bits of the scissors’ plastic handles pressing into my fingers.
I reach out, my fingers shaking, take hold of the ends of the strands of hair with my left hand and raise the scissors in my right hand. The hair is light as feathers, but it is stiff and sticky with all the gloopy gel he uses on it.
The sharp blades of the scissors slice through the first strands. Snip. Snip. I don’t cut in a straight line.
Snip.
Snip.
Ten-centimetre-long strands drop onto the pillow in clumps beside his open mouth.
‘Take it,’ Susan whispers from the doorway, her voice claiming the pieces of hair as our trophy.
I pick up some of the hair from his pillow and rush out of the room, my footsteps heavy and the floor creaking.
Susan pulls the door closed behind me; that creaks too and it bumps against the frame.
Our gazes and our smiles collide and our hands press over our mouths trying to keep our giggles from travelling into Mum’s room. Susan’s eyes dance with laughter. In the shadowy area of the landing, where there’s no window to let in any sunlight, the black pupils in her large eyes are wide and there’s a wicked cartoon-glint in them. I must have the same glint in my eyes.
***
‘Fucking kids! Where the fuck are you? Fucking brats!’ Uncle Harry’s yells boom out of Mum’s bedroom. His feet hit the floor the sound thumps through the ceiling, bouncing around the walls.
I look at Sarah. It’s half an hour since she cut his hair. We’re still smiling.
I imagine his fingers lifting when he woke up, trying to comb through a fringe that’s not there. We win. He will go, and he won’t come back.
Mum’s bedroom door bangs into the wall upstairs. Her door hits the wall in her bedroom when it’s opened too fast and too wide. There’s a dent of broken plaster where the handle hits every time she or one of our uncles is angry.
‘Fucking kids! Where are you? Get here!’ His yells and his footsteps bang their way onto the stairs, his hand rattling the loose struts in the bannister.
Sarah’s smile lifts to a grin that dents into dimples in her cheeks. There’s a gleam in her eyes. She is the daredevil. She loves danger. I have ideas, but she has courage.
Uncle Harry bursts into the living room, smashing the door out of his way, whirling like the Tasmanian Devil. Large, naked, and as violently red as a chilli pepper.
He dives towards Sarah. ‘Ah!’ Sarah screams as his big hands reach out and she leaps over the arm of the sofa, out of his grasp.
‘Ah!’ I squeal, ducking and turning away from a grabbing hand. I run towards the front door ahead of Sarah, still screaming. The latch is fiddly and I have to push down the lock, turn the small knob as well as the handle. I twist and push and pull as Sarah screams behind me.
When I run out, cold raindrops hit my hair. Large drops of cold rain soak through my nightdress, pounding down like little hammers. They drench me in a rush.
I turn, looking back for Sarah. She’s still in the house running around the living room, leaping on and off the furniture. She’s on the wrong side of the room to get out; Uncle Harry is between her and the door.
Uncle Harry snarls, grunts, and shouts as he tries to catch her, spit erupting from his mouth in a revolting spray.
Sarah’s screams follow her around the chairs and the sofa.
Rain drips from my hair. ‘Come on. Come on.’ I urge her to run across the sofa to join me outside. Her eyes are focused on me, reaching out to me.
‘Ah—’
Her scream breaks and becomes the cracked cry of being caught as his fingers grab the top of her arm, pulling her back and throwing her from the sofa to the floor. Her head bounces on the carpet.
My breath pulls all the way down to the soles of my feet.
I want to move but every muscle feels as if it is twisted, wrung out like a flannel. I’m scared. Uncle Harry is a giant. He’s like Popeye. She kicks and hits. He sits on top of her, straddling her hips, trapping her. ‘Fucking kids. I’ll teach you to fuck with me.’ One hand circles her neck as his other hand curls into a fist.
My hair drips out the milliseconds.
She thumps his thick arms, but her fists bounce back.
His fist hits Sarah’s cheek so hard I hear a crack in the moment that I step back through the door, running to help. Too late. Too late to stop him.
Blood sprays from her mouth over his forearm and splatters on the carpet.
She screams again as the second punch hits her cheek.
A sharp pain bursts through my head. I feel everything she feels. I jump on his back, my arm wrapping around his neck. ‘Get off her!’
He hits and hits her as I hit him. But my fists don’t make a difference. ‘Stop! Stop it!’ Tears merge with the rain that’s still dripping from my wet hair.
His elbow thrusts back and hits my ribs, knocking the air out of me.
‘Stop! Harry! Stop!’ Mum yells from the stairs.
I press my teeth into the skin on his shoulder, biting as hard as I can, biting like a wolf. I puncture his skin and bitter tasting blood fills my mouth.
‘What is happening in here?’ Another man’s deep voice rumbles through the room. Another man’s large hand pulls on my shoulder and his arm wraps around my waist, pulling, ripping my teeth from Uncle’s Harry’s shoulder.
Sirens wail outside.
The room fills up with people. There are six men in here. I scream and kick as the man keeps hold of me, keeping me away from Uncle Harry, with an arm around my middle.
‘Let me go! Let me go!’ I need to help Sarah.
The sirens wail louder.
Three of the men drag Uncle Harry off Sarah, holding his head and arms. His chest heaves like I imagine a dragon’s lungs would if it was going to breathe fire.
‘Come on, love. Come away,’ a woman says to me as the man lets my feet touch the floor. I’ve seen her before. She lives on our street, over the road.
I don’t move. I can’t. My muscles have all locked up again. I can see Sarah. A man in a green suit is leaning over her, pointing the light from a thin torch into her eyes. Her skin is white and her body is limp, lifeless, lying on the floor like a blood-stained ragdoll.
The man’s arm lets go of me, but the woman wraps me up in both arms and one of her hands presses my cheek against the cushion of her large breasts. Her soft cotton T-shirt smells of flowery soap, and her breath carries the scent of mint. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right, dear,’ she says over and over as she rubs a hand across my wet hair.
I must be making her wet. The thin nighty I have worn since I was five is soaked. It’s clinging to my skin. The hems of these nightdresses reach to just above our knees. They had been down to our ankles when we were five. I am naked beneath it, with all these people in the room, and it is loose because the elastic in the neck and sleeves has stretched.
Sarah.
I push the woman away. Sarah hasn’t moved. The hem of her nighty is at her waist because she’s been kicking.
‘It’s all right dear. It’s all right.’ The woman tries to hold me again.
I step away from her, my arms outstretched trying to keep all the adults away. It isn’t all right. Sarah isn’t moving, her face is a mass of scarlet blood and bright red lumps, and she hasn’t pulled her nighty down.
‘Sarah. Sarah.’ I kneel beside her, trying to wake her up. The man’s hand surrounds my arm and he pulls me back up onto my feet. ‘She’s all right.’
‘She isn’t. Let me go!’ I try to pull my arm free. He just holds me tighter.
Chapter 6
2018
The front door opens.
Susan and Lucy turn and look the same moment I do.
Jonny pulls his key out of the lock as he steps in.
My heart bursts with relief in an explosion of adrenalin. ‘Jonny!’ He will tell Susan to get out. I slide off the barstool deserting the glass I’ve been nursing while Susan tells her tales of us and hurry to the door.
I need to hold him. I need reality to kick back in. I need it to be just me and him. I wrap my arms around his middle and press my cheek against the cold leather of his coat as he reaches to hang his keys up by the door. I look up to greet the warm lips that press onto mine. His short, dark beard tickles my chin. The scent he wears lingers in the stubble and the smell fills my nostrils as I breathe in when he pulls away.
His eyes look over my shoulder and then he moves, disengaging from me mentally and physically. He’s seen Susan. His eyebrows lift, increasing the thin wrinkles in his forehead, as his eyes widen.
I turn around, facing her with my arms lifting, to hold him behind me. To protect him. Keep him. I don’t want her to come near. I want him to throw verbal stones over my head, over my wall, aiming them all to be a perfect hit on her.
Susan has left the breakfast bar too. She walks towards us, looking beyond me at him, smiling, with my smile. ‘Hello, Jonny.’
He walks around my barrier. There is no hesitation on his part either. He walks as quickly towards her as she does towards him.
He will tell her to go.
‘Susan.’ His voice carries surprise not anger, and he holds out a hand, offering it, not throwing it at her.
What is he doing? Panic wants me to run between them, push his hand down and shove her away. He knows what talking to her will do to my sanity.
‘Hi.’ Her hand slides into his and her fingers embrace his hand. They do not shake hands, just hold on to one another. ‘It’s been a long time,’ she says with the deeper pitch of warm emotions pressing through her voice.
‘Susan has been telling me about when Mum was a child and she was hit by a man,’ Lucy says as she walks across the room with her wine glass cupped in her hand, the stem dangling between her fingers.
When Susan releases his hand, there is a reddish tint to his skin visible even through the tan left over from the fortnight we spent on holiday in Egypt a month ago.
He knows I hate her. He knows. He shouldn’t want to shake her hand. He should tell her to get out.
His eyes glance at me, questioning, as his hand retreats into his back pocket. ‘Well …’
Say it. Agree with me. Tell her to go. I transport the words to him through my eyes.
He looks at Susan. ‘Why are you here? Where have you been?’ Again, there’s no anger in his voice. It is not a challenge. He makes it sound as if her presence is pleasantly surprising.
I want to know how she found me. What she wants from me. From us. What has she come here to do?
She looks at Jonny. No. It’s not just looking; she’s watching him, absorbing details about him.
‘Are you stay—’
‘Susan has finished her glass of wine. She probably wants to go home now.’ I think Jonny was about to ask her to stay. How can he think I would want that? She is not staying in our home.
She glances backwards, looking at the breakfast bar.
My gaze follows hers.
There’s a mouthful of wine left in her glass.
When her gaze turns back it clashes with mine and she smiles, feigning friendliness and innocence. I know there’s nothing innocent about her presence here. There can’t be. She is Susan.
‘I’ll call a taxi,’ she says.
‘I’ll give you a lift if you want.’ Jonny offers. ‘It’s hard to get a cab this late on a Saturday night. They’ll all be out in town. It’s pub-turning-out time. Where are you staying?’
Why is he being nice to her?
‘I’m renting a room in Keswick.’
‘Why?’ My voice is sharp. A knife blade that jabs. I don’t trust her. How can I?
Her gaze comes back to me. ‘Because I want to be near you.’
‘You’ve been near me, now you can go. You don’t need to stay near here.’ Jonny’s and Lucy’s eyes stare at me, their expressions uncomfortable.
I don’t care if they disagree. I don’t want her near me.
I stare at Sarah. Go away.
‘Mum,’ Lucy complains, the hand that holds her glass lowering. She learned that tone of voice from me when she was a child. I’d used her name like that to tell her stop doing something.
***
‘I don’t need to stay near here, no, but I want to,’ I say to Sarah, then look at Jonny. ‘Thank you for offering, but I’m happy to ring a taxi. I’ll walk back to the main road. It can pick me up at the bus stop; it’s not far, and it won’t be long to wait by the time I get there. The driver will probably be there by the time I am.’ I knew this first meeting would be hard. There can’t be any trust between us and there must be fear. But there should be fear. I just need some glue to stick me to this family so she can’t push me away. I glance at Lucy. Maybe she is the glue.
‘If you’re sure?’ Jonny says.
Lucy reaches out with her free hand, lifts my coat off the hook and passes it to me. Her other hand is still holding her glass.
Sarah moves closer to Jonny and loops an arm around his. Mine, the movement says.
Everything used to be ours long ago. Everything was ours until she decided to make Jonny hers. Then instead of us she became a me.
I would have shared. I shared everything with her.
I smile at Lucy as I slide one arm then the other into the sleeves of my coat. Lucy smiles, her blue eyes watching me as Sarah and Jonny watch me too.
Lucy likes me already, and she doesn’t like her mother’s rudeness. I like Lucy too. I see myself in her. She is intrigued by me. I have been telling her stories that her mother has never told. ‘Shall I give you my phone number?’ I ask Sarah.
She doesn’t move, or even acknowledge that I spoke. She isn’t going to take it. She is not going to get rid of me just by ignoring me.
‘Give it to me.’ Lucy pulls her phone out from the back pocket of her jeans.
Jonny unravels his arm from Sarah’s then wraps it around Sarah’s shoulders.
I speak out the numbers in groups of three. Lucy types them into her phone with her thumb.
‘Ring me,’ I say. ‘So, I have your number.’
She smiles as her thumb touches the phone; a moment later my phone rings and vibrates in my coat pocket. She ends the call.
I look at the image of myself with Jonny, seeing what could have been. ‘I’ll say goodbye then.’ We are an us. She has tried to forget it. But I have never forgotten. No matter how many miles, walls, or years there are between us, I will never forget. We are connected by things that cannot be bound by time or distance.
Jonny smiles. He looks the same to me as he did when I last saw him. I don’t see the impacts of age in his face. I see the young man who stole my heart from inside my chest within the first hour that I’d met him.
What is he thinking? I wish I could tell. How much does he know? There’s no sign that he knows anything.
I want to ask him a hundred questions. I want explanations. I want to be able to understand. Why was I left behind?
‘Goodbye,’ I say, even though I am not ready to go. I want something from them. I need words. An apology. But the emotions overwhelming my heart want revenge too. Something in return for all the years I have suffered while she has had this.
Sarah’s facial expression is stiff. She is nervous of me. She will be constantly wondering what I’ll say and do next. Good. I waited years to find her. It is her turn to wait, to wonder, to suffer.
‘Goodbye,’ I say it again, expressing the words to all of them, looking from Sarah to Jonny and Lucy.
I don’t know if I will say anything yet. I want to see what this is first. Then I’ll decide. It’s more fun to wait anyway. She will live in dread and I will reap some vengeance and play with her mind.
Lucy walks around me, turns the handle and opens the door. ‘Goodnight, Auntie Susan. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
We share another smile as I walk out into the bright night and look up at the large half-moon and the stars that are scattered across the sky in their thousands out here where there are no cities to pollute the sky with electric light.
Chapter 7
‘Goodbye for now,’ Jonny closes the door on Susan.
‘For now?’ I say as soon as the door has shut. ‘You know I don’t want to see her, why were you asking if she’d stay?’ The side of my fist thumps his leather jacket.
His hands lift palm outwards, calling a truce. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. Why did she come here? Did she say?’ The cadence of his voice lifts and falls in a relaxed response.
I want him to be angry.
‘She didn’t get as far as telling us, and now Mum’s thrown her out before she can. Why didn’t you tell me about her?’ Lucy’s blue eyes focus their accusations on me as she takes a sip from the glass she’s held on to.
‘For a good reason that I don’t want to talk about, which is why I haven’t talked about her. Isn’t it obvious there’s a good reason? Why else would I not mention my twin sister? Why were you being nice to her? She’s evil,’ My words are launched at them both but I look at Jonny. ‘How could you betray me?’
‘Mum. She’s an aunt I didn’t even know I had. Why wouldn’t I be nice to her?’ Lucy throws back as Jonny turns away and pulls the zipper down on his jacket. ‘You said you didn’t have any family left.’
‘She’s not family,’ I plead. ‘Not anymore. She’s a disaster. If she rings you, don’t trust her, Lucy.’
Her eyes look at Jonny as he hangs up his coat. She always looks to Jonny to confirm or deny my judgements. Our arguments have a pause button. They suspend like a sports match waiting for a video assistant referee’s judgement. Jonny doesn’t take part in arguments; he hates conflict. He only reacts to the extremes. But he presides over mine and Lucy’s arguments and calls who wins each point. It’s a habit for her to look at him for the final ruling. I think today he is going to agree with her when he should agree with me.
My heart is trying to burst from my chest with the energy I’m expending trying to make Lucy understand. Jonny should know without me having to say a word; he remembers what I ran from in London. I don’t, but it’s so bad my brain has closed it off and he never talks about it.
I feel like slapping common sense into them both.
Lucy takes hold of my hand as if at last she understands how upset this is making me. ‘I don’t understand,’ she says, though. ‘Why didn’t you say you have a sister? Why not just say you and your sister weren’t speaking?’
‘It’s just families, Luce.’ Jonny says, walking around us towards the kitchen. Dismissing the discussion and avoiding the conflict, true to type. ‘They are always complex. I don’t talk to my dad and your mum doesn’t speak about her sister. But …’ Before he reaches the kitchen, he stops, does a one-eighty, and looks at me. ‘People can change, Sarah. And she’s put the effort into finding you. I think you should give her a chance. She’s had a lot of time to regret her past and things have obviously changed. She had a hard time too.’
‘What happened, Dad?’ Lucy lets go of my hand and leaps on his words like a cat, then, as he turns back, she stalks Jonny across the room, ready to pounce on his impression of a fleeing rat.
You don’t have an aunt, I want to scream. She doesn’t count. Sisters don’t do the things she’s done. You have us. We love you. Why do you care about anything else? I follow them. ‘Dad and I are your family. You don’t need anyone else.’ My tone is harder, refusing to let any more emotion leak out from where it has all been buried decades ago.
