No Sister of Mine

SARAH

It felt strange that first night, lying in the dark and not hearing her breathe. For as long as I could remember I had shared a room with my big sister Eve and, despite my initial excitement at having all that extra space to myself, to be honest I would rather have had her still there. I missed her clothes, both clean and dirty, dropped haphazardly in messy piles all over the carpet, the smell of her body lotions and sprays hanging in the air, and knowing there was always a secret stash of vodka tucked in behind her T-shirts in the wardrobe which, if she wanted me to keep quiet, I would be allowed to sip from time to time.

Mum had been in a tidying and cleaning frenzy all afternoon. I’d sat on my bed, half reading a book, half watching her as she flicked a duster around in places she had been unable to access for months, and shoved the long hose attachment of the hoover into all the nooks and crannies under both our beds, dragging out a mucky plate and a couple of odd socks and dislodging an enormous spider in the process.

I think she just needed something to do. Like me, she was going to find Eve’s absence a bit odd at first. She even inadvertently laid four places at the table for dinner that night and Dad had to eat a double portion of pie, while I no longer had anyone to share clearing-away or washing-up duties with and had to do it all myself. Being a family of three was something we were all going to have to adjust to – until Christmas anyway.

It had taken me a long time to get to sleep that first night, and yet I woke up earlier than ever. I could hear the birds chirping away in the tree outside the window, and later the rattle of the letterbox that signalled the arrival of Dad’s newspaper, courtesy of Jenny Harper, a girl from my class at school, who had bagged herself a paper round when she was thirteen and was still doing it every morning, whatever the weather, two years later. Rather her than me.

Eve’s big fluffy red dressing gown was still hanging on the left-hand hook on the back of the bedroom door. Too big and bulky to lug all the way to Wales, that had been the general consensus, and it wasn’t as if she’d have to cover up and go wandering about the corridors at night anyway, because she’d told me she had a small shower and toilet of her own in a little cubicle in the corner of her university room. I peered at the gown hanging beside my slightly smaller pink one, and decided, then and there, to swap them over. Why shouldn’t I have the left-hand peg for a change? These things didn’t have to be written in stone. The room was mine now. I could put my things wherever I chose. I climbed out of bed and did it, feeling strangely rebellious, but somehow they didn’t look right that way round. I lay back against my pillow and stared at them, the two dressing gowns, mine on the left and hers on the right, all back to front, and knew that was exactly how my life was starting to feel. Changed. Back to front. And I didn’t like it, not one little bit.

‘You getting up, Love?’ Mum called from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Only, I think Buster could do with a bit of a walk before school, don’t you?’

That was another thing. Buster, who, despite Mum’s obviously rhetorical question, we all knew needed a walk every morning. It had always been something Eve and I took turns over, or did together sometimes if we were both up and about and fancied a chat. But although we all loved him and he was as much a part of the family as any of us, he was Eve’s dog really. She was the one who had begged and pleaded to get a puppy, and he’d arrived on her eleventh birthday, with a big bow around his neck and so excited he’d promptly made a puddle on the carpet at her feet. Now she’d gone I supposed the walking duties, just like the kitchen ones, were going to revert very definitely to me alone.

‘Coming!’

I got up and pulled on my old jogging bottoms and a pair of trainers, leaving my pyjama top on to save dirtying up a T-shirt, and after a quick visit to the loo, ran down to grab my coat and Buster’s lead. ‘Come on, you little tinker,’ I said, rubbing the old mongrel’s wiry neck. ‘Your lamp post awaits.’

Buster wasn’t as quick on his feet as he used to be, and tended to amble along the pavements sniffing into corners, as if he had all the time in the world, rather than run about chasing anything that moved, the way he once had. He was seven and a bit. Was that old, for a dog? I didn’t think it was, but Buster clearly had other ideas, and would not be hurried, no matter how late for school I might be, or how heavy the rain. Luckily, I wasn’t late that day, and the sun was out and looking like it was there to stay, so I let him have his way, the lead hanging slackly between us as we did our usual once round the block, stopping at all seventeen trees and all twelve lamp posts. A creature of habit, our Buster!

I couldn’t help my mind wandering as we walked, wondering where Eve was now and what she might be doing. Still asleep, knowing her, although a small unfamiliar bed and the uncertainties of life in a totally new place, surrounded by strangers, would have kept me awake, I was sure. But then Eve, at two and a half years older than me, was always more confident and more adaptable than I would ever be, or at least that was the way it seemed from where I was standing. She had absolutely shone in the end-of-term sixth-form production of Romeo and Juliet, her poetry was all over the library walls, and her exam results had won her one of the silver cups the school gave out at the end of every year. And yet, university would be the making of her. I’d heard Dad say that, with pride brimming over in his voice. As if she wasn’t pretty much perfectly made already. A flicker of jealousy had run through me when I’d heard that, knowing that she was his blue-eyed girl, the one destined to go far, and that, for now anyway, with another year at school, or maybe as many as three, to negotiate, I was still a kid. Just predictable, plod-along Sarah, washer-upper and dog walker extraordinaire, with dubious potential and not a poetic bone in my body.

‘Come on, Boy.’ Buster looked up in surprise as I tugged at his lead and tried to head for home. His big brown eyes gave me one of his not yet looks as he lifted his leg at a ridiculously high angle and peed, long and strong, against a tree. One final sniff, his nose twitching with interest at his own urine as it ran, stream-like, towards the road, and we were off.

‘Weetabix or cornflakes?’ Mum said, pulling the milk bottle from the fridge as we came back in through the back door. ‘I can’t do you any toast this morning, I’m afraid. We’ve run out of bread. I used the last of it doing your sister’s sandwiches for the train. And there’s only one egg left, which your father’s bound to want.’

‘I don’t even like Weetabix,’ I mumbled, letting the dog off his lead and running upstairs to get my uniform on. Last on the list again, I thought, as I slipped out of my pyjama top, grabbed a clean blouse and stepped into the pleated navy school skirt that had once been Eve’s. Only offered what scraps were left when everybody else had had first pick.

‘Cornflakes it will have to be then,’ Mum said, as if there had been no gap in our conversation, and throwing the last of Friday’s cold sausages to Buster, as I arrived back at the table. ‘Either that or starve …’

Faced with a choice like that, there was only one thing I could do, I suppose, so I ate up, making sure I sprinkled the tasteless little own-brand flakes with enough sugar to power me with energy for the day, or at least to set my teeth on the fast track towards my next filling, and quickly left for school.

I hated wearing a tie. Well, what self-respecting teenager wants to dress like an office worker? And a male one, at that? I hitched my skirt up a few inches higher and rolled the waistband under, pulled a lip gloss and mirror from my blazer pocket and tried to make my lips look at least half kissable. Paul Jacobs might be on the bus today. He’d only joined our class at the start of term, having just moved to the area, and all the girls had their sights set on him.

Paul was tall and dark and quiet, in an appealingly mysterious sort of way, and I was determined to get him to notice me. I just hadn’t expected to do it in quite such a spectacular way. The step must have been slippery, that’s all I can say. From someone spilling a drink, probably. Either that or one of the other girls had deliberately stuck out a foot or a bag or something. Why else would I have tripped and ended up on my face on the floor of the bus with what felt like a hundred eyes looking down at me and the sound of the sniggers ringing in my embarrassingly red ears? Even Tilly, who lived next door and was supposed to be my best friend, was laughing.

The hand that reached out and helped me up was warm, its fingers firm as they gripped and tugged me to my feet. In the fleeting moment before I regained my balance and looked up into the eyes that went with it, I hoped beyond all hope that the hand might belong to Paul Jacobs, and that he would guide me to a seat and fuss over me and sit next to me all the way to school. It didn’t. The hand was Colin Grant’s, a fat kid from a year below me and, as unlikely rescuing heroes went, he looked just as awkward and red in the face as I must have done.

‘You okay?’ he muttered.

‘Think so,’ I muttered back.

And then we moved down the bus quickly, heading for separate seats, aware of the queue forming behind us in the aisle, and I spent the rest of the journey nursing a sore knee and refusing to look up at all, even to talk to Tilly who had plonked herself down next to me, just in case Paul was there somewhere on the bus and laughing at me. It would take more than a bit of lip gloss to help me recover from a setback like that, I realised. In fact, I might as well just give up right there and then and let one of the other girls have him. And it was double English first thing. The day could hardly get any worse!

Chapter 3

EVE

That first Christmas seemed to take forever to arrive. Settling into university was a weird experience, a mixture of excitement and boredom and, at times, sheer terror.

My home for the next year, maybe longer if I decided not to move off-campus as so many second years seemed to do, was to be a room at the far end of a short hallway, on the top floor of a concrete block called Perseus, but known to students only as P. It was tucked away at the edge of the campus with a view, partially blocked by a line of tall spindly trees, over open fields. I would be sharing a very plain and functional kitchen and a small white-tiled bathroom, for those times when a shower just wasn’t enough, with five other girls. We’d tentatively introduced ourselves as each arrived, plonking cases down, unopened, in our rooms and then congregating in the kitchen, where we unloaded assorted mugs and new sets of cheap cutlery and favourite plates from home, and emptied carrier bags that clattered with tins of soup and beans.

‘Hi, I’m Eve.’

‘Jodie.’ Jodie was tall and thin, with long hair that could have done with a brush, and slightly crooked teeth.

Ruth came next. She was small and mouse-like but was wearing very high, very red shoes that pointed out beneath a pair of ordinary holey-kneed jeans. Odd.

‘And I’m Fran.’ Fran had darker skin than the others and shiny, almost black, hair, utterly unlike her rather pale, balding father who was dropping her off and insisted on coming right inside to check us all out. Fran had a touch of Spanish blood, I decided, with no evidence at all to back up my totally unsubstantiated theory. I was sure I’d find out soon enough, and sure enough I did when her Portuguese mother and two younger sisters turned up in a car the next day delivering enormous boxes of kitchen equipment which they seemed convinced their Francesca would not be able to live without.

The next girl to arrive that first day was Lauren, who tripped as she came through the door, but didn’t laugh it off the way I probably would have done. She just looked scared, and pale. She reminded me of my sister, the way I’d last seen her, looking all forlorn at the station and in need of some serious mothering, and I couldn’t quite decide if that was a good thing or not.

‘Sorry, am I last to the party?’ A big ungainly girl – horsey, as Mum would undoubtedly have described her – strode in as it started to get dark outside and pumped everyone’s hands up and down as if she was expecting water to come running out down our arms. ‘I’m Suzanne. Stupid name. Just call me Annie.’

There was much smiling and nodding, a few basic questions about home towns and family, most of the answers to which I was sure I would forget, and the awkward unfamiliarity of half-hearted hugs with strangers. Fran’s father beat a hasty retreat and we all propped our doors open so we could stay connected and carry on talking, or shouting more like, as we unpacked. From my room I could hear Annie’s feet thump across the hall as she went to help Fran open a tricky lock on one of her bags, and Ruth making coffee and unwrapping a cake her mum had made and asking if anyone would like a slice.

Within a day or two the initial wariness had worn off and we had become friends of a sort, despite probably having very little in common beyond finding ourselves at the same place at the same time, and all of us feeling more than a little out of our depth.

It didn’t take long to sort out who would have use of each shelf in the cupboards and how to divide up space in the two enormous fridge freezers, and where the washing machines were, once Fran had found them in another building a good five minutes’ walk away. We’d meet up in the kitchen sometimes and have a chat, maybe share a packet of biscuits but, beyond that, I spent a lot of time alone, lying on the narrow bed in my own room, listening to music, poring over leaflets for way too many clubs and societies I knew I would never join, and trying to make sense of the map of the campus and the notes I’d made during the first introductory lectures.

Sarah wrote to me often in those early weeks, providing a much-needed lifeline to home. She told me about Buster catching a frog and not knowing what to do with it, and about Dad winning a ten-pound cheque from a crossword he’d sent in to the local paper and treating them all to fish and chips, and about some boy at school called Colin who seemed to have developed a crush on her and wouldn’t stop following her about.

That unnerved me a bit, the thing about Colin. What if he took things too far, got carried away and wouldn’t take no for an answer, like Arnie O’Connor? What if he put my little sister in danger, tried to touch her, scared the life out of her? I thought about writing to warn her, or calling her from the communal phone in the hall, but what could I say? Arnie was still my big secret, one I was desperate to forget, and I knew it wouldn’t be right to judge every boy either of us ever met by his nasty drunken standards. And besides, I didn’t want to tell her. Didn’t want to tell anybody. So I pushed all thoughts of him aside, just as I’d planned all along, decided that Sarah would just have to look after herself, and threw myself into university life.

My course was fantastic. We were studying the novels of the nineteenth century that first term, and reading the Romantic poets. I lost myself for hours on end in the fascinatingly provincial world of George Eliot’s Middlemarch that reminded me, in so many ways, of my own home town, and luxuriated in the lilting words of Wordsworth and Lord Byron. It felt as if I had truly arrived in heaven, not forced to take lessons or exams in subjects I had no interest in, and no silly school rules or assemblies to tolerate. The study of English, its beautiful language and its centuries of richly engrossing literature, was all I had to concentrate on. It was what I increasingly believed I had been born for, and already I knew I wanted to make a career of teaching it to others.

‘Head in a book again, Eve?’ Jodie said, one Friday evening, as she and Lauren were getting ready to dash to the station and pay their families a weekend visit. ‘Make sure you have some fun while we’re gone, won’t you? All work and no play, and all that …’

I nodded, peering over my dog-eared copy of Wuthering Heights, my head still lost somewhere on the moors with Cathy Earnshaw. ‘Course I will. There’s a party over in Block K. Some of the English group. I’ll probably go to that.’

‘Well, don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!’ The two of them giggled as they linked arms and left. I couldn’t help noticing how close they’d become, and how quickly. Still, I had no reason to feel jealous. I had my books, and my own visit home to look forward to. It would soon be Christmas.

The party was in full swing by the time I reluctantly closed my book several chapters before the end and made my way across to Block K, my head still full of windswept landscapes and long-lost loves. The kitchen on the ground floor, identical in size and shape to ours, was packed with people, most of them holding beer cans, talking way too loudly, and looking and sounding decidedly pissed. I hovered at the edges for a while, suddenly realising I should have brought some booze. Maybe I could just make my way to the sink and pour myself a glass of water. Everyone would assume I was drinking vodka, if they even bothered to look at my glass, or me, at all.

‘Can’t come in empty handed!’ Harry, one of the boys from my course, said, wagging a finger at me and slurring his words. ‘’Snot allowed.’

I giggled, suddenly imagining something slimy emerging from his nose. ‘Right. I’ll go and get something then, shall I?’

‘Thassa girl.’ He merged back into the throng as I hovered again, undecided about whether I even wanted to stay, let alone drink. Well, maybe just for an hour or so, and just for one drink, to be sociable. The shop would still be open. It always was, on Friday and Saturday evenings, when a high demand for alcohol seemed to be the norm. I’d get a cheap bottle of wine, and some cream crackers or something to help soak it up. It didn’t look as if there was much in the way of food laid out and I got the general idea that this was very much a bring-your-own sort of a party.

Despite the well-lit paths, there was something a bit desolate about the outer reaches of Brydon’s sprawling campus at night, so I was glad to reach the central plaza and the shop with its lights on, the door open and a bustle of customers coming and going.

‘Hi, Evie Peevie!’ Beth’s boyfriend Lenny, who seemed to have picked up on the nickname she had given me on the train, greeted me from behind the counter with a wide smile. ‘A ready meal for one, is it? Like every other bugger in here tonight. Or can I get you the latest copy of The New Scientist? Oh, don’t worry, I’m only teasing. I know science isn’t your thing. English, right? Beth says you write awesome poetry. I’ve been having a go myself, actually. What do you think of this one? There was a young lady from Wales, who at uni went right off the rails. She dropped her drawers, on too many floors … Sorry, I haven’t got any further than that yet. Not quite Poet Laureate material, I know. Couldn’t help me out with a last line, could you?’

‘Afraid not, Lenny,’ I laughed. ‘You really should be a comedian, you know. You’re wasted in this shop.’

‘In other words, don’t give up the day job, eh? I know sarcasm when I hear it! Right, what can I get you, my lovely?’

I picked out a bottle of wine, a packet of Ritz and a small block of cheddar, and put them on the counter.

‘Cor, you really know how to live, don’t you? I hope this isn’t your evening meal.’

‘Party food. I don’t expect to be staying there long. I’ll probably get some chips on my way back later, if I’m hungry.’

‘No hot date tonight then?’

‘I wish!’ I paid for my things, which Lenny had dropped into a carrier, and gave him a wave as I went back out into the dark. I had no idea why I’d said that. Just one of those things people say. Did I really wish I had a date, a boyfriend? No, probably not.

The last time I had been with a boy at a party … it had been Arnie. And I had kissed him. Why had I done that? It had been more out of curiosity than anything else, I suppose, because I didn’t actually fancy him at all, but I’d wanted to find out how it felt, to be kissed like that.

Sweet and deep, and packed with longing. I knew I was a bit of a late starter, my head still full of wild romantic notions fuelled by weepy films and all the dreamy lovey-dovey books I borrowed from the library and read avidly under the bedcovers. Arnie was just someone to practise on, as far as I was concerned, ready for when ‘The One’ came along. Nothing more. If only he had known that. Or maybe he did, but ignored it anyway. For him, that awkward first kiss had worked like a green light. Full speed ahead to probing fingers and crushed breasts, and a frenzied attempt at getting his hands underneath my skirt.

He hadn’t taken it well when I said no, and kept saying no. Told me I was frigid. Told me that I was just teasing, that I wanted it – and him – but was playing hard to get. Sucked hard at my neck. Hurt my arm. Kept on pushing and probing, his fingers forcing onwards, tugging at the edges of my underwear, jabbing roughly into my flesh …

I know I had a lucky escape. Well, the knee I jerked up hard and fast between his legs made sure of that. And then I ran, tripping and gasping, all the way home, and he didn’t follow me, so I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies.

It hit me hard though, the fear that came after, and the realisation of my own vulnerability. I stopped drinking so much and stopped going out after dark on my own. I couldn’t risk seeing him, couldn’t take the chance that it might happen again, or that he would tell people, twist things, say I was a tease, make out it was all somehow my fault …

I shook the memories away. This was different. I was safe here. Safe, because this was my new life and I was in control now, and that felt good. Empowering. There was no way I was going to get drunk, or let myself get into a situation like that, with anyone, ever again. I wasn’t going to kiss any more frogs and hope they turned out to be princes. And, as for ‘The One’ … I doubted now that such a person existed.

As I re-joined the crowded party, the carrier bag was scooped from my hands almost as soon as I was through the door, and I was left standing alone in a sea of semi-strangers. I didn’t much like being at places like this on my own. I knew that a boyfriend wasn’t the answer, but it would have been good to have someone to arrive with, and walk back with afterwards. The girls I shared with were friendly enough but they were all off doing their own thing. I’d met up with Beth for lunch or a coffee a few times, and I wasn’t short of people to talk to when I went to lectures, but right at that moment I missed Sarah. My sister was like my other half, the one person I had always felt totally comfortable with, building secret dens out of blankets, curled up in our pyjamas on the sofa, whispering in the dark when we were meant to be asleep. Maybe I’d call her later, before she went to bed.

I followed my carrier bag across the room, anxious not to let it out of my sight or the hungry hordes snaffle all my cheese before I got any for myself. The boy who had taken it turned and smiled as he emptied the contents onto the draining board. ‘Want some?’ he said, pulling the packet of crackers open and ripping at the plastic wrapper on the cheese with his teeth.

I nodded, quickly reaching for my bottle of wine as an arm appeared from behind us and tried to grab it. ‘It should be me asking you that really, shouldn’t it?’ I said, clutching the bottle to my chest. ‘Seeing as it was me who brought it.’

‘Oh, we don’t worry about any of that nonsense here,’ he said, his accent one I couldn’t immediately place, but was clearly northern. ‘Share and share alike.’ He dug his thumb in and pulled a ragged chunk of cheese from the corner of the block, holding it out to me as he put the rest of it down. He rummaged about in the sink for a used glass and quickly swilled it under the tap. ‘I’m Josh, by the way. I’ve seen you around but I don’t …’