In Sarah’s Shadow

Instantly, I know that something is going on between the two of them. Sarah wouldn’t flush pink and act so flustered if it was just one of the regular boy mates she sometimes hangs around with. And regular boy mates don’t act the gallant hero and offer to carry your guitar home from rehearsal.

And just as instantly, when Conor’s face cracks into a heart-melting smile in my direction, I know that the world is not a fair place.

How else can you explain it when you’ve just set eyes on your soulmate…and realise he’ll never in a million years see you the same way?

Chapter 3 Good deeds = good luck?

“Oh.”

That ‘oh’ doesn’t sound too good. The cards on the table – some face down and some weirdly illustrated and facing up, spread out in some strange cross pattern – tell me precisely nothing. But for the old woman sitting across from me, it’s like she’s deciphering some ancient language or something.

Or maybe she’s just making it all up as she goes along.

“I see conflict with someone,” she mutters, shaking her head as she talks, sending minuscule whorls of peachy powder drifting from her face into still air that smells dusty, musty and Mr Sheen clean at the same time. “A girl. Someone close…close to you, and close in age. Does that make sense to you?”

Two years.

That’s all that separates me and Sarah, but it might as well be two decades or two continents for all we have in common. It’s been like that as far back as I have memories. Actually, my very first memory – when I was around two, which makes Sarah around four – is of being hot and uncomfortable, wriggling around in Mum’s arms in too many layers of knitted clothes and being told off. Why? Because I was distracting her and Dad from watching Sarah doing her one-girl singing sensation show – belting out Kylie Minogue’s I Should Be So Lucky. Ever since then it seems like I’ve had years of being told to shush and be quiet while Sarah has sung, skipped, tap-danced and dazzled her way through life.

Me? I’m a trudger – trudging through shifting sands while Sarah jogs right past me on the pavement towards some bright, shining future, which now includes great boyfriends, if Conor is anything to go by…

“It links in here, with this card that points to a feeling of unrest,” says the old lady, tapping a ridged, yellowish nail on the illustration of a stooped figure. “Almost of being weighted down.”

I’m finding it hard to concentrate – now that I’ve let a thought of Conor into my head I know I won’t be able to shake his face from my mind for hours. I wish I could stop thinking about him. I wish I could stop my hand from doodling his name every time I’ve come into contact with pen and paper over the last week. I even caught myself spelling ‘Conor’ with the alphabet magnets on our fridge door – I only just managed to scramble it (and the ‘Sarah sucks’ thing I’d spelt out a couple of minutes before) when Dad walked in on me.

“This conflict…there seems to be more to it than meets the eye. Am I right?”

Mrs Harrison tears her gaze from the cards and shoots me a look, which is kind of disconcerting. Well, the heavy blue eyeshadow is what’s really disconcerting. That and the peachy layer of powder covering her downy face, like some fuzzy mask. And the coral lipstick. You can’t miss the coral lipstick. Where can you buy make-up like that? Is there some secret, old lady make-up counter at the back of big department stores or something? The freaky make-up – that’s what’s made me (and every other kid in the street) avoid Mrs Harrison like the plague when I was growing up. The batty old mad woman at the house on the corner: she was practically guaranteed to get everyone under the age of twelve’s imagination going. If she was that freaky to look at, what must the inside of her house be like? Full of slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails?

Well, I’m here in Mrs Harrison’s house – a double first, since it’s also the first time in my life I’ve ever given her more that a vague, grunted “hello” as I scurried past her garden gate – and it’s a disappointment to my over-imaginative, eight-year-old self to see that it looks pretty ordinary. Like most old ladies the world over (my gran and my great grandma included) there’s a place for everything and everything in its place. Apart, of course, for the bookshelf that toppled over when she was dusting – the reason she called out to the first person passing (me) to help her lift it up.

Shyness – make that wariness – made me say very little as I followed her inside and lifted the lightweight, flat-pack shelves back upright. Once the job was done, and I’d been in her house just long enough to be surprised by its ordinariness, I thought Mrs Harrison might let me go with a simple thank you, or try and press a Werther’s Original (or whatever other strange sweet old people like) into my hand.

Wrong.

And wrong about the ordinary stuff too. “Would you like me to do a tarot reading for you, as my way of saying thanks? I know you young girls love anything to do with horoscopes and seeing into the future.”

What I don’t like is cliches – that girls my age should be into certain bands or certain TV shows or think certain ways, as if millions and millions of us can be lumped together as one dumb, trivia-obsessed bundle of raging hormones. But in this case, I had to admit Mrs Harrison had a point. Yeah, so maybe I’m the same as so many other people and not as individual as I want to be, but yes, I definitely wanted to see what the future had in store for me. Just as long as please, please, please don’t let it be more of the same…

This conflict…there seems to be more to it than meets the eye. Am I right? I ran what she’d just said through my head again.

“It’s my sister. We don’t get along,” I shrug, finally giving in and helping Mrs Harrison out with a confirmation or two. “My parents think I’m just jealous of her, but that’s not how it is. Not really.”

“I see,” says Mrs Harrison, glancing from me to the cards that are already face up, and back again.

Does she really see? Can those mass-produced, Lord of the Rings-style cards really let her peer into my mind, into my life? Can she tell how hard it is to be around someone who constantly puts you down in the smallest, subtlest, almost-invisible-to-the-human-eye way? A self-satisfied smirk in my direction here, a patronising dig there. A few of those a day add up to a lot of dents to a girl’s self-esteem over the course of weeks, months, years. Maybe that’s what Mrs Harrison is looking at now; not the ordinary, plain me on the outside, but the dented, bruised me on the inside.

Then again, the way her eyes are darting up and down from my face to the cards spread on the table, she might have spotted my scars. Quickly, I pull the sleeves of my fleece down and clutch them tightly in my fists.

An uncomfortable silence suddenly hangs in the air between us, which I realise is her waiting for me to say more about Sarah. But I won’t – if she really can do this stuff, if she really has some kind of a gift, then she doesn’t need me to tell her a thing. And if she’s just some batty old fake, then I’m not going to give her any more clues that she can use to make up some fantasy future for me.

“Let’s take a look at these…” I hear Mrs Harrison say softly as her strong-looking but wrinkled fingers flip over the last three cards that remain unturned.

The figures on them: they might as well be of Homer, Bart and Lisa Simpson, for all they mean to me. But not to Mrs Harrison, who makes the sort of small, appreciative “ooh” noise that my Mum does when Sarah does a turn in the living room, modelling her latest amazing outfit. Only this “ooh” is all for me…

“I see change, lots of change. One phase of your life is ending and a new one is beginning. And with it being in conjunction with these other two cards…”

She pauses, starting up with that tap-tap-tapping of her nail on the laminated illustrations again (but not drumming nearly as fast as my heart is now beating).

“…it’s a change that’s going to make you very happy. And it’s coming soon – sooner than you think.”

Change? Happiness? Coming my way soon? My heart is soaring so high I could kiss the thoughtful frown off Mrs Harrison’s forehead – only I won’t, since I don’t want to ruin a beautiful moment by getting peach powder in my mouth…

I’ve been holding my breath, looking for early sightings of this earth-shattering change coming my way. But life has been depressingly normal: Pamela’s been bleating on about her non-blossoming romance with Tariq; every teacher has ignored the fact that there are other subjects – and other teachers – at school and has saddled me with mountains of homework; and Sarah swanned out last night on yet another date with Conor.

I know this last fact because it was me who opened the door to him and had my second ever encounter with that smile. I tell you, no other boy has ever looked at me that intently or smiled at me so warmly in my life. Of course, it only lasted a nanosecond, before Sarah swooped on us, gathering up her coat and Conor, and practically hurtling the poor guy down our garden path.

But I don’t care; one nanosecond of that smile will keep me going till next time, whenever that might be. My head’s got a snapshot of his face and those friendly, soul-searching brown eyes, firmly fixed, deep in my psyche. And there’s a soundtrack on loop too…“Hi, Megan! Hi, Megan! Hi, Megan!” (I’ve erased the part that said “Is Sarah in?”)

“That one’s seventy-five pence, love.” A voice jars me out of my thoughts.

I glance at the tatty copy of Catcher in the Rye I’ve been holding and quickly put it down.

“No thanks,” I shake my head at the pushy guy behind the makeshift table covered in paperbacks.

I’m on my way home from another Saturday hanging out in town with Pamela. This stall: it’s parked up outside our local supermarket every weekend afternoon and I’ve never usually given it a second glance. But a few minutes ago, I found myself hovering, scanning the rows of bright covers, thinking that maybe I should lose myself in a book, to help pass the time till this amazing change decided to make itself known.

But I guess I shouldn’t be too impatient. It was only yesterday teatime that Mrs Fruitcake Harrison did her tarot thing on me.

“Go on…I’ll make it fifty pence for you!” says the stall guy, forcing Catcher in the Rye under my nose again. “It’s a classic! It’ll be good for your schoolwork!”

Which is exactly why I don’t want it. And probably the reason why I’d absent-mindedly picked it up in the first place – we’d read it already in English.

I’m smiling and shaking my head, already stepping away from the book and the hard sell, when something catches my eye. Witch Way Now? says a cartoony, gothic, black title on a blood-red book. Spells To Make Your Life Special! it says in smaller letters underneath. I can tell from the mock-serious lettering and the exclamation mark that this isn’t exactly some ancient tome of historical importance – it’s more like a tongue-in-cheek ‘spook’ cash-in on the back of the Harry Potter phenomenon.

But, cynical or not, I find myself picking it up and flicking through the pages. ‘The It Should Have Been Me! Love Spell’ makes me smile. I could sure do with some of that. ‘The How To Make Him Know I Exist Spell’ makes the smile start to fade as I become more intrigued. And then I spot it…

‘The Change Your Life Spell’.

“Fancy that one? Won’t get you many gold stars from your teachers, a book like that!” I hear the pushy guy guffaw. “Fifty pence for that one, love. As long as you promise to come back and turn it into a fifty quid note once you’ve got the hang of the spells!”

He thinks he’s a real hoot, this bloke. He’s not going to get a laugh out of me with pathetic witticisms like that – all he is going to get is fifty pence, in the smallest, most annoying pile of change I can rake from the bottom of my purse.

“Oi! You going to be the next Sabrina then!” I hear him call out to me when I’m already halfway down the street.

Of course I’m not the next Sabrina. Of course I don’t really believe in magic. But what I do believe in are signs and gut feelings – and maybe (just maybe) this book is the start of it all happening.

Maybe that’s rubbish, but so what – it only cost me a bunch of loose coins that were weighing down my bag anyway. And if I’m right, well, it could be the best fifty pence I’ve ever spent…

Chapter 4 Ice and fire…

I feel ridiculous.

According to the book, I need: a beeswax candle (is there any other kind?); a fresh sprig of lavender; an object sacred to me; and a peaceful, quiet room. The trouble is, I don’t have any of those. What I do have is a cinnamon-scented room freshener candle (unused, unloved Christmas present); some lavender aromatherapy oil (ditto); a copy of PJ Harvey’s Songs from the City, Songs from the Sea (my favourite rock staress, my all-time favourite CD and therefore my sacred object); and a room that is anything but peaceful, thanks to my dad roaring at the Manchester United versus Someone-or-other football match on the telly downstairs and Sarah twanging away on her guitar in her room across the hall.

“Come on…just do it,” I whisper to myself, trying to block out the noise and my feelings of total silliness. The point is, I don’t believe in magic, but I do believe in doing something symbolic, so if I go through the motions of this – with my reject Christmas presents and Songs from the City blaring on my CD player to drown out Manchester United and Sarah’s twanging – then I’m being positive. I’m saying if change is going to happen then I’m ready and waiting, not sulking in the corner while good stuff passes me by…(Wow – what would Mum make of that, if she could hear what I’m telling myself?)

First, light the candle…

Great – what with? I don’t want to spoil the moment and go trekking downstairs searching for matches. I’ll only get the third degree from Mum, hassling me about what exactly I want them for (to light the bonfire under the witch I’ve got stashed in my bedroom, obviously), so instead I just place the candle exactly in front of me on the carpet and stare at it intently, like I’m meditating or something. And then I realise that’s pretty stupid, because I need to look away at the book for my next set of instructions.

Move the sprig of lavender above the candle flame in anti-clockwise circles: not close enough to burn it, but enough to let the smell of the lavender infuse the room with its cleansing scent.

OK, so all I have is a small, brown bottle. I twist the cap off and it seems to make more sense to waft it (in anti-clockwise circles, of course) under my nose, so I can actually smell the damn stuff.

Next, hold your sacred object to your heart…

Easy peasy: I grab the empty CD box, with its cover of PJ Harvey striding through a night-time, light-strewn Times Square in New York, and clutch it to my chest. In the background, PJ growls above the roar of guitars.

Now, recite the thing you most want to change in your life.

Wow. How do I choose? Ever since I got the book home and studied this particular spell at close range, it’s all I’ve been able to think about. All through tea tonight, all through Mum and Dad twittering on to Sarah about her day’s rehearsal, I just drifted away, trying to figure out my options. And out of a long list of changeable situations (stuff like teachers realising I’m a shy genius rather than an underachieving loser), I settled on the main contenders, which just happened to be…

1 Boobs. Boobs would be good. Two of those – matching, please.

2 Sarah vanishing into thin air – that’d be nice.

3 My parents noticing I exist would be quite a novelty.

4 Conor. Just…Conor.

So how can I choose just one out of all of those? I stare hard at the cinnamon candle, the scent of which – even unlit – mingles headily with the lavender I’m wafting, hug hard on my CD, and whisper…

“Can you please let me in there?”

See? This is what it’s like. I’ve only been in the bath five minutes – a bath I announced to everyone that I was having, so no one could complain about no warning and full bladders – and now here’s Sarah, banging on the door with yet another loud, bleating demand for me to get out, to make way for her Royal Highness to get in here and floss her Royal Teeth, or whatever, before she goes out for the night. It’s not enough for her to rub my nose in it about the great Saturday night she’s got planned (some amazing party, I bet, in someone’s amazingly huge house in the west end, with the amazingly beautiful Conor to keep her company). Oh no, it doesn’t matter that the only thing I’ve got planned for tonight is a long, lazy bath, with Jim Carrey – courtesy of a DVD – for afters. Sarah has to edge her way into my privacy just that little bit more, making out like I’m selfish or obstructive or something, lying here among the steamy bubbles. It’s got to be for Conor’s benefit; Dad’s still roaring at the never-ending football match and I can hear Mum cackling away with Auntie Kelly on the phone.

Conor is in Sarah’s room right now…when I first ran the bath, I heard them chatting as she let him in the front door and led him up to her room. After that, I turned the taps off and had a deliberately shallow bath, just so I could listen through the walls as Conor began to sing along to the track Sarah was strumming on the guitar.

But now, shallow bath or not, I have to get out of it. I can’t relax with her hammering on the door every ten seconds.

“OK, so you’ve got your way! Satisfied?” I blink at her, hauling open the door and shivering as the chilly January air seeps in through the gaps around the front door and slithers up the stairs to slap my bare, wet skin. Against that, no amount of towelling fabric can keep you warm.

“Yeah, yeah! I just need in for two minutes!” Sarah glares at me, all pretence of niceness gone – as usual – when Mum and Dad aren’t around.

Yeah, yeah. Two minutes, two hours…it doesn’t make much difference. Sarah’s point was to get me out, to ruin my moment, and she’s done it. She wins again, as usual.

The bathroom door slams shut behind me and I find myself shivering miserably on the spot, too cold and dejected to move, suddenly too weary of waiting for my ‘life change’ to do anything but stare off into space, zombie-ing out to the background soundtrack of Dad and the telly roaring, Mum yackety-yacking, and…and…a soft, comforting voice.

“Megan? Are you OK?”

In my frozen moment, I turn my head (a mistake – rapidly cooling beads of water trickle uncomfortably from my wet hair to my goose-pimpling back).

But my bones warm up to centre-of-the-Earth temperatures when I see Conor, perched on the edge of Sarah’s bed, arms resting on his knees, those soulful brown eyes staring right at me, reducing me to the shivering, vulnerable mass of jelly I am underneath.

“Yeah…” I nod, feeling my teeth start to chatter in time to my head-nodding.

“C’mere,” he motions to me, leaning over to switch on the small convector heater in Sarah’s room.

Instant warmth – in two ways. How can I refuse? Even if shyness is practically paralysing every stilted step I take towards him.

“You and Sarah,” he smiles at me as I crouch down in front of the heater and, coincidentally, at his feet, “do you always bicker like that?”

He’s got a very fine silver chain around his neck, I notice. Whatever’s on the end of it is unseen, hidden behind the neck of his dark-blue top. Has Sarah seen it at close quarters…?

“Hey, what can I say?” I shrug, not looking him in the eye.

And what can I say? “See that beautiful, talented, exciting girl you’re going out with? Well, you do realise she’s a manipulating bitch, don’t you?” Hey, it may be the truth, but while his vision is currently (unfortunately) clouded by the rose petals of romance when it comes to my sister, it’s easier to be vague.

“I know what it’s like. Me and my big brother fought like crazy till he went away to university. Best thing that ever happened to us – now I have a great time when I go to visit him, and we always go out together when he’s home. Before last summer, we’d have been more likely to kick each other’s heads in than go for a pint together!”

I realise what he’s trying to do; he’s trying to comfort me. Big wow. And I don’t mean that sarcastically: no one in my family – Mum, Dad, Sarah – has ever tried to rationalise it; none of them has ever suggested that what goes on between me and Sarah is normal and will pass. That’s because Mum and Dad keep their heads in the sand, and because what goes on between me and Sarah is anything but normal, even if it does seem like harmless bickering on the surface. Oh, no – I don’t expect any cosy chats over a few glasses of wine in some student union in the future. The sooner me and Sarah have enough independence and money, I can guarantee that the two of us will keep as far apart from each other as the occasional enforced family get-together will allow.

“How old’s your brother?” I ask, flicking a shy look Conor’s way.

Worn, grey cord jeans, Kicker boots, fleece-lined denim jacket, dark-blue top, that glint of a chain at his neck, the floppy, slightly unwashed hair, a grin that brings his whole face to life, big, brown eyes with a fluttering of sandy lashes all around them. In the computerised filing section of my brain, it’s all noted, all bookmarked.

“Twenty-one. Three years older than me. He’s aiming to do a Masters degree in Financial Regulation and Compliance Management.”

“Whatever that is,” I hear myself saying as I start to thaw out in front of the heater.

“Exactly!” I hear Conor laughing and, self-consciously, I start laughing too, feeling slightly hysterical that I’ve inadvertently cracked a joke with the one person I’d wanted to make an impression on since the moment – freeze-framed forever in my memory – that I saw him.

Of course it all gets ruined. It has to, doesn’t it? Knowing my luck?

“Ready already?” Conor smiles at something over my shoulder. That something being Sarah. I turn and see she has red-rimmed eyes, probably from ramming her contact lenses in too quickly in her rush to get back here once she heard me and Conor talking.

Filthy.

That’s the only word to describe the look Sarah gives me with her reddened eyes. But hey, what’s new?

I stumble to my feet, and with a quick wave ‘bye in Conor’s direction, pad barefoot across the hall towards my own room, feeling the warmth of the heater and Conor’s friendliness being replaced by icy prickles on my skin, courtesy of the wisps of draughts in our house and the frosty glare I can still feel emanating from my ice queen of a sister.

Chapter 5 Funny? Peculiar…

“You sat next to him, practically naked?!”

That’s Pamela, whispering, even though the classroom is almost empty. I say almost: Miss Jamal, our English teacher, is in a bit of a huddle over at her desk with Mr Fisher, the music teacher. Wonder if there’s anything going on with the two of them? Miss Jamal is kind of OK-looking and Mr Fisher is pretty cute for someone who must be about thirty, so it’s not like it’s a totally wild, out-of-the-question idea.

Hmm – and how would Sarah feel about that? I know she’s seeing Conor, but ever since she first mentioned this Battle of the Bands stuff, it’s been “Mr Fisher” this, and “Mr Fisher” that every five seconds. You know, it really wouldn’t surprise me if she had a bit of a thing for him…

“Didn’t you just want to die of embarrassment, Megan?!” Pamela gasps.

“I wasn’t naked!” I whisper back, handing a pile of muddled textbooks down off the shelf to Pamela’s waiting hands and peering out through the door of the walk-in cupboard at the two teachers. “I told you, I was wearing a towel!”