The Second Sister. Claire Kendal
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that the prostate cancer cells love. Our father’s bones have weak points, but he refuses to act as if this is the case.
‘Leave the doll’s house for now,’ I say. ‘I’ll come for it another time. Just bring Luke and the box.’
‘No need,’ he says. ‘Luke and I can manage a doll’s house.’
Our mother shoots me a sharp shrewd look that our father cannot see.
‘Thanks but no.’ I manage something more concrete. ‘I need to clear some space for it first.’
What our mother says next is at odds with the small thumbs up she gives me behind Dad’s back. ‘I won’t be coming with your father and Luke tomorrow.’
‘I wish you would. We can order in pizza. Luke would like that. It would be fun.’
‘I’ll eat pizza.’ Our father quickly turns to her. ‘If your mother doesn’t mind.’
‘You do what you like, Jacob.’ It is her martyred voice, the one that used to make you scream. She turns to me. ‘You’re not going to sneak Luke off to a fireworks display?’
‘I wouldn’t do something like that behind your back.’
‘I let you take him out for Halloween on Monday even though it was a school night.’ She makes it sound like this was the most extraordinary concession. ‘Luke says you made a wonderful Catwoman. He was proud.’
‘My everyday clothes,’ I say.
‘True.’ She can’t suppress a small smile. Then she gives me The Look. ‘He mentioned that Ted came along. Dressed as the Joker.’
‘He makes a great super-villain,’ I say.
Ted and I were still furious with each other that night. The morning’s self-defence class was still too fresh for both of us. All of our communication was to Luke, who was dressed as a policeman and too happy in his trick-or-treating to notice the stiffness between the two of us as we followed him from house to house.
‘I promised Luke I’d take him to a fireworks display next year.’ I’m shaking my left foot up and down in nervousness. ‘Halloween and bonfire night aren’t the same thing. He wants both.’
‘Absolutely not. I’ve told you before. Bonfire night is dangerous.’
‘He is a boy, Mum. He’s not made of porcelain. He’s going to be angry if you don’t let him try things.’
‘He’s going to get hurt if you let him try too much. Your father and I may need to reconsider how much time he spends with you.’
‘That’s a bit hasty, Rosamund,’ our father says.
Our father is the recipient of yet more glowering. ‘Don’t keep pushing, Ella,’ our mother says. ‘You’re getting the box and the doll’s house.’
My eyes are prickly with tears, but I know myself well enough to realise they are made of anger as much as sadness. ‘Why are you being so mean? You still have me, you know. I’m still here.’
‘And I want to make sure that doesn’t change. Do you think about what it would do to us if we lost you too? Do you consider how terrified I am?’ Her voice cracks. ‘Imagine how you would feel if something happened to Luke.’
I wave for her to stop. I shake my head for her not to say another word. I cover my ears like a small superstitious child. Because to hear these words about Luke is too much for me.
‘Yes. Exactly. And that is the best analogy I can give you.’ She takes the dessert from the oven. ‘I worry about how far you will go to find out. I don’t think you’ll stop at anything.’ She closes the door with a loud bang. ‘You’re like your sister.’
‘I’m not.’ I know you would agree.
She places a bowl in front of me with heightened care and precision, even for her. ‘You have her determination.’
‘She was the beautiful one.’ I want to deflect our mother from a point that is too true and too frightening for me to contemplate.
‘You look like her twin. You are equally beautiful.’ Our father is still caught in his own loop of paternal fairness to daughters.
‘Well I don’t want to be.’
‘That is where the real difference is,’ our father says. ‘Miranda turned the dazzle on. She sparkled because she wanted all eyes on her.’
‘Jacob.’ Our mother’s voice is a warning and a command. It means, Stop and go no farther. It means, Do not ever say anything that is critical of Miranda.
He makes an attempt at appeasement. ‘You both take after your mother. You have her beauty. But you keep the dimmer switch on, Ella. If you flicked it, those eyes would stick to you too.’
‘I am more comfortable in poor lighting.’
‘I know you are,’ he says. ‘But still you shine. The two of you were so alike, but so different.’
‘Not were.’ Our mother sits down and begins to scoop out apple-and-blackberry crumble. ‘Are.’ She manages a weak smile and leans closer to kiss my cheek, a serving spoon full of crumble still in her hand, dripping purple syrup. Our mother never drips anything, normally. She is not a woman who spills. The kiss makes me blink away tears. I kiss her back.
‘Right,’ my father says. ‘The two of you are.’
‘It’s sweetened with apple juice concentrate,’ our mother says. ‘You know your father can’t have sugar. Cancer cells love sugar.’
‘You mentioned it once or twice before, Mum.’
‘I am keeping your father alive, Ella.’
‘I know you are.’
‘You can’t tell the difference,’ she says.
Our father sneaks a tremor of disagreement and winks at me.
‘I saw that, Jacob,’ our mother says. She wanders to the side of the room, and turns her back on us to stare at a photograph hanging on the wall. It is the last one of you and Mum and me together. Dad snapped it. Mum and I are sitting side by side at a wedding. You are standing behind us, upright and elegant, the front section of your hair pulled back in a jewelled clasp.
The photograph is washed out despite Mum’s care to hang it where the sunlight doesn’t reach. Your dress is a perfect-fitting organza bleached into cream, its sprinkling of bright blue painted flowers drained into pale grey. Your made-up face is faded, the deep maroon lipstick now the lightest pink. Is all of this blanching a trick of the light? I do not want to see it as a sign.
Mum puts my thoughts into words. ‘I look at that, and she is somehow already ghostly.’ She cups the side of her face in her hand, her head tilted to the side. ‘I think she is standing behind us, watching over us.’ She clamps that hand to her mouth and straightens her head, realising that even though she is using the present tense, she has broken her own rule and spoken as if you are dead.
The email is anonymous and already I am betting it won’t be easy to trace. It landed in the charity’s inbox five minutes ago. The sender’s name is ‘An Interested Party’. The subject heading says, ‘Lovers at a Café’. Attached is a single photograph, probably taken with a smartphone and certainly with the location services and time stamp turned on because it was snapped six minutes ago and the name of the café appears on it too.
I do not want our mother to see this, so I sit in my car in front of our parents’ house and forward the email to my personal account. Then I wipe all traces of it from the charity’s. As I am about to drop the phone into my bag, it rings,