Black Dog Summer (14 page)

“Are you and Mom going to get a divorce?”

“Don't be daft, Bry, it's just one little night on the couch in years and years of good stuff. Sometimes people don't get on so well for a bit, but it doesn't mean anything. You'll understand when you're older.” He rubs a hand across his head, but the tuft springs straight back up again. “Now back to bed, young lady.”

“I don't want to go back to the bedroom. Gigi is . . .” Bryony rubs her hands over her goose-bumpy arms and thinks of the clotted darkness over Gigi's bed.

“Gigi is what?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, off you go. It's late, my girly.”

“I know.”

“Good night, Bry.”

“Good night, Dad.”

But rather than going straight back to bed, Bryony goes upstairs and crouches outside her parents' bedroom door. She leans her forehead against the painted wood and thinks of her mother behind it, alone in the vast bed. She remembers how Adele looked like a patch of dense shadow that morning of the funeral, and how her irritating tears seemed to threaten to dissolve her away completely. The crying for Aunty Sally has stopped now, but the tears seem to have evaporated away something vital inside her mother, leaving less of her behind.

Bryony tries to remember what things were like before her cousin came to stay, but she just cannot.

I wait with Bryony outside the door in the dark passageway and think back to the way Adele looked the day I tore my turquoise skirt.

She had just had her hair cut into a new style that feathered around her face, softening the angle of her jaw, and making her big eyes seem to slant upwards even more. I remember watching my beautiful sister cut sandwiches into triangles as I tugged at the open edge of my wraparound skirt, which, just that morning, had seemed so pretty and radiant a thing to wear. Beside her well-cut trousers and white cotton blouse it now looked daft and childish, like something pulled from a dressing-up box. A familiar hot wash of jealousy jumped into my mouth, and I grabbed a Romany Cream from the pile she'd laid out on a plate for the girls and jammed it in to help push the feeling back down again. Choking on chocolaty biscuit crumbs, I went to the cupboard and got out the tea things. I knew the layout of the kitchen as if it was my own. It was always like this when we were growing up, I was as much in her room as I ever was in mine. I remember how I used to try on every new item of clothing that she
ever bought, regularly going through her cupboards to find the items still with their tags on. She never minded—or, at least, she never told me that she did. Was I ever going to grow up and stop thinking that all of Adele's things were a little bit mine too?

He'd married her, for heaven's sake.

The sound of Gigi's and Bryony's giggling rose to a crescendo in the adjacent room as my daughter taught her younger cousin some new thrilling game.

“Sounds like those two are going to be great pals,” Adele said.

“Let's hope nothing gets in the way.” I plonked the cups and saucers on the countertop and reached back into the cupboard for the teapot.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know, boys and things.”

“Heavens, I should think that they've got some time before boys become an issue, Monkey.” She laughed as the water gushed from the tap into the kettle. I tried to laugh too, but I couldn't. Suddenly, there was no way I could hold it in anymore. My heart thumped.

“Did you know, Adele?” My voice came out light despite the furious ache behind it. My sister turned to me and smiled.

“Did I know what, hon?”

“That I was in love with him?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Her smile slipped a little.

“Liam. I'm talking about Liam.” I gave my head a little shake as if it was nothing, but my heart was galloping in my throat in the wake of my unexpected words.

“You were in love with Liam?” She sets the full kettle down on the side of the sink with a clatter. “When?”

“Oh, it was just when he and I were in university. Forget about it. Ancient history.” My laugh was brittle and ridiculous.

“Did you feel like this after he and I got together?”

“Ag, leave it, Addy, I shouldn't have said anything.” Perhaps from speaking the truth that I'd nursed in secret for so long, my jaw seemed numb and oddly disconnected from the rest of me. I watched my sister's fingers, with their lovely manicured nails, clutching around the white plastic body of the kettle. They shook, and a small splash leapt
from the spout and landed on her top, turning a patch of the delicate white fabric see-through. The pink of her skin glowed through it.

“Sally?” Adele's eyes looked enormous, too big for her head.

“I shouldn't have mentioned it. I don't know what got into me.” I battled to force out a smile; failed.

“Did he and you ever . . . did you . . .” She placed the kettle down on the countertop, and something in that careful movement of her arm, the sliding of her muscles beneath her creamy skin, made me want to reach out and snap it in half.

So I hurt her with words instead: “We kissed once.”

I remembered the feeling of his mouth on mine as if it was yesterday. His half-closed eyes with their gold lashes were so large and vivid in close-up.

It was two years since we'd first met in English Lit. Adele had finished high school, and she and Liam had been living together in a rented garden cottage for almost a month. Without my sister, it was just me and Mom rattling around at home, and I'd often find myself overwhelmed by sudden waves of frustration. I hated the house without my dad in it, even though he'd been dead for over two years; I hated my bedroom with its styleless mix of childhood and teenage detritus that seemed to have no bearing on the person I wanted to be; and I hated Adele's room for being so empty. I'd find myself wandering through it, picking up items and then putting them down again, lost in the familiar place I'd grown up in.

Campus was no better. Every time I spotted Liam, I was breathless all over again, and then furious at myself for being so. Simone kept trying to set me up with other guys, but I was hopeless at pretending I was interested, and each feeble encounter fizzled into nothing. And then, late one afternoon after lectures, I bumped into Liam in the corridor.

“Hey, we haven't hung out in ages.” He grinned at me. “I guess since Addy and I got that place together, it's been . . . I miss you, Monks. Come on, let's get a drink.”

Two hours later, we stumbled out of the campus bar clutching each other and laughing about nothing as we made our way to his car.

“My Monkey,” he said, despite the fact that I wasn't his at all and he was already hers. “I wonder if I've picked the wrong sister.”

“Liam.” His name was liquid in my mouth as I fell against him and inhaled the giddy-making special scent of Liam's armpit and masculine deodorant. “You're being silly.”

“Am I?” He stopped walking and turned me round to face him. He was no longer grinning. My heart shuddered. Little darts of heat spiked between my legs and then we were kissing. The moment his tongue was in my mouth I wanted all of him everywhere and I knew I'd never be over him. With a small jolt of shock, I realized I would have him, steal him, if I could, even whilst he was my sister's.

When he pulled away, I was voiceless. I could barely move. “Need a lift home, Monkey?” I shook my head, and he drove off and it was over. Just like that.

I wonder if I've picked the wrong sister.
It was enough to give me hope.

“You kissed Liam?” Adele's voice was sharp-edged now.

“Well, no, actually . . .” Just once, I wanted to be the one with the guy in love with me and not her. “He kissed me.” I wanted her to ache as I'd been aching. “And it was a real kiss,” I added, “enough to make me think he felt the same way as I did, if you really want to know.”

Adele curled her arms over her partly see-through top and took a step backwards, knocking into one of the barstools. Suddenly, I wanted to breathe the words back in.

“How could . . .” She blinked at me. “I don't . . .” She hugged herself tighter. “One kiss? That was it?”

“Yes.” For a second I hoped she was going to laugh it off, to turn back to the tea making and carry on as if I'd never spoken. But the little sneer that curled the corner of her mouth told me that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

“Poor old Monkey. I bet you wanted him to carry on, didn't you? You wanted to shag him. You didn't even care that he was with me, did you, you fucking slut?” Her voice cracked with fury, and her face fired up to a vicious pink.

“It wasn't like—”

“Ever since we were kids, you've always been wanting what I've got, always trying to insinuate yourself into every little part of my life without actually getting on with your own.”

I staggered backwards as if I'd been slapped. I wanted to grab her, shake her, stop her, but the stinging truth of her words paralyzed me.

“You still want him, don't you? After all these years, after everything?”

The question came as such a shock that I couldn't lie fast enough to make it stick. I just stood, speechless.

“So tell me, Sally”—her voice became low and menacing—“what exactly
are
you doing here in my house every bloody afternoon?”

“I come to see you. The girls love playing together.” This was the truth, but I could see that it no longer mattered. For a long, silent moment, we just stared at each other.

“Sweet silly Sally,” Adele said. “Harmless little Monkey. What a pile of shit. You're a sneaky, conniving bitch, aren't you? Look what you've done. Look what you're doing right now.”

“I was never sweet or silly,” I shot back. “It's only
you
who thought that. In your opinion, I've always been nothing more than a sideshow to your fabulous fucking amazingness. Perfect little tarty Adele, getting everything she always wants, using Sally when it suits her, but only if she stays in her place in the shadows so that you can strut your stuff in the center of the bloody stage.”

“You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? You'd like to think you matter, but you're a joke, Sally. Your whole existence is a pathetic joke. Waiting around for years for Liam to notice you? What a waste of a life.”

I gaped at her, suspended over nothing but blackness as the floor spun down and away from me. “You don't mean that.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but paused when we heard the front door open and close, then fast, hard footsteps coming towards the kitchen.

“Hey, pretty ladies.” Adele and I both turned as Liam strode into the room and straight through to the laundry. “Had to pop home quick before that meeting . . . got some bloody thing or other on the front of my shirt. Typical.” We could hear him moving around in the laundry. “Did Dora iron the blue one with the little stripes, Addy?” Both of us were breathing hard, as if we'd just run a race. Liam walked back into the room, then froze when he saw the looks on our faces. “What . . .”

“Sally just told me, Liam. About the time you kissed her.”

Liam looked at me, and, for the first time since it happened, I could tell that he remembered that kiss too. For an unguarded moment, the hot, wonderful, guilty memory of it was written all over his face.

For years I'd been waiting for that look, that acknowledgment of his desire for me, but now it was the final blow that brought my world crashing: when I glanced at Adele, it was clear that she'd seen it too. She tried to step backwards, but she was trapped by the kitchen counter. She covered her mouth with a trembling hand as the other one waved at her side, as if she was trying to push the truth away, send it back where it came from. Liam looked from me to Adele and back again, panicked.

Adele burst into tears. Liam and I both started forward on an automatic impulse to comfort her, and then both stopped. From beyond the kitchen, we could hear Gigi's sweet voice and Bryony's toddler laugh. Nobody moved.

“My whole family,” Adele sobbed. “My whole goddamn life. That's what you're trying to destroy here.” I wasn't sure if she was speaking to me or Liam. From the look on his face, it was clear he wasn't either. Then she turned to me. “But I'm not going to let you.” The tears had stopped as fast as they'd appeared. She wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her wrist. “Get out.”

“What? Adele, don't be daft, you've got nothing to worry about.”

“Out.”

“Addy, listen to me . . .” But the crying pink had drained from her face, leaving it pale and frozen-looking. “I don't want to wreck your family, you
know
I don't.”

She drew herself up. She looked vast, immovable. “You're never to come back here, do you understand?”

“You're really throwing me out?”

“Go and live your sad little life somewhere far away from mine.”

“Jesus, Addy!”

“I mean it.”

“But we're family—”

“Please. Like ‘family' matters so much to you?” she hissed. “You've obviously been dreaming of wrecking mine for years.”

“That's absolutely not—”

“Don't you ever come anywhere near me or my kids or Liam again.”

The finality of her words seemed to stop time. For a moment, Adele and Liam and the whole room solidified into a vast, unified entity whilst all the bits that made me, me—bones, heart, blood, and skin—began dissolving away to nothing.

A spasm of sobs shook me where I stood. Adele's expression didn't change; her eyes were ice. I looked to Liam, but he was staring at the floor by his feet.

“This can't be happening.”

“Get Gigi and go. Now.”

And so I turned and ran, turquoise wraparound skirt flying, out of the kitchen, through the front hallway, and into the lounge to wrench my daughter from her game. One of my feet skidded on a small plastic animal that was lying on the Persian rug beside Bryony's chubby knee, and I nearly went crashing to the floor.