Letters From My Sister (18 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The house is modern, down a steep drive. Mum warned me how steep it was and that I must leave the car in gear. I have bought my own second-hand car and love it. It’s small, silver, shiny and fast. The next thing I need to do is look for a flat to rent.

My legs are stiff and aching from the long journey. I should have arrived at least half an hour ago had it not been for getting lost along the endless winding narrow roads that all looked the same and seemed to lead nowhere. There are no signs outside Bells’s house, it really was a stroke of luck that I spotted a tall man wearing a tracksuit, with a bright blue jumper and an identity card around his neck, motioning me into the drive. I recognized him immediately from Bells’s photograph album.

‘Hello, I’m Ted,’ he says, holding out a large hand which I shake. He has curly brown hair and bright blue eyes that almost seem to pop out of his head with enthusiasm.

‘Hi, Ted. I’m Katie, Bells’s sister.’

‘Hello, Bells’s sister. Welcome to Wales.’

A tall man with dark hair walks out and says hello too, asking me how my journey was. His name’s Robert. He is one of Bells’s ‘key workers’. He leads me inside, down a long corridor, past a pin-board that gives details of the events of the month, and into the kitchen. ‘Isn’t the weather remarkable today?’ Ted says, following closely behind. ‘They said there would be lots of rain, but we haven’t had a single drop.’

‘Ted is fascinated by the weather,’ Robert mentions with a dry laugh. ‘There’s nothing he doesn’t know about weather fronts.’

The kitchen’s a soft yellow, the colour of primroses, and kept immaculately clean, not a spot of dirt or clutter anywhere. I like the feel of the place immediately. There are glass doors behind the long wooden kitchen table which open out on to the terrace and garden. ‘What a lovely house,’ I acknowledge, looking around the room.

‘We like it,’ Ted says proudly.

‘Bells will be down in a minute, she heard your car arrive. Would you like a tea? Coffee?’ Robert stands ready at the kettle.

‘I’d love a tea, thanks.’

‘You haven’t been here before, have you?’ he asks.

‘No.’ There’s no accusation in his tone at all, but I can’t help but feel a heavy sense of guilt that up until now I have shown no apparent interest in where my sister lives. ‘I want Bells to show me round.’ Above the larder fridge is a black-and-white photograph of her wearing her dungarees, standing over a wheelbarrow filled with cooking apples. She’s smiling with her thumbs up. Robert can tell I’m looking at it.

‘She’s a great girl, Bells,’ he comments. ‘She’s always doing something. She can’t sit still, can she, Ted?’

‘Never,’ he says. ‘Bells and I go to college together. Every Thursday we go. We learn all kinds of stuff, like art and writing, and I’m learning to dance too.’

‘Really? What kind of dancing?’

‘Ballroom dancing.’

There’s another photograph, on the other side of the room, to which Ted leads me. He is large with broad shoulders. ‘Guess where I am?’ he says. I peer closely at the photograph. I can see Bells dressed in an Elvis outfit, strumming a tennis racquet as a guitar. Ted is behind her, wearing what looks like a shiny all-in-one outfit, with enormous fake sideburns. He’s playing the drums. ‘There you are!’ I say, pointing.

‘Groovy, huh?’ He laughs. ‘It was my birthday party. Everyone had to dress up as Elvis Presley. Bells and I formed a band together, we called ourselves the Gold Fishfingers.’

‘Really groovy.’ I smile back. ‘Why the Gold Fishfingers, though?’

‘Well, I love fishfingers,’ he replies simply, as if I really should have known, and walks out of the kitchen.

‘How’s your mother?’ Robert asks me.

‘She’s doing well. She gets frustrated because she still can’t drive, but Dad is so patient with her. He sets her tasks, like putting photographs into albums and other things you never normally get round to doing.’

Robert sighs with relief. ‘We were so worried, you know.’

‘Has Bells talked to you about Mum?’

‘No, no,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’

I’m dying to see her so I ask if I can go upstairs, but then she walks into the kitchen. She’s dressed in a pair of tracksuit bottoms and the black T-shirt I gave her with the silver star on it. ‘She’s wearing it in your honour,’ Robert says, winking at Bells.

‘Hi, Bells.’ She walks towards me. I’d like to hug her but Bells doesn’t really do hugs. Instead we shake hands and then she hits me affectionately on the arm and I hit her back. ‘That’s right,’ she says.

I pick up my bag. ‘I brought you some olives and cheese biscuits, and Eddie asked me to give you this ginger cake.’

‘Eddie at deli.’ She rocks forward and takes the bag of food. ‘Thanks, Katie.’

*

Bells leads me upstairs. A large DO NOT DISTURB sign is stuck to her door, along with lots of peeling football stickers. Her room is small, with a single bed in the corner, and unlike the kitchen there is no space in here which hasn’t been filled with paintings, stickers, posters, CDs and newspaper cuttings. I have to tiptoe in between a painting on the floor of the Union Jack flag and a poster that reads in red pen, Come on ENGLAND.

There’s the familiar poster of Bob Marley smoking a joint, and the one of the Beatles, both of which she pinned to the walls of her bedroom in London. I sit on the edge of her bed. Her inhaler sits on the bedside table together with her photograph album and a mug of tea.

‘How’s Mum?’ she asks, sitting down next to me. Her chest is wheezing. She picks up her inhaler.

‘She’s much better.’

I stand up and walk over to her window. I catch a glimpse of the sea. ‘Bells, wow!’ I sigh. ‘What a view you have. It’s beautiful.’

She stands close behind me, breathing heavily. ‘You like sea?’ she asks, clearly pleased that I’m impressed.

‘I love the sea. It makes me want to move out of London,’ I say, turning to her. ‘Come on, let’s go for a walk.’

*

It’s warm, but as Ted summarized, there are some dark threatening clouds hanging over us. We walk across the pale sand. I bend down and pick up a handful, letting it sift through my fingers like grains of sugar. Bells walks ahead of me. ‘Do you swim in the summer?’ I ask, catching up with her.

‘No, too cold.’

After walking a long stretch of the beach I ask Bells if we can sit down for a minute. It’s so peaceful here, looking out to sea. There isn’t another soul in sight and the only sounds we can hear are from the seagulls.

‘How’s Dad?’

‘He’s all right. A bit tired from Mum bossing him around.’ I gently nudge Bells.

‘That’s right.’ She nods thoughtfully. ‘Poor Dad. How’re you?’

‘I’m back in London, staying with Emma.’

‘How’s Emma?’

‘She’s fine. Getting ready for her wedding.’

‘How’s Sam?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him. Did you get my last letter?’

‘Yes. How’s Aunt Agnes?’

After Bells and I have discussed every friend and member of our family, we start walking back. She continues to show me around her home and I can tell how proud she is by the way she points out everything. This is her territory; her world that I am entering. The sitting-room has a piano. ‘Ted plays piano,’ she tells me. ‘Poor Ted,’ she adds, striking a key.

‘Why poor Ted?’

‘Very lonely, has no family.’

Bells would hate to be called a ‘poor thing’, but I have noticed how often she refers to other people in that way. It must give her a sense of security, feeling better off than the person next to her.

‘No one visits Ted,’ Robert says. He rests one hand on the door handle. He must have overheard us. ‘I’ve worked here for twelve years and Ted hasn’t had one visitor,’ he reflects. ‘You wouldn’t think it could be true but some families leave their children here. Dump them.’

‘That’s terrible,’ I exclaim, deeply shocked. It makes me realize how together my parents are, how strong they have always been. They would never have rejected Bells, it wouldn’t even have occurred to them. It also makes me realize just how much I do not want to be lumped in the same category as Ted’s family – the sister who never bothered.

‘I know. It’s the pits,’ he agrees, tapping one foot against the floor. ‘Everyone loves Ted, they don’t know what they’re missing out on. He looks after us all.’

‘Ted champion on trampoline,’ Bells adds. She is looking at the collection of videos next to the television.

I turn to Robert. ‘So you’ve worked here for twelve years? That’s pretty good going.’

‘Yep, and I haven’t had one solitary day off.’

‘No way!’

‘Well, maybe one or two, but I love it. My father worked here, so it runs in the family. I don’t know what else I’d do.’

‘You could do with a holiday though, couldn’t you?’

He smiles. ‘Yeah, I suppose, but I’m not sure where I’d go.’

‘You seen
Trading Places
?’ Bells asks me.

‘I love that film,’ I say. Robert and I walk over to join Bells, and I look over her shoulder at the DVDs. ‘Oh, wow,
Tootsie
, that’s my favourite!’

‘Very funny,
Tootsie
,’ Bells agrees.

*

It’s now three o’clock in the afternoon. Bells and I have tea and some chocolate digestive biscuits, and then I drive us to the local football club. She’s now wearing a football shirt and her red Manchester United scarf wrapped snugly around her neck. Her team are playing a match late this afternoon, she tells me excitedly. We enter the clubhouse. There are a couple of men sitting at the bar.

‘Hello, Budge,’ she calls out. ‘He’s captain,’ she tells me, her breathing intensifying. ‘Hello, Paul. Hello, Budge.’ She punches each one in turn. They turn round and hold up their hands to give her a high five. Bells’s hand barely covers the palms of theirs.

‘My sister Katie,’ she tells them. They briefly look at me and say hello.

Budge is very good-looking. He has dark brown hair and dark eyes that match. ‘Hi,’ I say back, but I can see I have lost his attention already.

‘Bells, you’re going to watch the match today, aren’t you?’ he asks, pulling at her scarf. He starts to uncoil it and she laughs furiously, saying it’s tickling her. I can see her blushing.

‘’Course she is,’ says the other one. Another army of men walk into the clubhouse. They take it in turns clapping Bells on the back.

‘How you doing, Bells?’

‘How’s our favourite mascot?’

‘Bells, good to see you.’

‘We’ve missed you,’ Budge adds.

‘I tell you,’ one of them says to me, ‘we need Bells back on the pitch. She’s our good luck charm.’

I’m about to say something when a beefy man, who looks like he works out in the gym seven days a week, sweeps in from behind and gathers her up in his arms. They all cheer and I join in. He puts her on to his shoulders. Bells is laughing and clapping her hands. ‘Come on, St David’s,’ they chant like a tribe. I have never seen her look so happy, nor so at home anywhere. I stand back, letting them pass me. They’re filing out now and on to the playing field. ‘Katie,’ I hear Bells call. ‘You coming?’

*

I drive back to London early the following morning feeling happy. Bells’s team won, 2–0. I watched the match, spending most of my time asking her, ‘Are they allowed to do that?’ I need to get up to date on the rules of football, clearly. After the match, I drove Bells home and found a crowd of people in the kitchen. I met Mary Veronica, a girl called Jane, another man called Alex, and Ted was still in the kitchen, looking after everybody. He said Bells was going to cook for us all. She made one of her famous vegetable roulades and, to follow, we had chocolate mousse. Bells opened her tub of olives and passed them around. Mary Veronica hated the taste and spat hers out. They turned some music on, Stevie Wonder of course.

I can now put faces to names; I can imagine what she does on a Saturday afternoon. I can see her being picked up like a trophy and carried on to the football pitch. I can hear her laughing and clapping.

I can see her cooking in the kitchen.

The different nametags in her clothes make sense to me now.

I can see her when she picks up the phone in the corridor, in front of the pin-board.

It didn’t feel sad leaving because I know Bells is in the right place. It’s not perfect, nothing is, but it’s her home. We’ve made a pact that I’ll see her once a month and phone her every Sunday and Thursday night. I know how important it is for Bells to have her routine. ‘Promise?’ she said as I left.

‘I promise.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I’m sitting at the kitchen table flicking through one of Emma’s many
Brides
magazines. Brides with flashing white smiles and pearls the size of quail’s eggs stare out of the pages at me. Emma will look nothing like them, I hope. I can overhear Jonnie and her next door talking about the wedding. They’re getting married in London, at St John’s Church, Hyde Park. Double-decker buses will take the guests from the church to the reception at the National Liberal Club.

In fact, Emma can’t stop talking about the wedding.

Should she choose Selfridge’s, Harrods or Peter Jones for their wedding list?

Should their invitations be modern or traditional?

Should they invite friends’ girlfriends and boyfriends?

‘If I invite Josh, I’ll have to invite Rebecca too, but I hardly know her,’ she is saying. ‘And what about children? I really don’t want kids!’

I realize how much I need my own space.

Why do I feel so flat? It’s been two weeks now since I saw Mark. For some reason I’d imagined he might pass by or call … but nothing.

I picture him on his bike again. I wonder what his book is about? Crime? Thriller? Love story? Science fiction? It could be an autobiography. Perhaps he’s had a fascinating past. I imagine the cover, Mark set in a square border, the title,
Mark’s Journe
y. I laugh at this idea. I feel a lot more interested in everyone else’s life at the moment.
If you could write the script of your life, what would you write?
I hear again, but this time it’s not in Sam’s voice. It’s my own.

I march into my bedroom and pick up my sketchbook. I’m not sure what I would write but I know I want to start sewing again. Since splitting up with Sam I’ve had more free time and I want to make the most of it. Maybe I want to take life less seriously too. No more writing lists of what I want to achieve by the end of each decade. Sam did those – he wanted to retire by the time he was forty. I just want ‘to be’.

With renewed enthusiasm, I decide to go for a Sunday walk with my sketchpad. I could buy a coffee and people-watch. I need to get ideas about what people want to wear. It’s cold outside, but the autumn sun is warm. I put on my blue and red poncho over my dark jeans.

Jonnie looks relieved when I walk into the room. ‘What are you wearing?’

‘It’s the latest fashion.’ I twirl around for him.

‘Where are you off to, cowgirl?’ he asks.

‘Out. For a walk.’

Jonnie is not good-looking. If you analyse his features they are in fact quite ugly. Two crooked front teeth, a long chin, and he’s too thin because he works too hard. Yet when you put it together with his blue eyes, dark hair and his sense of fun, he is one of the most attractive people I know.

‘Jonnie, we have to carry on with the wedding list,’ Emma insists, her face crumpled with despair.

Jonnie pulls a desperate face. ‘See you later.’

*

I sit down by the café window with my cappuccino and gaze ahead. It’s mid-morning and a few people are out. A girl walks past in a long dark brown skirt with ruffles around the bottom. She wears brown boots and a cream-coloured wrap-around cardigan. I sketch the overall effect. Tassels and fringes are back in, I notice, when I see yet another young girl walk past in a layered skirt.

As I sketch my mind keeps wandering. I’m not in the mood. I’d rather write to Bells.

I stop writing for a second, and think about what Mark said to me. I can still see him standing at Emma’s front door. I pick up my mobile. ‘Just wondered if you wanted to meet up for that coffee and sticky bun?’

*

My pen flies across the page as someone taps me from behind. ‘You gave me a shock!’ I say, retrieving my pen.

‘Sorry.’ Mark smiles, leaning over me. ‘I was waving at you from outside but you looked so serious. You’re not writing your will, are you?’

‘Mark!’ I cover the page, the way I used to if I thought someone at school was trying to cheat and steal my answers.

‘What are you doing?’

‘It’s only a letter. To Bells.’

‘Can I add something?’

‘No!’ I shut my sketchpad firmly now. ‘You can write your own!’

‘Bells is right. You are bossy. You
are
a traffic warden,’ says Mark, making me smile.

‘I’m glad you called,’ he continues.

‘Give us a cigarette,’ we hear an old man in a raincoat asking in the doorway.

‘You scrounger,’ says a younger man who’s about to walk inside. He digs into his pocket and finds a cigarette for the old man. ‘There you go.’

‘You have a lighter?’

‘Bloody hell! What has this world come to?’ Now he lights the cigarette. ‘Anything more I can do for you?’ he calls after the old man, who is now limping off into the distance, sucking his stick of nicotine. ‘Polish your shoes, buy you a drink,’ he mutters to himself as he walks over to the counter.

‘I love people-watching,’ Mark remarks. ‘It’s even better if I’m sitting in a hot country, drinking beer.’

‘If only. Any news on the book yet?’ He’s wearing that navy jumper with holes in the arm.

He lets out a long frustrated sigh. ‘No. My agent says it needs more work. If you want instant gratification, don’t be a writer.’

‘You never told me what you’re writing?’

‘Just a fantasy adventure story,’ he says modestly. ‘It’s for children and adults.’

‘Am I sitting opposite the next J. K. Rowling?’

He grins. ‘In my dreams. I’ve always loved books, since I was a child. I’ll never forget my grandmother reading
The Adventures of Uncle Lubin
to me.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘You don’t know it? You must read it. Uncle Lubin looks after his young nephew Peter, but one day a great Bagbird swoops down,’ Mark does the actions, ‘and whisks the child away. Uncle Lubin has to find him. He travels round the world and up to the moon in his floppy hat and striped stockings. Uncle Lubin has a dream that he sees Peter under the sea, flanked by mermaids, and he’s safe. When he wakes up he is distraught to find himself alone. Uncle Lubin never gives up, though, and in the end …’

‘Don’t tell me!’ I bang my hand against the table. ‘He rescues Peter?’

‘Yes, sure.’ Mark looks disappointed by my reaction. ‘But it’s more than that. It’s about the human spirit and enduring love. It’s about never giving up hope. I wish I still had that book, I don’t know how Mum could have lost it.’

‘Have you read
The Old Woman in the Vinegar Bottle
?’

Mark shakes his head.

‘It’s about this woman who lives in a vinegar bottle. She has a little ladder to go in and out by,’ I wiggle my fingers as if climbing an imaginary ladder, ‘but she grows discontented.’

‘I’m not surprised. Living in a vinegar bottle doesn’t exactly sound enthralling.’

‘“’Tis a shame, ’tis a shame,” she grumbles, and pictures herself in a little white house with roses and honeysuckle growing over it, pink curtains, a pig in the sty. A fairy passing by feels sorry for her. “Well, never you mind,” she says. She tells the old woman to go up to bed and turn around three times in her bottle. “When you wake up in the morning, you’ll see what you will see!” When the old woman wakes she’s in a room with pink curtains and she can hear a pig grunting outside.’ I do the sound effects. ‘What’s wrong?’ I am put off from telling the rest of the story because Mark is looking at me in a strange way.

‘Come on, tell me what happens next,’ he insists.

‘Well, the old woman is delighted but it never crosses her mind to
thank
the fairy. The fairy goes east and west, north and south, and then comes back to the old woman, knowing how pleased she will be in her little white house. “Oh! ’tis a shame, so it is, ’tis a shame. Why should I live in a pokey little cottage? I want to live in a red townhouse and have a little maid to wait on me.” “Well, never you mind,” the fairy says.’

‘“When you wake up in the morning, you’ll see what you will see,”’ Mark finishes for me.

‘Next she wants to live in a house with white steps and men and maids waiting on her. Then she wants to live in a palace. “Look at the Queen. Why shouldn’t
I
sit on a gold throne with a gold crown on my head?” The fairy grants her wish, but when she returns to hear the old woman complaining that the crown is too heavy for her head, she gives up. “Why can’t I have a home to suit me?” the old woman moans. “Oh, very well, if all you want is a home to suit you …” the fairy says wearily. The old woman wakes up and finds herself back in the vinegar bottle, where she stays for the rest of her life.’

‘Serves the old woman right.’

‘I remember that story so well, Mum read it to Bells and me. What about your family?’ I ask. ‘I’ve been so wrapped up in my own dramas that I know nothing about you. Are you close to your parents?’

‘We’ve had our moments. I felt I’d let my father down when I told him I didn’t want to be a lawyer. My brother emigrated to New Zealand and became a sheep farmer, Dad couldn’t understand where his genes came from. I was his last chance. Law is in his blood, his father was a lawyer. Jess is a lawyer too, so that helps. Dad especially loves her. My Scottish lass, he calls her.’

So not only is she good-looking and bright, she is also like family. Bugger. ‘How did you two meet?’

‘At school, funnily enough. In Edinburgh.’

‘Why were you in Edinburgh?’

‘One of my father’s first jobs was there, and my parents loved the place so much they decided to move permanently. I think I am about one-eighth Scottish by now.’

‘So you’ve been going out with her for a long time?’

‘Only six months, but it feels like longer,’ he adds, and I can’t tell whether that’s a good or a bad thing.

‘How come it took you that long to start going out?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says, his voice clipped and considered. ‘We kind of fell into it. We went on holiday with a group of friends and that was it. We were worried it might affect our friendship but it’s fine.’

Fine? Fell into it? That was it? Mark’s vocabulary lacks a certain passion. Where’s the romance? Where are the fireworks?

‘I guess it’s true,’ he says with a sense of defeat … or am I reading too much into his voice?

‘What?’

‘Somewhere along the line, girls and boys can’t just be friends. At some point …’

‘You don’t believe that rubbish, do you? Come on. We’re friends, aren’t we?’

‘You’re right.’

‘Are you happy?’

‘Am I happy? Well, that’s a difficult question.’

‘With Jess, not in general,’ I say, hoping that I am not being too nosy.

‘She’s one of my closest friends. She’s always been there for me. It’s funny, though,’ he shuffles his chair in closer, ‘she’s intelligent, but if you ask her where Guatemala is, she doesn’t have a clue.’

I sit, frozen. ‘Africa?’ From his expression I see I’m wrong. ‘America? Of course, it’s America.’

‘North or South?’

‘Er, South? No, North.’

‘It’s south of Mexico, next to Honduras, and not so far from Panama.’

‘Shut up, clever clogs, we can’t all be geography wizards.’

‘Which direction is north?’

‘Shut up!’

‘How did we get on to Jess?’

‘We were talking about your parents. They wanted you to be a lawyer.’

‘Oh, yes. It’s all about approval, isn’t it? You want them to be proud, whatever you do.’

‘I admire anyone who teaches, I couldn’t do it. Is your father proud of you?’

‘I don’t know,’ he shrugs. ‘I think so.’

‘He should be.’ I smile. ‘You see, if you were to die tomorrow – God forbid,’ I add, touching his arm briefly.

‘Thanks.’

‘I’m sure your father would be saying, “I wish I’d told Mark we were proud of him.” I would never have forgiven myself if Mum had died and I’d left so many things unsaid. I felt so hard done by when I was little because she was always in hospital with Bells, but look at people who have no proper homes or divorced parents who screw them up. Emma says she sees people …’

‘Don’t start saying how much worse off they are than you,’ Mark says, disgruntled.

‘Well, they are.’

‘Look, we never really go around thinking like that. There’s always someone a lot worse off than you, sure, but if someone said to you, “Think of the starving children in Africa,” every time you came to them with a problem, you’d want to pelt them with frozen peas.’

I laugh. ‘Why frozen peas?’

‘I couldn’t think of anything else. What I’m trying to say is, each problem, each situation, it’s all relative. OK, you had a damaged relationship with your mother, but if someone tells you they don’t get on with any of their family, mother, father and all six sisters and brothers, and that you should count yourself lucky, does that really make it better?’

‘I’ve never thought about it like that. You should become a counsellor.’

‘That’ll be fifty pounds, please. See you next week?’

‘Yes, please.’ The scary thing is I mean it too.

We sit quietly for a few minutes watching people go by. It doesn’t feel awkward saying nothing. It feels peaceful.

Eventually I break the silence. ‘Do you have any unusual characters in your family?’

‘How about the grandmother who kept a lion under her bed?’

I laugh. ‘Well, I’m glad it’s not just our family then.’