Shadow Sister (13 page)

I nudge Elisa. ‘Shall we look for a skirt for you?’ I suggest. ‘You know what, Elisa, let’s give you a makeover! New make-up, a different hairstyle, a whole new look!’

I look at my sister with excitement, but I can see that my enthusiasm isn’t infectious. But she’s not getting out of it that easily. It’s already quite an event that I’m in town with her, she really doesn’t like shopping. The only reason she called me this morning was to cheer me up after my horrible week. I appreciate it, but I’m also going to take shameless advantage of it.

As soon as we arrive at the fashion floor, I set off towards the racks of a collection I’d personally kill for. I pull everything out and hold it in front of me, so that Elisa can see how well it would suit her. That’s the advantage of having an identical twin.

‘I never wear that kind of thing.’ Elisa looks dubiously at the pink and orange patterned skirt.

‘Then start now.’ I pull a matching sweater from the rack and push her towards the changing room.

‘Lydia!’ Elisa protests.

‘You could try it on at least.’

Elisa disappears, sighing, into the cubicle. ‘This sweater is far too tight,’ I hear her complaining.

I lean against the wall next to the curtain, determined not to let her escape. ‘That’s because you always wear baggy clothes.’

Elisa comes out. She looks so sunny and feminine that even Valerie claps her hands in delight.

‘I think pink and orange is pretty,’ Valerie says, stroking the soft fabric with one finger.

‘Oh, is that what you think, shrimp?’ Elisa asks. ‘I feel like one of your Barbie dolls.’

‘You look fantastic,’ I say. ‘Come on, let’s pay. Pull the tickets off, then you can keep it on.’

Elisa makes a move to return to the cubicle and take everything off again, but I bend down and with a couple of quick jerks, pull the tickets off and hurry with them to the till.

‘Lydia!’ Elisa cries.

Of course, Elisa still disappears into the changing room and comes out again in her camouflage trousers, but I’ve already paid.

‘Call it a gift,’ I say as we go towards the escalator, ‘and don’t give me such a nasty look. You looked terrific.’

‘Mummy, I need to pee,’ Valerie says.

‘Can you hang on, otherwise we’ll have to go all the way upstairs.’ I help my daughter off the escalator. ‘You can go to the toilet in McDonald’s.’

‘Are we going to McDonald’s?’ Valerie asks in delight.

‘Just to pee. We’re going to buy clothes for you now.’ I lead her towards the exit. Elisa follows, frowning, the bag containing her new clothes in her hand.

‘Can I have an ice-cream?’ Valerie asks.

I promise her that we’ll sit outside the Italian ice-cream parlour once we’ve finished and she can choose something big, but of course that’s not enough. Valerie insists that she needs an ice-cream right now, at once. I ignore her and slow down until Elisa has caught up with us.

‘Do you still need shoes?’ I ask her.

It’s a rhetorical question because of course she needs shoes to go with the new skirt. Open shoes for when the weather’s nice and boots for when it’s cooler.

‘We could have a quick look in Manfield. I saw some lovely orangey-brown leather boots in the window recently. They’d go perfectly. I’ve already tried them on, so you’d only have to pay.’

‘And to like them, perhaps?’ Elisa says. She’s not usually sarcastic.

‘You will like them,’ I assure her.

When we get to Manfield, I point to the dream boots in the window display. The leather is soft and smooth, they have a slender heel, nicely finished.

‘They are nice,’ Elisa admits. ‘Perfect for you. I don’t like heels, I can’t walk in them.’

‘But the heels are so low! You’d just have to get used to them.’ I pull Elisa into the shop.

The saleswoman who has been discreetly observing us, comes forward. ‘Can I help you?’

‘She’d like those boots in a size 39,’ I say. ‘She doesn’t need to try them on.’

I set off towards the till, followed by Elisa, who is hissing at me that she doesn’t want the boots, and that she’s not going to buy them.

‘I’ll buy them for myself then.’

As we leave with the shoebox, I say, ‘If you ever want to borrow them, just say so.’

Of course, I have no intention of keeping the boots. At the first opportunity, I’ll leave them at Elisa’s house, perhaps even this afternoon.

Elisa shakes her head, half in exhaustion, half in amusement. ‘Shall we go and get a drink?’

‘Let’s go to Bambino’s first,’ I say. ‘It’s really close, otherwise we’ll have to walk all the way back here.’

As soon as Valerie hears the word Bambino’s she begins to complain that she’s got ‘tried legs’ and she needs to pee. I promise her that we’ll only go into one shop and that’s all, but Valerie shakes her head so that her pigtails swirl round and round. I bribe her by promising her the newest Barbie, Cali Girl. Valerie follows me into the shop.

In retrospect we’d have been better off stopping at a cafe right away. Getting a six-year-old into new clothes is always difficult, but a six-year-old who doesn’t like trying on clothes at the best of times and who is highly sensitive to my own irritation about Elisa’s behaviour…But if I quickly kit Valerie out now, we won’t have to do this again for a while. That’s what I keep telling myself. So we go into Bambino’s.

Elisa and I gather together a few things for my daughter and go into the changing rooms. Despite the promise of being the owner of Cali Girl shortly, Valerie doesn’t behave. She doesn’t want that itchy jumper, she wants a top that shows off her navel.

‘You’re not getting a tiny top. You’re six, not sixteen. You need a couple of T-shirts and you need a jumper for when it’s colder.’ I force a T-shirt over Valerie’s head. ‘Look what a pretty colour. Pink’s your favourite, isn’t it?’

‘No, I hate pink!’ the smothered Valerie says, the T-shirt
already halfway back over her head.

‘Put your arms into the holes.’

‘It prickles!’

‘That’s not possible, there’s no wool in it. It’s a hundred per cent cotton.’ I grab the yellow summer trousers that go with it and hold them up to Valerie. ‘Step into these.’

‘Mummy, I need to pee.’

I know that trick. Unfortunately for Valerie I’m not going to fall for it. She becomes redder and more peevish while I do my best to get her leg into a yellow trouser leg.

‘Are you all right?’ Elisa pokes her head around the corner of the cramped cubicle.

‘I’m desperate!’ Valerie cries.

‘I think she really needs to go,’ Elisa says in concern.

Flustered, I glance at Valerie and her anxious face tells me that we indeed do need to find a toilet. I pull her leg out of the yellow trousers again, let her step back into her skirt and try to convince her that it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t wear her vest to look for a toilet.

I come out of the changing room with a sobbing child and hurry to the till.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ I say in an apologetic tone to the saleswoman as much as to the customer at the till, ‘but could she please use your toilet?’

The saleswoman looks at Valerie, who has turned red from holding in her pee.

‘I’m sorry, but the toilet isn’t for customer use, we can’t make any exceptions,’ she says.

I look at her in disbelief. ‘You can see she’s desperate!’

‘I’m sorry,’ the saleswoman says, though it’s obvious she’s not.

‘I spend hundreds of euros on clothes here every year,’ I snarl at her. ‘What fantastic customer service! Come on, Valerie, we’ll have to run.’

I have a fleeting wish that Valerie will let everything out here,
in front of the till, but she’s much too well behaved for that. She’d rather die than let a drop leak out.

‘We’ll be back in a sec,’ I say to Elisa and dash to a small diner down the street where I take Valerie out the back and put her on the toilet. The door has a large sign on it: ‘Use of toilet: 1 euro. Paying customers, free.’

‘One euro? Are they completely crazy?’

Valerie sits on the toilet, her legs dangling. I don’t hear much happening so I ask her if she’s finished.

‘I suddenly don’t need to anymore, Mummy.’

‘What do you mean, you suddenly don’t need to? You were desperate!’

‘Yes, but the pee has gone away now.’

‘Did you pee your pants?’ I check them and her shoes, but they’re dry.

‘No, it’s gone. That’s funny, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it’s very funny. Have you been joking with Mummy?’

Valerie shakes her head and looks between her legs as if she expects that someone is playing a joke on her. She gives me an uncertain smile, because she can see from my face that I’m not amused.

‘Get down then,’ I sigh. We leave the diner hand in hand.

‘Using the toilet costs one euro, madam,’ a waiter informs me.

‘She didn’t go,’ I answer, without stopping.

Elisa is waiting for us in Bambino’s with a resigned look on her face.

‘Sorted?’ she asks and I grimace. The clothes are still piled up in the changing cubicle, so we go back in. The saleswoman comes over to us, ‘Can I be of any assistance?’

‘No, thanks. You’ve done enough,’ I say, drawing the curtain in her face.

I lift Valerie into the yellow summer trousers and turn her to the mirror. ‘They fit well. Do you like them, Val?’

Valerie looks at me with downcast eyes. ‘Mummy.’

‘What’s the matter?’

Suddenly Valerie’s eyes widen in shock, she pulls her knees together and puts her hand to her mouth. We both look down.

‘What are you doing now?’ I cry out.

Valerie doesn’t look at me. She keeps her knees together, her cheeks bright red, her hands covering a big wet patch.

I can’t do anything about it, I’m bursting with laughter. ‘Take them off quickly,’ I whisper between giggles. ‘Throw them in the corner and put your own clothes back on.’

Valerie hurries to obey and I go to the till with a couple of other items of other things.

‘So, you were successful in the end?’ the saleswoman asks.

‘Absolutely.’ I drag my card through the machine. ‘The things we don’t want are still in the changing rooms.’

Weak from laughing, we cross the road and go to the cafe terraces on Karel Doorman Street. We install ourselves, our shopping bags at our feet, rummage around in our handbags for sunglasses and giggle a bit more.

Our order is taken, two lemon teas, two apple tarts, and a fruit sorbet for the little miss, and then we raise our faces to the April sunshine and don’t talk at all for a while. I haven’t felt this good in ages, spending time with my daughter and my sister on a sunny terrace. A group of Muslim girls parade by, their hair caught up in flattering headscarves. A couple of girls with them wear their hair long and loose, tossing it around as they pace up and down, stomachs bared, glittering navel piercings on show.

It’s like being in the playground at Rotterdam College.

‘Hey, should we get something for the barbecue tomorrow?’ Elisa asks.

‘The barbecue at Mum and Dad’s tomorrow! Shit, I’d totally forgotten.’

‘You haven’t prepared anything?’ Elisa asks. ‘I thought you were going to make a quiche.’

I groan. ‘Do I have to go to the supermarket again?’

‘No, we’re going past the deli later. They’ve got the most delicious things.’

I sink down again. I’ll get something from the deli. My mother has probably done the same herself. In any case, I’ve never seen her prepare any of the exquisite dishes she serves up.

Our order is brought and Valerie sits up with a cry of joy. ‘What a big ice-cream!’

‘If you can’t finish it, just let me know,’ Elisa teases her.

Valerie shakes her head. ‘I’m going to eat it all myself!’

We drink our tea and take a couple of bites of the apple tart.

‘It will be nice to have a barbecue,’ I say. ‘The weather forecast for tomorrow is good, too.’

‘Are you going to tell Mum and Dad about that boy at school?’ Elisa asks.

I spread whipped cream on my tart. ‘I don’t know, probably not. It will worry them and they can’t do anything about it.’

‘You don’t know that. They do have experience of those things.’

‘Of children with behavioural problems, not violence,’ I say. ‘Shall we talk about something else, Elisa? I’d just managed to take my mind off it.’

‘Sorry. What do you want to talk about?’

‘Thomas. You’re not going out with him, are you?’ I ask.

Elisa sighs and puts her teacup down on the table. ‘Can’t you just stop with that? You’ve been bellyaching about my friends for years without knowing what you’re talking about. You might think that Thomas is an oddball, but he’s had a difficult life.’

‘What happened to him?’ I ask, but of course I don’t get to know because Elisa is discreet when it comes to her friends. It’s a quality I appreciate, but which always makes me feel a bit hurt. As if I might gossip. As if anyone else would be interested!
I really don’t care what Thomas went through as a sullen child or adolescent. I can’t imagine that he was ever a ray of sunshine.

‘Has he ever had a girlfriend?’

She shrugs. ‘Sylvie is crazy about him.’

‘Sylvie? About Thomas?’

‘Yes. I’d suspected it for quite some time, but she admitted it recently.’

‘Strange.’ I picture the dollish Sylvie and have difficulty imagining her with scruffy, long-haired Thomas.

‘I was surprised too, but she really likes him.’

‘And Thomas is only interested in you. Poor Sylvie. She can’t be used to not being able to get a man.’ I feel a sense of redress, after all her flirting with Raoul. She had the wrong man there – Raoul doesn’t go for those artificial types. Just to be sure, I asked him what he thought of Sylvie. ‘Admit you find her attractive,’ I challenged him.

‘If you like implants,’ he said. I’m certain Sylvie overheard. It was at the party for the opening of Elisa’s studio. For the rest of the evening she avoided us. It’s never been right between us, but that’s fine by me.

It’s warm on the terrace. I doze off as I listen to Elisa and Valerie talking about school and Valerie’s friends. Now and then a dark shadow falls across my face as somebody passes by and I look up. The sunlight conjures up red and yellow spots on my retina and I have to blink to see clearly.