Something Only We Know (4 page)

‘Therapeutic. Nice one, sis.’ Helen nodded her approval.

I swivelled so I was addressing her directly. ‘Anyway, it’s about time you started contributing to the household.’

‘You mean, like you do?’

Sod off,
I vibed at her.
I’m trying to help.

Meanwhile Mum was glaring at me like I was the biggest disappointment ever. ‘That’s put me in my place, then.’

‘You asked for my opinion. What about Dad, does he think Hel should work at the kennels?’

‘Him!’

Helen slid herself to the edge of the sofa and stretched. Then she stood up, her gypsy skirt trailing off the cushion behind her and flopping down around her ankles. She’d cinched in her
waist with a leather belt that I knew she’d had to punch extra holes in to make fit. She’s still pretty thin in my book, whatever the doctors’ charts say.

‘Look, is there anything to eat?’ I asked. ‘Because I’m so hungry I’m starting to feel sick.’

With a swish of Indian cotton my sister made her way out into the hall and up the stairs.

‘I’ve left you a plate of shepherd’s pie,’ said Mum absently, passing her palm over her brow as if she had another of her headaches. Of course I can see why she worries.
We all live in fear of it starting up again. Sometimes the anorexia’s felt like a fifth member of our family: Hel’s shadowy companion, hanging round the dinner table, casting a chill of
bad memories over us all.

I made to get up, but she reached out and held my arm for a moment.

‘You know, Jenny, I only ever try and do my best for her. It’s not easy.’

Maybe I should have stayed to reassure her, listen to her woes. But I was tired and famished and missing Owen. Fed up, too: I bet Mum didn’t spend a tenth of the time angsting over my
problems. I’m tough as old boots, I am.

‘So cut her some slack,’ I said.

I brushed her away and walked into the kitchen, not looking back.

Ten to midnight and I was propped up in bed, playing with the origami animals Owen had sent me. The parcel had been sitting on top of our fridge for days, apparently, not that
anyone had thought to mention it. Inside was my birthday card – hand-drawn, a complicated swirl of leaves and feathers – and this paper menagerie he’d created. There were two
kangaroos, a swan, a walrus, a seahorse, a fish, something that might have been a cat, a panda, a bat, a rhino and a mouse. Each one had been carefully threaded with cotton so I could hang it from
my lampshade or curtain rail. For now I’d lined them up along my duvet so I could take a photo with my phone, except the penguin kept falling over. Its beak was too heavy for its centre of
gravity. If I leant it against the walrus, that held it up, but then it looked drunk. ‘And nobody likes a drunk penguin,’ I imagined Ned saying.

I was delighted and relieved. I knew Owen wouldn’t have forgotten. Even last year, before we were going out, he’d taken the trouble to make me a photo frame out of driftwood. Then,
that Christmas he’d painted me a watercolour of the weir. In between times I’d had a bookmark decorated with pressed bracken, a pendant made from a Scrabble tile, and a whistle
he’d carved himself out of a willow stick. All right, it was no use taking him to a shop window and pointing hopefully at a pair of violet stilettos (‘You don’t need any more
shoes, Jen. You’re just giving in to the pressures of consumerism.’), but these little personal gifts he made me – presents that don’t hurt the planet, he’d called
them – were worth much more.

I was still negotiating with the penguin when I heard a soft knock at my door. I stiffened in case it was Mum, come to have another go at me for not taking her side in the kennels argument. At
the same time a small part of me hoped it might be so I could say something soothing and end the day on a better note. But when I called ‘Come in’, it turned out to be Helen, dressed in
her long white robe and carrying a mug in each hand.

‘I saw your light on,’ she said.

We know Helen keeps late hours. It’s a hangover from the illness, when she used the nights to exercise and write weird poetry.

‘Yeah, well. I’ve a lot on my mind.’ I gestured at the mugs. ‘What’s this in aid of?’

‘I made you hot chocolate.’

‘Why?’

‘Do you want it or not?’

I did. I threw down the phone and reached out gratefully. Hel settled herself on the end of my bed, pretending not to notice the state of my carpet or the piles of clothes draped over my chair
and stool. My mess annoys her, the same way her obsessive neatness gets to me. We don’t go in each other’s bedrooms much.

‘They’re cute,’ she said, nodding at the origami figures. ‘I like the little moustache.’

‘It’s a bat.’

‘So it is. Did you make them?’

‘No. Owen. For my birthday.’

‘Right.’ The faintest note of disapproval. Not everyone gets Owen or his approach to low-cost gifting. She herself had bought me a smart office set in a mix of primary colours
– lime green stapler, tangerine hole punch, raspberry pen pot, etc – to brighten up my desk at
The Messenger.
‘Make you look more organised,’ she’d said.

I swept the origami onto the bedside table, out of the way.

She said, ‘Anyway, I just wanted you to know, you were brilliant this evening. You didn’t have to stick up for me.’

‘Mum was wrong. That’s all there was to it.’

‘I’m glad you can see it. Even Dad wasn’t completely sold on the idea because he thinks I can “do better”. A nice clerical post, he sees for me. But those points
you made were good ones about the kennels being low-pressure and therapeutic. I’d been explaining how I wanted to use my qualifications somewhere, and that I loved animals, only I
couldn’t get Mum to listen. It was hopeless.’

‘She knows now. We told her. And in any case, you’re right, she can’t physically stop you. What’s she going to do, lie down in front of your car each workday
morning?’

Hel’s lips twitched at the image. Then she looked anxious again.

‘I’ve upset her though, Jen. I feel bad about that.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t fret. She’s always upset over something.’ I blew on the surface of my drink. ‘Isn’t that how families work? Various members sitting on their
hands trying not to strangle each other?’

‘Maybe. We’re too alike, me and Mum, that’s the trouble. We ought to be more laid back, the way you and Dad are. Is your chocolate OK?’

‘Yummy. How’s yours?’

A slight head shake. ‘I’ve got green tea.’

Obviously.

‘This is nice, anyway,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’

Two sisters sharing a midnight cuppa and a friendly chat. There hadn’t been enough of that.

‘The other thing was,’ she said, ‘while I’m here, I wondered if you could do me a favour.’

‘Two in one day? Steady on.’

‘No, it’s important, and I don’t know who else to ask. Incredibly important. I’m being serious. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it for ages.’

‘Yeah?’

The trouble with my sister is she can be quite manipulative. Whether this is a behaviour she took on when she was ill, or whether she was just born that way, I’ve no idea. I can’t
remember what she was like before. I do know that when she asks you for a favour, you need to be on your guard.
Don’t say anything to Mum about that food in the bin, will you? If you
don’t let on that I scoffed your Easter egg, I’ll buy you one twice as big. Tell Dad I had a migraine and couldn’t face going.
Covering for Helen’s got me into trouble
in the past.

I said, ‘Can’t you ask Ned, whatever it is?’

‘Not Ned.’

‘Why? What are you up to, Hel?’

‘I want you to check something online for me.’

‘You’ve got a computer.’

‘I can’t. It has to be you.’

‘What, then?’

‘It’s . . . I want you to find Joe Pascoe for me.’

I put my cup down. ‘Joe Pascoe?’

‘Mm.’

‘Joe you were at
school
with?’

She nodded and lowered her face so I couldn’t see her expression.

‘Joe who broke your heart?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why are you asking me?’ She didn’t reply. ‘
You
do it, Hel.
Go
on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, he’s bound to be somewhere.’

‘I daren’t. I might be . . . I only want to know what happened to him, from a distance. Then I can put him out of my mind for good.’

A lock of hair hung over her cheekbone, and some long-buried instinct made me want to push it out of the way and smooth it down for her. I didn’t, though. I kept my fingers firmly round
the mug and stared till she raised her head.

‘Right, Helen. Let me get this straight. Behind Ned’s back you want me to check up on a boy you were at school with, what, fifteen years ago – a boy who dumped you and who you
haven’t been in touch with since – and report to you and that’ll be it, end of story?’

‘Yes.’

‘It won’t be the end of the story. Will it?’

‘It will!’

‘But why, Helen? Why are you even considering this?’

‘What I said. I’m trying to move on, with the job and stuff. I want this year to be the year things change. So I need to draw a line under certain things. Put them to rest.
I’ve been hanging on to the past for too long. I know it’s not normal. But it’s only because there’s not enough in my life.’

‘And Ned?’

‘I know. I love him, but there’s this kind of – ’ she waved her free arm, searching to explain – ‘this
noise
at the back of my brain and I need to
silence it. That’s all, I promise.’

Joe Pascoe. The boy who’d smashed open my sister’s heart, who’d made her cry even more than she had over the damn guinea pig. Started nasty rumours about her, Mum had told me,
which exacerbated the bullying that was already pretty established. Finished with her for some girl called Saskia in the year above, and between the two of them they pulled her apart. Hel had
lasted just one more term before she dropped out of school entirely. Perhaps that’s why she couldn’t let it go now, because she felt ashamed of leaving the way she did, with so much
unfinished. When I’d left school it had been with a raucous end-of-year party and a snog under the chemistry block porch with Chris Green. Signed shirts and super-soakers and a banner hanging
off the roof and someone passing round a helium balloon to make us talk like mice. My sister had had none of that.

‘I still don’t think it’s fair on Ned.’

‘No, Jen, don’t you see? It’s
because
of Ned I need to settle the past. Because at the moment things aren’t right between us, and I think the way to sort them is
to nail that bad history. Yeah? One look, one update, that’s all I need and my head’ll clear forever.’

Those large, appealing eyes, that brave but delicate little pointed chin. She’s so bloody persuasive. That’s always been part of the trouble.

And I pictured Ned, his pleasant face, his cheerful smile, the casual, happy lope of his walk that you could recognise from a hundred yards away. Always bringing with him news and entertaining
stories, helping out around the house, generally lifting everyone’s spirits. He was practically a member of the family. He was like the funny older brother I’d never had.

Except you don’t fancy your brother.

I said, ‘For God’s sake, Hel. I don’t like it.’

‘Please. Please.’

‘Oh, just . . . leave it with me. I’m not promising anything.’

She moved her hand across the duvet so her fingertips were close to mine, but not quite touching.

‘I knew I could depend on you,’ she said.

CHAPTER 2

The office was sweltering. Rosa was near the sports desk, flirting loudly with Alan and a man from some local supermarket PR department, and next to me Gerry was bantering down
the phone with one of the photographers. I squinted at my PC screen.

What’s Your Craziest Holiday Experience?

My main task of the morning was to sort through readers’ tweets and emails and arrange the most amusing ones into a light summer page-filler. Should’ve been a half-hour job, but
actually it was impossible to organise this dross into any kind of meaningful shape. Every offering was moronic, pointless and self-congratulatory
. I stole a child’s inflatable dolphin
and her dad chased me down the beach! I buried my mate’s phone in the sand and then couldn’t find it again!
Pillock.
I trod on a sea urchin.
How did that even qualify as
crazy? Stupid, yes. Clumsy. Unlucky (especially for the sea urchin).

I plucked at my shirt, fanned myself with a sheet of paper.

My mate and I were so drunk we fell asleep on our balcony in the sunshine and got roasted alive.
I could use that one but Rosa might want the drunk part editing out.
I yelled SHARK
and got everyone to leave the water screaming. I nearly got arrested for defacing a political poster in Chile. I ate a wasp.
No, there was nothing I was going to be able to do with this
garbage other than type it up as it was. There was no kind of pattern or order I could impose to shape the piece. In any case, the photo desk would break up the text randomly with stock cartoons
and photos.
My girlfriend and I went skinny dipping in the moonlight and ran into a late night beach party
—
yikes!

I pulled out my mobile and texted Ned: ‘What is maddest thing you’ve ever done on holiday?’ No mileage in texting Owen because I already knew it was that time he locked himself
inside a grain silo to protest about world food distribution. Six hours in a police cell he got out of that escapade. The high point of his career so far.

I turned my attention back to the article. What else did we have here?
I dived off a cliff and broke my nose.
Blimey, that gem had been sent in by Mum’s hairdresser; I recognised
the name. That’s the thing about working for a regional paper. You’re effectively positioning yourself at a busy crossroads, and if you stand there long enough, all local life trots
by.

My shirt was sticking to my skin now and I worried about dark patches appearing under the arms. Once I’d nailed this article I was going to take a trip to the ladies’ and jam as much
of myself under the cold tap as I could manage.