Summer With My Sister (24 page)

If only she could
get
that half-chance . . .

Tomorrow I’ll wake up and someone will have emailed saying they want to interview me
, she promised herself.
Tomorrow, things will start to turn around: I’ll spot a new vacancy for my perfect job, I’ll be headhunted, my phone will ring and it’ll all begin to fall into place. I don’t need a crappy cleaning position. I can do better than that. I WILL do better than that
.

‘So there,’ she said out loud. She punched the
Pirates of the Caribbean
pillowcase into a better shape and rolled over. Positive visualization, that was the key. She had to keep telling herself that her luck would change any day soon. The alternative was simply too dreadful to contemplate.

Chapter Fourteen

‘Alex SNORES,’ Leila announced grumpily at breakfast the next day.

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘No, I
don’t
.’ Kick.

‘Yes, you DO.’ Push.

‘Oh, stop bickering, for God’s sake,’ Clare snapped. She had a thrumming headache right behind her eyes (whatever had possessed her to break into the emergency gin like that?) and had nearly cracked the bathroom mirror with her rough-as-sandpaper reflection when she’d peered into it just now. Polly no doubt was still sleeping it off, the lucky cow. That was if the quarrelling niece and nephew hadn’t just woken her, of course.

‘How long till I can get my own bedroom back anyway?’ Alex grumbled, pulling a hideous face at his sister.

‘A few months, not that long,’ Clare said, trying to appease him. Damn, they were nearly out of coffee, she noticed, foraging fruitlessly for a new jar in the cupboard. ‘We’re just helping her out for a while, that’s all. That’s what families do.’ She tried to keep a kindly tone to her voice, but couldn’t help hearing a ring of sarcasm through it. She hadn’t been best pleased to come down that morning and find the gin bottle still there on the coffee table with its lid off, and the glasses either side of it too. Her glass still had an inch of gin in it, she’d noticed, with rising fury. What if one of the children had thought it was water and glugged it back? Had it not occurred to Polly that she should have tidied them away before taking herself off to bed?

Obviously not.

‘A few
months
?’ Leila wailed. ‘Oh, great. That’s like nearly Christmas!’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Clare said. ‘It’s only for the summer. It might even be less time than that.’

‘Can’t Alex sleep with Babs and Marjorie? Or in the kitchen?’

‘No, he can’t. Look, Polly’s family. My
sister
. It’s nice to have her staying.’ The words sounded unconvincing even to her own ears. Last night’s conversation hadn’t exactly ended nicely.

‘Huh,’ Leila grumbled. ‘I don’t think so. All she ever says to us is
How’s school?
Who cares about school? She’s a rubbish aunty. She never even buys us
sweets
.’

‘Yeah,’ Alex agreed. ‘I’m never letting
Leila
stay with me when I’m a grown-up. Sisters stink.’

‘Not as much as poo-pants brothers,’ Leila retorted. ‘And there’s no way I’d
want
to stay with you anyway.’

‘Good, cos you’re not invited,’ Alex said, sticking his tongue out. ‘EVER.’

‘Just eat your breakfast, you two,’ Clare sighed, buttering more toast and putting it on the table. She hadn’t had enough sleep the night before to be very patient today. The evening had been surprisingly good fun to begin with, once Polly had got over her initial huff about the cleaning job at the pub. They’d actually had quite a laugh together, even bonded about various telly hunks they both fancied, and the conversation had flowed as easily as the wine.

Then, unfortunately, she had to go and open her big trap about the cleaning job again and it had all gone wrong. Worse than wrong, in fact; she’d ended up tearing a strip off Polly about her bad attitude. That was gin for you, it always made Clare arsey.

She munched her toast thoughtfully. Maybe she’d been a bit harsh. For most of the evening Polly had seemed humbler, less cocksure than in past years, as if the redundancy had knocked out half of her confidence. There must have been some devil in Clare that had been unable to resist that unnecessary swipe, upsetting the delicate balance they’d just arrived at.

‘Alex!’ she roared, suddenly catching sight of him feeding the dog under the table. ‘That toast is for you, not Fred. Hurry up, we’ve got to go in fifteen minutes and you’re not even dressed yet.’

School mornings were usually painfully observed rituals of hustle and hurry. As a single parent, it had to be that way – she couldn’t rely on anyone else to get them all ready and out of the house. Once breakfast had been eaten and the table cleared, clothes had to be thrown on, teeth and hair brushed, bags checked for permission slips, homework or reading books, and then at last they’d be into the final straight of shoes and coats if the weather was bad, or suncream and sunhats if the sun was actually showing its face.

Clare knew from bitter experience that if one single link fell from the chain – if the hairbrush couldn’t be located immediately, for instance, or one of them remembered at the last minute (as they were annoyingly prone to do) that oh yeah, they were meant to be coming to school dressed as a book character today, or whatever – then the whole routine would collapse. No mercy. And so, when she realized her sister was locked in the bathroom taking a long shower when she’d have liked a quick hose-down herself, not to mention the fact that none of them had brushed their teeth yet, she could sense that the morning was on the brink of unravelling completely.

She banged on the door, impatience sparking. ‘Are you going to be long in there?’

There was no reply, except for the sound of pouring water. ‘I need a wee,’ Alex said, shifting from foot to foot.

‘Well, you’ll have to wait, or go in the garden, I’m afraid,’ Clare said wearily.

‘But I need a poo as well.’

Clare took a deep breath and banged on the door again, louder this time. ‘HURRY UP!’ she bellowed through the wood. She felt like thumping her head against it too. Rules were going to have to be set down regarding bathroom availability times, she could see, as well as rules about leaving open gin bottles around the place.

Great. Her new lodger was going to love that.

Thursday was Clare’s day off, so once she’d finally hustled the kids off to school (teeth still unbrushed unfortunately, and with her having to make do with a stand-up wash at the kitchen sink –
nice)
, she wandered home, trying to shake off her bad temper by running through the list of things she needed to tackle that day. A supermarket run, clothes washing, hoovering, tracking down Leila’s lost trainer (what on earth had she done with it?), a long walk with Fred and general house-cleaning and tidying duties. That would do. She rather liked Thursdays, even though they consisted mainly of domestic chores. It was the sense of catching up on herself, of having a breather to put everything in order once more, before the chaos had a chance to explode again.

She was glad not to be going into work for other reasons too. She’d felt embarrassed the entire week about what had happened with Luke the Friday night before. The more she thought about it, the more hysterical she became in her memory of that evening, wild-eyed and frenzied, fingers like claws as she dragged Luke into her car, driving like a lunatic and garbling all that stuff about Michael to him. Shit. What must he
think
of her? Talk about how to make a fool of yourself. He’d been as friendly and nice as ever since then, asking how Leila was and waving away Clare’s apologies, but she still found herself turning pink every time he came near her. It was toe-curlingly horrendous.

She let out Babs and Marjorie, the chickens, who strutted down their ramp, beady-eyed. ‘Thanks, ladies,’ she said, reaching into their house to collect two warm eggs. ‘At least I can count on you pair.’

Carefully carrying the eggs, she pushed the back door open to see Polly in the kitchen crunching her way through a bowl of cornflakes with a mean-looking black coffee by her elbow. Clare took in the spilled milk on the table, the trail of sugar crystals from the bowl, and Fred with his greedy head under the table to gobble up the stray cornflakes there, and felt cross all over again. ‘Morning,’ she said shortly, putting the kettle on.

Polly jerked in surprise at Clare’s appearance. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

‘Day off,’ Clare said. ‘There are eggs here, if you want them,’ she added, putting them in the fridge. She opened the cupboard to take out the coffee, just before she saw the empty jar on the worktop, lid off, a scattering of granules freckling the surface. ‘Ahh. Did you use the last of the coffee?’

‘Yeah,’ Polly said. ‘I’ll get some more later on. I think you’re out of milk too, unless there’s another secret fridge that I haven’t tracked down yet.’

Clare smiled tightly. ‘No secret fridge,’ she confirmed.

‘What was all that banging about this morning, by the way?’ Polly asked, spooning in more cornflakes. ‘Do the kids always make that sort of racket?’

‘That was me,’ Clare said, feeling her jaw stiffen. ‘That was me, banging on the bathroom door, because we needed to brush our teeth. And poor Alex nearly wet himself on the way to school because he was bursting for the loo.’ She folded her arms across her chest. ‘If you could try to avoid having a long shower at that time in the morning, I’d really appreciate it. We’re always in such a mad dash to leave on time as it is, without . . .’

Polly rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and Clare wanted to throttle her.

‘All right, all right, I didn’t realize,’ she said huffily.

‘Right,’ said Clare as the kettle whistled to a crescendo of boiling – uselessly now, as it had turned out. ‘Well, I guess I’ll hit the supermarket then. Is there anything in particular you want?’

‘Some proper coffee,’ Polly said at once. ‘Oh, and some nice shampoo. I like that Salon Class stuff, you know, in the silver bottles?’

Clare knew, all right. The most expensive range on the shelves, no less. Did Polly expect her to shell out for that, as well as her posh coffee? Clare narrowed her eyes. Like hell she would. Her sister would be getting supermarket own-brand 2-in-1 shampoo and would have to lump it. ‘Sure,’ she said, turning away so that Polly couldn’t see the irritation on her face. She grabbed her handbag and car keys and strode towards the door, with Fred trotting hopefully after her. ‘No, you’re staying here, matey, sorry,’ she said, patting him. ‘I’ll take you out later. Unless . . .’ She eyed Polly. ‘Maybe you could take Fred out if you’ve not got anything to do?’

Polly shook her head. ‘I’m going to be busy,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

Clare was reminded of the
Little Red Hen
story she’d read to the children when they were younger. ‘Well, I’ll just do everything myself then,’ she muttered, slamming the door behind her.

‘I never thought I’d say this, but thank God I’m working today,’ Clare sighed the following morning, sinking into her chair behind the reception desk.

Roxie goggled at her. ‘Er . . . who
are
you? You might look like Clare Berry, but you sure as hell don’t sound like her.’