No Sister of Mine (ARC)

by Vivien Brown

  No Sister of Mine

  By Vivien Brown

  1

  To Olivia, the latest and littlest in a long line of sisters

  2

  PROLOGUE

  EVE

  I stood well back and watched my sister Sarah, standing in the rain in the enclosed courtyard

  at the crematorium, clutching a soggy tissue and dabbing at her eyes, pretending to cry.

  She was wearing what was obviously a brand-new coat, in a thick black fabric with a

  fur collar. Somehow it looked out of place among the over-bright colours of the flowers which

  the undertakers had laid out in long regimented rows while we had been inside listening to the

  service. Their little white cards were all still attached, and the perfectly arranged carnations and open-mouthed lilies were bending under the weight of trapped rainwater and spilling over

  the sides of the baskets, while the condensation was already forming in misty layers inside the cellophane-wrapped bouquets.

  I didn’t approach her, preferring to stand apart and keep my distance. I don’t think she

  noticed me anyway or, if she did, she chose to ignore me. Too busy talking in whispers and

  accepting kisses, the raindrops no doubt blurring her vision the same way they were blurring

  mine.

  All the usual suspects were there, of course. Dad, head bowed, walking a pace behind

  Sarah all the way, his steadying hand ever present on her back. Sarah’s teenaged daughter,

  Janey, ramrod straight and stony-faced, desperately trying to be brave, the tiny beginnings of a pregnancy bump just starting to push the buttons of her tight-fitting jacket apart. Josh’s parents, leaning into each other as if they were holding each other up, which they probably were, the

  devastation mapped into lines across their cold grey faces, the sudden loss of their only son

  something they would probably never come to terms with, let alone understand.

  Josh’s work colleagues had turned out too. They stuck together, a good dozen or more,

  the women young and teary and hugging each other; the men, easy to spot in their typical

  bankers’ suits, mumbling quietly and shaking their heads, and more than likely waiting for the

  moment when they could move on to the beer and buffet Sarah had laid on for after. I couldn’t

  help but wonder who was manning the tills at the bank, or if they’d somehow managed to close

  it for the afternoon. Or which one of them was her.

  For the last half an hour, I’d sat at the back of the chapel, listening to the priest and the

  readings and the music, my gaze fixed on the polished wood of the coffin, trying not to think

  of him lying there inside it in the dark. Mouthing my way silently through the hymns, turning

  3

  the single white rose over and over between my fingers until a crushed petal detached itself and fluttered to the floor. It looked a bit like a feather lying down there in the dust, surrounded by the shuffling of all those shiny black shoes. Isn’t that what they say happens when someone

  dies? A little white feather turns up, like a reminder, a gift from an angel. But Josh was no

  angel, was he? He was just a man, an ordinary man. A man who should have been mine . . .

  only now he never would be.

  Josh was hers – my sister, Sarah’s. In life, and in death. Next of kin, wife, executor,

  widow, mother of his child . . . you name it, and she was it. Legally, anyway. She would be the one opening the cards, reading the messages, sorting through his papers, his bank account, his

  clothes. Little bits of him would live on in her home, lingering in the photos on the shelf above the fireplace, ingrained in the furniture they chose together, remembered in the mug he had

  used, echoed in the features of that tiny future grandchild he would never meet. I wished I could have had those things, but I couldn’t. Not then. Not now. Not ever.

  But there was no point in being jealous of Sarah. They had shared a house, a bed, but

  that part of their lives was already over. She had let him go. She didn’t love him. He wasn’t

  etched in her heart, the way he was in mine, and still is, embedded so deeply I don’t think the bleeding will ever stop.

  She didn’t make him happy. I might have been able to accept the way things were if

  she had made him happy. But now it was too late. He was gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  There was no changing things now, no going back. And, for that, I didn’t think I could ever

  forgive her.

  SARAH

  Eve was skulking in the shadows, too ashamed to step forward and show her face.

  I’d seen that dress before, of course, at our mother’s funeral. I assumed it had been

  shoved away in the back of her wardrobe after that and now it had been dragged out again for

  the occasion, just like Dad’s old black tie. It wasn’t as if the dress was new in the first place. I remember being with her when she bought it, in a charity shop. A fiver well spent, she’d said.

  Black will always come in handy. Handy! Couldn’t she make more effort? Had she no respect?

  But then, what did I expect from someone like her? Would-be home wreckers aren’t interested

  in finding something new, are they? They’re more than happy to take what isn’t theirs, pick it

  up, use it from time to time and drop it back down again when they’ve finished with it. Unable

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  to make up their minds what it is they want. Dresses. Husbands. To the Eves of the world, what’s the difference?

  I wanted to forgive her, be the better woman, show her there were no hard feelings. But

  how was I ever meant to manage that? Josh was my husband, my life, and she had sullied that,

  wrecked us beyond repair. Didn’t she know how what she had done – what they had done –

  would alter things, that nothing could ever be quite the same after that?

  The rain was tipping down on the day of the funeral, sliding down into my collar,

  seeping through my shoes. It seemed fitting somehow, a cloud of gloom hanging over the

  proceedings, and nothing to lift the misery. And there she was, my big sister, an onlooker

  hovering on the edges, as if she didn’t really belong. Like the policeman in crime stories on

  TV who turns up uninvited at the church looking for clues, watching the mourners come and

  go, hoping the murderer is suddenly going to show himself and everything will be solved.

  I didn’t know why she’d come, or what she wanted. Nobody leapt forward to greet her.

  Not even Dad. Half the people there probably didn’t even realise who she was. Nothing was

  solved, or resolved, by her presence. I turned away, kept close to Janey, concentrated on staying strong for her, and tried not to cry again, in case I wasn’t able to stop.

  There was a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney behind us. Someone else, from an

  earlier ceremony, enclosed in a wooden box, being fed to the flames. I closed my eyes, saw the

  car again, felt that intense overwhelming heat and clenched my fists, my hands still blistered

  and sore inside my thick black gloves, as I fought back the panic. It was over. The accident.

  The fire. The fear. I had to remind myself of that. There was nothing I could do to change

  things now. I was still here. I had survived. And Josh was gone.

  I couldn’t bring myself to look at Eve, or to speak to her. Perhaps if she had made the

  first move . . . but s
he didn’t, and by the time we all climbed back into the waiting cars she had disappeared. No card, no condolences, no apologies. She hadn’t even brought flowers.

  5

  CHAPTER 1

  EVE

  Twenty years earlier

  Sarah didn’t want me to go. She stood between our parents on the station platform at

  Paddington, white-faced and silent, as I hauled my case up onto the train, and just stared at me, as if she needed to memorise my face because she might never see it again.

  ‘I’ll be back at Christmas,’ I said, as nonchalantly as a scared eighteen-year-old can.

  ‘Time will fly, you’ll see.’

  By the time Mum had leaned in through the open window and wrapped her arms so

  tightly around my neck that I thought for a minute she might actually strangle me, and Dad had

  patted me on the head like a puppy and slipped a twenty-pound note into my hand, the train

  was starting to move and Sarah and I never did get a proper goodbye.

  I stayed there at the window for as long as I could, watching my family waving as they

  got smaller and smaller, and then suddenly they were gone. All I could see was the arc of the

  carriages following on behind, and other faces at other windows, all slowly retreating back

  inside the train.

  It must have been the trickle of wind blowing into my face that made my eyes water;

  nothing else. This was the day I had been dreaming of, and the last thing I was about to do was cry. I was a big girl now, an adult at last, heading towards university miles away from home,

  my first grown-up adventure . . . and I could hardly wait!

  I bumped my way along the aisle, half carrying and half dragging my battered old case

  behind me, until I found an empty seat that took my fancy, in the middle of a carriage and next to a window. Forward-facing, obviously. If there was one thing this journey symbolised for

  me, it was moving on, pushing forward, not looking back.

  It had been a difficult summer. No, difficult was not a strong enough word. It had been

  horrible, traumatic, frightening. There had been a boy. Arnie O’Connor, his name was. Nothing

  special to look at, with his skinny legs and black-rimmed glasses, and a spattering of angry

  spots, but he was filled with self-assurance and a level of confidence totally at odds with all of that. He knew what he wanted, and what he wanted had turned out to be me.

  6

  We’d come out of a party, quite late, a gang of us, full of the joys of no more school, a whole summer ahead of us with no homework, no revision, no having to get up early, and I

  was tottering a bit, not quite used to so much wine.

  ‘Come on, Eve, I’ll look after you,’ he’d said, oozing caring and charm and concern,

  his voice almost as slurred as mine. He let me hold on to his arm as the cold night air hit me

  and all our friends slowly disappeared off in different directions into the night. I think I was giggling, but I have no idea what about. We stopped somewhere in the shadow of a big

  overhanging hedge, and I let him kiss me, properly kiss me, with tongues and beery breath and

  all . . .

  As the train rumbled and rocked along, I couldn’t stop the pictures from forming, the

  memories sweeping over me until I felt like I might be sick. The kiss I had thought I wanted

  turning into something else. Arnie turned into something else. Something dark and cruel and

  nasty. Something I didn’t want at all. He must have heard my protests, but he chose not to

  listen. His mouth locked over mine, hard, wet, stopping me from saying no, from crying out.

  His hands, pressing, pushing, squeezing. His body, heavy, insistent, forcing me down, further

  into the shadows . . .

  My eyes flew open, my brain struggling to push it all away and focus on the here and

  now. I took a few big deep breaths, and unclenched my fists, where my nails were making

  painful indents into my palms. No, I was not going to be sick, in public, on a train. I was not going to cry, or panic, or let this thing beat me.

  Perhaps I should have told someone. Had I done the right thing by keeping it all to

  myself? I might have felt better if I had reported him, shown the world what he was. But

  reported him for what? Because I had managed to fight him off, hadn’t I? His fingers had forced their way inside me, but nothing else had. So, it wasn’t rape. Attempted, maybe. Or assault.

  But not the real, life-changing full-on rape it could so easily have turned into. It had stopped short of that, thank God, although only just . . .

  Still, I couldn’t help that nagging feeling, somewhere at the back of my mind, that it

  was probably my own fault. I had drunk too much, and I’d let him kiss me. Kissed him back.

  How would that look, or sound, once the police got hold of it, or the courts? That I had wanted it, that I had led him on?

  My friend Lucy was the only person I told. Sex, especially shameful drunken sex,

  whether I had instigated it or not, just wasn’t the sort of thing I could ever talk to my parents about, so I had kept my head down, hidden away in my room the next day, cried in silence,

  7

  pretended to sleep. But Lucy was different. We talked about things. Everything. Always had, since primary school. She had taken one look at me and knew something was wrong, pestering

  at me like a dog with a bone, until she wheedled it out of me. And then she had tried to convince me that it had just been a boy trying it on. A boy too full of himself, and too full of booze, with a stupid sense of entitlement, and not knowing when to stop. It was her way of trying to make

  me feel better, but she hadn’t been there, hadn’t experienced what I had. The fear, the panic,

  the sheer unexpected violence I had been so powerless to prevent. And she was wrong. It wasn’t

  that he didn’t know when to stop. It was that he’d had no intention of stopping at all . . .

  ‘They’re not all like that,’ she’d said, really not understanding at all, her eyes taking on

  a sort of dreamy glow as she pushed my ordeal aside and returned to her favourite subject.

  ‘Take my Robert, for instance.’

  To be honest, I’d rather not. She was welcome to him. Talk about boring.

  I didn’t show her the bruises. Despite all her supposedly wise words, men were still just

  as much a mystery to her as they were to me. Her Robert hadn’t even got to second base yet.

  If he even knew where it was. But Arnie . . .

  No! No more Arnie. I was getting away, to a different town, a different country, and

  putting some much-needed distance between my old life and the new. Arnie was gone, and

  every mile I travelled took me further away from him. With luck, I would never have to see

  him again.

  University was to be my fresh start, and I was looking forward to it, albeit in a slightly

  wobbly, nervous sort of way. I would miss Sarah though. She could be annoying at times but,

  as younger sisters went, she wasn’t so bad really. I could imagine her now, wiping her sleeve

  across her nose the way she always did when she was upset, while at the same time rooting

  around for any make-up I might have left behind and rearranging the bedroom that, apart from

  on my occasional visits home, she would no longer have to share. I smiled to myself, knowing

  she would soon settle into a new routine and make the most of things the way they were, just

  as I would. And, as I’d told her at the station, it wouldn’t be long until we’d be together again at Christmas.

  The train wasn’t full. Nobody had come to sit beside me, or opposite, so I had four seats

  and a table all to
myself. I slipped out of my shoes and stretched my legs out in front of me,

  put my book down on the empty seat beside me and threw my coat across the two in front.

  Nestling back into the contours of the seat, I watched the buildings slip past, warehouses and

  tower blocks giving way to rows of back gardens, then to smaller villages with cottages and

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  churches and occasional barns, and finally to acres and acres of green tree-lined fields. The further from London I went, the more cocooned and surprisingly calm I started to feel, as if I

  was encased in a little see-through bubble where nothing, and nobody, could touch me.

  Time slipped by, just like the landscape, and I started to feel hungry. Mum had packed

  me a lunch. I could smell the egg in the sandwiches as soon as I pulled them from my shoulder

  bag and opened up the foil-wrapped package. I spread it out flat across the table to reveal the contents, shining up the big fat tomato by rubbing it on my sleeve, pulling the slices of bread apart then sprinkling the contents with the tiny packet of salt she’d obviously kept back from

  one of those shake-your-own crisp packets.

  There was something a bit sad about this being the last meal Mum would be preparing

  for me for quite a while. Who knew what I would be eating once I had to take care of cooking

  for myself? And I realised that she had probably eaten a whole bag of tasteless plain crisps just so she could save the salt for me. I rubbed my fingers over my eyes to wipe away the beginnings of a tear, forgetting about the salt and making them sting even more.

  I was just eating the last mouthful and folding up the foil to keep, in case I might need

  it again, when the train started to slow down. Several passengers were getting up and grabbing

  for their bags, bending to peer out to see if it might be raining outside before deciding whether to wear or carry their coats, and starting to make their way towards the exits. The train slid into a station and jolted to a halt, and I turned my attention to the platform that teemed with busyness outside the window.