My Sister's Child

by Caroline Finnerty

  One day Jo and Isla came home from school to find that their mum wasn’t at home. The back door was open and they searched the entire house but she definitely wasn’t there. Jo had checked around to see if she could find her handbag but it was gone too. Although it was unusual for her to leave the house, they assumed she had gone to the shop to buy more cigarettes or something but when she hadn’t come back by four o’clock, Jo called their dad in work. When he came home at five she still wasn’t back even though it was dark outside. Eventually at nine o’clock that night the phone rang and Jo and Isla raced each other down the hallway to answer it. It was Auntie Carole calling and she asked to speak to their dad. She said their mother had shown up on her doorstep in Fife without any bags and she thought that they should know in case she hadn’t told them where she was going. Their father, to save face and not wanting to admit to Carole just how bad things were between him and their mum at that stage, said of course she had told him. Carole said she needed a rest and that she was planning on staying for a few days.

  A few days came and went and then it was a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks ended up being three months. Jo and Isla had stopped asking where she was and started to get on with their lives without her. They walked to and from school together every day. They ate cream crackers piled with butter and watched TV after school until their dad came home from work. Sometimes Mrs Peabody would drop them in an apple tart and say that it was for after their tea but they would eat the whole thing before their dad got home.

  Then he announced one day that their mum was coming home. Jo looked at Isla and Isla looked at Jo but they said nothing.

  “Well, aren’t you pair excited? I said your mum is coming home!” he asked, confused by their deflated reaction.

  They had been told she was coming home four times already and she hadn’t materialised. This was the fifth time.

  “You said that the last time and she never came,” Jo said.

  “I know, love, I know, but she really is this time. She’s booked her ferry and everything. She’s sailing into Larne at five to eleven on Monday morning! We’re going to drive up there and bring her home.”

  Their dad had spent the rest of the weekend wallpapering. He had seen an ad on TV for the new Superfresco wallpaper and had said to Jo and Isla “Do you think your mum would like that, girls?”

  They had shrugged their shoulders because their mum didn’t seem to like anything. When they came home from school he had already finished the sitting room and he was standing back admiring his work with his hands on his hips humming a tune. By Sunday evening he had Superfrescoed the whole house. Every wall was covered in it: kitchen, bedrooms, even the bathrooms weren’t spared.

  They picked their mum up in Larne. Jo was given a Sindy Doll because their mum didn’t like Barbies and she gave Isla a colouring book but there were no pencils or crayons with it. Isla had started to cry but Jo told her not to be silly because she had lots of colours in her pencil case at home anyway and at least they had their mum back.

  When they got home to their house, their dad had unlocked the door and proudly shown their mother the wallpaper but she just said “Oh” and went upstairs with her case.

  Jo watched her dad’s shoulders sink downwards and then she had gone upstairs to their room.

  She heard Isla coming up the stairs after her a few minutes later.

  “I think Dad just said the ‘F’ word.”

  “No, he didn’t, he would never say that.” Jo closed the book shut that was resting against her knees and sighed heavily.

  “Well, I heard him say it.”

  “You’re lying, Isla. You always hear things wrong. He probably said something that rhymed with it like ‘book’ or ‘duck’,” she said, looking proud of herself.

  “Well, I’m telling you that he said ‘fuck’.”

  Jo’s mouth had opened wide and she slammed the book down on top of her locker. She jumped up from the bed. “I’m telling Mum what you just said!”

  She wouldn’t really have told on Isla. Their mother probably wouldn’t have cared anyway. She would have just shrugged her shoulders.

  Jo stormed out of the room and off down the stairs, leaving Isla on her own to think over the argument. Isla had then reached up and run her fingers over the new Superfresco wallpaper. The Holly Hobbie paper had finally been replaced. Their dad had chosen a bubbly cloud pattern for their room. It was raised and spongy against her skin and begging to be picked. She started off by tearing away a small cloud between her bed and the wall, then another bigger one and another and another. She couldn’t help it. Soon there was a huge bald patch on the wallpaper and she knew she was going to be in big trouble. Sometimes she couldn’t stop herself as a child when she knew something was going to get her into trouble but still would go ahead and do it anyway. She had tried lining up her teddies along the wall but they weren’t tall enough to cover it so she piled up her pillows and sat the teddies on top of them but the problem was she knew she would never be able to move her construction. Jo had came up later to tell her that dinner was ready (potato waffles, eggs and beans) and she asked her why her teddies and pillows were stacked up on top of each other and Isla said that they weren’t. So she came over and pulled all her efforts of concealment away.

  Jo’s face dropped when she saw the wallpaper. “Oh no, Isla!” Her hands had flown up towards her mouth.

  “Dad’s going to be really sad, isn’t he?” Isla had seen the look on his face when her mum just said “Oh” after his weekend wallpapering session and she knew that this was going to add salt to the wound.

  Jo nodded, too afraid to speak, not because their dad would be mad – their dad rarely got mad – but because, even though they were so young, they both knew that something like that could push him right over the edge. If he saw the hole in the wallpaper what would he do? If he had said the ‘F’ word when their mum just said “Oh”, they were worried that he would leave them like Trevor Quinn’s father left his family. They just lived with their mum and she did everything, all the jobs that the dads on their street normally did and the mothers’ ones too. She made the dinner, cut the grass, took out the bins, she changed the fuse in the plug when the Christmas lights blew. Their dad had joked one time when they had a mouse that they should get Mrs Quinn to come and catch it, but their mum still didn’t laugh.

  “We have to hide the hole,” Jo eventually said.

  “I did hide it but you ruined it.”

  “Dad would have noticed that in two seconds flat. We’ll have to rearrange the furniture a bit.”

  So they did. They dragged a chest of drawers over to cover the hole in the wallpaper and they moved Isla’s bed so that it joined Jo’s because there was nowhere else in the room for it to go.

  When their dad was reading James and the Giant Peach to them that night, he had asked why they had moved the room around and why their beds were joined together. Jo had said it was because they wanted to be able to cuddle when they went to sleep. Their dad had smiled contentedly and said, “I’m so proud of my two little girls.”

  Every night Isla would move over into Jo’s bed and curl her small form into the mould of her older sister. Jo would drape her arm around her and they would sleep soundly like that all night long.

  Jo didn’t know why Isla had to ruin the wallpaper but sometimes it seemed like she just couldn’t stop herself. Jo really wished she hadn’t done it because their dad was nice and she knew he would be really hurt. She was worried that her dad would think that they were on their mum’s side and she didn’t want to be on anyone’s side. If she had to take a side – but she really didn’t want to – but if you made her, well, then, she would actually have taken their dad’s because he always tried so hard to make their mum happy but she never could be happy. Sometimes Jo just wanted her to give him a smile, just a simple smile even if it were fake, just so he could feel okay about himself.

  Jo and Isla stayed like that with their single beds joined together until
Jo went off to university and then Isla had the two beds to herself. The chest of drawers only moved after Jo bought her first house and she needed to take it with her to have some furniture to tide her over for a while. She had actually forgotten all about the bald patch but, when her dad saw it, he had just laughed.

  In the months after their mum had come back, Jo and their father had both focused on Isla because she was the youngest and, besides, it was easier to cope when they had something to occupy them. Their dad would come in the door from work and ask Jo how Isla was doing that day and Jo would give him a rundown of the day, about what Isla had got up to, whether she had been upset or not, but no one ever asked how Jo herself was doing. Looking back, it had seemed as though Isla was always up on his knee with both of their heads hidden behind his newspaper. Jo would be in the kitchen making the dinner and there they would be sitting together, giggling conspiratorially in his armchair. Jowould have liked to be pulled up onto her dad’s knee too occasionally but there never seemed to be a time when Isla wasn’t on it.

  Jo finished secondary school, moved out of home and went to university. She joined societies, made a small circle of like-minded friends. She graduated with first class honours and her dad and Isla cheered for her at the ceremony. She joined one of the big five law firms and did her training. She worked her way up and through sheer hard work she was eventually made managing partner. Her work gave her a sense of self and it was a relief not to feel like the spare wheel, like the interloper that she had always felt like at home. She never really felt like she belonged in her family, like there was a slot for her.

  Meanwhile Isla had announced in fifth year that she wanted to leave school. Jo had told their dad that it was the wrong decision. She knew that Isla had no back-up plan or alternative career option mapped out but she couldn’t believe it when he didn’t put up much of an argument to stop her. He just said it was her choice. Isla was like a small rowing boat floating around the edge of a stormy bay. Some days she was taken out on the tide and they wouldn’t hear from her for days on end while other days she would change direction and the wind would carry her home.

  Jo knew that their mum had been grieving but after David died she checked out on them. Her skin had turned from the golden bronze of the summer sun to the grey bark of the ash tree almost overnight. Grey like the endless cigarettes that she smoked that clouded up the kitchen air. Jo could still see her sitting there with her two elbows resting on the surface of the pine table, staring off into the middle distance with a cloud of smoke thickening around her head. It would catch in her throat and make it scratchy until she would eventually cough. She wouldn’t even get up to open a window so Jo would have to do it for her. Isla didn’t have a memory of the way things were before, but Jo did. Before, her hair was plaited every morning going to school and Isla’s was tied up in two tiny pigtails on each side of her head. They had proper lunches and dinners. But when David died their mum stopped doing all of those things. She didn’t bother to clean the house any more either so Jo used to do it for her. She knew that they weren’t neglected or anything but the little details that make a childhood special were gone. Yes, the woman may have given birth to them, but she really let them down too. As Jo had always said, nurture trumped nature every time.

  Chapter 25

  Fizzy Orange

  The air was heavy. Pensive. Mischievous and restless. The wads of heavy clouds overhead were bullet-grey. The gusts started. Leaves swirled and blossoms fell. They danced upwards, sucked into a vortex before scattering to the ground again. As she walked into work the ends of Isla’s scarf danced on the air in front of her before falling downwards again. The grass was bent forward as the gales rippled through the park. All around the wind made a Ssssshisssssssh as it talked through the leaves. Ssssshissssh, it said in a whisper. She noticed a man chasing sheets of white paper as they twirled on a gust before him.

  She turned the corner onto St John’s Street and pushed open the door to the café. It was early so she knew that it would be just her and Greg in.

  “Hi there,” she said softly.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Look, Greg, I’m sorry about the other night – I really am.”

  “It makes no difference to me, Isla,” he said with a nonchalance that he didn’t really pull off.

  “Greg, please, don’t be like this –”

  “What is it that you want, Isla?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe you could explain it because I just don’t get you. I mean, I’m trying my best to help you but you just won’t help yourself! Do you know how infuriating that is? Why won’t you allow yourself to be happy? Do you want me to treat you badly, is that what you want? Would you like me then? Because if that’s what you want, it’s not going to happen. Call me old-fashioned but I wasn’t raised that way. I want to help you, Isla – I love you – yes, I do. I’m not going to stand by and watch you destroy your life.”

  “I’m sorry, Greg,” her voice was a whisper, “I’m sorry I can’t be the person that you want me to be.”

  A frustrated Greg threw the tea towel that he was holding in his hand down onto the counter. “You see what I mean? You just won’t help yourself!”

  “What’s going on in here?” Michelle asked, coming into the kitchen and unwinding her scarf from around her neck. She looked from one to the other and back again for an answer.

  Isla felt the heat creeping up her face.

  “The head on you, Greg, and the price of cabbage!” Michelle went on.

  “Leave it out!” Greg snapped, grabbing his apron and heading out the front.

  “What’s got into him?” Michelle looked at Isla in bewilderment.

  “It’s nothing,” Isla sighed.

  “Well, it doesn’t sound like nothing to me!” Michelle said, keen to have the last word before following Greg out the front.

  The atmosphere was strained for the rest of the day. They all got on with the day’s work and only talked when necessary. After Michelle had gone, Greg and Isla worked around each other without speaking.

  “You’re going to have to start charging him rent or at least for a contribution to the electricity,” Isla said in an effort to break the ice. She was nodding in the direction of the only customer left. ‘The Writer’, as they had christened him, was sitting in his usual spot in the corner with his fingers busily clacking away on his laptop. He usually scraped coppers together for a cup of coffee and then sat sipping it for hours long after it had gone cold.

  “Ah, he’s okay. You never know, he might just be the next Stephen King and we can say we knew him when he was starting out.”

  Isla went out to the kitchen and started tidying up. When she came back out the front, The Writer was gone and the café was now empty.

  “Look, Isla, I’m sorry about earlier.” Greg stopped sweeping and leant on the handle of the brush. “I shouldn’t have gone off at you like that.”

  “I’m sorry too, Greg.”

  “It’s dead in here – how about we close up a bit early and do something?”

  “Like what? Catch a movie?”

  “Nah. Do you know where I’d love to go on a day like today?”

  “Where?”

  “The beach.”

  “The beach? But it’s freezing out!”

  “I know, but there’s something about good brisk walk with the wind stripping your skin and catching your breath to make you feel alive.”

  “Okay, the beach it is then. What about Donabate? There’s a lovely beach there.”

  After they locked up the café, they walked the short distance to Greg’s place to get his car. Isla hopped in and Greg drove them through the city up along the coast of North County Dublin. The wind was howling and the crosswinds shook the small car as they travelled along the motorway. They soon exited it and followed the signs for Donabate, passing fields of polytunnels, golf links and haphazard caravan parks. Eventually they pulled up outside a hotel, which Isla couldn�
�t help thinking looked familiar although she didn’t know why. Greg silenced the engine and they struggled to open the car doors against the force of the easterly wind. The wind cut against their faces and sucked their breath away as they stepped out of the car. They walked down through the dunes to get onto the flat, hard sand. It was stained black in places where people had lit a fire. Stringy brown seaweed was draped across the strand with bits of decaying driftwood. Besides a man out walking his dog, they were the only ones on the beach. He nodded hello at them from underneath the hood of his windbreaker. They both raised their hands in a half-wave back to him. Isla couldn’t shake the feeling of déjà vu, of having been there before and it was starting to annoy her. She looked over at the circular Martello Tower in the distance and then it hit her. She had been there before.

  “I think I came to this beach with my mum once, just me and her,” Isla said. “I remember my legs ached from all the walking. I don’t know why we came here. I don’t know how we even got here – Mum didn’t drive so we must have got the train. See that Martello Tower?” She pointed over to it. “That’s how I remember – I kept running around it until it made me dizzy.”

  “Your mum is dead, isn’t she?” Greg probed gently.

  She nodded and looked down at the wind skimming ripples across the surface of a rock pool at her feet.

  “I’ve never heard you talk about her before. How did she die?”

  “She killed herself twenty-nine years ago.”

  Isla left Greg on the sand while she climbed up towards the tower. When she reached it, she put the palms of her hands out to touch its stone and closed her eyes. She could still remember how it felt, the feel of the jagged rock underneath her fingertips. She remembered the eventual dizziness from circling round and round it. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel the cool February sun on her face and see the orangey-red colour on the inside of her eyelids.