In Sarah's Shadow

by Karen McCombie

  He’s got a bottle of wine in his hand and pours some into my nearly empty plastic cup.

  “God – don’t get me started, Sarah. My sisters are great – don’t even mind if I borrow their mousse, but my brother…Jesus! I just know he’s dying to punch me in the face if I give him one good reason to!”

  And Seb is off, telling me tales of life at home and about his borderline homophobic brother and cosseting mum and sisters till I’m practically crying with laughter, even if Seb’s situation’s got a tinge of tragedy to it. Maybe that’s why I have have a soft spot for dark, slightly twisted humour so much; laughing at the bad stuff makes it all so much more bearable.

  Then something happens that is totally unbearable.

  “Can I have a word with you?”

  It’s Conor, grabbing me by the elbow and practically transporting me bodily away from Seb, who just shrugs sympathetically in my direction.

  “What’s wrong?” I frown at Conor, keeping my voice low so that the snogging couples on the stairs don’t listen in to our conversation.

  “She said you’d do this.”

  “Who said I’d do what?” I frown at Conor again, disorientated after my lovely, feel-good conversation with Seb.

  “Megan – she said this afternoon that you love parties, that you’re the flirt queen when it comes to them.”

  How the hell would Megan know what I’m like at parties, flirty (which I’m not) or otherwise? What is she trying to pull here? Apart from my boyfriend, of course.

  “You told her about tonight?” I reply, just trying to stick to the facts for now.

  “So what? You didn’t tell her? I think that’s pretty mean, Sarah. She was really upset. Why didn’t you want her here?”

  I can think of nothing to say. What is there to say? What is there to say that doesn’t involve telling Conor everything from A to Z when it comes to Megan, the suicide attempt included? I’m stunned and overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin.

  And that’s when he decides to get mad at me, like I’m hiding something from him or silently admitting to some kind of guilt. I don’t know what I expected of this party/not party tonight, but it wasn’t that Conor would walk out on me.

  She scares me – that’s why I’m shaking.

  Isn’t that pathetic? That your kid sister actually scares you? If it wasn’t so late, I’d walk over to Mrs Harrison’s and demand she helps me with this one, since she claims to know so much. But it is late and I don’t have the energy to move away from the kitchen table, never mind leave the house and cross the road to Mrs Harrison’s.

  Oh, yes, Megan scares me. It’s like living with an unexploded bomb crossed with a cobra – there’s no telling when or if it’s going to go off, or how that poison in its fangs will affect you. Already, I feel drugged and stupid – thanks to a glass and a half of wine and too much shock to take in. How much more am I supposed to deal with? I think the humiliation of running down the road after Conor tonight is tough enough, specially when my heel snapped and I went skidding on the icy pavement, watching, shivering as my knee began to pour blood through the tear in my new cord jeans.

  Around me, beside me, wherever, the party continues to spiral to a noisier, wilder conclusion, but I don’t even feel part of it as I sit here silently with a bag of frozen peas held to my equally frozen knee.

  “What are you doing, Sarah?” Angel giggles, wiggling her way towards me after her long-ago disappearing act.

  She walked into the kitchen with Joel, I notice, although he’s now standing in the doorway with his mates, looking over in this direction with a smug grin on his face. He’s whispering something and his mates all do photocopy-perfect replicas of his grin, slapping their clenched fists against his in some well-done, bro gesture of approval.

  Suddenly, I realise all too clearly what Angel’s gone and done, and I can’t believe she’d be so stupid. Joel is a bit of a looker, no doubt about it, but he’s got the worst reputation at our school. And if I’m not wildly wrong here, he’s just added my best friend to his list of trophy shags.

  “Angel,” I hiss at her, pulling her down on to the seat next to me. She thunks down on the chair and gives a drunken giggle.

  “You didn’t…you didn’t just sleep with Joel, did you?”

  “Don’t remember doing any sleeping!” Angel jokes, widening her eyes at me and holding one finger to her mouth like she’s about to say “oops!”.

  “Angel, for God’s sake!” I sigh at the mess she’s in, in more ways than one. But I don’t see how I can speak practicalities with her when she’s this far gone.

  “Oh, lighten up, Sarah!” she snaps at me, seeing my disapproving expression through her alcohol fog. “It’s no big deal, Miss Prissy!”

  And with that she’s gone, weaving her wobbly way off somewhere.

  Great – my boyfriend and one of my best mates have walked out on me, and my other best friend is too busy playing DJ in the living room to help me get these strangers out of my house.

  But every cloud has a silver lining, and mine is the fact that Megan seems to have gone to her room and is staying there. The last thing I need right now is for her to be watching and noting the madness and mayhem going on down here.

  Actually, that’s what I’d like to do right now – go to my room and shut the door. Only it’s my party, isn’t it? Even if it doesn’t much feel like it.

  Chapter 7

  The damage done

  “Jesus, Sarah! What the hell’s been going on here?!”

  That’s what Dad’s going to say the minute he sets eyes on this place. Mum…Mum will probably burst into tears. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been scrubbing and scraping and hoovering and polishing for the last few hours: trying to clean this place up is like trying to mop up a spilt pot of paint with a cotton bud.

  I set the alarm for 7am today, even though a) I didn’t get rid of the last of my ‘guests’ till 3.30 this morning and b) I didn’t sleep a wink anyway. But I reluctantly dragged myself downstairs, braced myself for a scene of total carnage and I wasn’t disappointed. It looked like the place had been burgled, trampled by a herd of rampaging elephants, then used as a squat by every down-and-out junkie and drunk in the neighbourhood. There was mess and trash everywhere. It was practically impossible to see the carpet for the empty beer cans and cigarette ends. Some kind of oily, greasy fingermarks were streaked along one wall of the hall. CDs and trampled-on CD covers were strewn all over the living room. The contents of every single kitchen drawer had been pulled out by someone looking very hard for something (who knows what). There was sick in the bath, red wine stains on our sand-coloured sofa, broken glasses in the kitchen sink and even a couple snoring in the hall cupboard, for God’s sake.

  Now…well, now most of the surface mess is gone and I’ve got rid of the couple from the cupboard (never saw them before in my life and I dread to think what they were doing in there before they crashed out). But no matter how much air freshener I spray or how many windows I open, I can’t get rid of this cloying fug of booze and fags. I haven’t got a clue how to get that red wine stain out of the sofa (Mum will know, but asking her isn’t exactly ideal), I only just spotted that the birdbath in our tiny front garden has been used as a beer-can bin, I’m completely knackered and I think I’m about to have a panic attack.

  Yep…I am having a panic attack.

  My heart’s thundering faster than a drum’n’bass beat and my legs feel like they’re going to pack up under me. I use the hoover as support and aim myself at the armchair before I make everything ten times more complicated by passing out. It’s bad enough that Mum and Dad are due back any minute now; if they see (and smell) the state of this place and spot me zonked out on the floor, it’s safe to say Mum is going to assume that all manner of hideous crimes have been committed while I’ve been home alone (ha!) and that she’s a truly terrible mother – when, of course it’s more a case of me being a truly terrible daughter.

  Oh, Jesus…

&nb
sp; But it’s not just the worry of Mum and Dad’s reaction that’s twisting my head into stress knots, it’s a whole load of other stuff too. Let’s see…which of them do I pick first? How about the fact that Megan is spooking me out, coming out of her room today just long enough to grab a sandwich and blank me ominously? What’s going on in that unfathomable mind of hers? Is she planning on ratting on me to our parents? But what would be the point in that, since the evidence of me screwing up is everywhere you look? I wish I had the courage to hammer on her door and ask her what she was playing at when she told Conor I was some big flirt, but seeing as I tried to keep the whole party secret from her, I guess I can hardly get on my high horse with her, morally speaking.

  Still, that’s just one of my head-pounding stresses. Another is Conor, or more particularly why he hasn’t phoned to apologise, or even just to talk over why he flipped last night, after one stupid comment from my sister. I keep checking the phone, in case I missed hearing it ring while I hoovered or ferried the ten thousand rubbish bags out to the bin, but there’s been nothing to hear except for a hollow-edged, recorded voice from BT repeatedly telling me “You have no messages”. At one point, I checked my e-mails, in case Conor had left me some long, heartfelt ramble, but no.

  There was one message for me, from Angel, and what she wrote has given me more stress than all the rest of it put together. She’s on one massive comedown after the party…I can’t imagine the hangover she’s got, but raging nausea and headaches probably seem immaterial next to the dread she’s woken up with today, knowing that she’s just made the biggest mistake ever.

  ‘What am I going to do, Sarah? I could be pregnant or anything!’

  Oh, Angel…Losing your virginity to a creep who isn’t even worthy of kissing the ground you walk on is bad enough. But the fact that you didn’t even use contraception…

  I feel like killing myself – I’m not kidding.’

  God, what do you say to that? I can’t handle this…it’s too much like a repeat of what happened with Megan last year, and those sensations are so scary that all I want to do is run away. But I don’t – Angel’s my friend and I have to help somehow, even if I can’t quite figure out the right words to make a difference. I wrote back to her straight after I got her message; some throw-away line about not panicking and another telling her that I’d be in touch later, once I’d faced my parents. And in the mean time, I did what Angel specifically asked me not to…

  ‘Please, please, please, I beg you, don’t tell anyone else about this – not even Cherish. I couldn’t stand the shame.’

  But what could I do? I had to let her in on Angel’s terrible secret – I didn’t see that I had a choice, if I was going to be in any way helpful. I just thought Cherish might be more…I don’t know…measured than me, come up with something that might just make a difference. Her older sister Lilah is cool; I even thought that Cherish might subtly ask her how you go about finding clinics open on a Sunday, so we could pass that info on to Angel.

  Not that Cherish has got back to me. Where the hell is she? She wasn’t in when I phoned earlier and she hasn’t sent a reply to my e-mail either. I feel so, so lonely and overwhelmed right now. I wish I had some human contact, someone to talk everything over with and tell me it’ll be all right instead of expecting me to just cope, as always. I wish I had the sort of sister I could confide in, instead of one I have to tiptoe around and avoid upsetting. I wish—

  “Jesus, Sarah! What the hell’s been going on here?!”

  “Um, hi, Dad; hi, Mum,” I smile wanly at my parents as they stand in the living room doorway and survey the debris…

  I hold my breath: those are Mum’s footsteps coming up the stairs, and I’m pretty sure I hear the clink of cups and plates. Is she bringing me something? I feel my eyes prickle with tears of relief; there’s nothing I’d like more than for her to come tap-tapping on my bedroom door, beaming that sweet smile of hers in my direction and making me feel like all is forgiven.

  I hear the tap – but it’s not on my door. She’s talking to Megan in the boxroom. Meg’s in there doing her homework, I guess; I heard the whirr of the printer earlier when I came upstairs. Maybe Mum will come in here next, so I better stop looking so wimpy and wet-eyed and cheer up for her.

  And I wait…

  …and I wait…

  …and I wait…

  …until I finally let my expectant smile slip away as I listen to the steady thud-thud of Mum’s footsteps retreating downstairs.

  What a day. After my birthday (“Unhappy 16th, Sarah!”) last year, this must be the second scummiest day of my life.

  My heart shattered with every disappointed statement from my parents.

  “Sarah, how could you?”

  “We’ve always trusted you!”

  “Where’s your sense of responsibility?”

  “You of all people! I’d never have dreamt…!”

  “Why did you go behind our backs?”

  “Do you have so little respect for us?”

  “We should have known not to go away!”

  “You could have put yourself in real danger, with all that drink and drugs around!”

  “You’re the eldest – what kind of signal does this send to Megan? Poor Megan…she’s only just getting back on track!”

  Poor Megan…I didn’t bother telling them she hadn’t stayed the night at Pamela’s – it would just have made things worse. Her turning up at home, mixing with a wild kind of crowd, that would have been my fault too. Yet another black mark on my now totally charred track record. I feebly tried to explain that Cherish and Angel had persuaded me to have more friends around, and that it had all got out of hand, but even as the words were leaving my lips I knew it sounded pathetic, as if I was trying to shove the blame on to someone else.

  “Oh, Sarah…” Mum had muttered sadly as she and Dad stared at me with such desolate looks of disappointment that I felt like I’d just broken the news to them that I was a serial killer or something.

  After that, the three of us worked silently through the rest of the day, trying to fix up the house to as near normal as it was ever likely to get.

  And then I escaped up here, letting another mealtime slip by unnoticed. No one came up to tell me tea was ready, even though the smell of something hot wafted up the stairs an hour or so ago. The phone hasn’t rung; neither Conor nor Cherish seem to be in any hurry to contact me. And my own mother can’t even bear to bring me a coffee while she takes one to my sister. I feel totally isolated, sucked into some vacuum of misery that I’ve got no way of climbing out of.

  But then, I’m not the only one, I think to myself, feeling a hot rush of adrenaline flooding my veins. What I’m going through doesn’t compare with Angel’s problems…

  “Are you going to be on that computer long?” I ask Megan as I hover in the doorway of the boxroom. “There’s something I’ve forgotten to do.”

  I need to get back in touch with Angel. I still don’t have anything constructive to say, no magical suggestions that’ll make everything better, but maybe it would just help if she feels I’m out there – in cyberspace at least – for her.

  “I’m finished now,” says Meg, hurriedly gathering up her pile of papers beside an untouched cup of coffee and plate of biscuits.

  I’m not really in the mood to stare at my sister, but even just the quickest glance at her tells me she’s feeling guilty; just something about the way she’s rushing out of here without a sulk or strop, and the way she won’t meet my gaze.

  “Thanks,” I say as we pass by in the doorway.

  Good grief, she even has the decency to pull the door closed behind her. She must be feeling guilty…

  Settling down in front of the screen, I take a deep breath to clear my head – ready to try and figure out what comforting pearls of wisdom I can chuck Angel’s way – when a waft of milk chocolate digestive reminds my stomach of what it’s been missing.

  The first bite is great; the second bite is better;
the third one nearly chokes me…I’ve just spotted something: my e-mail to Cherish, open on screen behind a bunch of other files. I’d closed it – I always close my mail, but Megan can never resist nosing at what I’ve been sent and what I’m sending. This time she hasn’t even been clever about it. She hasn’t put it away after she devoured this particular piece of gossip. So, that’s what Meg’s guilty look was all about; nothing to do with the bizarre fib she’d told Conor.

  Why is she like this, my sister? Why does she keep her own feelings shut up, her own life like a closed book, yet she loves to delve into other people’s? She thinks I didn’t spot her, but I saw her at rehearsals earlier in the week, nosing through the Filofax Mr Fisher had left lying beside his briefcase.

  Still – think positive. At least there’s no way she can use what she’s read about Angel; there’s no way she can twist that to her advantage.

  Is there?

  “You’ve got to watch that one…” Gran had said.

  “I think she means you harm…” Mrs Harrison had said.

  “Oh God…” I say, and drop my face in my hands.

  Chapter 8

  The end of a beautiful friendship…or two

  “OK – take a two-minute breather, people, and then we’ll run through that again. Uh, Sarah…?”

  Mr Fisher walks up to the edge of the stage and beckons me to come closer. I pad over and squat down. Did I muck something up there? That’s all I’m good at doing at the moment.

  “Listen, I know it’s a while off for you,” says Mr Fisher, rifling through some papers he’s got crammed into a green cardboard folder, “but I thought you might like to look at these…”

  “Music colleges…?” I mutter in surprise, balancing my guitar across my knees as I glance at the headed sheets.

  I’ve never mentioned doing music courses to Mr Fisher. Or to my parents. Or to myself. Primary teaching…that’s more or less what I’ve fixed my mind on. The teacher-training college in town has a great reputation.