by Paige Toon
My thoughts flit away from me again and suddenly I’m on the footbridge, the sky tinged orange and the mountains jagged silhouettes all around. For a few moments, I let my mind drift, before gathering myself together.
‘Let’s go to the ridge,’ I prompt Josie, bumping her arm.
Soon afterwards we’re in a shiny, dark, hollowed-out, frozen tunnel and, as I breathe in the cold air, I hear the familiar scritch-scratch of crampons on boots digging into densely packed snow. In the oddest way, I feel like I’ve come home.
There are three climbers ahead, preparing to set off down the ridge, and as they make their way through the gate, I move out of the ice cave and into the light. I watch as they set off down the narrow snow track, tethered together by rope.
‘Freaking nutters,’ Josie says under her breath, casting me a look. ‘And you’re a nutter as well.’
I smile a small smile. ‘It feels like a long time since I did that.’
‘You don’t really go climbing much these days,’ she observes.
‘Hardly ever,’ I reply quietly.
‘Do you miss—’
‘Yes,’ I interrupt, then smile at her properly. ‘I need to get my act together.’
She smiles back at me. ‘Plenty of time for that. What do you reckon, lunch?’
‘Good plan.’
Chapter 2
Rose
Once, on a sleepover, I was playing a late-night game of ‘Truth or Dare’ and Becky Betts asked me to choose between my sisters.
‘You can only save one, and the other one will die,’ she declared melodramatically.
I didn’t hesitate to respond.
I still remember the look of shock on her face as she glanced at her sister Laura. Neither of them could believe my blasé lack of diplomacy.
But of course I’d save Phoebe. Everyone would, Eliza included.
It’s not that Eliza and I hate each other. We just don’t get on very well. We never have. She thinks I’m boring and uptight and I think she’s immature and disrespectful.
‘You’re as thorny as your name,’ she never tires of saying. Or another variant: ‘Don’t be so prickly, Rose.’
If we weren’t sisters, it’s unlikely we’d be friends.
Phoebe, on the other hand, is like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. Her laughter is infectious.
Damn, I miss her. She’s only been gone two days.
‘You’re not taking that with you, are you?’ I ask Mum now, realising that she’s been holding the same china plate in her hands for at least two minutes.
‘I haven’t decided,’ she replies defensively, putting it down with a slight clatter.
‘You won’t need a formal dinner service in a smaller house,’ I point out pedantically.
‘I might do,’ she snaps.
‘You can’t take all of it with you,’ I warn wearily as she stalks out of the room. She stops abruptly in the hall, her face turned towards the front door. It breaks into a smile.
‘Have you been busking?’ she asks over the sound of the door clunking shut.
‘Yeah, in town,’ I hear Eliza’s reply, and then a knock as she places her guitar case against the adjoining wall.
‘I thought you must’ve been at work. Come and have a cup of tea,’ Mum urges genially.
I roll my eyes. ‘Or better still, come and help!’ I call out, smoothing my hands over my floral summer dress as our mother heads spiritedly in the direction of the kitchen.
‘Do you want one, Rose?’ she calls out to me as an afterthought. She’s already put the kettle on.
‘Sure,’ I reply, as Eliza appears in the doorway.
She’s wearing ripped denim jeans with a bright orange vest top and her hair has been fashioned into pigtails.
The hairstyle is just one example of how she hasn’t grown up. Others include busking and waitressing instead of getting a proper job, going through boyfriends like they’re going out of fashion, and still living at home. I could go on.
‘Seriously, are you going to help at all with this packing?’ I ask, as she slumps into a chair at the dining-room table. I’m kneeling on the carpet in front of Mum’s display cabinet, wrapping yet another of her beloved ornaments in bubble wrap.
‘Why should I? I don’t want to move,’ Eliza responds sarkily.
I was the one who recently persuaded Mum to sell up and downsize.
Phoebe thought it was ‘probably a good idea’, but Eliza was just furious to be losing her free hotel room.
‘This is not about you,’ I point out.
She leans forward and rests her elbows on the table, gazing down at me intently. I shift uneasily, already bristling at whatever it is that she’s going to say.
‘Do you really have nothing better to do with your holidays?’ she asks.
I’m a nurse and I live and work in London, doing an often harrowing and stressful job. I would love to be lying on a beach right now beside my boyfriend Gerard in a hot country, but instead I’m here in Manchester for the next two weeks, helping our mother to move, and our sister with her last-minute wedding preparations. What’s Eliza doing? A big fat diddly squat, that’s what.
My father’s words ring in my ears: ‘Rose is a giver, not a taker. Just like her mother...’
Mum used to be a nurse – that’s how she and Dad met. Dad had a climbing accident and Mum nursed him back to health, but she gave up work when we were born. It was all hands on deck after that.
‘I’m just saying,’ Eliza says, shrugging and looking away, dispassionately. ‘Some of us have better things to do with our time.’
I raise my voice. ‘Some of us need to get a proper job and stop scrounging off their elderly parent!’
‘Stop it!’ Mum barks from the doorway, making me flinch guiltily. The mugs on her tray vibrate noisily against each other as she continues. ‘You two turn into spoilt brats when you’re together! When are you going to start acting your age?’
She has a point. We are twenty-seven.
‘Why don’t you go and make a start on the attic?’ Mum prompts me.
‘Fine, I will,’ I reply, grabbing my tea and flouncing out of the room in much the same manner as she did a couple of minutes ago.
When Phoebe and I were at university, our parents decided to turn our family home into a bed and breakfast. All of our childhood bits and pieces went up into the attic – even Eliza had a tidy up, but she never moved out – and then Dad died and Mum lost interest in putting up strangers.
I’ve been meaning to sort through my stuff for ages.
On my way past the hall mirror, I catch sight of my reflection and see that my high bun has come loose into a ponytail – the no-fuss, sporty style Phoebe favours. For a split second, it’s like I’m looking right at her.
She and I adopted our own hairstyles from an early age because we were fed up with our teachers collectively calling us ‘Miss Thomson’ when they couldn’t tell us apart. But Eliza was responsible for me first embracing the bun.
I used to nick her scissors occasionally because I could never find mine, but one day she went mad because she had an art project due – some bizarre collage made out of cardboard – and I told her I’d given them back. She stormed into my bedroom, vying for blood, and was so cross to see them sitting in my top drawer that she yanked my hair and snipped off a chunk. She got into a lot of trouble for that.
In some ways, though, she did me a favour. I had to wear my hair up the next day and I got so many compliments that it became my signature look. Sometimes she’d wind me up by wearing hers in a bun, too, but she never could do neat and tidy so the teachers always knew something was off.
I hunt out the pole from the airing cupboard and hook it onto the ring to open the hatch door and bring down the ladder. A few minutes later, I’m up in the dingy, dusty space surrounded by boxes. I have no idea where to start, so I grab one and haul it towards me.
It’s almost an hour before I come across the first diary. I recognise it immediately,
despite the stickers plastering the front cover. My sisters and I were given identical purple notebooks by our Uncle Simon for our seventeenth birthdays, padlocked with tiny locks. I wrote in mine religiously, although I’d probably cringe at reading it now.
I prise back one corner of the cover and start in surprise at the scratchy handwriting I can just make out inside.
I knew Phoebe kept a diary – everyone knew Phoebe kept a diary – she was always entering writing competitions and telling people she wanted to be an author one day. But Eliza? I never would have pegged her as the diary-writing type. Songs, sure. But pouring her heart out to inanimate objects? Not her style. Even her songs are weird and quirky – there’s no soul-baring in her lyrics, not the ones that I’ve heard, anyway.
Yet this is definitely her scrawl. When did she start writing this?
I scrutinise the lock. I lost my own key once, so I have a fair idea how to crack it. I reach up and remove one of the bobby pins that were unsuccessfully securing my bun and poke it in the keyhole, wiggling it around. A moment later, there’s a click and I’m in.
I jolt at the sight of the first entry date: Friday 13th May, a whole decade ago. Friday 13th May – that was the day Angus moved in!
I slam the diary shut again. I knew it! I knew he had got to her, too! She always went around with this couldn’t-care-less attitude, but she didn’t fool me.
Guilt slithers like a snake in my gut as I open up the diary again. A chance to get inside Eliza’s head? How could I resist? She’d kill me if she found out, of course, but it serves her right for not helping to pack up the house.
I press back the pages and begin to read...
Chapter 3
Eliza
I’m sitting on the wall, swinging my legs as far back as they’ll go before they hit brick and bounce off again. This has always been one of my favourite places to sit at home: out the front, squeezed between a gap in the hedge, watching the world go by. We live on a tree-lined street in one of the nicer parts of Sale, a small town about twenty minutes’ drive southwest of Manchester. My friends wonder why I haven’t moved closer to the city, seeking a buzz instead of what they perceive as suburban boredom – ‘suboreban’ – but I like it here. I close my eyes and tilt my face to the sun, trying to catch a few rays before it goes behind the hovering clouds. It’s been a shitty summer so far. I hope Phoebe’s having more luck with the weather in France. I still can’t believe she didn’t invite me. I picture her now, laughing and carefree with the sun on her face and the snow-capped mountains behind her, just like in the photos she used to send me. It makes me smile, too.
My ears prick up as a car turns into the road and, sure enough, it’s Angus.
A few strays from the kaleidoscope of butterflies that resides in my heart burst out through the bars of my ribcage and make their way into my stomach. The buggers are under much better control these days, but I’m annoyed at the few that won’t behave themselves.
I watch as Angus parks his old Land Rover Defender on his mum’s drive, remembering with affection the day he brought it home from his uncle’s farm. It was painted bright orange within weeks.
‘Are you still driving that shitmobile?’ I call as he gets out of the car.
‘It’s a classic!’ he exclaims, flashing me a cheeky grin as he slams the door shut behind him. His dark-blond hair is as dishevelled and windswept as ever. Phoebe said he plans to tidy it up for the wedding, I recall with a pang.
‘Hello trouble,’ he says, coming over.
‘Speak for yourself.’ I don’t get down from the wall and he doesn’t try to kiss me hello.
‘I haven’t seen you for ages. How are you doing?’
I glance over my shoulder in the direction of my childhood home, although I can’t see it for the foliage in the way. ‘Bit gutted,’ I reply with a shrug.
‘Yeah.’ He regards me with concern. ‘I heard your mum’s selling up.’
‘She’s already accepted an offer.’
‘That was quick,’ he comments.
‘Mmm. I’m sure she could have got more if Rose hadn’t been rushing her.’
He gives a small, pitying smile that makes me regret bitching. Angus has never liked it.
‘Have you heard from Phoebe?’ I change the subject before he does.
‘Nah.’ He shakes his head. ‘She’s only been gone a couple of days.’
‘Feels like longer.’
There’s that smile again.
Phoebe is my older sister by twelve minutes, my beloved middle sister. In a funny way, she has always come between Rose and me. She’d like to say she bridges the gap, but actually, she widens it. Rose and I have always fought for her attention.
‘Are you back for the weekend?’ I ask Angus.
‘No, for the whole week. I want to get the apartment sorted out before Phoebe returns.’
‘Trying to soften the blow?’
‘Something like that.’ He smiles half-heartedly.
Phoebe wasn’t keen on moving back to Manchester. She’s only doing it because she promised Angus years ago that they would. He wants to live closer to his mum and property is cheaper up here, so they can afford to buy something of their own at last. Plus they’re both able to work freelance – she’s a translator and he’s a journalist – but she’s planning to take a break from her translation work to pen the novel that she’s always wanted to write. When we were younger, she was always bounding into my bedroom, desperate to tell me about her latest story idea before it slipped from her mind. I could’ve listened to her chat away for hours. She was very engaging. She still is.
‘What about you? Have you found anywhere to live yet?’ Angus asks.
‘Nope.’ I steel myself for his reaction. ‘I’m thinking about moving to London.’
‘You’re shitting me.’ He gapes at me. ‘You’re moving to London the second Phoebe and I leave? Are you avoiding us?’
I force a roll of my eyes.
No, just you.
‘Come in for a coffee?’ he asks hopefully, jerking his head towards his house.
‘Nah, your mum will want you to herself. Maybe catch you later, though,’ I say out of politeness.
‘Are you up to anything tonight?’ He ignores his cue to leave.
‘I’ve got a gig at a working men’s club. Should be fun.’
He smirks at my caustic tone. ‘Give me the address and I’ll pop in.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I know I don’t.’
His mum appears then, and proceeds to sweep him up in a hug. I take the opportunity to escape while I can.
Chapter 4
Phoebe
‘What’s your greatest fear?’
Josie and I are well into our second bottle of wine and the evening has taken a turn for the philosophical.
I think for a long time before replying to her question, distracted by the movement of the waiting staff and the irritating non-appearance of our food.
‘Come on.’ She presses me for an answer, and I’m too fuzzy-headed to come up with an alternative to the truth.
‘That I’m not the one.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asks with confusion.
‘I don’t know if I’m the one for Angus.’
‘Of course you are!’ she scoffs. ‘You guys are perfect for each other! What on earth would make you think you’re not?’ Josie is comically flabbergasted, but my corresponding smile is half-hearted.
The truth is, sometimes I think that Angus and I are together for one reason and it’s very simple: I saw him first.
I was riding my bicycle home from netball practice after school one afternoon when I spied the hottie getting a box out of the back of the Roger’s Removals truck parked on the Templetons’ driveway.
You know how sometimes you drive into danger when you should be driving away from it? It is a fact that loads of people crash into cars parked on the hard shoulder of a motorway because drivers inadvertently follow the line of their
sight.
Well, I’m not saying Angus was dangerous, but he was extremely attractive and I was understandably drawn to him.
‘Whoa!’ I remember him gasping, jumping out of the way as I swerved towards him.
‘Shit, sorry!’ I screeched to a halt.
He took in my netball uniform with a bemused, lovely smile, and I, in turn, took in his lack of a Roger’s Removals T-shirt.
‘Are you Mr Templeton’s grandson?’ I asked with delight, also taking in his long legs, toned arms and honey-coloured skin while I was at it. Our elderly neighbour lost his wife a few months ago, and Mum mentioned something about his daughter and grandson coming to live with him.
‘Er, yeah,’ he responded, shifting the obviously heavy box in his arms. His longish hair was partly obscuring his vision and, as he rested the box on a wall, I noticed the faded band T-shirt he was wearing, coated with a faint layer of dust. Radiohead – one of Eliza’s favourites. He was exactly her type. I couldn’t wait to show him to her.
But then he flicked his hair out of his eyes and they were so beautiful, they sort of stumped me.
‘I’m Angus,’ he introduced himself, his lips tilting up at the corners.
‘Phoebe,’ I replied, feeling inexplicably nervous. Suddenly the last thing I wanted was for him and Eliza to meet. His eyes were multi-coloured and unusual – one was mostly green and the other predominantly hazel. ‘Have you come to visit your granddad before?’ I was perplexed as to how I could have missed him.
He nodded. ‘A few times.’
Mr Templeton had always kept to himself. I sometimes saw him from my bedroom window sitting out in the garden, but the most we spoke was when one of our netball balls escaped over the back fence onto his property, and then it would only be returned with a lecture about flowerbed damage. I certainly hadn’t got into a conversation about his drop-dead-gorgeous grandson, but I wished I had.
At that point an attractive woman in her forties interrupted us. She called out hello and waved, while ducking in and out of the removal men still ferrying belongings into the house like ants.
