Signed: Helen Osborne
In the presence of: Elizabeth Osborne (Legal Witness & Senior)
****
Sat 8th October
I pick up a packet of disposable Bic razors. When we get to the checkout and she spots what I’ve done, Rebecca hands my purchase back, telling me to replace it on the shelf. As she does so, she declares at top volume that once a girl starts to shave, all the soft downy fluff on her legs grows back as thick black hair, and there’s no turning the clock back after that.
All my soft downy fluff stands on end. I can feel everybody’s eyes examining my body as I take the packet of razors and walk back to the shelf.
****
Sun 9th October
‘Over there.’ Helen squats down by her bedroom window, holding the curtain back. She’s pointing towards the bone factory, but her hand is trembling so much I can’t work out what she wants me to look at.
I crouch among her plant pots, snapping stems and snagging my trousers on canes, and slowly raise my head to peep over the windowsill.
‘Can you see anything?’ she asks.
‘No. Where?’
My eyes strain to see the shape she says is sitting in long shadows on the other side of the creek. Seagulls bob about on the trickle of water that oozes down the centre of the creek.
‘Over there.’ She tries to point again. ‘In the grass.’
First of all, I see a red car parked on the side of the road, nose tucked into the bush where Katie lost her handbag. Then I see what she’s pointing at: a small dark figure sitting on the far bank of the creek, its pale, round face gazing across the mudflats and marshes.
The man seems to be staring in our direction. This is not at all pleasant, so I move back from the window.
‘Is he looking at our house?’ I ask Helen.
‘Is he a tramp?’
‘Tramps don’t have cars, spastic!’
She fidgets with the curtain.
I stare at the figure and start to feel nervous about why he doesn’t move his head away and look at any of the other houses in our road apart from number eleven.
‘If he’s looking at us, maybe we should tell someone,’ I suggest. ‘Just to make sure.’
Together we leave the house and cross the road to see if the Nelsons are at home. It’s only a short way, but Helen grips my hand so that it hurts. I don’t try to shake her off.
The Nelsons have a new doorbell, a loud, electronic version of the national anthem. It plays for several minutes before stopping, accompanied by the frenzied yapping of the terrier from a room at the back of the house.
We stand stiffly outside the door and stare through the frosted glass, willing figures to appear in the hall.
‘Maybe they’re out,’ Helen says.
‘Try again.’
Mrs Nelson has placed a pair of white marble statuettes on the doorstep, and I rest my palm on the head of the elegant figure my side. Her hair is a mass of beautiful chiselled ringlets. Dressed in a stone toga, she holds a dove in her left hand. I wish our mother had the same taste as Mrs Nelson, but Rebecca always laughs at the Nelsons’ new things. She says we are forbidden from ever buying her birthday or Christmas presents from Nelson’s Eye in town.
The national anthem comes to an end for a second time.
The stone figure on Helen’s side is the mirror image of my statue, holding a dove in her delicate right hand. The statues are lighter than they look, however, because when Helen leans against her one its plinth shunts back to the edge of the doorstep and it nearly topples over.
‘Watch out!’ I say, dropping her hand.
I have started to feel foolish about the way we both reacted, and I’m angry at Helen for smothering me with her blanket of fear before I had the chance to think clearly for myself.
I’m glad the Nelsons weren’t in. What would Mrs Nelson have thought of me? I don’t want her to think I’ve suddenly turned into my sister, placing myself at the centre of everything, thinking some speck on the horizon is coming to get us.
As we stand on the doorstep, listening to the terrier’s frantic bark in the empty house, I realise that, unless I do something, my sister and I will be locked together like this forever, caught like eels in the same net, squirming, bumping, bruising each other. I take her hand and squeeze it harder than before, feeling her bones shift in my grip.
‘Ow! You’re hurting me. You always do that. Why can’t you hold my hand properly, like you’re supposed to?’
We get back to number eleven just as Rebecca pulls up and parks.
‘Hello, girls! Help me with this stuff.’ She pulls bags of books out of the boot and hands them to us. ‘Be careful! New! Just arrived.’
They don’t look new. The ones in my carrier bags are covered with mildew.
‘Shhh!’ I frown at my sister and shake my head as she opens her mouth to spill her beans about the strange man watching our house.
But as soon as we’ve brought the books inside number eleven, we race upstairs to our separate rooms.
I know she’s looking out of her window as well.
If the strange figure had still been sitting over on the far bank, he would have seen two pale figures standing in the upstairs windows of the house, one on the right, one on the left, like flecks of light in a pair of eyes on the same frightened face.
****
Mon 10th October
She faces him on the rickety folding-chair in the shop. Up and down, up and down, up and down she goes.
I can’t hear anything, but I know what he’s singing. My dad used to play this game with me. ‘This is the way the lady rides, boom-ti boom-ti boom.’
I see her squeal with delight.
I can almost hear her shouting, ‘Do it again!’
‘This is the way the gentleman rides, boom-ti boom-ti boom.’
I watch them play the game all the way through to the drunk man who falls off the horse and lands in a ditch. She slithers through the gap between his legs, but he keeps his hands firmly supporting her body so she doesn’t hurt herself or get dirty on the floor.
As revenge on Helen, I stop by at the Nelsons’ house on my way home and tell Mrs Nelson that my sister has been wandering off on her own again. I suspect she’s been stealing from somebody’s house because of the number of sweets she brings home from her secret expeditions.
****
Tues 11th October
‘Hello,’ Katie Nelson says in a watery voice as I push at her bedroom door with my foot and carefully manoeuvre the tray through the gap.
The terrier barges in and springs onto the bed, wagging its stumpy tail and panting.
Katie’s been in bed for ten days.
The dressing’s been taken off the wound on her forehead, and I try not to stare when I see what lies underneath. The stitches stand out in the shape of a broad smile, beaming out a livid, black-toothed greeting just above her right eyebrow.
‘Your mum says you’ve got to eat this.’ I place the tray of food on her lap and sit at the other end of the bed, trying not to stare at The Smile.
She winces as she sits up.
On the tray is a boiled egg covered with a pretty lace egg-cosy and a plate heaped with triangles of toast and butter. Mrs Nelson has made a cup of tea in a beautiful china cup covered with pictures of flowers, and she’s placed a gleaming silver teaspoon in the saucer.
Katie gazes at the tray but she doesn’t start to eat. ‘Want a piece of toast?’
‘Aren’t you better yet?’ I lift the dripping triangle to my mouth and look around.
Every flat surface in Katie’s room is covered with get-well cards. There are pictures of kittens with balls of wool and milky eyes, and puppies and teddy bears hugging each other with benign, toothless smiles. I spot my homemade card on the windowsill.
‘I keep going dizzy. Especially when I close my eyes or try to get out of bed.’
In between bites, I point a buttery finger at the array of strange tubs and tubes lined up on her bedside table
. ‘Is that medicine or what?’
‘The doctor says the scar’ll turn white, like a white line, and the stitches will look like white dots. But it’ll always be there. Mum says maybe if I grow my fringe long like yours, it won’t show.’
The dog licks its lips and stares at me, cocking its head to the left and the right. I lick my fingers and take another piece of toast, making sure I waft the scent past the dog’s nose to torture it. ‘But what about all those tubs and stuff?’
‘She keeps buying different ones. I’ve got to put it on. She’s trying to find a match for my skin colour so we can cover up the scar.’
One by one, she tosses the makeup over to my end of the bed. I unscrew the lids and daub different tones on the back of my hands. The shades range from sickly pale to Mediterranean bronze, with dozens of colours in-between.
‘Lizzie?’
‘Yea?’
Katie is staring at me. Her eyes are like horrible little darts.
‘What happened to my pink bag? D’you know? Mum keeps saying a man from the factory took it. But I don’t think that’s right. You took it out the basket, didn’t you?’
‘No, I think you had it with you,’ I say carefully, looking directly at her.
She frowns.
I look away. ‘I’m not sure what you did with it after the accident. You definitely didn’t give it to me before you rode off.’
‘I can’t remember what happened.’
I need to divert Katie’s attention from the bag. When I was five, I tell her, I lost my memory after a car crash with my dad in which I broke my leg. The car did three somersaults before landing on its roof by the side of the road. The Police found me wandering through a cornfield, holding a poppy. The car was a mini, and we were playing ‘Penny Lane’ by the Beatles at the time.
‘How could you walk if you’d broken your leg?’
Even though she’s had concussion, Katie’s still quite clever. I can see why she passed her eleven plus and ended up at my school.
‘I was in shock. That’s when you don’t feel the pain until later. You know. It’s the same as you had.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m really sorry about what happened to your bike. Will your dad get you another one?’
The smile on her forehead puckers. ‘I don’t want another bike.’ After a pause, she says, ‘I want my bag back. It was my favourite one. And my money.’ She gazes at the back of her bedroom door, where a hundred different handbags dangle, straps intertwined in a multi-coloured mess of plastic and leather.
‘Why don’t you tell your mum you put the bag down, but you forgot to pick it up again?’ I suggest. ‘That way, she won’t cause trouble at the factory and she’ll buy you another one the same. Maybe that’s what really happened? You put it down somewhere?’
‘I don’t know.’
I must continue to be nice to Katie. ‘Want me to go and look for it? Maybe you dropped it in the grass by the creek near that hawthorn bush on the left, quite near the top of the road?’ I feel myself blushing. ‘Here, your mum says eat this.’
‘I’m not hungry. You can have it if you like.’
I eat the egg, and by the time I’ve finished it Katie is almost asleep.
****
Wed 12th October
I wash the dishes very slowly, letting the froth cover my fingers and wrists. Then I immerse both arms fully in the washing-up bowl, pretending my limbs belong to a drowned girl in the creek.
I saw something very upsetting through the shop window this evening. I knew she was in there, even though she had cunningly thrown her bike against the fence of number sixteen to make it look as if she’d gone to play with Katie Nelson.
The car was missing from the drive of the shop, and the Venetian blinds in the window were almost closed, slanting at a strict angle.
The lights had been turned off inside, and at first glance it looked like nobody was there. I crouched down in the drive, pressing myself into the shadows. Keeping my head low, I crawled out on all fours. Every time I heard a car on the road, or the sound of footsteps, I bolted into the passageway at the back of the drive. Every time I crept out again, my eyes strained to see through the grey tones and murky spaces inside.
Two shadowless shapes moved about inside. The tall shape held out its hands to the small thin shape, and the small thin shape reached out its hands too. Then both shapes melted into a single dark patch, like a stain, and I couldn’t see any spaces in-between them.
****
Thurs 13th October
I can hear our mother’s voice saying, increasingly assertively, ‘Lizzie is perfectly capable of keeping an eye on her sister.’
She pauses. I can’t work out who she’s talking to. Clearly this is not one of Rebecca’s old friends. They all seem to live too far away to visit, but they phone up all the time.
‘Yes, I am aware of that, thank you.’
After a very long pause, she says, ‘I only leave the girls alone in the house when there’s absolutely no alternative.’
Then she says a terrible thing which makes my stomach freeze. ‘If I were you, Mrs Nelson, I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what Lizzie says. I’m afraid she’s rather prone to exaggeration.’
I can’t believe that my own mother is trying to sabotage my reputation with Mrs Nelson.
In her about-to-put-the-phone-down voice, she says, ‘Well. Anyway. That’s very kind of you to offer. I certainly will think about that. Really, though, I wouldn’t say that Helen’s “roaming around the village like a gypsy”.’
****
Fri 14th October
A feeling of panic grows in my stomach as I read. I pull out the previous letter, and the one before that.
I’ve uncovered an open secret and it feels like an open wound.
My dad’s been a terrible cheat. Every time he writes to us, he copies out the same letter twice, once for Helen, once for me, mimicking my letter in her letter, her letter in mine. The only thing he changes is the name after ‘dear’ at the top of the page. He can’t remember us separately, so he’s made us the same.
Whenever a letter arrives for me, I scurry the envelope upstairs and lie on my bed to devour his special words in private. Now I picture him putting each letter into its own separate envelope to make us think we’re different, closing it, addressing it, posting it off, and then laughing at us for being so gullible. He’s made a complete fool out of me.
I’ll show him that I’m different from her.
****
Sat 15th October
We sit in a pool of Saturday morning sunshine with mirrors propped in front of us. Colourful jars, tubes, sticks, tubs and brushes surround us. A bottle of Pepsi chills in a silver ice-bucket at the centre of the table. It’s real silver. You can tell. On the carpet by the sofa, a small pink suitcase gapes open, empty except for a pair of eyelash tongs.
Using me as her beautician’s model, Mrs Nelson has shown us how to put face-powder over our foundation and where to put blusher to emphasise the natural shape of our cheekbones. She describes how you should paint the whole eye, including the fleshy part over the lid, right up to the eyebrow. She says that I have radiant skin and gorgeous rosebud lips like Agnes Ayres, and when my breasts grow a bit bigger and I lose my puppy fat, I’ll have the figure to match. I will meet my Rudolph Valentino.
I don’t like her talking about my breasts like that. And I don’t care who Rudolph Valentino is.
After ten minutes of painful tweaking, Mrs Nelson says she has nearly restored the natural curve of my eyebrows.
‘Stop fidgeting, pet’, she says, patting my knee.
She chose me because Katie’s need to learn is more urgent than mine. I can see what she means, because of all her scars and scabby bits, and Helen’s too young and immature to sit patiently as a beautician’s model. Besides that, my sister’s got two hairy caterpillars crawling in opposite directions over her forehead, so she needs to listen and learn.
But I want Mrs Nelso
n to stop. I keep my eyes closed while her fingers rub warm liquids into my skin. She prods at me with brushes. My heart has started to race. I can feel her breath on my cheeks. I wouldn’t mind some fresh air.
I fidget in the chair.
‘Okay, all done!’ she pronounces at long last.
I open my eyes, but refuse to look in the mirror.
Helen says I look really grownup. I glower at her. That’s precisely why I will never wear makeup. Dad’s got to be able to recognise me when he comes home. Things are bad enough without makeup. My skin used to be smooth and flat, like a clean sheet of paper. Now my disobedient body has swollen up and ballooned in strange places.
Mrs Nelson gazes sadly at Katie. ‘You’re never too young to learn how to do your own makeup, especially when you’ve got a disfigurement.’
‘Unless you’re a boy,’ Helen squeals, acting as if she’s said something rude.
Katie giggles and looks indulgently at my sister.
Mrs Nelson scatters handfuls of bright eye-shadows on the table and tells us to experiment with different combinations for ourselves. In case we make mistakes with our new faces when we try out the colours, she distributes bottles of makeup remover and cotton-wool buds.
I snatch all the glittering, metallic eye-shadows before the others can get hold of them. Revelling in the idea that these rich colours are called shadows, I dab each square of powder with a finger and rub the back of my hand, admiring the way my skin is transformed into a peacock tail of golds, silvers, reds and blues. I would love to have a shadow as beautiful as this.
‘Now practise what I’ve shown you while I get on with some jobs round the house.’
Mrs Nelson disappears into the kitchen. We hear the fridge door open.
As soon as she’s gone, I squeeze moisturiser onto a bud and drag it across my face. The cotton wool fills with thick brown sludge. I repeat the procedure again and again until my face is completely clean.
I was happy to spend time with Katie Nelson this morning until it was made clear that the invitation included my sister. Instead of greeting me properly when I arrived at her house, Katie asked why Helen wasn’t there. When I explained that my sister said she’d rather play in her bedroom by herself, Katie ran over to number eleven before I could stop her and reappeared seconds later, skipping up the road with my beaming sister hanging off her arm like an empty bag.
The Third Person Page 7
