When We Were Sisters

by Beth Miller

  Six o’clock. I put the ducks into the oven, praying Huw and Miffy will return before the guests arrive.

  Where are they?

  For something to do, I tidy the drinks cupboard. Evie comes in as I’m kneeling on the floor holding a gin bottle. ‘Mum, you’re not supposed to drink.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart. I’m just sorting these.’

  She gives me a sceptical look. Somehow she knows that I would kill for a gin and tonic. I put the bottles back and firmly close the door.

  It’s almost quarter to seven when there’s a commotion at the back door. Miffy’s first in, laughing, flushed, her hair half out of its clip, smudge of mud on her forehead.

  ‘Oh my God Laura. Sorry, sorry, sorry, but blame your so-called local-boy husband! He got us completely lost!’

  ‘Can you believe it?’ Huw is laughing too. He has a matching smear on his cheek. ‘I had to reconnaissance up a mud bank! Look at me!’

  I do look at him. He is ten years younger. His eyes are sparkling. Such a beautiful blue. I remember the first time I saw those eyes. He was leaning against a table at the front of the lecture theatre. Jeans and a dove-grey T-shirt. Dark hair flopping onto his forehead. Wife and child at home.

  ‘I wanted to show Lissa the Carneddi, and we walked round that lake at the bottom, but then we took a path I didn’t know …’

  ‘Huw, you’ve lived here all your sodding life. How could you not know it?’

  ‘That’s what I said!’ cries Miffy, washing her hands. ‘I thought the big advantage of being a stick-in-the-mud’ – she wrinkles her nose at Huw, and he laughs – ‘and living in the same place your whole life, is that you know every blade of grass like the back of your hand.’

  ‘Well,’ I say, watching Huw, ‘despite being a Welshy, he’s not really an outdoors man. It’s all a front. I have to read the map if we go for a walk.’

  ‘Hell, I was convinced,’ Miffy says, bustling about with oven gloves. ‘Mmm. This smells great. You had me out there under false pretences, Dr Huw.’

  Huw giggles – a proper giggle, I’m not kidding – and starts mixing stupidly strong drinks for me and Miffy. I’m about to remind him I’m not drinking, then I just take it and swoosh down half in one go. It’s not like I asked for a drink; I was just given it.

  I’m a little unsteady by the time everyone arrives, and I make the introductions in a haze. Ceri thrusts her coat, hat and wine bottle into my hands as though I were the Hindu god Shiva with seventeen arms. Rees kisses me lingeringly near my mouth and, worryingly, I don’t mind. Jenny whispers, ‘How are you, dear?’ implying that I must be doing rather badly. Paul kisses me on both cheeks, and Jenny’s brother Nick, handsome in the same silver fox style as Huw, shakes my hand and thanks me warmly for inviting him.

  Miffy comes into the hall wearing a silky blue dress the colour of Huw’s eyes. Ceri looks her up and down in that dreadful Bangor way and says a flat ‘Hello’. Rees whistles, because he knows Ceri will just love that, and says, ‘Wow, Laura, so there are more like you at home, yeah?’

  ‘They’re nothing alike, Rees,’ Ceri says. ‘They’re not even blood relations.’

  The atmosphere round the table is very odd, and I don’t think it’s just because I’m slightly drunk. It’s highly strung and somehow sexually tense. These dinners have never been remotely like that before. I think it’s partly me. I can’t stop thinking about sex and how long it is since I’ve had any. I mean proper sex; I’m not counting that weird bathroom thing with Huw a couple of weeks ago. Even the thought of Rees kissing me is making me feel horny rather than grossed out. Must get a grip. I’ve let Glynn take the head of the table opposite me, and Evie’s on his left; it’s the first of these dinners she’s ever wanted to come to, though what with all the randiness in the air it’s probably not all that suitable. Ceri’s next to Huw, and Rees is on my right (we all have to make sacrifices). Miffy is sandwiched between Huw and Nick. I have inadvertently devised an edgy Alan Ayckbourn-type table arrangement.

  Miffy and Huw keep sniggering, clearly still finding their lost afternoon utterly hilarious. Nick twists in his seat to face Miffy. He’s very attractive, despite a faint resemblance to Jenny. He has cute dimples. I certainly would. Jenny-and-Paul watch Miffy as though she were a cabaret act. Rees keeps glancing at me – I can see him out of the corner of my eye – and although it’s just him, it does feel nice to be fancied. Poor Ceri is wearing the most hideous top in the history of clothes. Pillar-box red, it shows every bulge, and it has an appliquéd poodle on it, for some fucking reason. Perhaps I should sit her in the kitchen, for all our sakes.

  I pass a bowl of roasted carrots across to Nick, and knock over his wine glass – mostly empty, luckily. This makes me giggle, attracting Jenny’s disapproval.

  ‘Oh, Laura! Have you been drinking? I know that crazy laugh of yours.’

  I show her my water glass. I just had that one vodka before dinner.

  ‘I think I’ve had five, Jenny,’ I say, to annoy her, and Miffy, grinning at me, says, ‘Oh, now, it was only four.’

  ‘I know it’s all so funny,’ Jenny says, ‘but you must think of that little baby in there. He really doesn’t need any booze.’

  We all go quiet: teacher’s telling us off. Jenny puts her hand on Paul’s, but he moves it away and picks up his glass.

  ‘Delicious food, Laura,’ says Nick, to break the silence.

  ‘It’s no thanks to me. Huw and Lissa did most of it.’

  Huw and Miffy high-five each other. I feel Ceri’s eyes on me and focus on my plate, circle my fork round a carrot.

  Eventually everyone is scuttered, which is unfortunate in Ceri’s case as she’s a depressed drunk. As she drones on about her failed marriage, I see her as Miffy must: a grouchy middle-aged woman in an appalling top. Miffy catches my eye and does a great job of changing the subject, making everyone laugh with an account of a job interview she had a couple of weeks ago. The panel had the wrong CV in front of them, which caused great confusion, and was only resolved at the end when an interviewer said, ‘Do you have any questions, Dr Patel?’

  ‘How was your fancy party in England?’ Rees asks Miffy. ‘Put me on the guest list next time, yeah?’

  ‘It was a great night, wasn’t it?’ Miffy says to me. She sits back in her chair and lights up a cigarette. Ceri raises her eyebrows, because she’s never been allowed to smoke in our house, then smiles as Miffy stretches across Huw to offer her the packet.

  Glynn, who’s been as polite as I’ve ever seen him, asks if he can be excused to meet some friends. Evie stays in her seat, fiddling with a bracelet Miffy has given her: a silver string of blue and green stones which glint in the light.

  Miffy says, ‘It was wonderful having people there from all different parts of my life. Like Laura, and her beautiful daughter.’ She smiles at Evie.

  ‘Bloody long way to go, though, just for a party,’ Ceri says, blowing smoke defiantly in Huw’s face.

  When we move to the comfortable chairs for coffee, Nick quickly sits next to Miffy on the sofa. Annoyingly, I miss what happens between them, because Huw’s too smashed to care about Evie going to bed and I have to practically drag her up there like she’s a toddler. Evie is over-tired and I have to insist in my strictest voice – okay, by yelling – that she gets into her pyjamas. When I kiss her goodnight and go out, firmly closing her door, Rees is standing in the hall. He makes me jump.

  ‘Oh, Rees! Are you looking for the loo?’

  ‘No, I’m looking for you.’ He laughs at the rhyme. He’s really plastered; he staggers and grabs my arm.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I am now.’ He puts his face right up close, and then his mouth is on mine, his boozy tongue pushing inside, his hand on my breast. His eyes are closed, and I close mine too before I realise what I’m doing and push him away.

  ‘C’mon Mrs Ellis, you liked it when we were students.’

  ‘That was a long time ago, thanks very much,’ I say primly. ‘Yo
u need to be in bed.’

  ‘Good idea.’ He tries to pull me towards my bedroom, just as Miffy appears at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Am I interrupting something?’

  ‘No, you’re bloody not! Let go, Rees.’

  ‘Ah, Mrs Ellis,’ he says, letting me go. ‘I’m very flattered you remember our night of passion, but we’d better not. I’m spoken for, yeah?’

  Miffy and I stare at him as he goes downstairs. When he’s gone she says, ‘You all right? You look a bit shook up.’

  I start laughing, and after a moment so does she.

  ‘Come in here,’ she says, opening the door to her room. We sit on the bed. ‘So … your night of passion with Rees?!’

  ‘Oh, don’t. It was, like, 1985 or something. I was a crazy mixed-up kid.’

  ‘Bless, he’s never stopped burning that torch, yeah?’

  ‘Cruel impression, but something like that, perhaps. So, what do you think of Nick? Dishy?’

  She pushes a frond of hair behind her ear and says, ‘Very cute. Lovely smile.’

  ‘Don’t get excited, they’re not all like that in North Wales. Most of them are like Rees.’

  ‘But I think it’s all a bit soon for him. Nick keeps mentioning his ex-wife. I know all about the fight for the wide-screen TV.’

  Jenny calls up the stairs, ‘Yoo-hoo, Laura, are you all right? I’m just going to make coffee.’

  ‘Shit, we’d better go down. I don’t want her rifling through my cupboards. Thanks for saving me from a Rees worse than death.’

  In the kitchen, Ceri and Jenny are washing up and right in the middle of a lovely bitch. Ceri is saying, ‘Always has an eye for the ladies,’ as I come into the room, at which point they stop abruptly. I whisk them back into the living room. I hate people washing up; that’s why we have a dishwasher. At work Ceri doesn’t even rinse the suds off our mugs. I have to do it, if I don’t want soapy tea. Miffy leans against the fridge and lights a cigarette, gazes up at the ceiling and says quietly, ‘I guess at our age all men are going to come with a bit of baggage.’

  I fill the kettle. ‘But not necessarily the full carousel.’

  Miffy exhales with a laugh. ‘You were a bit of a matchmaker, back in the day,’ she says.

  ‘Okay, Miffy-sister.’ I heap coffee into the cafetière, press my hand against my tired back. ‘What is it you’re looking for?’

  When her smile fades she looks older. ‘I’m not that fussy. I just want someone kind, intelligent and solvent.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘If they want kids, that’d be just fine.’ She runs her half-smoked cigarette under the tap. ‘Talking of kids, did you see what Evie was wearing at dinner?’

  ‘What?’ I pour boiling water. ‘Her eensy-weensy T-shirt that barely covers her eensy-weensy boobs?’

  ‘I think maybe Glynn noticed that too.’ Miffy grins. ‘She’s going to be stunning in a couple of years. Like you. No, I meant her necklace.’

  ‘What about it?’ I can’t understand why Miffy’s interested in Evie’s beads from New Look.

  ‘It was the silver heart-shaped pendant you once gave me.’

  ‘Was it? Bloody hell!’ I push the filter down too fast and splash boiling water on my hand. ‘Ow. I don’t know where she got it from. I didn’t give it to her, anyway.’ I feel a blush coming on, as if I’ve been caught out in a lie.

  ‘It honestly doesn’t matter. It was just funny to see it again after all these years.’

  We go back in with the coffee, and Ceri asks if we went to Colombia to get it. God, the wit. The rest of the evening passes off uneventfully. Miffy talks to Nick, I avoid Rees by listening to Jenny bang on about her annoying cleaning lady, and at last everyone fucks off. Miffy helps me bring the dirty cups and things into the kitchen.

  ‘Lovely evening, Laura, thank you. Ceri seems nice.’

  I look at Miffy to check she’s being serious. God, you know what, she is. I don’t want Miffy to think this is the sort of person I hang out with. Even if it is.

  ‘Good to see another of her dreadful tops,’ I say, scraping leftovers into the bin. ‘Christ. She must get them second-hand off Gyles Brandreth.’

  Miffy laughs. ‘How come you ended up working together?’

  ‘Oh, we briefly shared a student flat. Few years later when she set up her shop, she emailed her entire address book to see if anyone fancied helping out part-time.’

  ‘What’s it sell?’

  ‘Interiors. Pretty things. You know, cushions, candles, lights. It’s not a brilliant career. She’s still paying the same crappy wage as when I started seven years ago. But it’s easy. And I’m good at selling things.’

  ‘I bet you are! So, do you think Ceri will last long with Rees?’

  ‘What, since he’s dying for love of me? Nah. Ceri isn’t exactly lucky in love.’

  ‘Which of us are, though? Talking of which’ – she drops her voice – ‘what’s the latest with Huw and the mystery blonde? You’ve not said anything about it.’

  I hesitate. I’d love to tell her how I really feel.

  Laura: I think it’s still going on.

  Miffy: That bastard! How can he even think of anyone else when he has you?

  Laura (crying): Oh, Miff, I don’t know what to do.

  Miffy: I tell you what we do. We take the initiative. Tell him you’re thinking about a trial separation. When he realises he could lose you, he’ll stop mucking about. You’re not alone, Laura-sister. I’m with you every step of the way.

  But I’m too knackered for the conversation. And I feel a bit weird about the way Miffy was with Huw today.

  ‘Did she turn out to be just a professor after all?’ Miffy says.

  ‘Yeah, storm in a teacup.’

  ‘Oh, I knew it! I’m so glad.’

  ‘Why don’t you go up, Miff? You must be quite done in.’

  ‘I am. I’m beat. That stupid walk took it out of me! We must have gone miles.’

  Huw comes in and says, ‘You both go up. I’ll load the dishwasher.’

  ‘Marvellous man,’ sighs Miffy, the silly moo.

  ‘Then I’ve got to go out for a bit.’

  ‘What, now?’ How embarrassing, after what I just told Miffy. ‘It’s one in the morning.’

  ‘I’ve got to get this book from my office, cariad, else I’ll be out of the loop for my meeting. In fact, I’ll probably just stay in the office and read the bits I need.’

  ‘Aren’t you way over the limit?’

  ‘I’ve ordered a cab.’

  Miffy catches my eye and I shrug. She comes over and hugs me goodnight. I draw in a breath of her scent, musky and expensive, not quite covering up the smell of cigarettes.

  When she’s gone up I look at Huw, busily stacking plates. I open my mouth to say something, but at the last minute all that comes out is, ‘Well, goodnight, then.’

  He flashes his falsest smile. ‘See you in the morning.’

  24 MARCH 2003

  As we leave the house my eye is caught by something glinting against Evie’s collar. I see it without properly seeing it. Then I remember what Miffy said the other night. The silver heart-shaped necklace.

  In the car I turn to Evie and gently cup my hand round the pendant.

  ‘Where did you find it, baby?’

  ‘Drawer in your dressing table at Grandma’s. You can have it back, if you want.’

  ‘No, you keep it.’ I turn the ignition. ‘It looks nice on you.’

  We smile at each other. She’s starting to get pretty at last, with her cute snub nose, her smooth lips that know how to kiss. Before she gets out of the car she gives me a hug. Rare these days. ‘Happy birthday, Mummy.’

  I almost cry when she’s disappeared through the school gates. My little girl. How long is it since she called me Mummy?

  When I get home Glynn is up and dressed: a morning miracle. He and Miffy are at the kitchen table, heads close together. She looks up. ‘Happy birthday, Laura! What did Huw get yo
u, anything nice?’

  ‘Um. A scarf.’ I pull it out of the Christmas paper he’d wrapped it in, and hold it up.

  ‘Not really you, is it?’

  ‘My mother would reject it as too elderly.’

  ‘Well, to make up, I’ll take you out for a birthday lunch. You choose where.’

  ‘Really?’ No one usually pays much attention to my birthday. Including me. Thirty-eight. How did that happen? Two years till the end of everything. Thirty-fucking-eight. No wonder everything’s sagging.

  ‘Definitely. You deserve a treat. We’re nearly done here. Can you think of an example of Glynn’s organisational skills?’

  Christ, he can barely organise getting out from under the duvet each morning.

  Glynn says, ‘What about when I was stage manager for our school play, Miffy?’

  Who said he could call her that?

  ‘Brilliant! That’ll do perfectly.’

  She’s so good with him, so encouraging. Behaving like I should, if I were a proper stepmother. Miffy’s mobile rings. She glances at it and says, ‘Oh Lord, it’s Hella. I love her to bits, but a phone conversation with her will be at least forty-five minutes.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her, say you’re in the bath.’

  She laughs. ‘That’s so naughty! If you’re sure?’

  I take Miffy’s phone and saunter upstairs. ‘Hi, Hella, how are you?’

  She expresses surprise and I explain about the bath, but she says, ‘I’m glad it’s you actually, Laura.’

  Oh God, I’ll die if she wants to ask me again if I trust my husband. But no, she says, ‘Do you think Melissa is all right? I’m worried about her.’

  ‘She’ll come to no harm here among the heathens, Hella.’

  ‘Oh, ha ha! No, I meant – she’s more vulnerable than you think. She can’t hear, can she?’

  With your foghorn voice, nearly.

  ‘Remember, Laura, she’s not that long divorced. She and Jay were together for such a long time, I worry how she’s coping.’

  ‘She’s fine. She’s just been helping my stepson with a job application.’

  ‘She’s so amazing with children. It was so devastating that she and Jay couldn’t have them.’