The Forgotten Sister

by Caroline Bond

  ‘Well, they’re just normal.’ ‘Cassie-normal’, which was not, she suspected, the same as ‘Leah-normal’.

  ‘Do they treat you different?’

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  Leah flicked a burnt chip on the floor. ‘Do they treat you different to their real daughter?’

  Cassie was taken aback. Again a rush of uncertainty and suspicion swept through her. How did Leah know about Erin? Had she been there, at Subway, all along?

  ‘No.’

  Leah shoved her fries box away and, in the process, knocked over Cassie’s ice-cream. The girls watched the slow ooze of unnaturally white ice-cream, caramel and nut bits spread across the table top. Cassie righted the cup and tried to mop up the worst of it with a handful of serviettes. Leah didn’t apologise.

  Cassie risked a direct request of her own. ‘Leah, I want you to tell me about our mum.’

  ‘What do you wanna know?’ So finally they were getting round to it.

  ‘What was she like?’

  Leah screwed up her face, a parody of thinking. ‘Like?’ She was in no rush to supply details.

  ‘Yes, what was she like?’

  Leah shrugged. ‘She was a piss-head.’ She took pleasure in seeing Cassidie flinch.

  But Cassie was stronger than Leah was giving her credit for. ‘I know that. But I want to know what living with her was like. What sort of mum was she?’

  ‘A crap one.’ Leah leant back against the rigid moulded seat and stared Cassidie down, or at least tried to.

  Cassie wasn’t going to give up without a fight. ‘Leah, please. You’re the only person who can tell me anything about her. All I’ve ever heard is how useless she was, how she couldn’t cope, about her drinking and her mental-health problems, but nothing about her as a person. You remember her. You’re the only one who can help me. I want to know.’

  ‘Oh, I remember her all right.’ Leah said.

  ‘So, please, tell me. Tell me anything, even if it’s something really small.’

  Leah bit the skin at the edge of her fingernail. It bled. ‘’Kay.’ There was a long pause and Cassie waited, frightened about what Leah would choose to share. The insight she got was not what she was expecting. Even Leah surprised herself by starting with a truth. ‘She liked dogs. She was forever coming home from the shops or the pub with ’em, puppies especially. She just loved puppies! Let ’em chew everything, piss on everything. She’d be all over ’em – at first; buying ’em sparkly collars, letting ’em kiss her face, coochy-cooing at ’em all the time. Then she’d get bored. Let ’em run off, or she’d give ’em away. Too much hassle. Everything was too much hassle for her, in the end.’ Cassie didn’t know what to do with this glimpse of her mother, other than feel bad: for herself, and for Leah. It was like wading into dark water, uncertain of her footing, with the current tugging and pushing at her.

  But Leah was on a roll. ‘Oh, and she liked a party. Before it got bad, it was any old excuse – anything to get her out of the shit-heap we lived in. She’d find money for a new dress easy enough, if she was off out. Get her nails done. It was always a sign that she was about to piss off: a full set of fake nails.’

  Cassie could feel her past starting to stick to her. She lowered her head and tried to breathe slowly. She hadn’t ever really thought of her birth mother as an actual person before all this started; she’d been just a blank outline drawn for her by other people. Cassie couldn’t remember her face or her voice, nothing specific about her at all, except…except there were the glimpses from her dreams, the messy fragments of affection and kindness, mixed in with the sense of isolation and threat. It was all so confusing. She didn’t know what to do with Leah’s version of their mother. There had to be more to their childhood than the sorry image of selfishness and neglect that both her parents and Leah were depicting. Hadn’t there? And Leah seemed to be deriving a cruel kind of pleasure from rubbing Cassie’s nose in the bad bits. Was that because of what had happened afterwards, because of how differently their lives had turned out? Cassie could understand it, but she didn’t want to accept what Leah was saying as gospel. The challenge was how to get beyond her bitterness and jealousy.

  Cassie looked up and fought back. ‘I remember music and someone dancing with me.’

  ‘Well, it weren’t her!’ Leah snapped. ‘She did her dancing in clubs and pubs, she wasn’t fussy – anywhere there were blokes with money in their crotch pockets. What else explains us two!’ That again was true, but she would have to watch herself; it was a fast becoming a habit, this telling-the-truth lark. She looked at Cassidie and felt a flush of irritation at the sight of her hopeful, naïve expression. ‘What did you expect? Some crap about how she loved us really. That if only things had been different, we’d ’ave been a happy little family. She was a terrible mum. She was pissed or high most of the time. There was never any food in the house. She’d disappear when it suited her, for days on end sometimes. She was nicer to the fucking dogs than to her own kids. And that was before she started letting every scumbag from a ten-mile radius doss in the house. I hope she is dead. She fucking deserves to be!’

  It was too much. The waters were too deep and Cassie was drowning. She sat, surrounded by slack-faced strangers eating chips, and cried, quietly, steadily. She wanted Leah to stop, to just shut up. Leah watched her, her face impassive.

  Out of nowhere someone intervened. ‘Are you all right, love? Is this lass bothering you?’ It was the table cleaner, a white-haired old man with a cloth in his hand.

  Leah glared at him and Cassie was tempted to say ‘Yes’ and put an end to it there and then, but there were still so many questions, so much that was unresolved. ‘No. It’s fine. Sorry. We’re fine. Honestly. Thank you.’ She wiped her eyes and forced a smile.

  Leah settled back in her uncomfortable seat, challenging him to take it any further. The old guy glanced between them and shrugged, as if to say Who knows what goes on between folk, then struggled down on one knee and wiped up the puddle of melted ice-cream. They waited in awkward silence until he’d finished and moved away.

  When he’d finally gone, Cassie said the first thing that came into her mind. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Leah blinked. ‘Wot?’

  ‘I said, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you remember it, and that it still hurts so much.’

  In response Leah made odd movement, a mixture of puffing out her chest and crossing her arms across her body, hugging herself – defiance and vulnerability in one contradictory move. ‘I’ve done okay, considering.’

  Cassie nodded and dived deeper. ‘Do you remember us being taken off her?’ Leah nodded, but didn’t elaborate. ‘Please, Leah, I need you to tell me.’

  ‘Why, what difference will it make?’ Leah honestly didn’t know.

  Both girls were silent for a while. They sat amidst the random assortment of people chewing and slurping their way through their meals. At a table nearby, a baby boy sitting in a high chair was sucking a chip. He paused when he caught Leah’s eye and beamed. To Cassie’s surprise, Leah smiled back. The smile transformed her face and gave Cassie heart.

  ‘Leah, please. I want to try and understand how it was for you.’

  ‘Okay,’ Leah relented. Sympathy-gathering time. She spooled out a little more of the tale, and watched as Cassidie lapped it up. ‘I vaguely remember some woman coming. Our mum must’ve known in advance, cos before she arrived, they cleared off. The house was quiet for the first time in ages.’

  ‘They’ – the dark shapes in the room on the left? Cassie didn’t dare interrupt the flow of Leah’s retelling by asking.

  ‘The woman wasn’t a copper. She didn’t wear a uniform, didn’t have a radio, but she asked a lot of questions. You could tell she weren’t happy with what she was seeing.’ Leah’s voice was monotone. ‘She said she’d come back. But she never did. It went back to being shit again.’ Her voice started to lift and colour, revealing shades of anger and something else, something much rawer and sadder. ‘If anythin
g, it got worse. It weren’t safe. I never knew who was downstairs. Keeping you quiet was a fucking nightmare. We were hungry a lot of the time. Who lets their kids go hungry, when there’s money for gear?’ Leah took a deep breath and got herself back on track; she was supposed to be convincing Cassidie, not seeking counselling. ‘Then the police raided – in the middle of the night. They came in mob-handed. There was a lot of shouting and torches. I remember the noise they made, it sounded like thunder coming up the stairs. You were petrified, crying and carrying on. She kicked off, of course, started screaming and shouting, saying how much she loved us – that they couldn’t just take us away from her. But they did. In a cop-car. We never saw her agen. There was a night or two somewhere – I don’t remember where – then we got sent to Jane’s. We had nowt with us. Just each other.’ It was a good place to stop.

  Cassie felt a shiver inside her chest. The thought of those two little girls, clinging onto each other, stripped of all the certainties of safety and love, was awful. Instinctively she felt the urge to reach out and touch Leah, but almost as if she’d anticipated it, Leah shoved her hands deep into her pockets. She took out her phone and checked the time. The screen was smashed, a spider’s web of cracks. ‘Shit! I’m gonna have to get going.’

  Cassie wanted her to stay, but didn’t know how to make her.

  They stood up and walked out together.

  Hitting the busy station concourse was a shock. The restless tide of people and activity was disorientating. Leah turned towards the exits. ‘I’m this way.’

  Cassie was still holding onto the image of Leah as a small child, abandoned first by their birth mother, then by her own parents. She wanted – needed – to say ‘sorry’ somehow. The problem with the council: she hadn’t even asked. ‘Leah, did you get it sorted? Your rent, the deposit thing?’

  Leah paused. Bingo! ‘Nah. They’re claiming I owe them some bond, or summat. Said it was in the contract.’ She kept her face turned away. ‘They’re just gonna have to wait. I ain’t got that kind of cash.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  Leah stopped walking and turned round.

  ‘How much is it?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘I’d like to,’ Cassie insisted.

  Leah looked her in the eye. ‘Two hundred pounds.’

  Cassie didn’t blink. She looked round, spotted a cash machine at the far side of the station and set off towards it. Leah followed in her wake. Within a few minutes Cassie was pulling a wodge of twenties out of the machine. She folded them in half and passed them to Leah. ‘Take it. Please. I want to help.’

  Leah mumbled, ‘Thanks’ and shoved the money away inside her jacket.

  ‘I’ll see you soon, then?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘Yeah. Soon.’ Leah turned and walked away a few steps, then she stopped. ‘I’ve gotta pick something up for Naz, in town. You can come with me – if you want to?’

  Cassie was surprised and touched to be asked. ‘Yeah. That’d be good.’ She fell into step with Leah as they weaved their way out of the busy concourse.

  Chapter 34

  SINCE THEIR expedition through the packed streets of Manchester, Cassie had heard nothing from Leah, which was strange because, against the odds, they’d had a good time.

  After Leah had eventually found the right shop – some sort of mobile repair place – and collected the package for Naz – something small and insignificant-looking – they’d gone for a wander, shopping without buying. The assistants looking at them with wary suspicion had been new, for Cassie, but it had added an interesting edge of hysteria to the experience. Leah had revealed a cruel but accurate eye. She’d mercilessly mocked their very different tastes, deliberately picking out clothes that she knew full well wouldn’t suit Cassie; and they’d had a good time poring over the bargain baskets at the makeup counters. It had been kind of fun, despite the ever-present element of ridicule. But since they’d said goodbye at Piccadilly, there’d been nothing. Cassie found herself checking her phone incessantly.

  ‘Will you please put that away?’ Her dad’s voice was tight with forced politeness. She pushed her phone away from her plate, all of three centimetres. ‘I said “away”.’

  His pissy tone made her seethe. Her mum was no better, her face a picture of concerned disapproval. Even Erin, with her tense shoulders and watchful eyes, was irritating. In that moment Cassie hated it all: the home-cooked meal, the jug of iced water, even the stupid, expensive pepper mill that her dad had an embarrassing habit of grinding with an affected flourish, like waiter in an Italian restaurant. It was all so civilised. Who ate like this any more? She hated them for their pretensions and their fake niceness. They had no idea, any of them. None at all. They were so sealed off from real life, so bloody comfortable and smug.

  And it was a sham.

  Because they were liars. Flat-out liars. Cassie knew that now. All this time with not so much as a hint that she had a sister. The level of deception was unbelievable. They’d written Leah out of Cassie’s history so completely, and so effectively, that she had no memory of her. How could they do such a monstrous thing? Cassie couldn’t conceive of a justifiable reason. None. She was itching to call them out on it, shame them, here and now, in front of Erin, as they sat around the dining table pretending to be nice, civilised, loving parents. But Leah’s warning stopped her. Leah didn’t strike Cassie as the kind of person to make empty threats. If she broke her promise, Leah would disappear. Cassie couldn’t bear the thought of that.

  Tom scraped his knife across his plate in pursuit of a piece of chicken, and Cassie wanted to snatch it off him and fling it across the room. The knowledge of their bare-faced dishonesty burnt inside her. They’d been prepared to let her think she was alone in the world, because it suited them. She couldn’t stand being in the same room as them. ‘I’ve had enough.’ She put her cutlery down haphazardly, deliberately.

  They all looked at her. Her mum questioning, her dad annoyed, her sister pained. Tom cracked first. ‘You’ve barely touched your dinner. And besides, we haven’t finished.’

  Cassie turned towards him and announced, ‘Well, I have.’ As she picked up her phone, it buzzed. In defiance of her father, she checked to see who the message was from, then opened it and read it.

  ‘Cassie!’ Tom warned. He held his voice steady. ‘I’d like you to do as asked, please. Your mum has cooked a nice meal for us all, so the least you can do is have the common courtesy to eat some of it.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Fine,’ Tom said through gritted teeth, ‘but I’d appreciate it if you could stay at the table until we finish ours.’

  Cassie caught a look pass between Grace and Tom, but her mother did not argue with her dad’s sudden swerve into Victorian parenting. There followed another five minutes of excruciating chewing and scraping. Cassie didn’t eat another bite. She sat with her arms folded, watching them. The second Tom put down his knife and fork, Cassie made a move – Erin still had half her dinner left, Grace likewise.

  ‘Sit down.’ Tom’s patience stretched and pinged. Grace’s hands fluttered to her throat.

  Erin quickly pushed her plate aside. ‘It’s okay. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘I said, “Sit down!”’ Tom repeated.

  ‘Please, Tom. Let her go.’ Grace’s voice wavered slightly. Cassie was up, out of her seat and across the room in a flash.

  ‘She has no respect for anything any more.’ Tom’s accusation hung in the air as she slammed out of the front door.

  After Cassie’s abrupt departure, the energy in the room plummeted, but not the tension. Erin looked at her mum, who nodded, thereby releasing her from her obligation to stay and try and make things better. Grace was worried that Erin’s efforts to hold them all together were becoming too much for her; their youngest daughter was looking increasingly tight-wound and unhappy. It was heartbreaking that in failing to deal with Cassie, they were also failing to protect Erin.

  It was the rapidi
ty with which their family was disintegrating that shocked Grace. Only a few weeks ago they’d been okay, more than okay – they’d been happy, normal, settled. Now nothing felt right. And Cassie was blocking them, refusing to talk to them about the impasse they’d reached. Grace and Tom had both tried, but Cassie simply refused to discuss it. Their relationship seemed to have fallen apart. Yet Grace could feel the roar of emotions surging and pulsing through her daughter. There would be no peace for anyone until all that anger and grief either subsided or exploded.

  Tom slumped in his seat. ‘Sorry. I know we’re supposed to be cutting her some slack at the moment, but it drives me nuts when she’s that rude.’ His voice sounded tired.

  Grace felt relieved that at least Tom was back on an even keel. ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s like she’s deliberately provoking us…provoking me,’ he corrected himself.

  ‘I don’t think it’s aimed specifically at you. I think she’s angry because she’s frustrated.’ Grace knew she was stating the obvious.

  ‘I know, but how long is it going to go on for? And it’s getting worse. She’s getting worse.’ Tom was right, but Grace didn’t want to agree with him. ‘It’s like she’s a different kid.’ The one they thought they had banished, all those years ago.

  ‘She’s not a kid any more,’ Grace observed.

  ‘No,’ Tom sighed, sadly.

  They sat at the abandoned table, cast adrift, unable to negotiate the huge gulf between the daughter of their memories and the furious young woman that Cassie had become.

  Chapter 35

  NAZ WAS furious. Leah knew it the moment he came into the bedroom. She shrank against the wall, pulling the duvet up for protection. He sat down on the bed, on her side, very close, his hands hanging down, both fists clenched.

  ‘Is there something you wanna tell me, Leah?’

  No. There was nothing she wanted to tell him, but she knew what he was getting at. Cassidie! It had to be Cassidie. She was the only secret Leah had, and the only one he wanted.