‘Oooh but you’ll make me a cup of tea first, won’t you? I’ve got a splitting headache and my back is killing me.’ She writhed on the crumpled sheets. ‘Must have been in a weird position.’
The word
position
lodged in my brain next to the image of June and Hugh trying out every illustration in the
Kama Sutra.
‘It’s your own bloody fault you feel this way, you can make your own bloody tea.’
‘Fine.’ She stood and flounced down the stairs.
I looked at my computer screen, which was telling me hitherto unknown feelings about my best friend, and then I looked around my unbearably messy spare room. Hours of putting up with my sister’s clutter and listening for sex sounds made me feel claustrophobic in my own life. I pushed back the chair, which caught on a pair of tights on the floor, and checked the weather out the window. It was, typically, raining; that greasy, cold autumn rain that washed nothing clean.
I was digging in my closet in my room for my mac when I heard a noise behind me. I turned around to catch June in the act of sprawling over my neatly made bed, her high heels resting on my pale green duvet cover.
‘June, I take off my shoes before I lie on my bed,’ I said through gritted teeth.
‘I’m sure you do. You’re so sensible.’ From her, it sounded like an insult. ‘Hugh and I were just talking about it.’
‘Hmm. Yes. I’m sure that’s what you and Hugh did all night together. Talked. About me.’ I ripped my mac off the hanger.
‘We did, actually. He said—’
‘Nothing you two talked about could possibly be of any interest to me. And can you get your feet off my bed?’
June shimmied over so that the bottoms of her feet were barely dangling over the edge of the bed. ‘God, Ellie, why are you being such a priss? You sound exactly like Mum. Is this how she taught you to act?’
‘She mostly taught me how not to act like you.’ I pushed my arms into the mac, making my jumper bunch up at the elbows.
June snorted. ‘Huh. Not surprising. What did she say?’ Her voice raised from its usual husky sexiness into an imitation of Mum’s ‘ “June’s a
slut
, June’s a
waste,
June’s a
problem
. Let’s clean the house together, what fun!” I bet you both had a brilliant time slagging me off while I was away having a life of my own, far away from that little perfect house and the little perfect family.’
‘Mum never said that.’ Not in so many words, anyway. ‘And if you’d ever bothered to be around, you’d know that I always defended you.’
‘Why would I want to be around? Dad had some life in him at least, but once he popped his clogs there was only Sheila and her little clone.’
She rolled over, incidentally dragging her shoes across my duvet cover again, picked up from my bedside table the mug of tea she’d made, and drank from it. When she put it back down, tea slopped over the edge and spotted on my pillow.
A Sheila clone. Left at home, boring and neat and predictable.
I grabbed the pillow and began stripping off the case before the tea soaked through. ‘If you’re going to get tea everywhere, at least do it someplace you’ve already messed up.’
I hated the way I sounded, like an uptight cow.
‘And Dad didn’t “pop his clogs”,’ I said. ‘He died. But you weren’t there for that, either.’
The force of my anger surprised me, but I kept on going, right over that precipice. ‘All I ever wanted was for you to be a proper sister. Is that so hard? Somebody you share your life with, somebody you care about? Or can you even care about anybody? Is that too much hassle for you?’
June sat up. ‘I’m not your fucking sister,’ she said, and she picked up her tea and stomped out of the room.
I stood there, pillowcase in hand, jumper bunched up underneath my mac, shocked at what I’d said. I’d not realised how angry I’d been with her, about all those years, till it had poured out of my mouth.
And then I finally heard what she’d said.
I dropped the pillowcase and ran the short distance across my bedroom and over the landing to the spare room. She’d closed the door but I opened it. June was sprawled on the couch, her skirt and hair artfully disarranged, her face obscured by her mug of tea.
‘What do you mean you’re not my sister?’
She shrugged and kept on drinking.
I stepped into the room. ‘Were you adopted?’ That could explain the tension between her and Sheila, the big age gap, and why she and I were so different. But we had the same eye colour, the same hair colour.
‘No,’ she said, and put down her mug, empty. ‘Listen, forget I ever said anything, okay?’ She stood and came towards the door, but I didn’t get out of her way.
‘I want to know what you were talking about.’
‘It’s not important, doll.’
‘I think it is.’
In her heels, she was as tall as I was. I met her eyes and looked at her steadily. I think it was probably the first time I had ever done that. Close up, I could see that her smudged mascara had collected in the lines around her eyes.
‘Why did you say you weren’t my sister?’
‘I said I wasn’t your
fucking
sister,’ she said, and she lifted her chin. ‘Because I’m your fucking mother.’
I sank down on to the couch, staring at her.
‘You what?’
‘I’m your mother. I got pregnant with you, I carried you for nine months, I gave birth to you. You’re my daughter.
Capice?
’ She pressed her hand to her forehead. ‘God, have I got a hangover.’
I tried hard to make sense of this. ‘But you were only a kid when I was born.’
‘I was thirteen when I got up the duff, and fourteen when I had you. I was going to have you adopted, but Mum and Dad said they’d keep you.’ Now that she’d dropped her bombshell, June looked almost as if she were enjoying this. ‘Whew. You know, it sort of feels good to tell the truth after all this time.’
‘You lied to me. You all lied to me. For my whole life.’
June shrugged. ‘Well, it was better for you. I don’t have a maternal bone in my body, darling.’ She sat down at my desk and began rolling a fag.
I felt numb. ‘Who’s my father?’
‘I don’t remember. Some bloke or other. It doesn’t matter anyway, you’re Sheila’s through and through. Might as well have skipped my generation altogether.’ She lit up.
I breathed her cigarette smoke. My
mother
’s cigarette smoke.
‘There,’ she said. ‘I’ve shared something with you. Do you feel better now?’
‘I don’t know what I feel.’
‘Well, I feel bloody terrible. I’m hung over and I need to sleep.’ She took a last long drag of her cigarette, stubbed it out in one of my bowls, and stretched out on the bed, ignoring that I was sitting on the bottom of it. She closed her eyes.
‘We need to talk about this,’ I said.
‘Later, doll,’ she mumbled and pulled the sheet over her head. ‘Close the door behind you, will you?’
‘June, talk to me.’
She didn’t move or make a sound.
‘June.’
I prodded her on the shoulder, but she only pulled the sheet tighter over her.
It was impossible to get June to do anything she didn’t want to do. I gave up, went downstairs, and picked up the phone.
Mum had recently bought a phone that had caller display on it so when she answered she started immediately talking to me. ‘Oh, Ellie, you can’t imagine the problems I’m having with this pattern. I dropped a stitch, it was the tiniest little one, and now nothing will come right, it’s all wonky.’
I didn’t sound like her. Not really. Did I? I certainly never talked about knitting.
I interrupted her. ‘Mum? I need to ask you a question.’
‘Of course, darling.’
I didn’t know how to put it. ‘Uh, you know June’s here? And we had an argument this morning, and she’s hung over, and you know she’ll say anything when she thinks she’s cornered, any old silly thing to get your goat, but the thing is she says she’s actually not my sister, because she’s my mother.’
Sheila was silent. This was not a good sign, so I carried on.
‘She says she got pregnant when she was thirteen, but that can’t be true, can it? I mean you couldn’t all have kept that secret from me all my life? Not without me even suspecting anything, right?’
‘I wondered when she’d tell you.’
Her quiet words confirmed everything.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t
Dad
?’
‘Well, it wouldn’t have done you much good to know, would it?’
‘That’s not the point.’
She sighed. ‘Ellie, I’ll come down and see you. How about Thursday - no, wait, I’ve got the parish council and there’s that whole debate over the cake-sale disaster. What are you doing at the weekend?’
Just what I needed, a June and Sheila ticking time bomb in my house while I tried to figure out who I should be buying a card for on Mother’s Day. And now I knew why all those arguments had taken place behind closed doors or after I was supposed to be in bed: they were trying to stop me from discovering the secret.
‘I’m working at the pub,’ I said. ‘I won’t have any time this weekend.’
‘Monday, then? I can cancel my book club and get a train.’
‘Mu—’ I stopped myself before the old, false name came out. ‘I’m fine. You don’t have to come down.’
‘But I want to.’
‘Well, I don’t want you to. I’m okay. Really. I’ve got to go now, I’m due at the Mouse and Duck. Talk to you soon. Bye.’
It was only after I’d hung up the phone that I looked down at my left hand and saw I’d dug crescent moons into my palm with my nails.
11
‘Your sister is your mother?’
I nodded, and took another bite of mushroom omelette. Hugh could certainly goggle when he had the right thing to goggle over, I reflected.
When I’d knocked on his door an hour earlier, Hugh had answered it wearing his dressing gown and a scowl. He gave me a deathly stare, clearly remembering my comment the night before about where he put his dick. It took me ten minutes of begging before he agreed to let me buy him lunch.
‘But only because it’s Mr Tasty’s,’ he’d said grudgingly as he’d gone to throw on some clothes.
Mr Tasty’s was one of the few cafés in Reading that wasn’t either part of a chain or trying to be horrific-ally fake-upmarket. It had lime-green vinyl booths, chipped beige tables, and, for some reason, it served both greasy British fry-ups and Thai food. Neither cuisine was particularly good, but for years Mr Tasty’s had been the place Hugh and I went whenever we had something important to discuss with each other. Partly out of habit, partly because we knew we’d never run into anybody we knew there, because nobody ever went there except for construction workers and Reading’s few Thai expats.
Hugh poked his fork into his Pad Thai with extra chillies and peanuts, abandoned it, and went back to goggling at me.
‘She’s not old enough to be your mother.’
‘She’s thirty-nine. She had me when she was fourteen.’
Hugh appeared to be even more shocked by this information. ‘She doesn’t look thirty-nine.’
‘Obviously a life devoid of any responsibility whatsoever keeps you looking young and fresh.’
I decided I didn’t want to know what Hugh was more shaken by: the fact that June was my mother, the fact that he’d slept with my mother, or the fact that he’d slept with a woman who was nearly forty.