My Perfect Sister Read online

  my

  perfect

  sister

  PENNY BATCHELOR

  Published by RedDoor

  www.reddoorpress.co.uk

  © 2020 Penny Batchelor

  The right of Penny Batchelor to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Cover design: Emily Courdelle

  Typesetting: Jen Parker, Fuzzy Flamingo

  For the Batchelor gang: Mum, Dad, Paul, Anna, Tom and Nic; and my husband Chris

  Contents

  Thursday 4th May 1989. 4.15 p.m.

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Thursday 4th May 1989. 8.00 a.m.

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Thursday 4th May 1989. 8.10 p.m.

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  Thursday 4th May 1989. 8.50 a.m.

  17

  18

  19

  20

  Thursday 4th May 1989. 11.30 a.m.

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  Thursday 4th May 1989. 1.30 p.m.

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Thursday 4th May 1989. 4.16 p.m.

  Questions for Book Clubs

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Thursday 4th May 1989. 4.15 p.m.

  Out in the garden Annie enjoyed the feel of the sun on her skin in the dappled afternoon sunlight, relishing casting off her red gingham dress and lying down on the grass in the back garden playing horizontal starfish. The grass tickled her as she moved her legs and arms sideways in tandem, pretending she was floating in the sea; a feared creature of the big, wide ocean. Free to float away to a desert island.

  The school day was over. Above her head a cabbage white butterfly flapped its wings, teasing her by flying back and forth almost rhythmically towards her nose but never quite trusting to land. Annie giggled with delight and opened her mouth, pretending to swallow the butterfly in one. It flew away towards the fence separating their garden from next door and disappeared into the pink blossom on a tree.

  Annie bathed in the warmth of the sun against her skin and started to doze, dreaming about chocolate ice cream. Perhaps her mummy would take her to the corner shop to buy one when she got out of bed. All would be well with the world.

  Suddenly a shadow covered the sun, cooling her face, causing her to wake up and sit bolt upright.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, startled. ‘It’s you.’

  1

  2014

  I stand in my childhood bedroom, though little remains of what it used to be. On the walls where in my teenage years I had Blu-Tacked Nirvana and Oasis posters there’s now pale blue wallpaper with a small, white, peony pattern. The old cider-stained taupe carpet has gone, replaced by a dark blue plush version. Instead of my vanity table placed against the side wall there’s a modern sewing machine on a stand, surrounded by neat, stacked plastic boxes containing threads and fabric. Lots of flowers and pink. Everything has a place and is rigidly in it.

  The pencil marks on the door frame recording my height over the years have been emulsioned over. A white flat-pack wardrobe stands where my old wooden one used to be. Inside are empty hangers, the kind bought in a multipack, not plastic ones taken from high street shops on a Saturday afternoon shopping trip. No cast-off underwear destined for the laundry lounges on the floor. The childhood books I left behind are long gone, as is the small bookcase. Only the single bed remains as a remnant from what the room once was to testify that I slept here. Even that, pushed up against the back wall instead of jutting out into the room, is covered in a patchwork quilt no doubt sewn by my mother to show her crafting skills off to guests.

  If she ever has any.

  This is not my room anymore; it’s the spare bedroom. In fact, it’s as if I never was here, as if I didn’t exist.

  On the contrary, it is Gemma who probably doesn’t exist, but you wouldn’t know it by looking in ‘her’ room. I shut the spare room door behind me and push open the brown door with a pottery multi-coloured ‘Gemma’ sign still stuck on it. Behind that door is a lost world, a museum piece from a distant decade that should be covered Miss Haversham-style in dust and cobwebs but is as spick and span as if it were cleaned yesterday.

  No doubt it was.

  Presents lie on the floor next to the bed where her shoe collection used to be – one for each birthday and Christmas she has been gone. For goodness’ sake. Does Mother think Gemma is going to come back from the dead and open them?

  Her pop posters still line the walls, her lipsticks, mascara and eyeliner neatly sit on the dressing table below its mirror (I hate to think of the bacteria on them), and from the back of her dressing table chair hangs her mini-rucksack, the black one she took out with her when meeting her friends. Scruffy, the mangy fluffy dog Mother said Gemma was given as a baby, guards her pillow. It’s the same bed linen, purple with white swirls that she once slept in, but freshly washed and ironed. This is a sanitised teenage girl’s bedroom, without the smell of perfume, freshly-washed hair, sweaty cast-off clothes or a cup of once warm coffee. Without breath. Without life.

  I look at the pinboard resting on top of the desk. There are photos pinned there, photos I haven’t seen for all those years I’ve been away. Photos from a real camera, the kind where you point, shoot and don’t know what the picture will turn out like until it comes back from the developer’s. In the middle of one faded rectangle Gemma smiles at the camera, her dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, her eyes laughing at something the photographer must have said. She is in the park, I think. The evening light dances on her cheekbones, striped pink in that eighties fashion; her cut-off T-shirt shows off a tanned midriff above a pair of pale blue ripped jeans; she’s raising her arms in the air as if to say this is mine. This is all mine.

  The other photos show a mixture of permed girls and mulleted boys in a variety of fading situations: someone’s house, the park again, and one where they wear white school shirts with fat, short ties. She smiles out from the pictures, frozen at sixteen.

  As I turn to leave I notice another picture at the bottom left-hand corner, one of my parents looking much younger, sitting on the step outside the front of this house. Mother is curled up on Father’s knee and they are smiling for the camera, their happy faces belying what I can remember from my childhood. I peer closer inquisitively then remove the pin and pull the photo away from the board. The corner of another photo had covered part of the image. I take a sharp breath when I see which part hasn’t been viewed by the world for twenty-four years. Here the colours are bright and stand out next to their muted neighbours.

  To the right of Father, a real-life gap of about twenty centimetres away, there’s a little girl with a ginger ponytail and a brown pinafore dress looking the other away, not part of this
cosy family scene. Me.

  Gemma must have taken it.

  I hear the front door close softly.

  Occasionally I think that if she weren’t already dead I’d want to kill Gemma myself.

  2

  I close the bedroom door quietly and walk to the stairs. The old swirly red and green stair carpet has gone, replaced by a dark beige industrial one, the practical kind that won’t show up the dirt. I remember as a young girl sitting on the stair third from top, rubbing my face against the carpet, half-closing my eyes and watching the red and green dance together millimetres from my eyelashes whilst a policewoman spoke to my parents in voices muted by the closed kitchen door. Every ten seconds or so loud sobs punctuated the mumbling. ‘Stay upstairs until I say so,’ my father had said, ushering me into my bedroom. Time passed, was it minutes or hours? A minute can feel like millennia to a young child.

  I’d ventured as far as the stairs but no further, as if there was an invisible barrier holding me back, fixing my eyes on the carpet pattern. There I’d stayed until Father came to get me and told me I had to have an early night. You see, that’s what I remember from my childhood, not picnics, birthday parties or trips to the park but the police coming round when my sister didn’t return home and the pervading shadow it cast everywhere. Except that shadow, that gloom, that tiptoeing around death never left. I did instead.

  When I walked out of the red front door for the last time I may have lived on this planet for a month longer than Gemma ever did. I left at soon as the bell had rung on my final day at school and didn’t come back, ever, to this house.

  I returned from Leeds over a decade later to see my father in hospital after his stroke, and although she had left the message on my mobile to let me know which hospital he was in I hovered in the darkest recess of the corridor until my mother had left. A dying man’s bedside isn’t the place for a row, or more likely the silent treatment. My mother is more passive-aggressive than the dramatic argumentative type.

  The smell of the disinfectant stuck with me, pinning itself to my recollection of the day. Whenever there’s that scent in the air I think of my decaying father. He couldn’t talk well but squeezed my hand and a tear ran down his cheek; he then pulled on my arm, gesturing that he wanted to tell me something. I bent down to his level, so close that I could feel his shallow breaths on my ear.

  ‘Forgive your mum,’ he said. Thirty seconds passed whilst he drew upon some more energy to speak his final words to me. ‘She loves you, she just couldn’t show it. Look after her when I’m gone. Please.’

  I smiled at him, a wide smile that didn’t stretch to my eyes, and nodded – a panacea for the dying. Like hell I’d keep my fake promise. His last words to me were about her, not some words of love and wisdom for me. He’d been the buffer between me and her, but even on his deathbed he took her side. What about me, I wanted to scream. What about me?

  Nine days later I went to the church funeral but skipped the pub buffet and reminiscences about what a decent bloke he was by old colleagues, neighbours and those who wanted a free lunch. Instead I went home, got drunk and remembered Father in my own way as the quiet, smallish man who tried, but never quite hard enough. Did I love him? I think so. But I can’t say that his passing made much of a difference to my life, it now being so far removed from the bad old days.

  And yet, despite all my remonstrances, here I am at 22 Greville Road, the place I’d swore I’d never return to.

  With great sadness and faint hope I pat my back jeans pocket where my mobile is. It hasn’t vibrated and there’s still no text or voice message from Shaun begging me to come home. Or rather back to his home – the one he asked me to leave in no uncertain terms after what I did, the situation he couldn’t understand and I won’t bring myself to think about.

  Greville Road is now the only semblance of a home I have left.

  That’s how low I’ve sunk.

  I walk down the stairs, steadying myself for the inevitable moment when I’ll come face to face with my mother for the first time in, how long? I’ve lost count. In fact, I never bothered to start counting: far away from here, living a different life, I didn’t have to think about facing up to what I’d spent so long running away from, being the left over one, the daughter who was still around, a stark reminder to them that their wonderful, beautiful, preferred Gemma was not. How could I possibly ever live up to the memory of a dead saint?

  My childhood key, the bronze one with the stripy plastic cover at the top ‘to show you this is the key to home,’ Father had said, still worked and when I arrived she was out. So they hadn’t changed the locks, but then that was probably nothing to do with me. Mother will have kept the locks the same just in case Gemma turns up with her key, a bunch of flowers, a husband, family and a dashing tale to tell about what she’s been up to since that summer day when she never came home.

  Downstairs now, I walk into the kitchen, which is still the same and looking none the better for it. Mother is standing at the sink with her back to me making a cup of tea. The noise of the kettle may have covered my footsteps.

  ‘Hi,’ I say a bit louder than necessary, steeling myself. Why am I nervous? Should I have agreed to come here at all?

  She turns around, balancing a tea bag on the end of a teaspoon. If this had been another situation it would have almost been comic.

  ‘Oh Annie…’ she says, her words tailoring off to a soft silence. The first thing I notice is that her knitted cardigan is hanging off her once plump frame in swathes. She looks like a child dressing up in adults’ clothes. She is pulling the edges of her right sleeve with her left hand: fidgeting, twisting, rubbing. Her eyes, surrounded by a panda bear’s black rings, seem to have sunk into her skull, whilst her crumpled skin is stark white, almost translucent, criss-crossed by red, angry veins in a spider’s web fashion. Her once golden-brown hair is now grey and cropped shortly to her head. She is gaunt, haggard and shrivelled.

  I gasp in shock, and then cough to try to cover up my initial bad-mannered reaction. I hadn’t expected it to be true, I’d assumed that her wheedling pleas were just a manipulative pretence to guilt trip me into returning and the reason I could give for heeding them.

  Mother really did have cancer. Or rather cancer had eaten her up and was preparing to spit her out, used and desiccated, into the grave.

  3

  What do you say to a woman you haven’t seen in well over a decade and now appears to be dying in front of your eyes? My answer is biscuits. I ask mother if she has any to go with the tea and jump up to the kettle to busy myself making my own cup. Whilst the steam rises from the kettle, I wash up the few dirty plates lying in tepid water in the sink. Even the crockery with its chintz pattern, now amazingly back in fashion, is the same I ate and drank from as a child and, although slightly chipped, it has worn better than mother has.

  ‘There’s a packet of digestives in the tin,’ she informs me. I don’t have to ask where the tin is; it’s to the left of the bread bin in the same place as it was in my childhood. I take a couple and carry my hot cup of tea. It is only when I sit down opposite Mother that I notice the mug I picked up from the draining board. It is white with slight enamel cracks and the words ‘Gemma’s mug’ written in pink on the side. I clench my fingers around the handle until they turn white.

  ‘Thank you for coming. I didn’t know whether you would. I am glad you did.’ Mother’s eyes stare at me then dart away as if scorched.

  I pause for just a bit longer than is natural to think of something to say. ‘That’s OK. What’s, um, your diagnosis?’ I put the mug down on the table a little too heavily and a small pool of brown liquid splashes on to the table. At home I would have left it but here instinct tells me to leap up and fetch a piece of kitchen roll to mop it up with in case it leaves a stain.

  ‘Ahem.’ She coughs and gestures towards the cork mat covered with a view of the Lake District. I duly oblige and cover Coniston Water up with the bottom of Gemma’s mug.

  S
he gets straight to the point but doesn’t look me in the eye when she says, ‘I have stage three kidney cancer and a secondary tumour that I need chemotherapy for. The doctor removed the kidney in an operation.’

  What do you say to that?

  She takes another sip of her tea before carrying on. ‘Aunty Lena, I mean Elaine, has been taking me to the hospital for treatment but her Den isn’t so well now and she can’t always spare the time.’

  ‘What about Reg? Does he still live next door?’ Reg, his wife and son who is a few years older than me lived on the other side of our semi-detached house when I was a child. He had been a kind man, if a little too fond of foot-stomping country music that penetrated through our dividing wall.

  Mother pulls her cardigan more tightly around her. ‘Reg is drunk most days. I doubt he’s able to drive a car and if he was I wouldn’t get in it.’ She is very disapproving of alcohol is my mother, only stooping to sipping a gin and tonic at Christmas and birthdays. At least she can’t blame the cancer on booze.

  ‘Karen?’

  ‘She left him about ten years ago. Reg is on his own now.’

  I know what I ought to say. ‘Well I’ve got my car. I can take you to the hospital. When is your next appointment?’

  ‘In a couple of days’ time. Thank you.’ She places a wizened hand on top of mine and it takes all my forbearance not to snatch it away. Mother doesn’t do affection, I barely remember any hugs and kisses, caresses or tenderness. Even when I was a little girl and she washed my hair she’d brush it through not with warmth but with ruthless efficiency. I’d wail as she pulled out the knots. When I turned six she took me to the hairdresser and told her to cut it short in a practical, no-nonsense style. I cried for days at the loss of my bunches.

  The last time I lived in this house mother spent most of her time lying down in her blacked-out bedroom, free from the sunshine, life’s responsibilities and me. Breakfast was Father’s job. She might deign us with her presence after school, but the chip shop and the pizza takeaway did jolly good business from our house on the days she stayed upstairs until I learned how to cook pasta and stir fry for Father and me. We never knew which days those would be.