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My stepmother’s funeral was a quiet affair. The small churchyard clung to a slope on the edge of Larkstone village, gravestones like broken teeth, the surrounding hills of Derbyshire cloaked in a fine drizzle that seeped through the thin cloth of my coat. There were a few neighbours, a bearded man standing on his own and an older woman dressed in black silk. I felt as though I should know her. I tilted my head. Her husband stood behind with an umbrella slick with rain and she turned away from me.
And there was my sister, Steph, in her red dress. She had bowed her head too and I could no longer see her face. The wind blew my hair over my eyes, tangling against the wet on my cheek. I let my eyelids close.
I flinched as that first clump of earth hit the coffin below.
I tried to concentrate on the vicar’s words, his voice. I took a peek. He held his prayer book with hands that were open and expressive. His skin was smooth and brown and he spoke with a clear, cultured accent. Not a local. I wondered then what the village thought of him. I wanted to smile at him, but he was too engrossed in the service. As I should have been.
‘Let us commend Elizabeth Crowther to the mercy of God, our maker and …’
Crowther. It still hurt.My stepmother had taken my father’s name, my mother’s name, along with everything else.
‘… we now commit her body to the ground: earth to earth …’
Another clod of black sodden earth hit the coffin. I reached forward and opened my hand.
‘… in sure and certain hope …’
What hope? My lips tightened. I was not, had never been, a believer.
‘… To him be glory for ever.’
More earth tumbled down into the grave. The vicar lowered his head again, we all did, as he intoned a prayer. I kept my eyes open. It was cold, the air spiced with rotting leaves and autumn smoke. A single bee struggled against the wind to land on the cellophaned flowers at our feet. It looked so out of place, late in the year. I watched it hover, a dust of yellow pollen clustered under its belly, tiny feet dangling beneath, oblivious to the drama playing out above.
I risked another look at my sister. I felt a kindling of old fear. She lifted her head and our eyes met and I drew a staggered breath.
Steph.
The back room of the pub was half empty, the walls a dank musty brown, the ceilings punctuated by low beams riddled with defunct woodworm holes. Decorative tankards hung like dead starlings from their hooks and beneath, a cold buffet was laid out on white linen with the usual egg mayonnaise sandwiches and hollowed-out vol-au-vents. An elderly neighbour cruised down the table with its foil trays, prodding this and that as she loaded up her plate.
My sister kept her distance, nibbling on a sandwich, talking to the vicar. A stack of blackened logs in the grate behind them spat and hissed without any sign of a flame. Her blue eyes fluttered across me as I stood on the other side of the room. She was waiting, I realised. Waiting to see what I would do.
I felt my chest tighten, the hands at my side clench. I thought perhaps I should forgive her, that I should be the one to go over and talk to her. Beyond the function room, I could hear the bellow of a man at the bar, the recurrent beeps of a slot machine by the entrance and the slash of rain battering the front door as it juddered open and closed again.
‘Hello,’ I said as I approached. My voice was husky and unsure.
‘Caro.’
Her voice surprised me. It had a distinctive New York drawl. The tone was gentle. If it was meant to encourage me, it had the opposite effect. I didn’t reply. I could hardly bear to meet her eyes. The vicar moved on, scarcely acknowledging me.
Then Steph put her glass down. Her body relaxed, her arms opened. I wanted to step closer, but my feet refused to move. We hugged, a loose, cautious kind of hug, her pale, flawless cheek brushing cool against my skin.
‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ I said.
‘I almost didn’t, but then I thought, why should I let her stop me? She’s gone.’ Those long vowels again, so alien to me. But then it had been many years since I’d last heard her voice. ‘And I wanted to see you. You’re my sister.’ Steph’s expression was cautious, assessing my response.
‘I … I …’ Now I was her sister?
‘I’ve seen your website, your illustrations. They look amazing!’
‘Really?’ I said. I pulled myself up, keeping my tone light and neutral.
‘Yes, really. I love The Little Urchin, with her spiky hair, her nose pressed up against the window.’
My latest book. It was a compliment. I hadn’t remembered her ever giving me a compliment, not when I was little. But Steph’s face was open and sincere. She was different to how I remembered. I wanted to believe.
‘You’re very talented, you know, I always knew you would be creative,’ she said.
‘Oh, well, um …’ Praise indeed, to hear that from my big sister.
‘I mean it. I could never do something like that.’ She smiled. Her arms waved expansively and her coat parted, another glimpse of red.
I shrugged. ‘Thank you.’
She’d cared enough to look me up, when had she done that? It was unexpected. I was suddenly conscious that I knew very little about her, what she did for a living. Was she married? Did she have children? I didn’t even know that. She was seven years older than me and it was quite possible that she had a family of her own by now. I eyed her flat stomach, the clothes. No, I thought, no children. Somehow, I couldn’t see her with children.
A movement caught at the corner of my eye, the curtains at one of the windows flapping in a draught from a broken pane.
‘Can we go somewhere else?’ Steph’s voice dropped. ‘Anywhere you like, but not here.’
I swallowed. It made sense to refuse, my head screaming at me to walk away. It was almost twenty years since she’d left home, when I was nine. She’d been sixteen. We’d had no contact at all since then, despite all my attempts to stay in touch. Christmas, birthdays, they’d meant nothing. Perhaps my early cards had ended up at the wrong address.
But I wanted to. I really did.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I got a job at a hotel in London, manning reception.’
My sister’s voice was measured and quiet. I could imagine her smart and sleek behind a desk.
We’d found a café in the small town of Ashbourne a few miles away. The smell of freshly ground coffee beans and vanilla seedpods cut across the muted chatter in the room and I lifted my cup to hold its warmth against my fingers.
‘Then they offered me a job in the marketing department.’
She flicked her hair across her shoulders. Blonde, but no roots – it had been brown when we were young. She must have dyed it, I thought.
‘I moved to Head Office and worked my way up. Then I joined the US team. I’ve been based in New York now for six years.’
There was a pause. Her eyes travelled across my thin, gawky frame. Six years. In New York. Yet there had been so many more years when she’d been in London, in the UK. Close enough and yet so far. I didn’t reply, struggling to find a common ground.
We both took another sip from our respective drinks. The traffic beeped through the glass window, a sludge of rainwater washing onto the pavement, green and red traffic lights reflected in the puddles. Colours, I saw everything in colours.
‘And you? Where did you study?’ Steph leaned in over her cup.
‘Manchester. Art and Creative Design.’ I tucked my fingers into the palms of my hands, feeling my short nails scratch against my skin.
‘Really? I somehow thought you’d have gone as far as possible from Derbyshire.’
I bristled. Manchester was only an hour and a half from the village by car, but by bus and coach it was much longer, and you still had to get from the house at Larkstone Farm to the village bus stop. Manchester had seemed a million miles away. The bustling big city, new people, a whole new life.
‘Did you enjoy it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I did. The course was brilliant.’
I side-stepped the truth: my self-imposed isolation; my lack of confidence; my distant manner.
‘I’m glad.’ Steph stretched out the fingers of her hand, wriggling each one before folding them back into her palm.
There was another silence.
‘And now you’re in London. Bet it’s nice being self-employed, working whenever you want.’ She smiled encouragingly.
‘Hmmm, depends how you look at it. There are so many other illustrators out there, vying for the same jobs for not much pay. It’s not an easy way to make a living.’
Already I was saying too much, filling the space with words, justifying my own ineptitude. Why should I feel defensive?
‘I can imagine.’ My sister nodded, sipping her coffee again. There was a soft chink as she placed the cup carefully back on its saucer. A waft of perfume made me lift my head up. I wasn’t a fan of any kind of perfume.
‘How did it happen?’ Steph’s voice broke.
I flashed a look of surprise at her. Did she even care? I scanned her face, the perfect arch of her eyebrows, the smooth forehead, no lines, as if she never frowned, or even smiled. Like a Greek statue, head turned away, poised in her indifference. Except … the voice was at odds with her face.
‘They didn’t tell me anything,’ she said.
It had been the family lawyer who’d made the call to her. I felt a pang of guilt.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t ring. But I didn’t have your address or a telephone number. It was the lawyers that tracked you down.’
They’d organised the whole thing, the funeral, the reception, much to my relief. They’d rung me too.
‘That’s alright, I understand.’ Steph watched me still, ignoring the implied criticism, waiting for an answer.
I threw a glance at the neighbouring tables, but the occupants were all too engrossed in their conversations to pay any attention to ours. I drew a breath, bringing my hand up to my head, thrusting my fingers into my hair.
‘I … that is, she … she fell,’ I said. ‘Over the banisters from the first floor. Some time during the morning, they said, though apparently she was still in her dressing gown.’
‘How could she fall over the banisters?’ Steph asked.
‘I don’t know. Some kind of accident, I was told. She was found face down on the rug in the hall below. Broken neck. Bit of a mess.’
I thought it best to stop there.
‘Ah.’ Steph hesitated. She cast her eyes to her lap, folding her napkin.
Then she reached out a hand, covering my own. ‘So, it’s only us now.’
I nodded. My eyes searched the fine cracks on the back of her hand. Expert make-up could disguise an older face, but not the hands.
‘Yes,’ I mumbled. ‘It is.’
‘I’m in London after this, for a few weeks at least, in a hotel near Tottenham Court Road.’ She drew a breath. ‘Can we start again?’
I looked up.
‘It’s been too long, I know.’ Her hand was cool over mine, her face earnest.
I held my hand still, resisting the urge to move it. I really did want to believe this different Steph. What had happened to her? I’d never understood whatever it was that had gone on between us. Or between her and Elizabeth.
Her eyes held mine. They were blue. Mine were brown. The street lights wobbled in the wet glass of the café windows, amber yellow.
Steph’s lips parted.
I nodded again. ‘Yes.’
I thought of my stepmother. I tried to picture her body lying on the hall floor. The blood smeared on her lips, pooling on the rug, her red-painted face still smiling, as if to say, as she’d often said:
‘Shall we start again, Caroline?’
CHAPTER 2 (#ub9f87679-3196-56d6-b574-aad6379c8172)
The phone rang.
‘Caro?’ It was Steph. She’d promised to ring before she left the UK. I was back home in London and hadn’t heard a thing for days and now suddenly there she was.
‘Hi.’ I could hear crackling over the phone line.
‘Fancy a curry? My treat.’
I caught my breath. ‘That sounds great. When?’
‘Tonight? We need to talk.’ She named a restaurant.
‘Sure, what time?’
‘Seven.’
‘Okay.’
I put the phone down slowly. It felt strange talking to my sister like that, as if we were friends.
We met up, Steph and I, in a curry house behind Leicester Square. We chatted about not very much, avoiding anything to do with the funeral or our childhood.
‘My office is amazing, in one of those skyscrapers overlooking Central Park. I thought I’d faint when I first looked out of the window and realised how high we were!’
I found myself following each word, each lift of an eyebrow, each smile, wondering what Steph was really saying as she talked about her work, her apartment in New York, the glamour of Fifth Avenue boutiques and constant traffic, flashing advertising boards leaching light into a sleepless city sky. Look at me, she was saying, how fabulous my life is, how lucky I am – unlike you, my little sister. That’s what she was really saying, wasn’t she? I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. I didn’t want to feel like this. I wanted Steph to be my friend, to be my sister.
It was the end of the meal when Steph finally brought it up.
‘What about the house?’ she said.
