It’s only when Daisy asks me what it’s like having a vicar for a dad that I get a bit uncomfortable.
‘Oh. I dunno. Normal, I suppose.’
‘Really? Do you have to, like, pray all the time? Go to church every day?’
‘It’s a bit like that. But sometimes we don’t go.’ I don’t tell them we hide under our beds and play the invisible game. Thank God Samara changes the subject.
‘Craig fancies you.’
My insides explode. He’s definitely the coolest boy in the year. And he’s good looking. Really.
‘How do you know?’ I try not to look bothered but I can feel I’m blushing. I’ll have to get a handle on that.
‘He said you were cute.’
Hmm. I’m not sure if that’s good enough. What exactly does cute mean? Cute like a puppy or a kitten?
Daisy looks annoyed. ‘He never has a girlfriend anyway, so, you know, don’t get your hopes up.’
‘Oh, OK.’
She changes the subject. ‘What was it like being home-schooled anyway? Isn’t that really weird?’
‘Yeah, it got a bit dull. Just me and Rebecca and Mum.’
‘I thought you met up with all the other home-school people? That’s what my cousin did. She had loads of mates.’
‘Oh yeah, we did that. Course.’ There will have to be a lot of lies told, I realize, and I’ll have to be careful what I say.
‘So what do you think of college, then?’
‘It’s good. Yeah, I think I’ll like it. Everyone’s really nice.’
‘Yeah, the teachers are OK. Your sister looked a bit gutted though when you left her on her own. She could have come along.’
‘No, I don’t think so, she wouldn’t want to.’ No way am I going to have Rebecca cramping my style. Being a twin is boring and Rebecca is extra dull.
‘So, are you gonna come to the pub on Friday, then?’
‘Maybe, I’ll see.’
‘You should. Craig’ll be there,’ Samara says.
I definitely have to go. It’s just a question of getting out.
When I eventually get home Rebecca has covered for me so I ignore my parents’ suspicious glances and act like I’ve done nothing wrong. I’d scraped all the nail varnish off as I walked home, leaving a flaky little trail behind me, like that horrible story Granny read to us a couple of times. It was good when the girl shoved the witch in the oven though, Reb and I liked that bit.
It’s a prayer evening tonight and there’s no avoiding going. Believe me, I’ve tried. We sit in the freezing cold church hall and shiver. Roderick, my father, claims there are never enough funds to heat the place properly. I look at the others. They’re a tragic bunch; a few old dears and some of his fan club, who’ve come wearing their stinky breath and greasy hair, their eyes are glazed and faraway as if someone’s just walloped them over the head with a frying pan. While I sit and despair and try not to listen to my father I think about a way of escaping on Friday night. I’ll need something new to wear and wonder about the charity bags. There might be a fresh pile of stuff to root through. I’ll have a look later when everyone’s gone to bed. I bet Daisy’s mum just takes her out shopping when she wants something new. My mother doesn’t do shopping. She doesn’t do
new, full stop. She’s sitting there now with her eyes screwed shut and her head bowed, wearing clothes that look like they were meant for an old lady. It’s pretty embarrassing, her being such a mess. At least Rebecca and I make an effort, even if for Rebecca all that means is being clean. Sometimes when they want to punish us they lock the bathroom but usually I find a way. There’s no way I’m going round looking like I’ve dipped my head in a chip pan.
After the prayers, the chanting and the healing, Saint Roderick does his meet and greet bit. The opposite of my mother, he preens like a peacock, and I have to stand beside him, all smiles, while people compliment him on his boring old sermon. Yawn.
He grabs my arm on the walk back to the vicarage. A bit too tight.
‘Well, Hephzibah. How did you get on at the college today?’
‘Fine, thank you.’ I try to squirm away but he’s not letting go. I’ll have a bruise.
‘I hope you won’t make a habit of being late home. I wouldn’t like to think of you walking the streets in the evening all by yourself.’ His voice is stretched taut, like a tripwire.
‘It’s perfectly safe.’ Arguing with him is not a sensible thing to do but sometimes I can’t help it. And I can push things, further than Rebecca ever can anyway.
‘Next time you’re planning on staying late, you let me know. I’ll be there to collect you.’
Yeah, in your dreams
, I think. But I smile and say thanks instead. With a bit of luck he’ll be out of it on Friday and I’ll get away with sneaking off.
In bed that night I decide it’s time to build bridges with Rebecca. She’s barely spoken to me this evening and I know it’s because I went off without her. Her hurt, hangdog look is massively annoying but I’m going to pretend I haven’t noticed anything’s wrong.
‘You should have come with us today, Daisy and Samara are so nice. You’d have had fun.’
She’s still silent, her face to her wall, scrunched up in bed. She’s so thin you’d barely notice she was there.
‘What’s up? Didn’t you like college, then?’
No answer. I heave a martyred sigh and roll over on to my back, way too excited to sleep. I can’t wait to go back again tomorrow and see my new friends and Craig. Before I nod off I remember the fiver I need to find and remind myself to get up extra early and sneak a look in Mother’s purse.
After
When I woke this morning, it was still January. Still the day after the funeral. Hephzi was still dead. It was over a week now. My head was like lead on the mattress and my throat felt like I had swallowed barbed wire but I still had to get up and leave for college. The new term was starting and if I didn’t go in then I might as well give up completely. We were pretending to be normal and The Parents were watching me all the time, making sure I toed a line that was scored like a groove in glass; if I slipped or stumbled then something would shatter. They’ve always made us keep up appearances, me and Hephzi. Hephzi was always better at that too. She could smile and flutter her eyelashes and say just what they wanted to hear and people would walk away pleased to have spoken to her. She’d picked up those manners from The Father. But today I had something important to do. Just as I’d been about to go home
after the funeral, Daisy, one of Hephzibah’s newly acquired friends, had brushed past me and shoved a piece of paper at my chest. I’d read the message, torn the note into tiny pieces in the palm of my hand, then let the wind carry them safely away.
Up until September The Mother taught us at home; her specialist subject was misery and lessons of painful silence and glares masqueraded as basic Maths and English. When the Home-School Inspector came to check up on us, they put on a show of course, but mainly she stuck with what she knew best. But
when we turned sixteen Hephzi demanded that we study for our A levels. She’d been begging to go to school for years, her voice growing less meek, less mild, and when she found out about A levels from Mrs Sparks she wouldn’t shut up about them. The Father took a lot of persuading, and so did the people at the school, but for once the cards were dealt in our favour. The teachers would make arrangements and help us to catch up. It was an unusual situation but allowances could be made. I was glad. I thought we would breathe fresh air at last, away from the septic trail of The Mother’s spite. We’d been
dying inside as we trod in her footsteps, marking time. I itched to be free but, well, I wasn’t sure about the idea of college. Getting out of the house more would be good but it made me nervous. It wasn’t me I was worried about, it was my sister.
The Mother hated to think she was doing us a favour by sending us to the school in the village, where we were to enrol at the sixth-form centre. But it was too late by then, they couldn’t back out without stirring up talk. Most of the local kids were staying on there and it would be an opportunity for us to try new things, meet some of the locals, have some fun, that’s what Mrs Sparks said to me when we bumped into her on the first day we left the vicarage to walk the mile up the main road to the school. Hephzi was thinking about meeting the ones who didn’t come to church, the ones we’d never had a chance to make friends with – and that was most of them. We’d seen them though, buying chips in their lunch breaks, smoking on the swings, hanging arm in arm around the village. Hephzi had stared greedy-eyed and I’d watched her wanting them and wished I could steal the view. Then the thought slid
through me, a curl of hope, that I might find a friend there too, someone else besides Hephzi who I could talk to. But it didn’t work out like that.
Today Craig was waiting, as the note had said he would be, at the Rec. He was sitting on a swing, leaning back and looking up into cold acres of sky. The air was white, white with cold and white with ice, and I pulled my coat around me as I trod over ground that was as dead and as frozen as The Father’s heart. But for Craig, the place was empty. No one would see us. As I walked over to him, fighting the wind which drove slivers of cold into my bones, my body ached and I faltered. I could turn and go back the way I had come. I shouldn’t even be here. But Craig had spotted me and was sauntering over. I followed him into the kids’ playhouse and scrunched myself, small and tight, into a corner. He lit up a cigarette and I inched even further away. Someone had scrawled filthy words on the child-size table and I stared at them as I waited for him to
speak first; I had nothing to say. When he’d
smoked half his cigarette he spoke, his voice gruff.
‘You gonna tell us what happened, then?’
I didn’t answer. Why should I tell him anything? He wasn’t my friend.
‘Look, all I want to know is, how’d she die?’
Again, I didn’t respond. This was all he’d wanted, to interrogate me about my dead sister. What else had I been expecting? She was none of his business now. I shifted, still on my feet and ready to go. I should be at school in Physics. There’d be hell if they reported that I hadn’t been there.
‘Where’re you going?’
‘Physics.’
‘Just wait, would you?’
From outside the playhouse I stared at him then, as he sat in his beanie hat, smoking the cigarette down to the filter, his long legs somehow concertinaed into the tiny space, and wondered why Hephzi had liked him. I knew I was ill. My head ached and my throat was worse. Inside my old coat I was sweating and shivering too. As I turned away to trudge back to civilization I heard him call me a name but I didn’t respond. He was nothing to me.
By the time I reached school I knew I really wasn’t right. I slumped down in the corridor opposite the reception desk not caring who saw or stared. The bell had gone for second period and dawdling feet scuffed past me in trainers and dirty boots. I watched them go by and wondered if
someone would stop. It was a pair of heels which faltered and then drew to a halt.
‘Are you all right down there?’
I looked up through my fringe, it was lank and greasy but I didn’t care that I hadn’t cleaned myself that morning. Without Hephzi to nag me I could be as smelly as I liked.
‘It’s Rebecca, isn’t it?’
I just about managed to nod.
‘Hang on, let me get someone.’
The heels clicked away and returned with another pair of feet, this time shod in sensible lace-ups.
‘Come on, love, let’s get you up.’ Strong hands hauled me upright and I lolled in the caretaker’s arms. He manoeuvred me to a plastic chair by the reception hatch and I sat, shivering and waiting to see what would happen next. I’d never caused a drama before. In fact I usually made a point of keeping well out of the limelight. Someone was being summoned, the school nurse it turned out, and she took one look at me before she said, ‘Call the parents.’
The Mother came for me. She wasn’t allowed to drive the car and so she’d walked and it had taken ages. I’d sat there in reception, not caring who stared, and the nurse had periodically come back to check on me. She’d given me a plastic cup of water and two paracetamol but it hadn’t made any difference. After twenty minutes or so Craig had sidled in and sloped past, avoiding looking in my direction like always.
When The Mother arrived the nurse appeared again.
‘Rebecca’s running a high fever and needs to go straight to bed, Mrs Kinsman. I’d ring for a doctor’s appointment if I were you.’
The Mother nodded. She looked annoyed.
‘Come on, Rebecca. Let’s get you home.’
‘She’s rather weak, I’m afraid. She’ll need some help getting to the car.’
‘Car? I didn’t bring the car. She can walk. The fresh air will do her the power of good.’ I heard my mother laugh, a brittle burst which I knew meant she was determined not to be bossed about by a wretched do-gooder. That was what they called people like the school nurse, or the local GP, or my form tutor. Once or twice when I was small, people had come to the vicarage, social workers or doctors or people interested in what I was, I don’t really know. They discussed me, and he explained how shy and slow I was and that they were doing their best with me. I would sit on his knee while they stared, not really there, playing invisible, and he would talk and then they’d smile and go away. The Father had explained that we were never to talk to people like that and that we’d only get in trouble if we did. He said that no one liked lying children and that there were special punishments for them. Never
trust a do-gooder, he said. Not to their faces, though, to their faces he was as nice as pie.
‘You’re at the church at the other end of the village, aren’t you? Can you phone someone and ask for a lift?’
‘I don’t think so. Now, Rebecca. Come along.’
I wobbled to my feet and the walls began to spin. The nurse stepped forward, stopped me from toppling and pressed me back into the chair.
‘Mrs Kinsman, I understand this is a difficult time for you. But Rebecca really is unwell. She will not be able to walk the length of the High Street. I’ll get Linda to call a taxi for you.’
The receptionist made the call and I was too ill to even be frightened at the consequences which would await me back home when The Father saw us arrive in a cab. The Mother didn’t say a word to me on the journey; she didn’t need to, her silence iced the air between us. She helped me out of the cab though and paid the driver before hustling me inside, looking over her shoulder.