Jonathan Dodd

 

Chapter 1

 

 

"Hello Carole."

Candy was shocked into immobility. No one had called her by her christened name for years. No-one even knew it, except for Jack. The girl untwined herself from the untidy pile of bags and cases obstructing Candy's front door. The smile on her face was sardonic. "Don't you recognise me? I haven't grown that much. I'm Joanna, your kid sister." The flat Midland tones emerged from her mouth, unheard and unspoken for so long, flooding Candy with so many long-buried memories and ghosts. She choked on the familiar conventional polite words of greeting, standing there rigid, clutching her own bags.

Eventually she was able to take stock, looking this unwelcome stranger up and down, taking in the familiar long straight hair, the pale grey eyes, the narrow oval face and pointed chin that contrasted so much with her own rounded and freckled features. A pang of reawakened jealousy jabbed through her, among the other jumbled responses. Joanna had taken after their mother. She had grown so much from the awkward fourteen-year old that Candy suddenly remembered so well. Even worse, she realised that her sister was taller than her by at least three inches, and had a good firm figure beneath the cheap and none-too-new clothes she was wearing. The anger she felt was the most surprising thing.

Candy finally found her voice. "What are you doing here? How did you find me?" She was shocked to hear the old loathed and buried tones of her childhood surfacing in her voice through the layers of carefully-trained anonymous London accent.

"Ah, it wasn't easy. I'll tell you. But first, let me in, I'm dying for a pee. And I'd kill for a cup of tea." Joanna smiled, sweetly, ingratiatingly, showing a little too much of her teeth, then moved casually but pointedly aside from the door and stared hard at the key held out like a knife in Candy's hand.

There was no avoiding it, she had to let Joanna in. With any luck she was on her way to somewhere else and would go again soon. Besides, there was no point in having a prolonged stand-off in the corridor. She moved forward to open the door. "I'm sorry, it was a bit of a shock seeing you here. You could have phoned.”

Behind her, through the now-open door, she heard Joanna's voice. "I didn't exactly plan this. It was a bit sudden like. I'll tell you all about it." And in through the door came the bags and the cases, making a large and unseemly pile in her hallway. It looked rather more permanent than passing-through luggage, and Candy's heart sank. There was something of the feeling of a change of seasons in this unwanted meeting, like the first cold wind of Autumn, and for an uncomfortable moment the hairs on the back of her neck raised themselves up, as if in warning. But the door was open, the luggage was inside, her arm was waving Joanna in the direction of the bathroom, and it was already too late. If there was a too late to this. She just didn't know. She had no idea how she felt. 

What she did next surprised her even more. While Joanna was in the toilet she moved quickly into the living room and shut and locked the dividing doors that opened on to Jack's flat. Thank goodness he’s at the club, she thought. She needed time to adjust, she wanted to be in control before confronting Jack with her sister in their home. There was so much to find out. The spectre of her father and his rages appeared painfully, and her long-suppressed guilt at abandoning her mother and sister at home. She was supposed to have escaped from all that. Damn her sister, dragging it all back, dumping it all over her life, their lives, hers and Jack's, like that baggage in her hall.

She bustled through to the kitchen, put on the kettle, shouted through the still-shut bathroom door. "How do you like your tea?" Here was safe ground, this was not threatening. They would talk over tea, sitting civilised. Joanna would explain, and then she would go. She looked at the clock, mentally ticking off the time left before Jack was expected home. About two hours.

Candy declined to offer tea in her living room. They sat perched on the relative discomfort of her kitchen stools, stirring and sipping in an awkward and wary silence.

"Nice place. I love the bedroom." Joanna had treated herself to a quick unguided tour while the kettle was on. She was trying to give the impression of being relaxed, legs crossed, one arm hanging over the stool-back, the other hand idly playing with her tea-spoon. "I mean, it's all red, and the bed’s so big. I wish my bedroom was like that." Then she grinned foolishly. "Not that I've got one right now. It wasn't much bigger than a rabbit hutch anyway.”

Candy had been watching her over the rim of her cup, and had seen her guard drop."I had the bed made. We had terrible trouble getting it through the door." Cheap point, she thought, remembering the thin saggy mattresses of her childhood, and felt mildly ashamed.

Joanna reached for her bag. "Got an ashtray?" she asked, offering a packet, putting one in her mouth.

Candy was shocked again. Everything Joanna said or did knocked her back to her childhood. She had started smoking at eleven, it was one way of rebelling, but she had had to be secretive. Her father would have made trouble, wanted to know where she got the money, and she'd have never been able to tell how she raided her mother's purse or the holiday jar on the top shelf of the kitchen. But she had never seen Joanna smoke.

"I don't." She felt humiliated having to squat down and rummage in the cupboard under the sink. It must have been the same for Joanna. Her mother must have known about the missing money, but she'd never mentioned it. She'd covered up, like the girls. Silence was the best defence. An image of her mother floated into her mind, there at the kitchen table in the old house, and she was horrified to find that she wanted to see her again. She backed out too fast and hit her head on the cupboard door.

Candy hadn't wanted a cigarette for three years, but God could she do with one now.