Bright Girls

“Why don’t you just borrow the spare key,” said Adam, selecting one from a row of hooks on the wall beside him. Rachel and I looked at each other.

“Do we have a key to Janice’s?” his grandmother said. “I didn’t know we had a key”

“She gave it to us because Charlie kept locking himself out.”

The old woman looked blank. “Who’s Charlie?”

This bewildering exchange was interrupted by the whoop of a siren which grew to a crescendo and then stopped as a police car pulled up at the kerb, lights flashing. The passenger door opened and a woman in a strappy sundress clambered out, showing rather a lot of leg. Her chunky calves were laced almost to the knee into high, cork-heeled espadrilles. She had long plum-coloured hair plaited into dozens of thin braids and gathered up into a sprouting ponytail high on her head. A pair of heavy chandelier earrings dragged at her earlobes. She flew up the steps towards us, blethering apologies.

Auntie Jackie.

Three Auntie Jackie (#ulink_acb6ad06-1813-58ad-b800-fd01a561d972)

“You got here. Thank God!” Auntie Jackie advanced on Rachel and me with arms outstretched and crushed us against her in an uncomfortable three-way hug. “I’m so, so sorry I wasn’t at the station. I went to Asda to get something nice for your dinner and on the way back some lunatic jumped the lights and smacked into the side of me. My car’s a wreck. Luckily there were witnesses. Anyway,” she went on, releasing us at last, so we could uncrick our necks, “you’re here, safe and sound, and that’s the main thing.” She stepped back and looked us up and down, her eyes resting admiringly on the expanse of smooth tummy exposed by the ten-centimetre gap between the end of Rachel’s vest and the start of her skirt. “Your dad was right,” she sighed. “I’ll be beating the men off with a broom.” She seemed quite capable of it too, if that hug was anything to go by

“You look so much like your mum,” she said, turning to me, and for an awful moment I thought she was going to cry, but she contented herself with a last bruising hug. All this while, the policeman had been busily unloading plastic bags of groceries from the boot of his car and carrying them up to the door of number 29. I wondered if all Brighton’s policemen were this helpful.

“There you are, lovely lady,” he called out when the job was done and he was about to drive off. Auntie Jackie went haring down to the kerb and leant, head and shoulders, through the driver’s window to speak to him. In fact, from where I was standing, she looked as though she was giving him a kiss, but she couldn’t have been. Could she?

Without waiting to be asked, Adam disappeared back inside his house and emerged with our suitcases, one in each hand, and carted them next door.

“Adam’s at the university” Auntie Jackie said, as if this was some rare and marvellous feat. “So he knows all the fun places. Don’t you, Adam?”

He nodded placidly.

“Thank you for looking after them,” she went on, as she kicked a path between the piles of Asda bags to let us into the house.

He didn’t seem to take this as his cue to go, but stood, loitering awkwardly while Auntie Jackie unlocked the door. I wondered if he was waiting for a tip. Then just as I turned my back to follow Auntie Jackie and Rachel inside, he tapped me on the shoulder and said in an urgent whisper, “My gran didn’t give you any food, did she?”

“Yes,” I said, a trifle uneasily

Adam went white. “Oh my God,” he said. “She always does this.”

I didn’t have a chance to enquire what he meant as Auntie Jackie was calling from deep inside the house, so I picked up a few of the shopping bags and went inside, and when I turned round, he was gone.

My room was in the basement, along with the kitchen and a tiny, airless shower room. It faced the street and looked directly on to a wall, and, if I was lucky the passing feet and ankles of pedestrians. It felt strange to be down below pavement level, but the room was large and pretty with an open fireplace filled with chubby candles, and a sofa bed dressed up with satin cushions. It was home to assorted curiosities including an archery target, a double bass missing all but one string and a life-sized papier-mâché pig. Above the mantelpiece was a painting of a meaty nude, who bore a faint resemblance to Auntie Jackie, showing off a lot of underarm stubble and much else besides. More to my taste was a black and white photo on the opposite wall which showed a group of nuns punting on the Cherwell.

“This is usually the sitting room,” Auntie Jackie explained on our tour of the property. “But I’ve tried to tidy it up for you.”

The alternative was a recently decorated room on the first floor, bagged by Rachel because she said she was a fresh air freak and wouldn’t feel safe having the window open at night downstairs. Privately I thought it was more likely to be the double bed and the en suite that had persuaded her, but I didn’t mind. Not really. Auntie Jackie’s bedroom and an antiquated bathroom were also on this storey. The attic room at the top of the house was occupied by the lodger, Charlie, when in residence. He kept odd hours, we were told, because he was a professional musician who worked in the West End, and he liked to practise his trumpet when he got up in the afternoons, but apart from that, and a habit of locking himself out, gave very little trouble and was hardly ever in.

There were more Post-it notes, like the one over the doorbell, dotted around the house, offering warnings and reminders to past and present tenants. NO LOCK said the label on the loo door. DOOR CLOSED = OCCUPIED. Another, beside the oven, advised would-be chefs: TAKE BATTERY OUT OF SMOKE ALARM BEFORE USING GRILL. The most mysterious of all was stuck above a plug socket in the kitchen and said simply: NOT THIS ONE! On making enquiries, I was told that Charlie had once unplugged the freezer for a whole weekend while recharging his motorbike battery, resulting in the destruction of a month’s supply of Weight Watchers’ ready meals.

The whole of the ground floor was taken up by Auntie Jackie’s “business” – Ballgowns, Evening Wear and Accessories for Hire. The front room was entirely given over to dresses of every size and colour: rail upon rail of taffeta, silk, velvet and tulle; sequins, feathers and pearls. In the back were chests of drawers containing shawls and scarves and elbow-length gloves, and above our heads, beaded evening bags hung in clusters like chandeliers. In one corner was a curtained changing cubicle, and the rest of the space was occupied by a workbench and sewing machine, for repairs and alterations. Dad, typically, had got it wrong and told us Auntie Jackie worked in a second hand clothes shop, which made it sound one step up from a car boot sale.

The pride of the collection was displayed on a tailor’s dummy in a glass case. It was a midnight blue strapless dress which flowed out from knee level into a fishtail of hundreds of tissue-thin layers, all embroidered with sprays of silver stars. I wondered why it had been singled out for this attention – it was one of the least ostentatious of the lot – until Rachel gave me a nudge and pointed to a framed photograph on the opposite wall, and it suddenly made sense. In the picture, greeting a line-up of celebrities and smiling her famous, modest smile, was Princess Diana in that very same dress.

“Is that really…?” I asked Auntie Jackie.

She nodded, amused by our gawping. “You’d have been too young to remember, but Princess Diana auctioned off most of her wardrobe for charity in 1997. I’d just got an insurance payout for a whiplash injury – nearly $18,000 – and I blew the whole lot on one dress. I didn’t have the business then – I just wanted it for myself. My husband was hopping mad: he didn’t speak to me for a week. And then within two months she was dead.”

There was a solemn pause as we looked again at the holy object.

“Have you ever worn it?” asked Rachel.

Auntie Jackie shook her head. “Sadly, no.”

“Because it’s too precious?”

“No. Because I’m too bloody fat. Every time I try a new diet I think ‘I’ll be wearing Diana’s dress by Christmas!’ but it never happens.”

“It must be worth a fortune,” said Rachel wistfully She was probably thinking how much stuff she could get from Topshop if she put it on eBay

“Priceless,” Auntie Jackie agreed. “But I’ll never sell it. I could end up living in a cardboard box under the promenade, but I’ll still have my dress. They can bury me in it – it’ll probably fit me like a glove when I’ve died of starvation.”

“I wouldn’t sell it either,” I said. Although I’m the Sensible One, I do have a romantic streak.

Auntie Jackie left us to unpack and “freshen up”, as she called it, while she put away her groceries and began to prepare dinner. I could hear her clattering around in the kitchen cupboards and singing along to the radio, while I hung my few decent clothes in the wardrobe. In the absence of any empty drawers, I left the rest in the bottom of the suitcase, which I pushed under the bed. Various other items from home – my clarinet, music stand, books, tennis racquet – I deposited around the room as though marking out my territory It was only now that I came to unpack that I realised how little I’d brought. We had left in too much of a hurry. The last item to be rehoused was a cream shawl, crocheted in softest baby wool, which I used to cover up a depressed-looking armchair. It was the only thing I owned that my mother had made especially for me, which made it even more priceless in its way than Princess Diana’s dress.

Four Big Sister, Little Sister (#ulink_ae5c13d0-175e-5f42-8aa3-b2e807b92a72)

Mum died when I was one and Rachel was nearly four. I don’t remember a thing about her of course. I used to think I did, but then I realised that all my memories were photographs. Rachel doesn’t really remember her either, which is even worse. All those years Mum spent playing pat-a-cake with her, and being patient and kind, for nothing! Nowadays, whenever I see some toddler kicking off in the supermarket and the mum trying to negotiate and be all reasonable, I feel like going up to her and saying, “For God’s sake, just smack him! He won’t remember!”

I can’t say I “miss” her because you can’t miss someone you never knew, but sometimes, when school work’s piling up, and things indoors are a bit disorganised, and Dad’s too preoccupied with his job to notice, I can’t help thinking that one parent isn’t quite enough. I suppose it must be like being an only child. You wouldn’t spend all your time grieving about the brothers and sisters you don’t have, but now and then you’d look at those big, boisterous families and feel a twinge of envy.

It’s only in recent years that Dad has talked to us about how he coped or rather didn’t cope when Mum died. He’d always talked about Mum of course, so that we would know how wonderful she was and never “forget” her, but not once about himself and his own feelings. To begin with, Nanny Chris (Mum’s mum) came to stay and look after us while he was out at work. After a while, they had a bit of a falling out because she didn’t approve of the way he let us sleep in his bed, and he thought she was too strict about mealtimes and TV rations, so she went back up to Scotland in a strop and we didn’t see her for some time.

That was when Mum’s sister – Jackie – came. She was only twenty-five – ten years younger than Mum – but she gave up her job in London and left her flat and her friends, and moved into our spare room in Oxford so that she could take care of us all until Rachel started school and I went to nursery I suppose Dad must have paid her. She wouldn’t have done it for nothing.

It all worked well for about a year, and then Auntie Jackie started to make friends of her own and go out in the evenings a bit more. Before long she’d got a new boyfriend and wanted to move him into the spare room with her. Dad was furious and said he didn’t want some strange bloke in the house with us when he wasn’t around, and they had this huge row and Auntie Jackie walked out. Within three months, she and the boyfriend had got married and moved to Chicago, where he was from, and we didn’t see her again for another eight years.

The rest of the family was outraged that she had deserted us, convinced that the husband was some sort of gangster and it would all end in tears. Which it did eventually, but nothing like as soon as the family had predicted (and no doubt hoped). After twelve years she came quietly back to the UK, and with her share of the divorce payout, she acquired the house in Brighton and started up her business.

During her time in America she had sent gifts at birthdays and Christmas, and cards signed “from your loving Aunt”, and at Dad’s insistence we had dutifully replied with bland reports of our progress and copies of our school photographs, but as far as we knew, Dad never wrote to her himself.

There had been just one visit, the year that Nanny Chris died. I’m afraid to say that it was the memory of this that had given me a pessimistic view of Auntie Jackie’s reliability

I am ten years old, standing in the wings at the school concert, sucking nervously on the reed of my clarinet as I listen to Elizabeth Gallup play Minuet in G on the piano. Although I can’t see them, I can sense, from the occasional distant cough and rustle, the bulky presence of the audience beyond the stage. Even so, I am surprised by the storm of applause that greets the end of Elizabeth’s performance. The hall must be full. I am on next. A lone, metal music stand, like an instrument of torture, glints coldly in a shaft of light from the high hall windows. For a moment I am completely paralysed: my eagerness to perform, to show off and be applauded is brought down by a crippling attack of stage fright.

Something I have known all along, and buried, rises up now: I am not meant to be here, playing in this concert. I am not good enough. It is a mistake.

“Ruth, I’ve put you down to play a solo in the school concert,” my clarinet teacher said at the start of a music lesson, three weeks ago now

“I’m not Ruth. I’m Robyn,” I said. Ruth is a year older. She has done grades. The teacher faltered for a moment before her smile was back in place. “Of course you are. Robyn. Well, you can play something in the concert too, Robyn. Why not?”

The wooden boards, stripped of varnish and slightly soft, quake underfoot as I cross the stage and balance my single sheet of music on the solitary stand. It is mid-afternoon, the hall is uncurtained and well-lit, and I can see the faces of the audience as clearly as they can see me, clearly enough at any rate to be sure that Dad and Auntie Jackie aren’t among them. She is supposed to be here. Dad has taken the day off work so that he can collect her from Oxford station and bring her along. It was a firm arrangement, a promise, and I have been boasting to the whole class for days about my aunt coming all the way from America to watch me. If she doesn’t show up, everyone will think I’m a Big Fat Liar, the sort of girl who invents fantasy relatives to make herself look important.

As my damp, nibbled lips close around the mouthpiece of the clarinet, the other buried thing chooses this moment to surface. I have never, in all my practices, even in the privacy of my own room, played this piece all the way through without mistakes.