Bright Girls

If I can just get through the first bar without a misfire. I can never seem to recover from an early squawk. I fill my lungs and attack the first long note, and it emerges pure and clean. Relief.

From the back of the hall comes the swish and clump of the double doors opening and closing as Dad and Auntie Jackie creep in late. Heads turn at the disturbance. I falter, squawk, lose my place in the music and then, just as I find it, the gust of air admitted by the swing doors comes rolling up the aisle towards the stage like a giant wave, snatches my flimsy sheet of music from the stand and lifts it high in the air, where it swoops to and fro above my flailing hand before wafting slowly down into the audience. I turn and bolt into the wings to general laughter and applause.

I was slightly surprised when Auntie Jackie finally returned to live in England that she didn’t get straight back in touch. She and Dad had patched up their quarrel by then and we were her only living relatives, but Dad explained that she probably felt guilty and wouldn’t want to make the first approach in case it was rejected. Besides, Brighton was 110 miles from Oxford – hardly a feasible distance for a day trip. He also had a theory that Mum’s death had hit her harder than he’d appreciated at the time. He’d been too caught up with his own sorrows to notice anyone else’s. “Your mum was always the good, clever, sensible sister who everybody loved. And Jackie was the difficult, wayward one who was always in trouble. She once told me she felt that people were secretly thinking that the wrong sister had died.”

“That’s terrible. Poor Auntie Jackie,” said Rachel, identifying immediately with the naughty sister.

Dad was wrong though. Guilty or not, she did make the first approach: a letter arrived addressed to me and Rachel.

I know I’ve been the world’s most useless Aunt, but I kept you all in my heart while I was away, and never stopped thinking of you…Now I’ve had time to settle in and find my feet, I want you to know that I’m here if you ever need me. Blood is thicker than water, I appreciate that now…

“She’s got a good heart,” Dad conceded, when he read this outpouring, which ran to two pages of badly spelled scribble. “And if it ever came to the crunch, I know she’d be ready to help out.”

When the crunch came, within six months of this casual remark, and we needed somewhere to run to, Auntie Jackie’s had been the obvious choice.

Five The Bucket and the Bell (#ulink_82c9b8a9-06c0-5b42-966b-f441299ff1aa)

That first evening at Cliff Street Auntie Jackie made us a prawn stir-fry with noodles, which we ate in the kitchen – the only communal area now that I had taken over the basement. This proved to be the one edible meal she could make, and she soon abandoned proper cooking altogether.

Unfortunately I couldn’t do justice to her initial efforts as about two mouthfuls in I began to feel queasy and had to go and lie down. By ten o’clock my stomach was in spasms, my head was in a bucket and I was puking myself inside-out. Living in Oxford I’d witnessed quite a lot of public vomiting – you really had to watch where you put your feet in Freshers’ Week – and I’d always had a horror of being sick. It was such a disgusting spectacle.

“Sorry” I said to Auntie Jackie in between torrents, as she discreetly wiped the toe of her shoe with a tissue.

“You don’t think it’s the prawns, do you?” she said, passing me a wrung-out flannel so I could mop my face.

I shook my head. I knew the culprit was the fishy ham: traces of the strange, beige film were floating in the bilious slop in the bucket. Besides, I hadn’t eaten any of the prawns.

“No, I bet it’s those sandwiches,” said Rachel from the doorway “I thought they smelled funny at the time. Thank God I never ate mine.”

“Do you think we should ring the doctor?” Auntie Jackie asked her. “Or your dad?”

We had only called him a few hours earlier to say that we’d arrived safe and well. It seemed a pity to phone and retract the good news so soon. The two of them conferred in low voices for a moment and then Auntie Jackie disappeared upstairs.

“Poor old you,” said Rachel, stepping just inside the sickroom with extreme reluctance, and covering her mouth and nose. “You’ll be all right, won’t you?”

I nodded weakly I was experiencing the momentary relief that follows violent puking. Auntie Jackie returned a few minutes later and shone a torch in my face.

“Ow What are you doing?”

“Does your neck hurt?” she asked, snapping off the torch.

“No. Why?”

“Just checking you haven’t got meningitis. Excuse me. Do you mind?” she lifted my T-shirt and peered at my pale flesh, apparently satisfied.

“You need to drink plenty of fluid,” she instructed me. “But sip, don’t glug. Do you want me to sleep in here tonight?”

I shook my head. I wanted to curl up quietly and die, without any fuss, and that was something best done alone.

They withdrew to the kitchen, and I could hear the murmurs of conversation and the comforting domestic noises of washing up and tea-making. Just before she went up to bed, Auntie Jackie came in again to bring me some fresh water. In her free hand she was holding a large Swiss cowbell. “This is the nearest thing I’ve got to an emergency cord,” she said. “If you want me in the night for anything, ring this and I’ll come down.” It let out a soft clong as she set it down.

When she had gone, I lay there feeling sorry for myself for a while. There were no curtains on the window and the street lamp outside gave just enough light to pick out the shapes of the furniture. I could see the double bass, and the candles in the fireplace, and the papier-mâché pig sitting on the window seat, and the picture of the punting nuns, which made me think of Oxford, and I wondered when or if it would ever be safe to go home.

Six Adam (#ulink_46bfeae4-debf-5088-94b5-70bfd8edfa42)

I stayed in bed for two days, unable to do more than take sips of water and doze, and make occasional shuffling visits to the bathroom next door. At one point during the first night my mobile phone rang, but it was out of reach, hanging on the door handle in my bag. I could hear it buzzing away like a furious insect, but I couldn’t summon the strength to fetch it. When I did finally sleep, I had lurid nightmares about a giant pig – as if the ham was taking revenge on my mind as well as my guts.

Rachel made occasional mercy visits to the basement to cheer me up and harass me back to health. She even brought me a copy of Hello! and a pen so that I could draw the spots and hairs and wrinkles back on to the airbrushed celebrities. She had already made a preliminary exploration of the town and discovered some promising shops, but was waiting for me (and Dad’s cash) to join her for a proper spree.

“I suppose I’ll have to start looking for a job,” she said glumly. “Next week. When you’re better.” I wasn’t quite sure what my recovery had to do with it. She had promised Dad she would work over the summer, to build up some sort of cash reserves before going off to university. He admitted he didn’t have any great hopes that she’d save anything, but he figured that every hour she worked was an hour she wouldn’t be out spending.

Another regular presence at my bedside was Auntie Jackie, so regular in fact that I never needed to resort to the giant cowbell. I knew she must be popping in, even when I was asleep, because someone kept emptying the bucket, bringing fresh water, and opening and closing the window The room faced south and in the middle of the day when the sun was at its height, the uncurtained basement was as hot as a greenhouse. At other times I could hear footsteps overhead, in the “shop” and I knew she must have a client in for a fitting.

On the third day I felt the first stirrings of hunger, so Auntie Jackie brought me a cup of clear soup and a piece of toast, which I tore into cubes and submerged until they were just soft. I’d never tasted anything so delicious. I had retrieved my phone by this time, so I knew that it was Dad who had rung me. He had followed it up with a text – fully spelled and punctuated as always: it must have taken him hours.

Hello Robyn. Sorry to hear from Jackie that you’ve been sick. I tried to phone last night, but there was no reply. Roger’s room in college is comfortable, but extraordinarily noisy with summer-school students next door partying at all hours. I miss you and hope we can all be together again soon. I haven’t been near the house. Love you. Dad xxx

Rachel had also had a message from him – equally long-winded. We’d tried to teach him the basics, but he seemed to have a morbid fear of abbreviations. What normal person would use the word “extraordinarily” in a text?

I sent off a quick reply to stop him worrying.

Hi Dad. Thx 4 ur msg. 8 some food 2da 4 1st time and feel ok. Luv u 2 xxx :-)

I knew I was getting better because the fact that I hadn’t showered or washed my hair for three days was starting to bother me. On my way out to the kitchen to return my empty soup bowl I had caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece – a sight which sent me scurrying to the bathroom to take action. My hair was so greasy it was almost waterproof: I had to use nearly half a bottle of shampoo before I could work up a lather, and the run-off was the colour of ditchwater.

I felt rather light-headed when I’d finished, perhaps because I wasn’t used to being vertical, or possibly because the shower was too hot, and I was still sitting on my bed on my wet towel, while the room swayed tipsily around me, when there was a tap at the door.

“Visitor,” said a voice. “Are you decent?”

“No,” I squeaked, diving back into bed and dragging the duvet up to my neck. Just in time, as the door opened and Auntie Jackie ushered Adam inside. He was carrying a bunch of white carnations and looking embarrassed.

“Hello,” he said, trying to peel off the 50% EXTRA FREE label on the polythene wrapper. “I heard you’ve been ill. I brought these to say sorry.” He held them out, and then realising that I couldn’t take them from him as well as hold up the duvet, gave them to Auntie Jackie instead.

“I’ll go and put them in a vase,” she said, retreating graciously.

It occurred to me that this was the first time in my life that anyone had bought me flowers, but I didn’t admit this of course. I just said, “Thank you. But you don’t need to apologise.”

“Well, I feel slightly responsible,” Adam said, advancing into the room, but not going so far as to sit down and make himself comfortable. “My gran’s suffering from dementia – you probably noticed. And she tends to be a bit careless with sell-by dates and stuff. So every few days I have to do a sweep of the fridge and chuck out anything dodgy But lately she’s taken to hiding packets of food in other places – like under the sofa – which means it goes off even quicker. It’s fine if I’m around because I can warn people, but in your case I got there just too late…”

“There’s no proof it was the sandwich that made me ill,” I said, to be kind. “It could have been something I ate on the train.”

He looked sceptical. “No. I found the empty wrapper in the bin. It was well out of date.”

“By how much?”

“You don’t want to know.”

All the while he was speaking, he was looking out of the window or down at his feet or at the wall above my head – anywhere but at me, which gave me a perfect opportunity to observe him without having to make eye contact. He had a nervous mannerism that I hadn’t noticed on our first meeting: a way of twitching his cheeks, as if trying to shrug his glasses higher up his nose. It was quite sweet in a geekish sort of way