The Lost Sister

It’s five years today. Sometimes it only seems like yesterday but when I think of all that’s changed in those years it seems like forever since I knew you and Daddy.

There’s strange things happening in your graveyard. We saw empty cider bottles and burned grass in the old part where no one is buried any more. Someone wrote Boot Boys Rule OK on a tombstone. Rebecca hates me going there but all we do is listen to our music. Leah doesn’t go on at Melancholia all the time. Neither does Mrs Mulvaney. She let Kevin paint his room black and stick a luminous skeleton on the ceiling. He had his bottom lip pierced with a tiny dagger. You’d laugh if you saw his hair. He’s dyed it jet black and made it straight. He hates fair curls and is sick of being called a blondie pouf! I asked him what it was like kissing girls with a dagger in his lip and he said, do you want to find out? Cheeky.

I still miss you. Do you know it’s five years or does that just seem like a little dot in eternity?

Special love to Dad on this memory day,

Cathy

3 March 1990

Dear Mum,

It’s so fucking unfair! It was all in the Evening Herald about the gravestones and photos too. Your gravestone was all right. It was the old ones that had the graffiti done on them. Nothing to do with me and Kevin and Melancholia but the woman in the house beside the gate told the guards we hang around there all the time. We don’t hang around! We visit your grave if only she’d open her stupid eyes and look. And we don’t smash gravestones but no one believes us. The guards came to the house and talked to Rebecca. They asked us questions about the graffiti and the broken angels and devil worship. One of the guards said Rebecca had better keep a closer eye on me in future or there’ll be more trouble. He made it sound as if it was all her fault. But it’s not. She told me not to go to the graveyard except with her but I like being there with Kevin and Melancholia. Those sick boot boys messed up our rights!!

After the cops left Rebecca slapped my face. She said, that’s for running around with sick Goths. What planet is she on? What sick Goths? Just because Kevin dyes his hair, she keeps saying he’s like a vampire. It’s not fair. I don’t cut myself. I don’t get pregnant like Julie did. So why am I grounded for a fucking month? Thank God, Jeremy is on my side. He thinks Goth is an expression of individuality. It always sounds pretentious when Melancholia says that but he made it sound true. He was always getting into trouble when he was a teenager. His father said he’d never amount to anything but he did. His ad about the shopping centre won an award for innovation. His photo was in the papers. Rebecca stuck it on the fridge. I see him every time I open the door.

No more ouija board. It’s banned from my life. Even if I played snakes and ladders Rebecca would freak! I’d stopped believing in it anyway. I just wanted it to be real because I need to know if you’re in Heaven. I’m finding it harder and harder to believe you’re there…or anywhere except in my head. Maybe you were a dream I dreamed and you and Daddy never existed. Maybe I’m a dream and living in everyone else’s dreams. Maybe angels do come at night and read letters. Maybe it’s not a con job thought up by Lydia Mulvaney to stop me snivelling over her fish fingers and chips.

X

Cathy

20 Oct 1990

Dear Mum,

I’m back in your room again. Julie and Paul have moved out. They used Gramps’ money for a deposit on a house in Swords with wood floors so Jonathan doesn’t have to breathe in the dust from our carpets. It makes his asthma worse. Julie gets so scared when he starts to wheeze but the doctor said asthma is not a problem with the right medication and lots of kids grow out of it. Their next new baby will be born in April. Julie calls it ‘another mistake’ but I know she’ll love it just as much as she loves Jonathan. I cycle to Swords with Kevin once a week and we baby-sit so they can go to the pictures.

Sometimes Jeremy stays over in our house. I saw him kissing Rebecca in the hall last night. I didn’t mean to spy and was only going downstairs to get a glass of milk. Rebecca’s hair was like a rope around his hands and he was pressing her against the wall and whispering, let me stay…they won’t hear anything…I promise…promise…kissing her all the time. I was afraid to move in case they saw me. She let him stay. He was wrong. I heard. It makes my tummy swoop to think of it and the more I try not to the more I do.

Love to Dad and all,

Cathy

5 Nov 1990

Dear Mum,

Serious news. Lauren’s in hospital. We’re all in shock. She keeps saying she didn’t mean to do it so deep and she’s promised Rebecca she’ll never do it again. Is she crazy or what? She’s in a private room with flowers. Mr Moran said it’s only right to look after her properly and he’d pay. He brings her chocolates and fluffy toys. Mrs Moran said if they’d had their way in the beginning, all this could have been avoided. She said it low to Mr Moran so that Rebecca couldn’t hear. But I did. The cheek of her. What does she know about anything except being stinking rich and showing off her fancy house in magazines? They’ll never be our parents, no matter how hard they try. Watch over Lauren and make her stop hurting herself.

Love you all,

Cathy

Chapter Fifteen

Rebecca’s Journal–1990

I was searching under her mattress for blades and I found poems instead. Only a few. I suspect she’s destroyed most of them or maybe hidden them somewhere else. But I’m not going to pretend I know. She values her privacy too much. I cried when I read this one. I thought it was about gardening when I saw the title but she’s obviously still clinging to memories of our mother. At least, in this instance, Lauren has released them in ink, not blood.

Crying is not for the faint-hearted. I thought I’d never stop. Only that Jeremy was calling…I don’t ever want him to see me in such a state. We’ve moved on from that time…tick tock tick tock tick…

I’ve copied this poem and others into the journal. Some day when she’s stronger, I’ll persuade her to send them to a publisher.

Deadheading the Red Geraniums

I watch you

Deadheading the red geraniums

The withered petals

Blood-staining your hands

When you snap the head

From its slender stem.

I watch you

Breathe the perfumed air

As sweet peas waltz

On bamboo stilts.

Adrift in pink until the pods

Wither and decay.

I watch you

Gather roses: crimson, cream and peach.

The prayerful thorns sink

Into your flesh.

Stigmata lifting you

Across the deep abyss.

I watch you

Stroke the birch, the silvery bark.

A family tree, denuded.