The Lost Sister

I screamed and my fist went through the window. I don’t remember the glass breaking. Just the moon turning silver and your face vanishing into the night. I woke up in hospital with bandages on my hands. Not a good idea, said the doctor when he came to see me. Don’t do that again, young lady, unless you’re into blood sports.

When I got home from the hospital Rebecca made me look at myself in the mirror. Black panda eyes and black smeared lipstick. I wanted to die. Black…black…black. She kept shouting and flinging my clothes on the bed. She looked at Daddy’s guitar and your perfume bottle shaped like a pyramid, still half-full, and my silver locket with your hair inside. She said my room is nothing but a shrine and it’s time I started living in the real world. She tore my posters of Bauhaus and the Banshees and The Cure from the wall and crumpled them in a ball. Tomorrow I have to paint your room. Primrose yellow or rose-petal pink, I have two choices.

Alcoholic poisoning is what I had. My stomach was pumped. I’m going to stop writing to you for definite this time. Angels don’t read letters. They don’t even exist. Death is a black and bottomless sleep. I’m grounded for 6 weeks. Shit!

Catriona

6 November 1992

Dear Mum,

Your room is painted primrose yellow. I have kitten posters on the walls. Jeremy painted the ceiling and I did the walls. When he did his Michael Jackson moonwalk across the floor, we laughed so much Rebecca came in to see what the joke was about. When I told him I was never going to drink again, he said alcohol is only disgusting when it’s handled recklessly. I was too young. I broke rules. I was heedless of my own welfare. I have to look upon this experience as a baptism of fire. He asked me why I did such a crazy thing. It’s dangerous and corrosive to keep bottling up your feelings, Catriona, he said.

I began to giggle, a high awful giggle that I couldn’t stop. Take it easy…it’s all right…take it easy. His voice was sharp, then soft, like he was coaxing me over a dangerous place and I stopped as suddenly as I started. Goose bumps ran all along my arms when we sat on the bed and he leaned close to me. You should laugh more often, Catriona, he said. But not like that…not like that.

X

Catriona

15 Jan 1993

Dear Mum,

Lauren rang today. Eight years, she said. Who’d have believed it. She lives in one of Mr Moran’s apartments. Real plush, she says, with a view of St James’s Park. He brings her out for posh meals when he’s in London on business. I bet Mrs Moran doesn’t know! I asked who held his zimmer frame when they kissed and she said I was way off the mark on that one. He’s a father figure, kind and decent and nothing more. You’re forgetting rich, I said, and married to the teacher bitch. The teacher bitch has nothing to worry about, Lauren said. Her husband can obsess all he likes but I’m not interested.

I wonder if she’s telling the truth. The boys in school used to call her The Ice Queen and put bets on who could get her to go out with them. They never won. She has lots of boyfriends now but their names keep changing: Louie, François, Colm, Toby, Saul.

She’s OK again after falling off her bike. Rebecca flew over to make sure and said she’s living like royalty.

Look after her and keep her away from blades.

Love you all,

XX

Catriona

3 Feb 1993

Dear Mum

I have to write about this. Forgive me…forgive me. I never meant it to happen. This evening I met Jeremy by accident on Merrion Square. At first he didn’t recognise me in my Goth make-up. Goth coat and dress, lace over my face, my black cross.

When I said hello he stopped like he’d run into a wall and said, Good God, Catriona, is that really you? You look amazing.

He gave me a lift home. The rain started when we were leaving the city and was pouring down by the time we reached Broadmeadow Estuary. There’s a storm coming, Jeremy said. Even as he spoke, we saw lightning flashing across the viaduct. We parked by the shore. The waves raced under the arches and the ducks flapped their wings into the wind. We saw the heron standing as still as ever. Then the thunder rolled over the estuary and lit up the swans like ghosts on water. Jeremy put his arm around my shoulder and said it was nature at her proudest, showing off for all the world to see. Like Goths, he said. Showing off her darker side.

I began to cry. Don’t ask me why. He lifted the lace from my face and laid it over my hair. He took off my net gloves and stroked my fingers. Nothing else. Just stroked and stroked until my whole body was shivering. My sweet innocent Catriona, he said. Are you a child playing adult games or a woman caught in a child’s mind? Why does such anger radiate from you? He talked about the accident. No one ever does but he asked questions and it was like drawing splinters out of my skin.

Sometimes I wake from a dream and hear Julie screaming. I jump out of bed and crash into the wall because your room is different to the room I slept in then. Rebecca should have been minding me but she’d sneaked off to Sheila’s party. Jeremy explained how she feels guilty about disobeying you and not being at home when the police called to the house to tell us about the accident. He said that’s why she tries so hard to do what’s right.

I wish she’d stop trying. She can’t make it different, no matter how hard we pretend. Then I told Jeremy the most dreadful thing of all. How my anger sometimes makes me hate you for being dead. It’s not true. It’s me. I hate myself for thinking such awful thoughts but they go like a skewer through my brain.

He said the line between love and hate is as fine as a wire vibrating. I don’t understand what he means but it sounds right. He understands how things can happen in a part of your mind you never knew existed.

He kissed the tears on my cheeks and on my eyelids. When he kissed the tears on my lips he opened his mouth and pulled me closer. Then he was kissing me for real, tongue touching tongue, and even though I was frightened, I didn’t want to pull away, ever. I thought about Rebecca and all her dreams coming true. The wind nearly blew me over when I opened the door of his car. He said, Don’t be silly, Catriona. Get back in! I’ll drive you to the house. He feels as if he’s playing with fire when we’re alone. It would be the end of everything if Rebecca found out about his moment of weakness. She won’t…she won’t find out.

Don’t warn me against him. Don’t remind me of his age, of Rebecca, a whole life I’m too young to understand. I’m in love with him. The age difference doesn’t matter. That’s nothing where love is concerned. I’ll dream about him tonight. And tomorrow I’ll daydream through the waking hours. His eyes are so piercing they can see right into my soul. Even now, when he’s not with me, I feel him beside me, feel his touch on my skin, his fingers stroking mine, and the thunder enfolding us. Is that how it was with you and Daddy? Tell me what to do!!

Catriona

10 Feb 1993

Dear Mother,

Kevin’s bedroom is now painted white. The skeleton has gone from the ceiling. Ask me how I know. I’m not supposed to be there. Off limits, isn’t it? Go on, ask! I’m going to tell you anyway. I lay on his bed and listened to The Cure but it was different to before, like he could stop being my friend and be something else. He took the tiny little dagger from his lip and put it under the pillow. When we kissed I closed my eyes. I kept seeing Jeremy’s face. The way he combs his wheat-yellow hair straight back from his forehead yet there’s always a bit hanging down. I could see his eyes, blue like the sky, and his voice soft when he said, Catriona…Catriona…Catriona.

I lifted my black dress above my ankles so that Kevin could see my net stockings and my shoes with the silver buckles. He parted the lace at my throat. He opened the buttons on my dress. So many buttons down the front but he didn’t mind struggling, one button after the other, stopping to kiss me in case I was bored it was taking so long. Then I saw his blond roots where he’s growing out the black and I had this terrible feeling that I was ruining our friendship by allowing him to open buttons and kiss my neck, his tongue licking the hollow in my throat, making shivers on my skin while all the time I was thinking about someone else.

Then the buttons were open and he was able to take off my bra. My heart gave a skippy kind of jump when he touched my nipples. He pressed me deeper into the bed. His face was hard, a stranger’s face. I didn’t know him any more. I wanted to hug my breasts away from his eyes and be safe in my room with you in the kitchen making dinner and Daddy’s key in the front door, and the way he used to shout, ‘Hey, you parcel of beauties, I’m home.’

I shouted at him to let me go. He didn’t hear me. My dress was down around my waist and he kept whispering my name…I love you Cathy…Cathy…Not Catriona. I hit his face with my fist and he jerked back, his eyes opening wide. Then he slumped beside me, breathing fast, as if he’d been in a race that went on too long.

Nothing happened, Cathy, stop crying…calm down…calm down…His words came from far away but eventually I heard him. He kept apologising, said he’d misread the signals, thought I felt the same, nothing happened, nothing to stop us continuing to be friends as before. But I knew he lied. That he, like me, could see our friendship dissolving with every promise we made.

I can’t think of anything else to tell you tonight. Watch over me. I’m in a dangerous place.

Catriona

16 March 1993

Dear Mum,

Jeremy’s kiss is like a dream. Perhaps it was. I don’t ever want to think about it again. I saw Kevin this evening when I was walking along the estuary. The dagger’s gone from his lip. We haven’t talked much since that night. A girl was with him. She has swinging fair hair like a shampoo advertisement. I was afraid he’d told her about the time in his bedroom and could feel the shivers coming just thinking about it. Her name is Andrea and I just know she hates The Cure.

Tomorrow is St Patrick’s Day. Remember the parades and the sleet and us dancing on floats in our Irish dancing costumes? Blue knees? The parade has changed a lot since your day. I’m going to watch it with Melancholia and her friends.

I’ve kept the worst news until last. Rebecca flew out this morning to see Lauren. How does she always know? She’s determined to bring her home and make her better again.

X

Catriona

Chapter Nineteen

Rebecca’s Journal–1993

I never should have allowed Olive Moran to send Lauren away but, truthfully, I was secretly relieved she was leaving us. I wanted nothing to come between Jeremy and our happiness. I convinced myself it was a good idea to let her handle life on her own. I’ve enough on my hands with Cathy and her Goth friends.