Summer With My Sister Read online

  Magda shut her eyes for a brief pleasurable moment, thinking of their smiling faces upturned like flowers, the warmth of their young bodies when they hugged her, their peaceful faces as they slept. This woman, Miss Johnson, she might have the fancy apartment that Magda’s small flat could fit into twenty times over, the money and the big important job, but these things were nothing when you had nobody to care for you when you were ill. Poor Miss Johnson. Magda would not swap lives with her in a heartbeat. Wcale nie. Not at all.

  Chapter Six

  It was Saturday afternoon and Leila’s party was in full swing. Earlier that day Clare had hung bunting around the kitchen, spread her nicest polka-dot oilcloth on the table, and set out mixing bowls and wooden spoons for Leila and her seven guests. The plan was to make bath-bombs and soap, and the girls were currently mixing sodium bicarbonate and citric acid together, white puffs of dust floating above their bowls as some of them stirred rather too vigorously. Clare went around spraying witch hazel into each bowl and got them to mix it in, then passed around a box full of scent bottles for the girls to smell.

  ‘I’ve got lots of different fragrances you can choose from,’ she said. ‘Chocolate, vanilla, raspberry, lavender, lemon, English rose, sea-spray … there should be something you like. Choose one each and I’ll add a few drops to your mixture. Be very careful with the bottles, though, as some scents are expensive.’

  ‘We’re watching you like hawks,’ Debbie joked, putting her hands on her hips and peering around beadily at them. ‘One spill, and you’re out.’

  The girls began oohing and ahhing over the scents, wafting them under each other’s noses. Clare had been experimenting with bathtime goodies for a while, and really enjoyed making bath-bombs, bubble baths and soap. She’d got the idea last Christmas when she’d been stony broke and unable to afford proper presents for anyone but the children. She’d seen an article in one of the magazines at the surgery about easy crafts you could try at home, and had found the bath-bomb recipe there. They were so simple to make (and dirt cheap too) that she’d made her first batch that evening, adding lavender and dried rose petals to the mix, and wrapping them in colourful tissue paper tied with large bright ribbons.

  She’d intended it to be a one-off, but then a few people had come back to her asking where she’d bought them, as they were so nice. When Clare had explained that she’d made them herself, they had promptly put in orders for more. Since then she had begun experimenting with bubble-bath mixture too, bars of soap and shea body-butter. She’d mainly given her products to friends and her mum to try out for free – she wasn’t a hard-nosed business woman like her sister, after all – but already Debbie, Tracey and some of the other girls had come back and ordered more: paid for, this time. It was never going to make her a fortune but she found it relaxing, making her potions and bath treats in the evening and filling the house with yummy fragrances.

  ‘Okay, so we’re aiming for a wet-sand feel, guys,’ she said now, coming around to check how their mixing was progressing. She added in fragrances for each girl, then opened jars of dried petals that they could sprinkle into the mix. ‘Try squeezing a bit in your palm to see if it sticks together – when it does, you’re ready to put it into the mould.’

  ‘This is cool,’ said Anna, Leila’s closest friend, sniffing her mixture. ‘Mine smells so chocolatey, it’s making me hungry. Yum!’

  Clare beamed, thankful that Leila’s friends all seemed to be enjoying themselves. Some of the girls in her class had really over-the-top parties – hiring out Amberley Pool, for example, or taking everyone pony-trekking – and she’d worried that a home-based party might be too low-key. Hopefully this one would meet with peer approval. But then Carly Prince went and opened her big mouth.

  ‘I’m not sure my mum will like this,’ she said, peering disdainfully into her bowl. ‘She only gets, like, really expensive stuff. The proper stuff?’

  Meow. Clare exchanged a glance with Debbie. Carly Prince was the snobbiest girl in the class, and spiteful with it. If she wasn’t showing off wildly, she was crushing somebody else. Why Leila wanted to be friends with her was beyond Clare, but the girl seemed to exude a powerful, irresistible magnetism that held her classmates in thrall.

  Ignoring her, Clare passed around paper pill-cups so that the girls could press handfuls of their mixture into them. ‘I thought bath-bombs were meant to be round ?’ Carly said, turning up her nose. ‘Like, bomb-shaped?’

  ‘Ahh, these are special ones,’ Debbie put in quickly before Clare had to explain that the spherical moulds were quite fiddly to use.

  ‘Yeah, these are going to look really cute,’ said Anna – lovely loyal Anna – in the next breath, smoothing over Carly’s abrasiveness.

  Carly pinched her mouth together, annoyance flashing in her eyes. She dumped her mixture carelessly into the pill-cups, then glanced around the room for a new target. Her eyes fell on Leila, and Clare felt a shudder go through her.

  ‘I can’t wait until it’s my birthday next month,’ Carly sighed, tossing back her long, honey-coloured hair. ‘Daddy said he’s going to get me a new pony. I’m so excited.’

  A chorus of envious ‘Oooh’s went around the table. Carly was the only child in the local school with that kind of wealth; nobody else could compete. Only a year and a half left of primary school, Clare kept telling herself through gritted teeth, and then no doubt Carly’s parents would ship her off to a posh private school somewhere, leaving all the normal kids to go on to secondary school together. It couldn’t come soon enough.

  ‘So, what did you get for your birthday, Leila?’ Carly went on, as Clare had known she would.

  ‘I got this really cool bike,’ Leila replied, half-turning to grin at Clare. ‘Mum personalized it for me and put a furry saddle on; it’s fab.’

  Clare’s heart seemed to swell at the pride in her daughter’s voice. So there, Carly Prince, she thought. Money might buy you a pony, but it can’t buy you a cool customized bike with a furry saddle stitched by your own loving mum.

  ‘Awesome, where is it? Can we see it?’ asked India, a tall vivacious girl with long red hair and a frenzy of freckles.

  ‘It’s outside. Can I get it, Mum?’ Leila asked, wiping her dusty hands on her jeans.

  Clare smiled. ‘Of course you can, love,’ she replied, and Leila darted out of the back door, blonde ponytail swinging. ‘Now, who needs me to help them? I think we’re nearly there.’

  Clare was just squidging the last crumbs of Martha Stringer’s rose-tastic bath-bomb into its paper cup when Leila reappeared, wheeling in her bike. It was a bit of a sight, Clare had to admit, with the tinsel Leila had insisted on leaving wrapped around the handlebars, and stickers now adorning it, but Leila was beaming gappily, so she didn’t care what the others thought.

  ‘Whoa,’ said India. ‘That’s awesome. Such a gorgeous colour!’

  ‘I love the saddle,’ Martha put in, her eyes shining behind her glasses. ‘What a cool style too. Really unusual.’

  Leila beamed. ‘It’s great, isn’t it?’ she said.

  Carly was staring at the bike, frown lines creasing her forehead. ‘I used to have one like that,’ she said slowly. ‘Really similar. But it got nicked a few weeks ago – our shed was broken into and they took Daddy’s Trek bike too.’

  Clare swallowed. ‘It … it got nicked?’ she echoed faintly.

  ‘Yeah.’ Carly came out from her place at the table to take a closer look. ‘You know, the tyres look just the same,’ she said. ‘My bike was blue, not lilac, but apart from that …’

  Clare felt sick. This bike had originally been blue, she remembered. Surely that was just a coincidence, though?

  ‘The seat was different,’ Carly said, walking over and fingering the fluffy cover Clare had stitched. ‘Mine was white leather, but it had got really cracked, and …’ Then she took off the seat-cover and gasped. ‘Oh my God. This is my bike!’ she cried, pointing at the worn white seat that had been exposed. ‘This is my act
ual bike, the one that was nicked.’ She whirled around accusingly and glared at Clare. She was only nine years old, but it was terrifying. ‘Where did you get this from?’

  ‘From a friend … there must be some mistake,’ Clare garbled, aware of her face turning crimson. Oh God. Oh shit.

  Leila was looking baffled. ‘Wait, you’re not saying … My mum didn’t nick your bike,’ she said indignantly. ‘Did you, Mum? Tell her – you bought it for me, didn’t you?’

  It was one of those moments when the world seemed to stop turning, when she felt the stare of every person in the room weighing heavily on her. She was going to kill Jay Holmes when she got her hands on him.

  Somehow she made it through the rest of the party without metamorphosing into the human equivalent of Munch’s The Scream painting. It was an effort though, an awful, horrible slog of two hours with Carly’s scornful gaze flicking between her and that wretched bike the whole time. Honestly, how could she have trusted Jay? How could she have blithely accepted that he’d picked up this bike, without asking exactly where he’d picked it up from? Of all the stupid, trusting people in the world, she had to be the most gullible muppet of all.

  Just to make matters even more excruciating, the doorbell rang halfway through the party and Clare opened the front door to see Steve there on the step. ‘Thought I’d surprise the birthday girl,’ he said jovially when Clare’s face collapsed with dismay. ‘All right if I join the fun?’

  Fun? Clare was almost tempted to hand over her apron to him and leave him to it, while she pelted upstairs and hid in the wardrobe. She’d managed to fob off Leila and Carly with a line about the bike being second-hand (true), and that she was sure they could sort everything out (false) if there was a problem (no ‘if’ about it). She was dreading the arrival of Mrs Prince, though, and Carly’s accusatory voice ringing out as she apprised her mother of the situation, no doubt at top volume in front of all the other parents.

  Bloody hell. How did she get herself into these fiascos? And now, to top it off, here was Steve, striding past her into the house, booming, ‘Where’s my birthday girl, then?’ as if he was the guest of flipping honour.

  Clare heard Leila’s squeal of delight and her racing footsteps, and then she’d thrown her arms around her dad’s neck and he was swinging her up through the air, both of them laughing.

  This party could not get any worse. Roll on five o’clock, when it would all be over and she could sink into a bottle of wine.

  ‘I’ve had to leave your present outside because it’s too big to come through the front,’ Steve was saying as Clare shut the front door, smarting.

  Too big? What had he got her, an elephant? Denise had probably curled its sparse, bristly hairs or put a ribbon on its tail, she thought spitefully. Then her own bile made her stomach churn. At least he hadn’t got her a knock-off bike, a voice retorted in her head. A knock-off bike stolen from the class snob, no less.

  ‘Open the back door and have a look, babe,’ she heard Steve say as he went into the kitchen. ‘Hey! Hello everyone. Having fun? Ah. Hello, Debbie.’

  ‘Afternoon.’

  Clare hurried after them, just in time to see Debbie giving Steve a cool, appraising look as if to say, Well, look what the cat dragged in.

  Ignoring Debbie, Steve flung open the back door. ‘Ta-dah!’ he shouted. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Oh, wow,’ Leila said, shooting an anxious look at Clare before staring outside again. ‘Another bike – thanks, Dad!’

  The smile slipped from Steve’s face. ‘Another bike?’ he repeated.

  Leila nodded. ‘Yeah, Mum got me this one,’ she said, pointing to where Clare had propped it against the far wall. She stepped outside, then reappeared with a mint-green racer, which was unmistakably brand spanking new and certainly hadn’t been pinched from anybody’s shed. ‘Whoa,’ she said, visibly delighted. ‘Dad, this is awesome, thank you!’

  Clare felt herself sag. Hadn’t she been thinking only a few moments ago that this party couldn’t get any worse? Somehow it just had. Much worse.

  ‘Whoops,’ Steve said nonchalantly, his eyes flickering over the chopper and then across to Clare. ‘Communication-breakdown alert. I should have said. It’s just that I knew Leila really wanted a bike, and I didn’t think …’ His unsaid words hung in the air and Clare finished the sentence in her head: I didn’t think you could afford one, Clare.

  Fair enough. She hadn’t been able to afford one. Not until Jay Holmes had rocked up with a fell-off-the-back-of-a-lorry bike that she’d been dumb enough to pay forty flipping quid for.

  ‘It’s cool, Dad, honestly,’ Leila said, ever the diplomat. ‘I really like them both. And I can lend one to Anna so that we can go on bike rides together.’

  ‘Even if one of the bikes is actually, like, mine,’ Carly put in under her breath.

  Steve heard her muttered comment – well, everyone heard her muttered comment, just as Carly had no doubt intended – and shot Clare a questioning look.

  She shook her head. ‘Later,’ she mouthed. She’d explain later, once she’d brained Jay Holmes with the rolling pin, she thought. First things first.

  At last it was five o’clock and the parents began arriving to pick up their daughters. Clare had helped the girls decorate the boxes into which they’d packed the now-dry bath-bombs, and she’d tied ribbons onto them all while they ate the party tea.

  ‘Mmm, it smells amazing in here,’ Martha’s mum Imogen said as she came into the kitchen. ‘I can’t wait to try one of these bath-bombs. You are clever, Clare.’

  ‘She makes soap as well, and really nice bubble bath,’ Debbie said at once. ‘They make brilliant presents, if you ever need some.’ She winked conspiratorially. ‘Just saying, Im, because I know Clare’s far too modest to blow her own trumpet.’

  Clare blushed. ‘Thanks,’ she said to both Debbie and Imogen at once. Not everyone was out to get her, she reminded herself.

  ‘That’s good to know,’ Imogen said. ‘I’m hopeless at remembering presents, so I’m always dashing around trying to pick something up at short notice. Right, where’s Martha? Come on, love, we need to go. Say thanks to Leila and Clare.’

  It hadn’t all been bad, Clare thought, relief rising within her as one by one the children departed. If it hadn’t been for the bike debacle, she’d have considered the party a resounding triumph, bar some snipey snobbery from Madam Carly.

  At that moment she heard Steve letting someone in the front door (he was making himself very at home here, she thought crossly, considering this wasn’t actually his home any more) and then came the unmistakable voice of Mrs Prince. ‘Parking’s a nightmare in this street, isn’t it? I don’t know how you can bear not having your own driveway.’

  Cringe.

  Clare listened to Steve explaining that he didn’t live here now, but yes, it was rather a pain, parking on the lane, and he was sorry if he’d hogged the space with his Beamer out the front there.

  Double cringe. Clare pulled a face at Debbie. ‘Brace yourself,’ she muttered.

  ‘Mummy!’ cried Carly, rushing through to greet her. ‘You’ll never guess what, it’s the weirdest thing. Leila’s got my bike! You know the one that was nicked?’

  Debbie looked at Clare. ‘Where did you get it from?’ she hissed.

  ‘Jay,’ Clare replied through gritted teeth. ‘Hi there, Stephanie,’ she said politely as Mrs Prince wafted into the kitchen in a cloud of pungent perfume. ‘I’m afraid there’s been some kind of a mix-up, if you’ll just let me explain …’

  Chapter Seven

  Polly finally forced herself out of the apartment on Saturday to buy a newspaper and a stash of chocolate (somehow she’d managed to leave that off the Ocado list; what had she been thinking?) and the world felt an unfamiliar, chilly place when she stepped out into it. The colours around seemed harsh and dazzling. The rumble of buses jarred in her ears. People were bustling along the South Bank – tourists, families, smoochy couples arm-in-arm – and this ma
ss of human life was overwhelming after the quiet solitude she’d been wrapped in. It made her realize how cut off she’d become, how isolated. She hadn’t heard a peep out of Waterman’s, save a standard goodbye letter and confirmation of their stingy redundancy terms. She hadn’t heard anything from her so-called friends, the Sophies and Richenda, either, after that disastrous night in the Red House. Nothing. She’d been ditched, that much was obvious.

  Head down, she walked at top speed to the corner shop, wanting to get this excursion over and done with so that she could be home again as quickly as possible. Going out had become stressful. The air felt too … fresh. The sun was too glaring without tinted windows. How had it ever seemed normal to leave for work every day, to get on the Tube with all those crowds, to jostle and push, to talk to everyone? It was a relief to be back in her apartment, just her. Safe.

  On Monday she’d crack on with the job hunt properly again, she’d promised herself. Monday morning she’d get up early, put on some power clothes and haul herself into the hottest headhunting agencies, brandishing a mint-fresh CV in their faces. She’d chase up everyone she’d already emailed her details to as well, see if she could muscle her way into an interview. She wouldn’t rest until she had a new employer, a new office to call home.

  But then on Monday morning when the alarm blasted her awake, she found herself rolling over blearily, slamming it off and going back to sleep until ten o’clock. Damn. How had that happened? She slunk guiltily out of bed and into the shower. Come on, Polly. Standards were slipping. Everyone at Waterman’s would have been at their desks for hours already.

  Right, into action. No excuses. Computer on. Coffee on. Phone on. She wouldn’t even look at the TV until she’d networked her way around the entire City, even though This Morning was starting soon.