Sister: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

only option was a hotel. I’d never appreciated how badly fitting your windows are. Squalls of sleet-cold air were coming through the gaps. Your walls were impregnated with damp, moist and cold to touch. Your ecofriendly light bulbs took ages to throw off any decent light. I turned your central heating up to maximum, but only the top two inches of the radiators gave off any heat. Do you simply not notice such things or are you just more stoical than me?
    I saw that your phone was disconnected. Was that why your phone had been engaged when I’d tried to ring you over the last few days? But surely you wouldn’t have left it unplugged all that time. I tried to cool my prickling anxiety - you often disconnect the phone when you’re painting or listening to music, resenting its hectoring demand for undeserved attention; so the last time you were here you must have just forgotten to plug it in again.
    I started putting your suitcase of clothes away in your wardrobe, welcoming my customary surge of irritation.

    ‘But why on earth can’t you put your wardrobe in the bedroom, where it’s designed to go? It looks ridiculous in here.’
    My first visit, wondering why on earth your tiny sitting room was full of a large wardrobe.
    ‘I’ve made my bedroom into a studio,’ you replied, laughing before you’d finished your sentence. ‘Studio’ was such a grand name for your tiny basement bedroom.

    One of the things I love about you is that you find yourself ridiculous faster than anyone else and laugh at yourself first. You’re the only person I know who finds their own absurdities genuinely funny. Unfortunately it’s not a family trait.
    As I hung up your clothes I saw a drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe and pulled it out. Inside were your baby things. Everything in your flat was just so shabby. Your clothes were from charity shops, your furniture from skips, and these baby clothes were brand new and expensive. I took out a pale-blue cashmere baby blanket and tiny hat; so soft my hands felt coarse. They were beautiful. It was like finding an Eames chair in a bus stop. You couldn’t possibly have afforded them, so who’d given you the money? I thought Emilio Codi tried to force you to have an abortion. What was going on, Tess?
    The doorbell rang and I ran to answer it. I had ‘Tess’ in my mouth, almost out, as I opened the door. A young woman was on the doorstep. I swallowed ‘Tess’. Some words have a taste. I realised I was shaking from the adrenaline rush.
    She was over six months pregnant but despite the cold her Lycra top was cropped showing her distended belly and pierced tummy button. I found her overt pregnancy as cheap as her yellow hair colour.
    ‘Is Tess here?’ she asked.
    ‘Are you a friend of hers?’
    ‘Yes. Friend. I am Kasia.’
    I remembered you telling me about Kasia, your Polish friend, but your description didn’t tally with the reality on the doorstep. You’d been flattering to the point of distortion, lending her a gloss that she simply didn’t have. Standing there in her absurd miniskirt, her legs textured by goosebumps and the raised veins of pregnancy, I thought her far from a ‘Donatello drawing’.
    ‘Me and Tess met at clinic. No boyfriend too.’
    I noted her poor English rather than what she was saying. She looked up at a Ford Escort, parked by the top of the steps, ‘He came back. Three weeks.’
    I hoped my face showed its complete lack of interest in the state of her personal life.
    ‘When will Tess home?’
    ‘I don’t know. Nobody knows where she is.’ My voice started to wobble, but I’d be damned if I’d show emotion to this girl. The snob in Mum has been healthily passed on to me. I continued briskly, ‘She hasn’t been seen since last Thursday. Do you know where she might be?’
    Kasia shook her head. ‘We’ve been holiday. Majorca. Making up.’
    The man in the Ford Escort was leaning on the horn. Kasia waved up at him and I saw she looked nervous. She