The Past and Other Lies Read Online Free PDF Page A

groan. Either way it was cut short when Jennifer surged forward, snatching instinctively at the thrashing legs, her face buried in the denim of the dangling trouser legs in a desperate attempt to take their weight on her shoulders, in her arms.
    And the legs were a dead weight. Jennifer kept trying to grab more and more of them, to take more and more of their weight and all the while she was thinking , How long? How long has she been like this? All the time we were pouring gravy over our shepherd’s pie? Taking our seats at the dining-room table? Since before Crossroads came on? Before Dad came in from work? How long? And at the same time her mind raced forward to a time that hadn’t happened yet but was about to: herself calling out, Help! Someone help me! and Mum and Dad running up the stairs, coming in, finding them, cries, screams, dismay. An ambulance being called, a lifeless body on a stretcher with the blanket (a red one) pulled up over Charlotte’s face, the neighbours standing in clusters in their doorways, of hours spent sitting in white hospital corridors trying to get the attention of elusive doctors, of a policeman taking a statement and a WPC comforting Mum, someone asking, Why? Why would she do such a thing? Endless cups of tasteless vending-machine tea in white plastic cups. And life, her own life, stretching bleakly ahead from this point onwards into...nothing.
    Jennifer groaned, sobbed and clutched even tighter and the legs kicked, they actually kicked, and she had the greatest difficulty keeping hold of those legs as her eyes sprayed tears and her mouth gasped, and she knew she must do something more.
    The something more was the pair of tiny, slightly rusted nail scissors lying on the dressing-table beside the open bottle of shocking-pink nail polish.
    Jennifer shifted the now wriggling legs to her right arm, reached over and snatched up the scissors, reached above both their heads and tried to cut the hated school tie. Which is when she realised it was impossible to cut using your left hand, so she sobbed and gasped some more and switched the legs to her left arm, the scissors to her right hand and began to cut and cut and cut like a manic dressmaker an hour before an important fashion show.
    The tie proved to be made of good-quality material, and the cutting was more hacking than precision snipping, but eventually a tear was made in the awful stuff and the weight of Charlotte’s body and of Jennifer hacking and snipping for all she was worth helped the strands to rip until at last it gave and the two bodies dropped to the floor with a bone-jarring thud.
    Jennifer’s forehead connected with her kneecap, the back of her head crashed onto the floor and there was a tangle of arms and legs. She found herself on her back staring up at the remaining length of tie, her thumb and forefinger still looped through the handles of the nail scissors, a red depression in her skin so deep it bruised the bone. As she stared up at that piece of tie it occurred to her that it was actually two pieces of tie—that is, two ties knotted together—which was how Charlotte had made it long enough to fasten to both the light fitting and around her own neck. And as Charlotte only had one school tie it was reasonable to assume that the other tie was Jennifer’s. This time Jennifer did not experience a rush of fury that Charlotte had stolen something of hers.
    On the floor beside her, Charlotte made a gurgling, choking, groaning sound. Jennifer lifted her head off the carpet and stared at her sister and opened her mouth to say something (what, she had no idea) when they both heard Mum’s voice in the hallway downstairs.
    ‘Charlotte! Jennifer! For heaven’s sake, your dinners are getting cold and I’m not putting them in the oven. And you’re missing Crossroads .’
    As Mum spoke these words, they stared at each other and because Charlotte was alive and staring at her and because Jennifer knew why this had happened, she