The stepsister, p.2
The Stepsister, page 2
Flicking over the page I close my eyes briefly before picking up my pencil. With fingers flying across the paper, in no time I have a pretty decent image of the man, even down to his black leather shoes and the way his brown hair rests on the collar of his jacket.
I stare at the image just as, moments before, I’m positive he was staring at me. I still have no idea what colour his eyes are and I’m not sure if I’ve captured the shape of his jaw but, when I glance up to check, he’s already disappeared into the crowd of Christmas shoppers thronging the pavement outside.
Grabbing my bag and, with arms only half in the sleeves of my coat, I follow in his footsteps but there’s no trace. My head twists this way and that but it’s useless to see through the crowds of last minute shoppers as the clock ticks its relentless countdown to Christmas. It’s as if he’s never been and all that remains of the episode is my sketch.
‘Alright love, did your friend catch up with you earlier?’
My hand grips the homemade sliced loaf, pressing the soft white flesh between suddenly anxious hands. I know it’s him just as surely as if he’s followed me into the shop and tapped me on the shoulder. But who is he? What is he? And more importantly, what does he want with me?
‘Yes love, earlier today or was it yesterday?’ Paula shoves her glasses up her nose with print-stained fingers. ‘He tried the flat but—’
‘He tried the flat?’
‘Yes.’ She frowns. ‘He knows where you live.’
It's funny how soft the bread is under my fingers, squidgy even - so much softer than brown or even wholemeal. Comfort food, slapped with half a pound of butter dripping off the side. Sounds muffle. Mrs McDaid disappears and all that’s left is the bread mangling under my hands and the thought that he's following me. Not that she needs to tell me. I knew after that first time. Something tingles. Some shadow, from the long distant past, shifts like a curtain to reveal a hidden memory from my childhood. I know he’s following me because I’ve been followed before.
A bell peals. A door is pushed. Sounds invade and I'm standing by the counter with a squashed loaf and her words still ringing in my ears.
He knows where you live.
Back at the studio it doesn’t take long to transfer the drawing onto canvas and, with a few quick slashes from my brush, I create my first work of any quality since the door slammed on the last of Robert’s Louis Vuitton cases. By necessity, I’ve had to leave his eyes partially concealed under hooded lids - I can only guess at the colour. By inclination I’ve lacerated paint, quick and dirty, onto the surface and created something dark and slightly sinister.
Stepping back and surveying my work there’s nothing slightly about it. This man is sinister and, as my gaze roams over his features, I wonder whatever possessed me to put paint to canvas? I don’t want this picture even though it’s good, very good. I want nothing to do with it. I’ve captured his essence, his heart although I doubt if that organ resides inside his chest. I’ve created something and, just like the man, I don’t want anything to do with either it or him. And yet…my eyes run over the lines and grooves. There’s something here, some depth that I can’t begin to guess at.
I turn my head to the window and the view of the castle, where it stands proud of the breakwater heralding the entrance to St Peter Port harbour. This is my muse, my soul even. When things aren’t going well, when all sense has left my world, I find solace in the swirl of the sea as it edges the rock in white mist. But there’s no solace to be had as I feel his eyes follow my thoughts. I stamp my feet like a five-year-old denied a treat and, in a flash, I’ve relegated him to a prison of white as I drape a sheet over my easel.
There. Done. Finished.
I’m suddenly restless but not for work. I must work if only to stave off the stream of brown invading my letterbox like a virus. I’ve been tardy of late and work has changed from a flood to a trickle. But I still have a couple of loyal writers that are willing to wait for the next illustration by Victoria Marsh.
Despite the pressure and lingering sense of worry, I take a couple of minutes to check my phone just in case Ness has texted me about her travel plans. There are two messages. I pull a grimace at the first.
Just back. I need my dress shirt for tonight. Robert x
If he hadn’t left the kiss I might have relented but there’s nothing I hate more than a hypocrite. He couldn’t wait to dump me as soon as he realised who the new office temp was. The teenage daughter of his boss, with legs up to her armpits and hair, teeth and tits to match, was eminently preferable to scruffy old me without a relative to my name. But I don’t mean to be uncharitable. It’s not his fault he’s a yellow-bellied wimp with the courage of a gnat and a taste for the ridiculous, like his frilly French shirt, which is the bitch of all bitches to iron and the reason it lives on the bottom of the ironing pi… My smile broadens to a grin.
Robert doesn’t know one end of an ironing board from the other and I’m pretty sure ironing isn’t amongst the skills of his bimbo, living as she does in the lap of luxury along Fort George. I even remember which bag I’ve put it in. I rip the seam and hurl the fragile silk into the tumble drier on an extra-long, extra-hot cycle before shoving the ruined beyond redemption shirt into a carrier bag and texting him back that it’s on the doorstep.
The second message doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know. It’s from Ness.
Darling - picked up my tickets for Holland. I leave on the ‘red eye’ tomorrow, if you could give me a lift to the airport and I’ll hand over Nigel at the same time. You know how he detests kennels. He’ll be company for you. Hugs, Nessie xxx
I throw the phone on the table next to the tube of cerulean blue I’d chosen to rule the painting. Allowing her to take the lead in this is one thing. But to be dumped with Nigel at the same time is something else entirely. I’d already told her I didn’t care about the canal house and I don’t. I couldn’t give a toss about something so nebulous and indistinct as a house in Holland. It’s not as if it’s somewhere I’d ever dream of living and that’s not even taking into account there’s no way someone has just upped and willed me a half-share in a property, whatever the location.
I have no recollection of the events that led to my abandonment on the steps of Victor Hugo’s former Guernsey residence but, that’s not surprising being as I was only hours old when they found me. I‘m forever that abandoned baby, wrapped in the arms of the person that loved me the most, until she left me alone on that top step. I had no name, until social services issued me one in a flux of panic. Abandoned children might well be something that happens in other parts of the world but in Guernsey it was a novelty that sent everyone into a tailspin.
My mother is long gone. For reasons, only known to her, she abandoned me to my fate and my future without a family. Oh, I have a family of sorts, if you can ever call a stepsister, who’s always viewed me a nuisance, family. Ness was only a bump when her parents happened upon a little discarded bundle, of what they thought rags, on their way home one night. It was only when they saw the rags move did they think they had either a cat or a rat on their hands.
The pealing of the doorbell pulls me out of the past and back into my studio where the shadows have lengthened, and the temperatures fallen. I peer out of the window only to dash back at the sight of Robert’s car blocking the narrow lane beside the house. Days ago, even weeks, I’d have taken him back into my life and my bed. I wouldn’t have asked for anything other than to have things revert back to their previous footing. But, now with my heart exploding in my chest and my pulse drumming in my head, I know it’s too late. We’re too late. If we’d married earlier…if we’d let the expected course of our relationship follow the predicted pattern of wedding and kids, we’d probably now be tripping over the nappy bin. But, the clock can’t be turned back on our relationship. That clock has ticked on. Now that I’ve had a taste of independence, I’m not going to give it up any time soon.
The ringing turns to thumping. I listen with closed eyes until a car door slams and an engine throbs to life. Part of me wishes that I’d found the courage to fling the shirt in his face, instead of cowering behind the door. But, I’ve always been the family doormat and, with Nigel about to descend, it looks as if that’s not going to change anytime soon
‘Thanks for picking me up. You know what taxis are like this time of the morning.’ Ness wrenches open the door of the back seat and I’m suddenly arrested by the smell of wet dog. ‘Be a good boy for Aunty Vee, poppet,’ she croons, settling into the passenger seat and cramming her leather holdall between her knees.
‘You’re not taking much?’ I say, throwing a swift glance at her bag before pulling out into Queens Road.
‘Yes, well,’ her smile blinding. ‘It’s a good opportunity to buy a new wardrobe now that we’re about to come into some real money. Have you heard any more from Robert, by the way? I don't know why you let him slip through your fingers. You're never going to find someone like him again.’
‘What? Someone who's going to drop me like a rock cake as soon as a sexy Danish pastry comes on the scene? No, thank you very much. I've had my fill of all the Roberts I can take.’
I'm certainly not proud of my behaviour yesterday. But I didn't expect him to react in quite the way he did, my attention now on my phone resting on the dashboard and the increasingly abusive texts that spell out, in more than one language, what an absolute bitch I am. But being ashamed of my behaviour is no reason to discuss it with my stepsister. After all, she never discusses her love life with me.
‘How long are you intending on being away?’ I finally manage, the lights from the airport runway glowing in the distance.
‘Oh, not long, although I do have an open ticket. I thought I'd see what the men in Holland are like, for a change,’ she says on a laugh before turning in her seat. ‘You wouldn't mind checking on Ma for me, would you? I usually visit on Saturdays and she'll be expecting someone.’
I knew it was coming but I still find it a surprise - Ness, the dutiful daughter, who takes her responsibilities to her mother seriously. I crunch the gears. Perhaps Robert is right, my gaze flicking to my phone. Perhaps I am a bitch of the lowest order. Perhaps, instead of criticizing Ness’s pity visits, where a bunch of crappy flowers is meant to make up for all of her previous failings in the daughter department, I should just be glad she visits at all. Has she forgotten that I already visit her mother once a week? But, for all of my stepmother's mothering instincts and nursing background, she only ever had room in her heart for one child and that wasn’t me.
When they found me on that doorstep the best thing for all concerned would have been if she’d persuaded him to drop me off at the nearest children's home. I wonder to this day what madness made her decide to take on a baby she had little time for and certainly little patience. It ruined her relationship with Ness’s father. It ruined her and it certainly didn’t do me any favours.
As children went I wasn't the worst. Being abandoned does tend to alter one’s perceptions about what’s important. If behaving could earn me even a glimmer of a smile from the stony-faced woman who’d decided to adopt me, on some whim or false sense of duty, then I'd have been the best-behaved child in Guernsey. But it was never enough. Whatever I said was wrong. Whatever I did, I could always have done better. But Ness, for all her precocious ways, could do no wrong in her mother's eyes. She was the golden child, fated to be adored and, in being adored, spoilt. Not that her mother could ever see it. I was made to feel like some Cinderella type except that there was never a chance of me going to the ball. There was no chance of escape until I was old enough. I moved out on the morning of my sixteenth birthday.
‘She probably won't even realise I'm not there,’ Ness says, unclicking her seatbelt.
That's true. However, despite the dementia, she always knows when it’s me. It’s there in the tilt of her head and the way she never seems to look me in the eye. She recognises me or, at least, something in me that she remembers she doesn’t like. I still don't know why I bother to trek halfway across the island once a week and yet every Tuesday evening, despite the weather or any plans I might have to the contrary, I'm pressing the buzzer on the intercom of the dementia care unit.
A little nod is the only response I’m prepared to give as I follow her out of the car. I run my eyes over her retreating back, taking my time to examine the smart boots and fake-fur coat, a sharp contrast to my paint-splattered denims and scruffy leather jacket. I should hate her, the girl that had everything I craved when I was growing up; the love and affection of a mother, a history, a past and a secure future. I should hate her but, funnily enough, I can’t. We’re the same; her and me, the same but different. I lost my history, my past, my parents when I was abandoned but Ness…Ness lost her father when he decided that two babies were two babies too many.
If it hadn't been for Ness, wanting to pop into the shop for her favourite magazine, it's unlikely I’d have spotted him.
For once I'm not in a hurry. I have no Robert to rush home to. No meal to cook and, whilst I love my current job of painting London buses, it could never be labelled artistically inspiring, however magical the words accompanying the drawings will be. So, wasting five minutes fingering boxes of Guernsey fudge that I don't really need, isn't going to do any harm to anything except my figure. I grab two boxes and head for the till only to come to a complete stop.
He’s right in front of me, head averted, eyes averted, hand brushing over the rack of newspapers standing in the doorway.
I know nothing about him; nothing apart from his face. The way he stands. The curve of his shoulders thrust back, hands loose by his side. I know he'll have a slow, deliberate walk even though I've never seen him move. I know his fingers will be long and strong, my gaze now on his hand, a hand I recognise. But, instead of being curled around a cup, he’s clenching onto a boarding pass.
So, he's in transit, is he? He’s going to disappear out of my life without revealing his interest. His eyes, I still can't see his eyes; the colour, the expression, the direction. But I know, as if it’s heralded from a loudspeaker that just seconds before he was staring at me.
I drag my hair from my face, the strands greasy and uncombed, not that it matters. When was the last time you heard of stalkers complaining about unwashed hair? It's not as if they give a damn whether their quarry is salon ready or scruffy as hell. I'd laugh at the thought but it's far from funny and I tuck my hand in the pocket of my jacket, fumbling for my keys. Keys are my road to freedom; the keys to my car, the keys to my flat - he knows where I live…
I feel the breath squeeze past my lips, my attention interrupted by Ness, her arms full of trashy magazines.
‘The queues! I thought I’d never get to the till,’ she moans. ‘I’ll send you a text when I land. Oh, this is for you,’ she adds, handing me a key. ‘I got another one cut just in case you change your mind. We could spend a few days in Amsterdam. Think about it.’ She gives me a swift kiss on the cheek before walking beside me to passport control.
She suddenly stumbles to a halt, staring in front of her. The one thing Ness never does is stumble, unless there’s a man involved. The airport is heaving and I can't begin to imagine which man has taken her fancy. She has an eclectic taste in the male species and I rarely see her with the same man on her arm twice. He's bound to be tall, good-looking and wealthy. All her men are tall, good-looking and wealthy. In fact, I wonder why she didn't have a go at Robert; after all, they work together. The thought gets pushed aside by another. I wonder if she can possibly mean my man, not that he’s mine.
My gaze follows hers and I see what she sees: him.
What does she see? A threat? An omen? A warning or just a man?
He turns and follows and now I wonder if I was wrong. Just who’s following whom? My hand clenches inside my pocket, my nails digging deep into my palm. That day in the café I’d sat lingering over my coffee and my sums while Ness had rushed on to some meeting or other. What if he hadn’t been following me? What if he’d been following her? I’d only assumed the man in the corner shop had been looking for me but what if he’d been looking for my stepsister? As a solicitor, with a high-profile and often controversial career in matrimonial law, she guarded her privacy above all else. The only weak link in her armoury was her continued efforts to help me. She was ex-directory and lived in an apartment with more security than Fort Knox. Had I led him to her? Had he been following me in an effort to get to her? And even now was he about to board the same plane to Gatwick and then Holland in the hope of causing her harm? It seems a very long way just to make a date.
I pull her to a stop, ignoring the heavy flush on her cheeks or the way her eyes are still staring at his back.
‘Look, do you really need to go all the way to Delft? We can easily contact the solicitor and…’
But she unhooks my hand from her arm before dragging me into a brief hug. ‘Let me be the lawyer here, Vee. After the couple of months I’ve had on that last case, I could do with sorting out something simple like a house transaction. Don’t forget to visit Ma and give Nigel a hug from me. I’ll be back before you know it.’
He’s gone. He’s boarded the plane, the same plane as Ness. I know because I watched from the viewing gallery with a coffee going cold. Is it my imagination or does he pause on the top step, his shoulders squared, his head tilted as if he wants to turn, to raise a hand in silent salute? No, my imagination is running away again. I settle my untouched mug back on the table. He wasn’t following me. He’s no stalker except in the imagination of a neurotic, recently-dumped woman. To stalk me, he’d have to be desperate. He doesn’t look desperate. He’s gone. Ness has gone. I’m still here with a phone full of abusive texts and a man to avoid—another one.
