But couldn’t girls sound vicious sometimes?
TWO
Sometimes it was like I was the favourite sister and Mandy felt she could say things to me she wouldn’t tell Linda. I loved these times, my face scalding over.
We made Linda stand outside the place where we had our fish and chips. Poor Linda, kicking her heels on the pavement and watching through plate glass as Mandy and me took our seats at the gleaming counter. “Only two stools,” Mandy had trilled. “You’ll have to do without, our Linda.” And to Linda’s stunned face she added, “We can’t make our Wendy do without, can we? Not the baby. What would our mam say?”
So me and Mandy watched Linda lean against the glass as we had our supper. I stared at the flattened part of our Linda, the orange and purple stripes of her.
“Sometimes she’s got no sense,” Mandy told me. “She’s like a big lump.”
Feeling horrible and thrilled, I agreed with her, sucking up a hot strip of golden batter.
Mandy went on. “Remember when we had that big scene, when Linda said she couldn’t sleep on patterned sheets and pillowcases?”
I nodded. Mam had been upset because she couldn’t afford new, plainer bedclothes. So Linda was stomping her feet and yelling, Fine! She’d strip her bed down and sleep on the bare mattress. Mam was shouting back that no daughter of hers would sleep on a bare mattress.
It turned out that Linda would wake in the middle of the night and look down at her pillows and sheets. In the dark the giant pink and blue petals of the print scared her. She mistook them for blotches of blood, come some way out of her body. Often she thought her ears bled in the night.
“There was a reason for it,” I said to Mandy. But she had taken up staring at the man serving behind the counter. A black man, with the darkest skin you’ve ever seen. He was in a pinny striped red and white as toothpaste and he wore a white cardboard hat, folded to the right shape. I thought he must fold a new one at the start of every shift. It looked just like one of the white card trays he was shovelling chips into. He worked silently, under illuminated boards of prices and faded pictures of different dinners. Besides the mushy peas, I realised, everything they cooked was beige.
“I really want to have a black man,” said Mandy suddenly, in a different voice. She was fixated on this one. She watched his hands work, binding someone’s parcel in reams of newspaper. “Just to see,” she added. I thought, this must be the kind of thing she can tell me and not our Linda.
“Isn’t that a bit...I don’t know...a bit racist?” I said.
She looked sharply. “What?”
“Wouldn’t he think you were just after him because he was black? For the novelty?”
“Nah.” She was always sure of herself. “He’d be pleased. And it’s not just because he’s black anyway.” She tossed that hair. “They’re meant to have right big dongers. Haven’t you heard? I’d just like to see, for once.”
“Just for once,” I repeated and I must have turned scarlet. I went back to watching Linda, watching us from outside.
Linda:
Mandy thought that our sister was an experiment.
We stood her in front of things, to get her reaction.
When she was very young we stood her in front of the radiator, to see if she would melt.
Later, we tried to dye her hair. We used: tomato soup, gravy browning, lemon juice, olive oil.
When you’re a middle sister (like me) you have no power. Not unless you are distinctive, and I was never distinctive. Mandy was special and big and Wendy was special because she was small.
I could only ever watch and marvel. My sisters seemed so original. Where could I begin...to even make a mark?
I was a lump. I’m not pitying myself. I was a lump, I don’t care. I’m stubborn, unchangeable. But I’m also steadfast, reliable.
When I grew up and went out to work they put me on the make-up counter in Boots and I stayed there. I tell women how to make the best of themselves. I like it.
Mandy was jealous of my job, when I first got it. ‘You! How can you get women to make the best of themselves?’
And it is true that I was never glamorous like our Mandy is glamorous. She seethed for a week or so and boycotted Boots. Then I started bringing stuff home—free samples and whatnot—and we were friends again.
I tried explaining to Mandy. She would be too lovely for my job. She would be too intimidating behind my glass counter. Behind the racks and rows of mascara brushes and the gorgeous coloured tips of lipsticks. She’d be too lovely.
I on the other hand put the punters at their ease. I was every woman. I looked the same as everyone else. I stood as good a chance as they did of looking nice, given the right make-over. They’d look at me and think... well, I look better than her, and she’s stood on display.
So there I was again, pacifying Mandy. Volatile Mandy who could flare up for fun. You had to watch your step with her.
I felt like warning the men she went out with. I saw them step out onto a minefield. I waited for them to snag trip-wires, to find their feet caught under the flat, deadly weight of mines.
Mine mine mine. Mandy could blow us all to smithereens with her selfishness.
She walked into any room expecting all eyes on her. Soon that made her wearily expectant. She hated the way she made eyes light up. But woe betide any that stayed dull for her.
Oh, she could treat people disgracefully.
Just when Mam was getting her life back together, getting herself a new beau, a dapper little man from the old-time dancing, Mandy shoved her oar in and ruined things.
The dapper man came calling on Mam.
