Something Only We Know (21 page)

‘Uh huh.’

‘How’re you doing?’ asked Sally, hopping down from the podium while we had a minute’s break. ‘Have you been drinking enough?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘And you’ve enjoyed it?’

‘Yeah, I have, actually.’

‘Good. Are you ready for your cool-down exercises?’

Helen frowned at me. I could tell she thought she’d had enough.

I said, ‘We have to do those or we’ll ache all over tomorrow. Won’t we, Sal?’

‘We certainly will. Listen to your sister.’ She gave Helen another wink and returned to the dais.

The quiet music came on. Gradually the women put down their water bottles and face towels and wandered onto the floor again, ready to stretch. Next to me, Helen at last tore off her T-shirt and
threw it against the skirting board.

I’d said to her before class that no one would be watching her, and I thought I’d been telling the truth. But I’d forgotten what a compelling figure my sister is. Now she was
stripped down to her vest, her narrow waist, flat stomach and porcelain-smooth arms were on full view. That striking curtain of orange hair draped like wavy silk down her back. She just draws the
eye, she can’t help it. She always has done.

‘So we begin,’ said Sally, ‘with feet hip-distance apart. Then take a brave step forward, and
lean
into the lunge. And hold. Check your bent knee, it should be over
your ankle. Feel the calf muscles speaking to you. What are they saying? Are they saying hello yet? OK, arms out at the sides, and bring them slowly round in front of you as if you were embracing a
giant beach ball . . . That’s right. Mesh the fingers and try to pull them apart. Keep your shoulders down. Chest open. Chin lifted so you’re looking straight ahead. Breathe.’

I got into position and glanced across at Helen. She was like an ivory carving, her skin so pale you could see the veins at the inside of her elbow, the shadows of bone definition at the base of
her neck. There was something so fragile about her. I thought of Ned and his recent worries.
Had
she got any thinner? Not that I could see, not obviously. Perhaps her cheekbones were that
little bit sharper. There were bluish tinges under her eyes, but there often are because she stays up late. And that made me remember other times I’d secretly studied my sister in the past.
Once when Mum had talked her into taking me swimming – God knows what threats or bribery she’d employed to wangle that – and Hel had sat on the poolside wearing a sarong over her
one-piece and I’d been fascinated by the extreme sharpness of her elbows and the fact her tummy was actually concave. Her arms had been mottled purple and yellowy, the way your skin goes if
you play out in the snow in just short sleeves. And she had been cold that day, even though the pool was heated and steamy. I recalled another afternoon when I’d come home from primary school
and she’d been laid out on the sofa with cushions piled underneath her. She said she couldn’t get comfortable, that however she lay, the seat was digging in. I said it was like the
fairy story about the princess who was so refined she could feel a single dried pea through twenty mattresses. That had made her smile.

I thought of a day I’d brought home a friend from primary school. I think I was in the top class then, and this girl had wanted to go in Helen’s room and poke around, and in fact she
had done and I’d had to drag her out. She’d got hold of one of Helen’s belts and tried it on (it was way too small) and then asked whether my sister was going to die. When Mum
heard about that exchange she banned the girl from our house and gave me an earful for having invited her.

Because there’s always been this secrecy around Helen – her body, her room, everything. Considering we’ve grown up together, I feel I hardly know her. So much of the person she
is has been shrouded in mystery. Then again, I suppose it’s to be expected. Even if she hadn’t been anorexic, she’s seven years older than me. That’s a gulf which is hard to
cross.

Yet here we were, dancing together. Who’d have thought it? When the class was over and we were filing out, she grasped my arm.

‘You were right, sis. I admit it. That was amazing.’

‘You enjoyed it?’

‘God, yeah. I’m knackered, though. Phew! How do you remember the different routines? I’ll never learn them.’

‘You will. It’s muscle-memory, half of it. Your body recalling the moves without you even having to think.’

‘If you say so.’ We walked out onto the car park and she pointed to the pub across the road. ‘So what’s The Duke like?’

‘No idea. When the zumba girls go out, it’s normally to the Queen’s Head. Why do you ask? Don’t tell me you’re in need of a drink.’

‘I just don’t want to go home yet. Do you?’

‘To the land of the Arctic stares? Fair point. Come on, then. Let’s put our heads round the door.’

The Duke turned out to have one of those old-men’s saloons, horrible carpet and splitting seat covers. It was empty of customers, too, which is never a good sign. There was, however, a
good log fire going.

‘Sure you want to stay?’ I asked.

‘You want to go home and sit in front of the TV with our parents?’

Hel pulled off her headband and settled herself by the hearth while I got us two Diet Cokes, plus a bag of peanuts for myself. I’d have quite liked a shot of something but I was
driving.

‘So you’ll be zumba-ing next week?’ I said, sliding in next to her.

‘If you’ll have me. It’s a pity I was so rubbish.’

‘You were not.’

‘Oh, I was, Jen. Like that move where we had to lean over and shimmy our boobs – I’ve no boobs to shimmy, have I? And no bum to wiggle. I must have looked ridiculous. You know
me, I can’t really do “sexy”.’

I understood what she meant. Hel’s beautiful, but it’s aesthetic, abstract admiration rather than the blatantly carnal she tends to arouse. She’ll never have a luscious body,
plump and ripe, curvaceous. Her beauty’s always going to be the sort that puts you in mind of wood nymphs or Rivendell. Out of the blue I recalled what Ned had confided back in the summer,
that they weren’t sleeping together any more. Dear God, horrible image. Why had he ever told me that?

‘Don’t stress,’ I said quickly. ‘We’re all sizes and shapes in there. You just have to go with the music. Have fun.’

‘I did! And the weird thing is, I’m exhausted, but at the same time I feel so fired-up I could leap tall buildings at a single bound. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I do.’

She grinned at me and I grinned back. Well done, Jen; well done, little sis.

We sipped our drinks and watched the fire flickering in the grate.

‘How are things with you, anyway?’

‘You mean Owen-wise?’

‘If you like.’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.’

I let out a long sigh. ‘What you’d expect. I miss him, Hel. I miss him every day and every night. Some evenings I don’t know what to do with myself. I come out of the office
and I have to fight the urge to turn and walk across the square and down towards his flat. Or to the shop to see the girls, or to the Oak. Those places that were ours. And then when I get home
I’m in a mood, and Mum’s asking all these questions, but never the ones that might make me feel she actually cares about me as a person.’

‘She does care. She just doesn’t know what to say to you. She’s trying.’

‘Oh yeah, very trying. But the worst aspect of this whole break-up thing is that I keep going over and over in my mind how I ought to have played it with Chelle. This idea that he blames
me, that he’s got me down as – I don’t know – a
bully –
that hurts. That’s hard to bear.’

‘Owen’s a tosser.’

‘No. He’s just naive. He misread a situation. I just wish I could have another chance to explain myself properly. It still goes round and round my head, what I should have said, what
I wish I hadn’t. It’s killing me, Hel.’

She nodded. ‘Maybe you need to contact him again, then.’

‘I do think about it. But I haven’t the nerve. If we met up and he repeated that stuff about how I never understood him and how I was too pushy . . . I can’t risk putting
myself through that. Not right now.’

‘It would be a resolution. Which is better than the state you’re in.’

‘I don’t know. I change my mind twenty times an hour. Ned thinks I’m better off single.’

‘Huh. Does he? Who died and made him king? Look, Jen, if you want to contact Owen, you go ahead. Or not. Your choice. Only it seems a shame if you think you could still talk him round, not
to at least have a try.’

‘Life’s tricky, isn’t it?’

‘It bloody well is.’ She flicked her hair back carelessly, and across the room the barman cast a longing glance.

I said, ‘You two are OK? You and Ned?’

‘Great,’ she said, and I thought I’d never heard a syllable invested with such bleakness.

The pub door opened and an old man tottered in. He had with him a dog on a lead, a faded collie with a drooping head. I smiled a greeting but he ignored us.

‘My God, they make a pair,’ I whispered to Hel. ‘You have to ask yourself, who’s going to keel over first?’

She nudged me with her foot. ‘Don’t be mean. That’s exactly the type of animal we help out, the ones who get left behind when their owners die.’

She began to talk about the kennels then, and about the cases that were currently on her mind. I wanted to know about the man who’d been a pain to her when she first started.

‘Oh, he’s still a pain. Every day he finds something to carp about. Last week he threatened to file a written report about my not locking the meds cabinet, but actually I
hadn’t been anywhere near it and then the centre director admitted it was her fault. He was furious.’

‘What have you done to annoy him so much?’

‘Nothing that I know of. It could be Lucinda-Syndrome.’

I nodded. Lucinda had been a tutor hired about ten years ago, when Hel was ploughing through her science GCSEs. She’d taken an instant dislike to my sister, sniping and inventing
complaints against her, and after a while we’d worked out it was basically to do with the way Hel looked. That does happen sometimes. Mostly beauty like hers provokes a warm reception in
people, but there are always one or two who react to it by getting defensive and hostile. Lucinda herself had a hairy mole and a monobrow, but as we said at the time, that wasn’t
Helen’s fault.

‘Perhaps that’s why Rosa doesn’t like me,’ I said drily.

‘She
could
be jealous of you. It’s not such an outrageous idea.’

‘Ha.’

‘No. You’re young, you’re at the start of everything. It’s all before you. God, Jen, I wish I was still twenty-three.’

‘Because thirty’s
so
old.’

‘It is when you’ve done nothing with your life.’

‘Get off. Tell me more about the doggies.’

So she described a foxhound rescued from a hunt that they’d successfully rehomed as a pet, despite various people telling them it couldn’t be done. There was a Jack Russell-cross
with a withered hind leg whose owners had got bored with him, but who’d found favour with a boisterous vicarage family. The blind Staffie, Isaac, was still around; he’d become the
centre’s mascot and everyone on the staff made a fuss of him. Every week brought new refugees and new matches, and a few losses. Some days she cried but I hadn’t to tell Mum that.
Mostly it was good. ‘I want to make a difference, Jen. Like that woman tonight with her charity bike ride. Imagine achieving something like that. I can’t stop thinking about
it.’

‘If you announce you’re biking to John O’ Groats, Mum’ll have a heart attack on the spot.’

‘I was only thinking aloud.’

‘Well, no thinking aloud in front of her. Not unless you want another earful.’ I took a sip of my Coke. ‘You know she’s going to be furious when you get back and say
you’ve enjoyed yourself.’

‘So she is.’

I thought of my mother’s anxious, resentful face as it had been over the dining table that evening.

‘Actually, I don’t know how you stand it, the constant scrutiny. She’s getting worse. You can’t even cross your legs without her being on high alert, can you?’

‘Ah, she’s OK.’

‘She needs to stop being so controlling.’

‘It’s only because she worries about me.’

Suddenly I was annoyed.

‘Tell me something, Hel. Why do you always defend her? I know she irritates you to death. She does nothing but monitor your movements and try to stop you doing stuff. She’s like a
bloody prison warder. Plus she’s so damn miserable. She never has a good word to say about Dad and she’s just not interested in me. I could shack up tomorrow with an axe-murdering
junkie and she wouldn’t bother. It’s totally unbalanced, like you get twice the attention and I get none. Not that I’m complaining; I couldn’t stand it the other way. I
don’t know why Dad puts up with it, though. The way she is with him, it’s awful. If I were him I’d tell her where to go.’

I felt a lot better for having got this off my chest. I was fed up, and it was nice to have the opportunity to offload to someone who understood. This evening with my sister had been good. I
felt we’d made a new connection. I wondered if she thought the same, wondered if we would sit and chat like this next week, and the week after that.

‘I mean, why did Mum go on and
have
a second child if she wasn’t that fussed? Do you think I was a “mistake”? And why did she get married to a man she obviously
can’t stand? It’s wearing on the rest of us. Do you reckon she was she always this sour? Was she a sour kid, was she
born
sour?’

Helen frowned. Her fingers laced and unlaced in her lap.

‘You shouldn’t go on about her. She’s your mum. I know she’s hard work sometimes, but she’s had a difficult life.’

‘Has she? How?’

‘It’s not that easy to explain, Jen. There are things—’

‘Things?’

‘Family things. You didn’t pick them up because you were too young.’

‘Pick what up?’

A pause.

‘OK, listen,’ she said. ‘I’m going to tell you something, and you’re not going to overreact to it. You’re an adult and you ought to know how your own family
works.’