Page 23 of The Good Sister

He waits for a moment to make sure he has my attention, then begins to walk. I follow him, a few paces back, through the gap he has created in the crowd, through the building and out the automatic doors into the cool, soothing air, then away from the entrance and out into the parking lot.

‘Are you all right?’ Wally asks, once we are away from the noise and the smells and the lights.

My heart is still thundering. ‘I thought I could do it,’ I say to Wally, or myself. ‘I thought it would be okay.’

Wally nods. ‘One thing I’ve learned about facing fear,’ he says, ‘is that sometimes, it’s just too scary.’

JOURNAL OF ROSE INGRID CASTLE

Yesterday Owen and I took the Eurostar to Paris. It was late when we checked into our hotel room on the Champs-Élysées and when I woke this morning, Owen was at my bedside with strawberries and proper French coffee. Today we spent the day strolling around the streets, eating and drinking and window shopping. There was a particularly sweet moment while we were climbing the stairs to the Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre. A little girl in a red coat had tripped up the stairs and Owen had scooped her up before she even hit the ground and popped her back on her feet. It had made me smile and ache all at once. That could be our little girl, I thought. If only I could give him a child.

I tried to put it out of my mind, and I did manage to for a while. But then another thought started to distract me. Fern. She hadn’t been answering my calls. She didn’t even answer when we agreed on a scheduled time. It was so unlike her. I know she is probably fine. But . . . what if she isn’t? That’s the tough part. If she were a child, I could call the cops and ask them to go over there and they would. But Fern isn’t a child. For heaven’s sake, I’m the one always advocating for her to be treated equally, as an adult. But in the real world, she’s not like other adults. And she’s my sister. And if I don’t protect her, who will?

My therapist says I’m a perfectionist, in all things, including sisterhood. That is true enough. Ever since I was a child, I’ve longed to be perfect.

If I could just be perfect, I used to think, everything would be okay. It became my life’s mission. Each night I would lie in bed and plan the perfect day, a day incapable of upsetting Mum. I’d get up early, make my own breakfast, clear the dishes quietly. I’d keep an eye out for things I could do to be helpful. Put on a load of laundry, sort the socks, bring Mum a cup of coffee. Mum loved it when I did things like that. She’d smile and say, ‘You’re a good girl, Rose.’

But no matter how hard I tried, I always got something wrong. If I put on the laundry before school, by the time I got home, it had sat there for too long and needed to be rewashed. If I made dinner, I’d accidentally use ingredients Mum had bought for another meal. If I tidied up, I’d always lose something important that Mum had left out intentionally.

It didn’t take long before Mum’s voice permanently took up residence in my mind. It was clear that something was very wrong with me. I was stupid, lazy, selfish. I didn’t pay enough attention to things; I didn’t look after my sister properly. I was bad. Sometimes I was bad even when I hadn’t done anything.

Before I was diagnosed a diabetic, even my health was a source of great irritation to Mum. I knew better than to complain about feeling thirsty or lightheaded, but there were things I couldn’t avoid. For example, occasionally I wet the bed. A classic symptom of juvenile diabetes, I found out later, but at the time we didn’t know that.

‘You wet the bed again, Rose. Again! What is the matter with you?’

I begged Mum to take me to the doctor for months before we finally went. And even after I was diagnosed, Mum still acted like I was making a big deal out of nothing. Every time I tested my blood sugar, she’d roll her eyes. Fern, on the other hand, read up eagerly on diabetes and became an expert, often pointing out what I could and couldn’t eat to Mum. It made Mum wild. There was something about us sticking up for each other that set her off.

Like the time we were ten. Fern and I had just got in from school and we were sitting side by side at the kitchen table with our homework books open. Mum usually napped at this time of day, so we’d both been startled when we heard her pottering around. After a few minutes, she came into the kitchen. Immediately, I knew something bad was coming. Her eyes looked strange. They always looked strange when something bad was coming.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I know what you’ve done. If you come clean and admit it, you won’t be punished. But if you don’t admit it, there will be consequences for you both.’

Fern looked at me with a puzzled, questioning look in her eyes. I tapped my bracelet against hers and tried to choose my words carefully.

‘What . . . is it, Mum?’

‘Don’t insult my intelligence, young lady! You know exactly what I’m talking about. Look at that face – all innocent. You think I don’t know what a conniving little bitch you are?’

I ran through a list in my head. Had I unknowingly shrunk a piece of her clothing in the dryer? Eaten something she’d earmarked for herself? Been too loud? Too happy? Too miserable? One option was to pick one of those things, but if I was wrong, then I’d be in trouble for two things. I thought until my head hurt. When I couldn’t come up with a response, I couldn’t help it. I cried.

‘Here come the waterworks,’ Mum said, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s not going to work this time, Rose! We’re not leaving this room until one of you admit it.’

I knew Mum meant it. Once, she had locked us outside for hours until we confessed to another crime (stealing her jewellery, that time, which she later found behind her dresser). It was the peak of summer and we didn’t have sunscreen on, so we’d huddled under the one tree in the communal yard, following the shade as it moved. I remember watching some other kids from the building squealing as they ran through the garden sprinkler. We didn’t dare ask to join them, so instead, to pass the time, Fern recounted the plot of the Agatha Christie she’d been reading to me. She was quite good at that, the storytelling. Mum didn’t let us inside until after dark, when the mosquitoes had feasted on us and we’d scratched our ankles so hard we were bleeding.

‘Right,’ Mum had said this day. ‘Well, I’ll just have to pick one of you to be punished. Eenie. Meenie. Miney. Mo.’

She pointed at Fern.

‘It was me,’ I said immediately.

Fern looked surprised, but Mum didn’t. As usual, Mum knew exactly what she was doing. She knew I’d never let Fern get in trouble.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Go to your room and don’t come out until I tell you,’ Mum slurred.

After an hour or two, the doorbell rang. Pizza delivery. We’d never had pizza delivered before. It smelled amazing. Mum didn’t call me for dinner, nor did I expect her to, but I was surprised when Fern hadn’t come to bed by 8 pm. I’d been in my room for hours by then, without food and with only half a glass of water that had been sitting beside my bed. I’d been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes a few months earlier and I knew if I didn’t eat, my blood sugar would become dangerously low. I searched the room for food – the pockets of my clothing, and Fern’s. There was nothing.

Still, Mum didn’t come. I waited. And waited. By midnight, I had a headache. By morning, I was shaky, drenched in sweat and I felt like a sledgehammer was thumping at my temples. The half glass of water was gone. I was freezing, which I knew meant I was hypoglycaemic. I needed sugar. Juice, preferably. I needed to test for ketones. I needed to eat.