My Sister Jodie Read online

‘Well come on, girls, get a move on. Get all those old toys sorted into cardboard boxes, then Dad will take them to the hospice shop in the car.’

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  Mum glanced up at the ceiling. ‘Where did that mark come from?’ she said, frowning.

  ‘What mark?’ we said in unison.

  ‘You two!’ said Mum, but she was in too cheery a mood to get really angry. We heard her humming

  ‘Truly Scrumptious’ as she went back into her own room.

  ‘I don’t know what to keep and what to chuck,’ I said, stirring all my toys. ‘I never play with my Barbies now, or my cut-out paper dolls, or my giant set of wax crayons – they’re just for babies, but I don’t really want to throw them out.’

  It was easier for Jodie. Most of her old toys were broken. Her old Barbies had skinhead haircuts and tattoos and assorted amputations; her teddy had led such an adventurous life that his head was hanging off his shoulders by a thread. Her crayons were stumps and her paints a sludgy mess.

  ‘Junk, junk, junketty junk,’ she chanted as she threw them rhythmically into a black plastic rubbish bag.

  She grew wilder, throwing in her cream clutch bag and cream pumps, her pink crocheted poncho, her white fluffy towelling dressing gown, her floral toothmug and flannel and washbag, her pink alarm clock in the shape of a heart.

  ‘Jodie! You’ll hurt Mum’s feelings,’ I said.

  ‘She never minds hurting mine,’ said Jodie.

  ‘They were presents from her.’

  ‘Yeah, but they’re all stuff she likes, not me.’

  ‘I quite like them too,’ I said. ‘Can I have your dressing gown if you don’t want it?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Jodie, wrapping it round me. She 28

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  laughed. ‘You look like a polar bear. Here, bear, want a fishy?’

  She pretended to feed me the wooden rocket, and then chucked it carelessly into the black plastic bag

  – but that night I heard her scrabbling in the bag, searching for something. I kept quiet. The next morning I saw she’d wedged the rocket beside her red shoes in her small suitcase of treasured possessions.

  We lived with cases and cardboard boxes all around us for days, never quite sure where anything was, suddenly needing something that was packed right away. Dad was out all day and half the night, trying to complete all the book-shelves and bathroom cabinets on his order book.

  He had a farewell do with his mates at work and came home all tearful, saying they were a cracking bunch of lads, like brothers to him.

  We had a farewell Sunday lunch with Dad’s real brother, Uncle Jack, and Aunty Pauline and our two little cousins, Ashleigh and Aimee, and Dad’s mum came too. They all wished us the best, and Gran kept saying how much she’d miss us, though whenever we went round to her house she was always telling us off, especially Jodie.

  Mum didn’t say goodbye to any of her family. She didn’t keep in touch. She always sniffed when she spoke about them. Jodie and I would have loved to meet this other gran who always ‘went down the boozer’, and the granddad who’d been on benefit all his life, and we especially wanted to meet the uncle who’d been ‘in and out of the nick’, but Mum had left home at seventeen and never gone back. She did her last shift at Jenny’s Teashop, coming home with a carved wooden spoon and a new apron with 29

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  SUPERCOOK embroidered in white across the chest –

  gifts from her regular customers.

  Jodie missed school altogether for the last couple of weeks. Marie and Siobhan and Shanice had turned against her and it was simpler and safer to keep out of their way. Jodie said she mooched around the town in the mornings, ate the packed lunch Mum made for her down by the river, and then mostly hung around the park until it was time to come home. She liked the children’s playground.

  She always loved little kids. She’d had plenty of practice looking after me. They all ran at her as soon as they spotted her, hanging on her arms, begging her to pick them up, to whirl them about, to give them a push on the swings or help them up and down the little slide. The mums made a fuss of her too because they could sit on the bench and chat amongst themselves while Jodie leaped about like Mary Poppins on skates.

  ‘Maybe I’ll be a nursery nurse when I’m older,’

  Jodie said happily. ‘I seem to have the knack for it.

  Or I could be a nanny. Or maybe I’ll just have heaps of kids of my own.’

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t want to get married,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t! You don’t have to have a husband to have lots of children,’ said Jodie, winking at me.

  ‘Mum would go spare if she heard you saying that,’ I said.

  ‘Mum goes spare at everything I say,’ said Jodie.

  ‘What if she finds out you’re bunking off from school?’

  ‘She won’t. I’m leaving anyway, so what does it matter?’ Jodie said carelessly.

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  She didn’t bother to go back to say goodbye to anyone. I didn’t actually say goodbye to many people at my school either. I didn’t really have any proper friends. I did say a proper goodbye to my teacher, Mrs Lambert, because she was always kind to me.

  ‘I’m so happy for you that you’re going to this boarding school, Pearl. It’s a wonderful opportunity.

  You’re a very bright girl. I know you’ll make the most of it.’ She straightened up, shaking her head now. ‘What about that big sister of yours? How does she feel about going?’

  I shrugged awkwardly.

  ‘I was very fond of Jodie, though she was always a handful,’ she said, smiling. ‘Still, maybe she’ll turn into a lovely young lady at boarding school.’

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  She’d guessed my wish, word for word.

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  3

  We got up at six sharp on moving day, even Jodie. Mum had been practising big breakfast fry-ups – egg and bacon and sausage, sometimes black pudding and hash browns and bubble-and-squeak as well – but this morning we had a marmalade sandwich and a mug of tea as we worked, doing all the last-minute packing up. Dad was useless, fretting about his work tools, taking them out of their boxes and unwinding all the bubble wrap.

  ‘I’m just checking, just checking,’ he kept muttering when Mum screamed at him.

  I tried to help Mum pack up in the kitchen but I was trying to be too quick, too eager, because I knew she wanted everything out of the way before she gave the floor one last scrub. The milk jug slipped right out of my hands and crashed on the floor, shattering into blue and white shards and splashing all over my socks.

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  ‘For pity’s sake, Jodie!’ Mum snapped. It came out automatically – she was so used to telling Jodie off and not me. ‘ Pearl, I mean, you silly careless girl.’

  Jodie herself was clearing up the bathroom, packing all the washing things into one last box and then cleaning the basin, the bath, the toilet, the floor.

  ‘I’ll give it a going-over after you. You’ll leave it all smeary,’ said Mum, but when Jodie called for her inspection, she had to shake her head.

  ‘Well, you’ve made a really good job of it, Jodie.

  Look at that shine! There, it just shows what you can do when you put your mind to it.’ Mum sounded almost put out, as if Jodie was playing a trick on her.

  As soon as the two removal men came, Mum got them clearing the living room first while she vacu-umed busily behind them. We followed when they went on to the big bedroom, trying to help with the small stuff while they tackled the heavy furniture and the carpets. Jodie rolled me right up in a rug, calling me her Pear