“Tomorrow,” I said. “I promise.”
“You promised tonight.”
“Let’s have a little drink,” Skye said, “to celebrate the return of the prodigal sister.”
“We don’t drink,” Nathan said priggishly. He’s wrong. I just don’t drink in front of him. My own childhood was diseased and deceived by Mum’s drinking and the decisions she made when drunk.
“There’s a bottle of white in the fridge,” I said, because Skye was staring at my second-hand furniture and looking depressed. At least it’s mine, and no repo man’s going to burst in and take it away. She probably found me plain and worn too, but I can’t help that.
She had a couple of drinks. I watched very carefully, but she showed no signs of becoming loose and giggly. So I said, “It’s late. Stay the night.” She was my sister, after all, even though I didn’t know her. But she took one look at the spare bed in the box room and said, “Thanks, I’ll call a cab.”
When the cab came, Nathan followed us to the front door and said goodbye of his own free will. Skye was always the charming one. She didn’t attempt to kiss him because if there was one thing she’d learnt well it was what guys like and what they don’t like. She said, “I’ll come back tomorrow and bring you a gift. What do you want?”
Now that’s a question Nathan isn’t used to in this house, but he hardly stopped to think. He said, “Football boots. The red and white Nike ones, with a special spanner thing you can use to adjust your own studs.”
“Nathan,” I warned. The subject of football boots was not new. I could never quite afford the ones he wanted.
But Skye grinned and said, “See you tomorrow, kid,” and she was gone in a whirl of fur trimmings.
Mr Bo used to buy our shoes. Well, not buy exactly. This is how he did it: we’d go to a shoe shop and I’d ask for shoes a size and a half too small. Mr Bo would flirt with the assistant. When the shoes arrived I’d try to stuff my feet in and Mr Bo would say, “Who do you think you are? One of the Ugly Sisters?” This would make the assistant laugh as she went off to find the proper size. While she was gone, Skye put on the shoes that were too small for me and slipped out of the shop. Then I’d make a fuss — the shoes rubbed my heels, my friends had prettier ones, and Mr Bo would have to apologize charmingly and take me away, leaving a litter of boxes and shoes on the floor. It worked the other way round when I needed shoes, except that he never made the Ugly Sister crack about Skye. I hated him for that because although he said it was a joke I knew what he really thought.
The only time he paid hard cash was when he bought tap-shoes for Skye. He’d begun to teach us dance steps in the kitchen. “Shuffle,” he’d yell above the music, “kick, ball-change, turn... come on, girls, dance for Daddy.”
The next day Nathan didn’t want to go out. His friend came to the door wanting a kick-around but ended up playing on the computer instead. I didn’t say anything but I knew he was waiting for Skye.
At the end of the day there was nothing I could do but make his favourite, shepherd’s pie, and read Harry Potter to him in bed. I could see his heart wasn’t in it.
I wasn’t surprised — Skye had been taught unreliability by experts — but I was angry. She’d had a chance to show him that a woman could be as good as Batman and she’d blown it. All he had left was me and I was not the stuff of heroes. What had I done in the past nine years except to keep him warm, fed, healthy and honest? Also, I made him do his homework, which I think he found unforgivable. I thought I was giving him solid gold, because in the end, doing my homework and passing exams were the tools I used to dig myself out of a very deep hole. But how can that compare to the magic conferred upon a boy by ownership of coveted football boots? At his age he thought the right boots would transform his life and give him talents beyond belief. Magic boots for Nathan; dancing shoes for Skye.
Mr Bo tried to teach us both to do the splits. Maybe, at eleven or twelve, I was already too stiff. Or maybe, deep down inside, I felt there was something creepy about doing the splits in the snow-white knickers and little short skirts that he insisted we wear to dance for him. Either way, I never managed to learn. But Skye did. She stretched like a spring and bounced like a ball. She wore ribbons in her crazy hair. Of course she got the dancing shoes.
One evening he took us to the bar where Mum worked, put some money in the juke box and Skye showed off what she’d learnt. Mum was so impressed she put out a jam-jar for tips and it was soon full to overflowing.
Now that I have a child of my own I can’t help wandering what on earth she was thinking. Maybe she looked at the tip jar and saw a wide-screen TV or a weekend away at a posh hotel with handsome Bo Barnes. Or was she just high on the free drinks? Once, she said to me, “Wanna know somethin’, kid? If you’re a girl, all you ever got to sell is your youth. Make sure you get a better price for it than I did. Wish someone tol’ me that before I gave it all away.” Of course she wasn’t sober when she said that, but I don’t think sobriety had much to do with it; it was her best advice. No wonder I did my homework.
Skye showed up when Nathan had stopped waiting for her. “C’mon, kid,” she said, “we’re going shopping.”
“You’re smoking.” He was shocked.
“So shoot me,” she said. “You have dirty hair.”
“So shoot me.” He grinned his big crooked smile.
“Needs an orthodontist,” she said. “I should take him back to LA.”
“Over my dead body,” I said. “Nathan, get in the shower. Skye, coffee in the kitchen. Now.”
She wrinkled her still pretty nose at my coffee. I said, “What’re you up to? What’s the scam?”
“Can’t an auntie take her nephew shopping?” She widened her innocent eyes at me. “’Tis the season and all that malarkey.”
“We haven’t seen each other in over fifteen years.”
“So I missed you.”
“No you didn’t. How did you find me?”
“Were you hiding?” she asked. “How do you know what I missed? You’re my big sister, or have you forgotten?”
“I wasn’t the one who swanned off to the States.”
“No, you were the one who was jealous.”
“I tried to protect you.”
“From what? Attention, pretty clothes, guys with nice cars?”
I said nothing because I didn’t know where to begin.
She stuck her elbows on the table and leant forward with her chin jutting. “It all began with Bobby Barnes, didn’t it? You couldn’t stand me being his little star.”
“He was thirty. You were nine.”
“A girl doesn’t stay nine forever.”
“He ended up in prison and we were sent to a home. He robbed us of our childhood, Skye.”
“Some childhood.” She snorted. “Stuck in that squalid little apartment — with no TV or anything.”
“And how did Mr Bo change that? Did he stop Mum drinking? Did he go out to work so that she could look after us? Okay, he brought us a flat-screen telly, but it got repossessed like everything else.”
“He gave us pretty clothes and shoes...”
“He stole them. He taught us how to steal...”
“But it was fun,” Skye cried. “He taught us how to dance too. You’re forgetting the good stuff.”
“He taught you to dance. He taught me how to be a look-out for a pickpocket and a thief. You weren’t a dancer, Skye; you were there to distract the rabbits.”
“Why’re you two quarrelling?” Nathan said from the doorway.
“We’re sisters,” Skye said. “If you’re good I’ll tell you how a pirate came to rescue us from an evil wizard’s castle and how your mom didn’t want to go and nearly blew it for me.”