Free Weird Sister by Kate Pullinger

screaming?’
    ‘We’re travelling in the other direction. We should just go down, and get on the train.’ Agnes walks back up the stairs and takes Jenny by the hand. ‘Come on,’ she says, ‘we’ll get the next one.’
    They walk to the bottom of the stairs and stand for a moment gazing through to the afflicted train. It has stopped halfway along the platform. Several women are weeping, leaning against the curving wall of the station. Two men are sitting on the ground, their heads bowed. Someone has vomited. London Transport personnel begin to appear, shouting in to their radios. Afterwards Jenny remembers the crackling of their stiff plastic fluorescent jackets as they rush up and down the platform. They look as lost and confused as the passengers. ‘He’s there,’ says a man in a suit, pointing his shaking hand, ‘he’s down there, under this carriage.’
    ‘Is he alive?’ asks the staff member.
    ‘No,’ says the man, ‘no way.’
    The driver stumbles out of his cab.
    ‘Come on,’ says Agnes. ‘Let’s get out of the way.’ She puts her arm around Jenny.
    ‘Someone jumped, didn’t they?’ she asks. ‘Someone jumped in front of the train.’
    ‘Looks like it.’
    Jenny feels ill. ‘God,’ she says, ‘how awful. You must really want to die to do that.’
    ‘Unless he was pushed,’ Agnes says calmly.
    Jenny looks at her, looks back through the arch to the other platform. ‘Do you think he can have been pushed?’
    ‘You never know. You never know these days. Never take things at face value, Jenny.’ Their train is now approaching. ‘I hope he was pushed.’
    ‘Why?’ asks Jenny, astonished.
    ‘Because if he jumped, he’ll never rest. He’ll never have any peace.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘His soul,’ Agnes says, and Jenny hears her despite the noise of the train. ‘It will be in torment, forever.’
    They get on to the train. It is packed and their shopping bags are awkward; everyone is damp and steaming. The doors close and as they pull away from the scene Jenny asks, ‘Are you religious?’
    ‘No,’ replies Agnes, ‘quite the contrary.’

Karen panics
    Karen doesn’t know what to wear to the wedding. She doesn’t have any nice clothes anymore, all she has are mummy clothes, jeans, shirts, stretched old cardigans that she’s worn every day for years. There isn’t room in her budget, in the money she gets from Graeme, the money they receive from Social Services. When Graeme was working she used to ask him for extra money from time to time, and he’d always looked shocked, and he’d always handed it over, although usually slightly less than what she’d requested. But now she doesn’t ask for money for herself and, quite frankly, she can’t be bothered. She has ceased to worry about the way she looks. She has other priorities.
    Except for now. When Jenny arrives home from her day out with Agnes Karen asks to see what they bought. She is amazed by the quantity of glamour in those shopping bags. ‘You’ll look fantastic,’ she says to Jenny and as the girl blushes, Karen can feel her excitement and pleasure. And that leads her down a narrow bumpy track to the conclusion that she herself will look ugly, she’ll look frumpy, she’ll look terrible. She’ll look short and pear-shaped. Her parents are driving down from Leicester for the day, everyone she knows is coming to the party, and she has nothing to wear.
    From time to time, in the past, her brother-in-law Robert has given Karen money. Usually before the boys’ birthdays – ‘Buy him something from me’ – handing her too much cash to spend on a small boy. Between them it is understood that Karen will buy something for herself as well. But she’s never actually asked Robert for money, and she’s not about to start, especially not now that he’s getting married.
    That evening, after the children are in bed, Karen goes up to her bedroom. She looks in her closet, hoping to find something she’s forgotten,