Free Letters From My Sister by Alice Peterson Page A

beeps his horn furiously as he overtakes us. ‘Wanker!’ he shouts out of the window. The cyclist turns around briefly and shakes a fist at us.
    ‘Now you listen to me, Katie …’
    ‘But, Mum …’
    ‘No. You shut up,’ she says. ‘If you ever say that about your sister again, I mean EVER, you forfeit your pocket money for weeks.’ She grips the steering wheel. ‘It’s
not
Bells’s fault …’
    ‘You always take her side, Mum.’
    ‘You are very lucky you …’
    ‘I am very lucky I don’t have a cleft lip,’ I finish for her like a robot. Whenever I’m difficult, Mum and Dad’s invariable answer is to tell me how lucky I am not to have been born with something wrong and that I should count my lucky stars.
    ‘Well, you are,’ Mum says.
    ‘You love her more than me,’ I tell Mum.
    ‘I do not,’ she says wearily. ‘That’s not true.’
    I look out of the window, trying hard not to cry.
    ‘All I wanted to do was watch your father today with no dramas, but I see that’s clearly impossible. No more outings, that’s it,’ she tells us with finality.
    Back to doing nothing.
    ‘On Monday we do nothing, on Tuesday we do nothing,’ Bells chants to the theme of
Happy Days
. She doesn’t appear at all upset that she ruined our afternoon.
    Mum lights a cigarette with the car lighter and opens the window. ‘It’s OK,’ she mutters. ‘I can cope. You can cope.’
    If Bells hadn’t been naughty none of this would have happened. I can feel my chin wobbling but I’m still determined not to cry. Yet tears stream down my face now. I don’t understand it. Why do I always get the blame? I might as well be the naughty one, because at least that way I get to have more fun.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    ‘What am I doing now?’ Mr Vickers rubs his hands together, thinking up his next trick. We’re in my shop and Mr Vickers and Bells have been playing this charade game for about five minutes. Already I’m finding it a challenge having Bells around. She likes to pretend she’s a customer and unfolds Eve’s neatly piled clothes. She also likes to ask customers how rich they are. ‘How much money you have?’ she says, almost the moment they step inside. And now … who is this man with giant hands the colour of a purple cabbage? His circulation is so poor that his feet, squashed into old beige shoes looking more like Cornish pasties, are also a mottled purple.
    I sent Bells off to buy a baguette for lunch, and somehow she managed to pick up this man along the way and bring him back here. ‘Sorry, who are you?’ I asked him as he walked into the shop.
    ‘I, er, don’t want to intrude.’
    ‘I’m sorry, who are you?’ I asked again.
    Finally I discovered that he is called Mr Vickers and he works at one of the local libraries. He has grey hair and wears mustard-coloured trousers with a smart white-collared shirt. What’s even more peculiar about him is that he has a bump about the size of a golf ball in the middle of his forehead.
    ‘Why funny lump on head?’ Bells asked immediately.
    ‘Oh, my goodness,’ Eve said, putting a hand over her mouth. ‘Bells, it might be personal.’
    Our visitor looked at me for a translation. ‘She asked you what the, um, lump was on your forehead?’ My voice rose at the end. I was oddly curious too.
    ‘I was, er, born with it,’ he replied. ‘I’m not quite sure, er, what it is … soft tissue or something like that.’ He didn’t seem too embarrassed about being asked such a personal question.
    ‘What am I, er, doing now?’ he asks her, and even Eve is joining in. He holds his hand in mid-air, fingers clenched as if he is holding on to something tightly, and starts rocking backwards and forwards, making strange noises.
    ‘You are riding a horse?’ Eve guesses, her finger resting on her lip as if she is trying to solve an important crime. She looks confused, her eyes narrowed. ‘
Non
, that does not explain the hand.’
    I glance at the door, praying no one