Free The Convent by Maureen McCarthy Page A

thinking about how my life might have been different. Maybe I simply lack imagination, but it has never been something I’ve considered important. Oddly enough, it’s Stella who is more intrigued by it all than me. One of her favourite pastimes is weaving complicated stories about my origins. Your birth mother was a priestess in a faraway land … She couldn’t keep you because she was doomed to die when she turned sixteen. My lack of interest in these bizarre scenarios never fails to infuriate her.
    â€˜I wish it was me who was adopted,’ she often moans to Mum and Dad. ‘The romance of it is wasted on boring old Peach!’

    â€˜Will you look after her for us, sweetheart?’ Mum and Dad sat side by side on the deep-pink velvet two-seater couch under the window; it had belonged to Nana who’d lived with us until she died the year before. ‘We don’t have to go if it’s going to be too much for you or if you feel that you won’t be able to cope.’
    It pissed me off a bit that they thought they had to ask. As though I wouldn’t look after my sister while they were gone!
    â€˜Of course,’ I said, not bothering to sound enthusiastic. ‘I’ll have her sorted out by the time you get back.’
    â€˜We realise it might get difficult,’ Dad was looking down at his fingers, ‘but you can ring us any time. We’ll come home early if needs be.’
    â€˜Don’t sweat.’ I shrugged. ‘It will be okay.’
    â€˜Thanks, love.’ He gave me a tired smile. ‘But understand, you are not responsible for everything she does. And it’s only a couple of months.’
    â€˜I know that.’
    â€˜You think you’ll be okay at Christmas?’
    â€˜We’ve been over this a million times!’ I said irritably. ‘I am nineteen years old!’
    Christmas has never been that big in our house, mainly because we don’t have any close relatives apart from Mum’s sister, Claire. It was all arranged for us to go to go over to Claire’s place for Christmas Day. But I knew it wasn’t really Christmas that was worrying them. It was Stella.
    My sister’s slide into a strange malaise over the last year had us all stumped. There was Nana’s dying, I suppose – they were so close because of the music thing – and then the teacher stuff, but it still didn’t make any sense to the rest of us.
    â€˜Your sister is almost seventeen. You must continue to go about your normal life.’
    My normal life! I felt like laughing, and then I wanted to cry, because I was suddenly thinking about Fluke. The way he’d smiled at me through the smoke and bouncing lights and loud music, straight across the heads of the other girls, some of them my friends who were dancing so fast and mean and sexy that I couldn’t keep up.
    â€˜Go see your friends and have fun, okay?’ Mum was nodding seriously. ‘All we’re asking is that you keep an eye out for her.’
    â€˜Just as long as I can still bring home hot guys to party all night?’
    Dad grinned. ‘Just make sure Stella doesn’t get hold of them first!’
    The same week that Nana died, Stella got a new music teacher. I’d already left school by then, but I heard about her. Spiky and vivacious Ms Beatrice Baums, she of the striped red socks and sharp tongue, had decided that she was going to make Stella a star. What sixteen-year-old can resist that? To say Stella developed a crush on her teacher would be the understatement of the year. Stella didn’t just want to be like Ms Baums, she wanted to be her.
    Mum stood and propped her bum on my desk. She put one hand on my shoulder and ran her other fingers through my hair.
    â€˜I might have to come back early,’ she said, resting her chin on the top of my head and holding me around the neck. ‘Wild men in the middle of the night sounds too good to