A few days later I woke up in the room I was sharing with Bella at Aunt Thecla’s house, feeling gloomy. The large depressing painting of withered bluebells in a cracked black vase on the wall above the bed didn’t help either. I really missed my old bedroom. It wasn’t very big but it had always given me somewhere to wind down. Mum had let me choose the colour scheme myself, and my window had overlooked the back garden.
I realised I was feeling a lot like I’d felt just after Sarah left – kind of bored with everything, as if I couldn’t be bothered leaving the house or making much of an effort to do anything. And I was worrying about school. It was still the summer holidays at the moment, but in a few weeks I would have to make a huge effort to be sociable whether I felt like it or not. There was no going back home to my old house and my old school, which, even if I’d never exactly loved it, was at least reassuringly familiar.
I suppose I’d been hoping this move would bring Bella and me a bit closer, since neither of us had any friends here. I was hoping we’d have to rely on each other for company, at least until school started, but instead Bella seemed to be avoiding everyone. Since we’d moved in with our aunt she kept saying that she wanted to go out on her own to explore the village, and she was full of excuses about why I couldn’t go with her. Whenever she came home she always seemed pretty chirpy for someone who’d spent the whole day hanging out alone. I did try to press her for more information about where she’d been, certain she wasn’t telling the whole truth, but she always got snarky and told me to mind my own business.
Aunt Thecla wasn’t much company either. She spent most of the day up in her attic studio, where she told us she was working on a portrait of her beloved Hughie. I asked if I could see it but she refused to let me even enter her art room. It was off limits to everyone, with no exceptions, she said, although she did promise to show me the painting as soon as she’d finished it to her satisfaction.
‘To her satisfaction being the key point,’ Bella said sarcastically when I told her.
I giggled because it was true that our aunt’s whole house was full of awful paintings that had clearly also been completed to her own satisfaction.
So any worries I’d had of having to spend hours on my own being polite to Aunt Thecla turned out to be quite unfounded, since she was far too obsessed with depicting Hughie to bother too much about me. She would appear in the living room from time to time to criticise my TV watching, but I usually ignored her since there was nothing else to do to pass the time.
Today I got up to find Bella already downstairs and fully dressed. She was sitting on top of the kitchen unit by the fridge, reading something on her phone as she munched on a banana. Aunt Thecla wasn’t there or she’d have been nagging her to sit down and eat a proper breakfast at the table.
‘I wonder if Aunt Thecla will ever get another dog,’ I said, more to get her attention than anything else.
‘The house still stinks of Hughie,’ Bella complained, still not looking up from her phone. ‘Hey, listen to this … Thecla is the name of a saint.’ She started reading from her phone screen. ‘Thecla was a saint in the early Christian Church who was saved from burning at the stake by a miraculous storm, sentenced to be eaten by wild beasts, then saved again by a series of miracles.’ She started to laugh.
‘Well, I’ve never heard of her,’ I said with a grin as I put some bread in the toaster.
‘There are probably loads of saints you’ve never heard of,’ Bella said. ‘Hey, did you know Mum told me she might go to church with Aunt Thecla on Sunday to try and meet a few people? I mean, how hypocritical is that when Mum doesn’t even believe in God?’
‘She believes in a creative force though,’ I pointed out.
‘That’s not the same thing,’ Bella argued.
I didn’t think it was very different, but I decided to keep quiet because I didn’t want to get drawn into an argument like the ones Bella is always having with Mum and Dad on just about every topic imaginable. She seems to make a point of disagreeing with other people these days, and she never even tries to phrase things tactfully like I would if I was contradicting someone.
‘Did you know Aunt Thecla is taking us to buy our uniforms today?’ I said, to change the subject. ‘Mum was going to take us but now she’s got some work stuff she needs to do.’
‘More likely she’s hoping Aunt Thecla will pay for everything,’ Bella scoffed.
‘Shush … she’ll hear you,’ I hissed.
‘So?’ Bella slid down to stand on the floor. ‘She’s probably expecting to have to buy our uniforms in any case. You do realise Dad’s business hasn’t been doing very well lately, don’t you?’
I frowned. ‘No.’
‘Mum is stressing about money. She says she might have to go back to working full-time if things don’t pick up. But you can’t tell her I told you. I promised not to say anything, because she thinks you’ll worry too much.’
Well, I will now, I felt like saying, wishing she wouldn’t do this thing of telling me some secret that really does worry me, then forbidding me to talk about it to anyone, so my worry just gets even worse.
We were meant to be taking Grace with us to the shop so that Aunt Thecla could buy her uniform too, but when the time came Grace kicked up such a fuss that Mum gave in as usual and said she would take her later.
Lucky Grace. Or, as Bella would say, clever Grace.
It turned out that the lady who ran the uniform shop in the village – Mrs Mayhew – had grown up with our aunt. The two had lived within a few streets of each other all their lives, attended the same school and the same church, and now they sent each other Christmas cards and always stopped to speak in the street. But behind her back Aunt Thecla called Mrs Mayhew ‘an awful snob’ and ‘a terrible gossip’, and she said that she dreaded to think what Mrs Mayhew called her.
‘You’re frenemies!’ Bella joked when Aunt Thecla described the situation to us. Then she had to explain to Aunt Thecla what a frenemy is.
As soon as we arrived at the shop, Mrs Mayhew greeted our aunt with a smile and then came forward to have a closer look at Bella and me. ‘So, Thecla … these are Paul’s girls, are they?’
‘The older two – Bella and Elisabeth,’ Aunt Thecla introduced us, quite proudly I thought. ‘Girls, this is Valerie Mayhew.’
‘Don’t look much alike for sisters, do you?’ Mrs Mayhew said as she looked us up and down in a way I found quite embarrassing. I wondered if she automatically sized people up for uniforms the second they walked into her shop. I just hoped she wasn’t going to make some comment about our comparative measurements. I’m not fat but I’d really love to have Bella’s measurements rather than mine. The fact is that Bella looks great in everything, whereas I have to be more careful what style of clothes to choose if I want to look good.
‘Come this way, girls,’ Mrs Mayhew said, waving us towards the changing rooms. ‘I’ll soon have you both kitted out.’
As we tried on our uniforms in separate changing rooms I pulled a face at myself in the mirror, wishing – yet again – that I looked more like my sister. I’d once told Aunt Thecla that I wished I looked as beautiful as Bella, and she said that I was beautiful too, just in a ‘less obvious’ way, whatever that was meant to mean. Actually, the more I thought about it the more I remembered other typically odd comments Aunt Thecla had made over the years, all aimed, I’m sure, at making me feel better about myself.
I heard Bella asking to try on a larger blouse, and then I heard Aunt Thecla’s loud voice saying, ‘I think we had better buy you a new bra as well. That one is looking rather grey. Your mother really ought to wash her whites separately, you know.’
Bella mumbled something I couldn’t hear but I knew she was embarrassed.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Aunt Thecla’s voice came again. ‘We’re the only ones in the shop. Valerie, do you still sell underwear, or was that just while you had the boarders?’
‘We haven’t sold bras or knickers here for years, Thecla. Not since our day, I should think! Remember those navy-blue gym pants with a little pocket for your hanky?’
They both laughed and I knew Bella would be cringing as much as I was. It got worse though. ‘If you want bras there’s a very good shop in Castle Westbury, on the market square. I’d take them both there if I were you. No doubt your younger one will be needing something too? They like to wear them early these days, don’t they? Makes them feel grown up.’
Now I was the one who felt mortified as they went on to discuss which other shops might sell good-quality trainer bras.
Suddenly there was a bit of a commotion outside my changing room and I pulled back my curtain to see what was happening. Bella had emerged fully dressed in her own clothes and was heading for the exit.
‘BELLA, COME BACK AT ONCE!’ our aunt was shouting after her.
‘Sorry! I’ve got somewhere else I need to be!’ Bella tossed back sharply as she barged out of the shop.
Aunt Thecla’s face had gone pink. ‘I do apologise, Valerie. I shall be having words with her later.’
‘A bit of a rebel like her father, is she?’ Mrs Mayhew commented slyly. ‘You know, I was only thinking about your Paul the other day. I wonder how he feels about it all now.’
My ears pricked up at that. Dad? A rebel? What was she talking about?
‘Valerie, can we save this for another time?’ Aunt Thecla snapped, nodding across to where I was poking my head out from behind the curtain and staring at them.
‘Oh, doesn’t she know?’ Mrs Mayhew sounded surprised.
‘Good grief, Elisabeth, aren’t you changed into that uniform yet?’ Aunt Thecla asked swiftly. ‘Come on! Quick sticks! I’d rather like to get at least one of you kitted out today.’