CHAPTER 9

Claudia stood on the platform with a bunch of cheap clearance-style roses in her hands. Flowers at airports, at bus and train stations, were a long time in-joke between the two friends. Neither of them could remember what the punchline was anymore … was it to do with romantic comedies and men never buying flowers in real life? But they carried on. She shifted from one foot to the other and ran her hands through her hair, flicking the band on her wrist and untucking and tucking her pale pink shirt into her high-waisted black cigarette pants. Despite Nora’s obvious distaste for them, Claudia was standing in the same black and white trainers she almost always wore, which she thought went with everything and added a bit of funk. Claudia was not nervous about seeing Nora. It did not matter if Nora thought her shoes were dreadful, or if Claudia had not showered this morning, or if she used phrases such as ‘more better’, which she was prone to do when very relaxed.

A best friend cannot make you nervous: there is too much of yourself poured into them staring back out at you and it is difficult to find yourself particularly dazzling or intimidating.

What Claudia was worried about was the delicate familial ecosystem that Nora’s arrival was about to interrupt. A once-closed natural balance comprising her and her sisters: of ego, of competition over each other’s feelings, of insecurities, and some painful memories. The thought that the hurt of some recollections and the dull collective ache they provoked are not just shared with each other exclusively anymore. The realisation that as you get older there are other people you love enough that you can suffer with them too.

It works in reverse too. Secret languages, whatever truly brings you joy, jokes coded for a select few, your most hilarious shames – all once the province of sisters alone – can be shared with an expanded circle as you get older.

Between sisters, their emotions, their feelings for each other, a tricky tenderness, they’re all spinning plates – but ornately inscribed, like ancient Chinese artefacts bearing narratives.

Here is the plate that represents you as the person I love most in the world.

Here is the plate showing how suffocated you can make me feel.

Here is the plate holding the memory of us as teenagers, when you told me you pity me and it was the most savage thing anyone has ever said to me and I will never forget it.

Here is the plate that holds a childhood full of fun and mutual adoration.

Here is the plate that only the two of us know about.

Here is the plate holding the constant feeling you are the only adult in the world I have ever wanted to smack in the head.

Simultaneously, your sister is the one with whom you are your most authentic self, who you don’t have to watch what you say to, who knows everything you think, but is also the one who can be thrown into a rage at the most oblique reference, the most subtle dig. She knows everything you mean. She knows what everything you say means.

Now Claudia was about to add to this already precarious array of spinning plates, with relationships with people she had grown to love outside the family circle. A husband or wife can mostly provoke ambivalence. They’re almost ornaments or accessories in family get-togethers, of complete uninterest to even the most passionate of siblings, who have no quibbles with ignoring the status of their in-laws. Nobody wants to have sex with their sibling, so why would you worry about the person who does?

But a friend. A friend is much more complicated territory.

Claudia could hear the rumble of the train before at last it came into view and she beamed to herself, thrilled at the thought of an arrival whose job essentially was to be in her corner.

The train stopped, shuddering to a final mechanical sigh. Shading her eyes against the sun, she looked down the silver and orange carriages as people began to get off. It was the usual older crowd: chubby older women in tracksuits, with hair that had been set at the hairdresser’s just for the trip; young, harried parents with sunken eyes reflecting a ten-hour stint keeping toddlers captive in a ten-metre by four-metre box. Ecstatic children covered in chocolate and sausage-roll crumbs finally tasting freedom. Gloomy middle-aged women and men, who had escaped their home town decades ago and were unsurprised to be back. And Nora.

Nora stepped off a carriage halfway down the platform. She looked her usual cool, calm and collected self, dressed in the uniform of the eternally unruffled and calmer friend. Jeans, unwrinkled shirt, blazer. She wheeled a sleek monogrammed hard black suitcase next to her. Claudia shouted her name, waving enthusiastically, and started bounding towards her friend.

Nora turned towards her, grinning. But as she stepped forward her boot seemed to get mixed up with her suitcase, her foot turned at an odd angle and as she tried to lean on the suitcase for balance it slid out from beneath her, taking her leg with it. Suddenly she was sprawled on the ground.

Claudia hooted as she got to her friend’s feet and put out her arm.

‘Get it together!’ she yelled – an old refrain between the two, but usually reserved for other people’s pitfalls.

Nora quickly looked up and down the platform for people who were staring at her. Only a man in his seventies, wearing shorts with knee-high socks, was chuckling and not bothering to pretend it was about anything else but Nora’s tumble. Nora took Claudia’s hand and jumped to her feet.

‘Jesus Christ, spare me,’ she mumbled as Claudia pulled her in for a hug.

‘You’re here!’ Claudia, a few inches taller than Nora, nuzzled Nora’s neck, inhaling her scent. She stopped and held Nora out at arm’s length, studying her face. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Why yes I have, thank you for asking,’ Nora responded, laughing. ‘What else am I going to do on a godforsaken thousand-year train trip I’ve taken purely for you?’

Claudia smiled and nodded, picking up Nora’s suitcase.

‘Let’s get you checked into your crappy motel and you can scrub the smell of cheap chardonnay from your skin.’

‘This is glamorous in a B-grade movie kind of way. I could see interesting things happening to you while you stay here.’ Claudia surveyed the Motor Inn room the pair were forced to push their way into after the water-damaged door jammed.

‘Interesting things like sexual assault?’ Nora said, looking into the bathroom. The beige tiles were clean-ish. The brown carpet had been vacuumed strenuously, but she could already see that under the beds and down the side of the television cabinet had not had the same treatment. ‘Make me a coffee would you?’ Nora said, gesturing to the corner where a bar fridge squatted. On top sat a kettle and black sachets of Nescafé Blend 43 and white sugar.

Claudia flicked the white plastic kettle’s switch. ‘Need to sober up for the dress fitting?’

‘Oh, rack off.’ Nora was busy in the bathroom, taking out her various potions and gels. Claudia listened to the jet-like sound of the tap running, Nora squirting something onto her hands, the slap of skin on skin and the splashing of the water again.

She reappeared looking five years younger.

‘You need to put mascara on and fill in your eyebrows; you look like a teenager,’ Claudia said, stretching out on one of the single beds in the room. ‘Why did you book a room with single beds?’

‘In case you need rescuing,’ Nora said deadpan, lying down on the other.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the fake wood panelling across the ceiling.

‘How you doin’, kid?’ she asked the fan. She listened as Claudia let out a low sigh.

‘I don’t know.’

Nora rolled to her side, facing Claudia.

‘You don’t know?’

‘Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t feel like I think I should. I should feel excited. I feel dread. Should I be feeling this is the surest thing I’ve ever done? Because I don’t know if I’ve just allowed myself to be corralled into this and just gone along with it. I don’t feel like I’ve made any actual decisions in this.’

‘You feel dread? Is that because of Dylan? Or is it because you have to be here for a week? Is it because you’re getting married or because you’re at the centre of some weird emotional tug of war between your parents?’

‘Well, a five year old could tell I’m not enjoying the guilt trips being laid on me by each of my parents in both their blatant and subtle ways. But maybe I am feeling a bit, I don’t know, inconclusive about Dylan? Is this really the man I want to be married to? Do I really even want to be married? It’s not very cool.’

Nora snorted.

‘I’m not sure what your doubts are. Maybe you are just a walking and talking cliché at the moment and it’s cold feet.’

‘Hmmm, well maybe the week before their wedding would be exactly the time someone would reflect on their life.’ Claudia sat up and poured two sachets of sugar into a mug with the instant coffee and picked up the kettle.

‘You don’t have time to reflect on your life this week.’ Nora manoeuvred herself into a sitting position and put out her hand for the mug.

‘There’s no milk, be careful,’ Claudia said, handing it to her. ‘You know, I thought you would be more sympathetic, for some reason.’

‘I’m here to give you what you need.’