‘How was the cinema?’ I ask Daisy over breakfast the next morning. It’s our mum’s turn to work on a Saturday, so we’re home alone. Daisy hasn’t said much to me all morning. Everything is tense – I’m scared if I put my knife down too loudly it will be enough to break whatever deathly quiet we’ve settled into.
‘It was fine,’ she says.
‘And cocktails at the Lighthouse?’
‘They were fine, too,’ she says. She stirs her cereal pointlessly and doesn’t look at me.
‘Oh, good …’ I say, waiting for her to ask me something about my evening, or even look up from her bowl. I hate this so much.
‘I would tell you that the guy I fancy wasn’t at the cinema,’ she says, pausing. ‘But you already knew that, right?’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask as casually as I can, in a desperate attempt to avoid, postpone, delay what’s next.
‘Come on, Lily.’ She rolls her eyes in exasperation. ‘This is why you’ve been so secretive lately. You know you’re doing something wrong. It’s not in your nature, so you’re creeping around and being weird rather than just being honest about it!’ She drops her spoon down onto the table with a clatter.
I swallow, not sure what to say next. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I really didn’t, I promise. It just kind of happened!’ Uh-oh. Telling Daisy the truth about Cal just turned into my new thing for the day.
‘Oh, that’s OK then,’ she says, mockingly.
‘I tried to tell you! Loads of times!’
‘Well you didn’t try very hard then, did you?’
‘That’s because every time I did you would say something presumptuous or patronizing and I wouldn’t know how to deal with it!’
‘Don’t try to change the subject! You lied to my face!’
I don’t want this to spiral. There have been so many near-fights between us in the last couple years that I’ve carefully avoided, but there’s no easy way out of this. I feel a slight panic set in. ‘I mean … it’s not like he was your boyfrie—’
‘That’s not the point! You knew I liked him and you just went behind my back and asked him out and kept it a secret! You were deliberately sneaky. This isn’t like you …’ Daisy trails off. ‘You’re not even bothered about meeting guys. You’ve never been bothered about meeting guys! Not for years! So why are you suddenly so intent on stealing the one guy you knew I really liked?’
‘I didn’t do any sneaking or any stealing! We met in the pub and he just asked me out! He’s hot, he’s kind, he’s interested in me, it has nothing to do with you!’
‘He asked you out?’ Daisy says instantly, as if she couldn’t keep it in for a second longer.
‘Yeah, Daisy, I know that’s hard for you to believe.’ I roll my eyes.
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she says, sternly, but behind the set of her jaw there’s a furtiveness, like an animal evading capture.
‘What did you mean then?’
‘I …’ She gapes like a goldfish.
‘Right.’
‘No, it’s just …’
‘What?’ I urge her to speak, but she doesn’t, she’s just sitting there trying to formulate what she knows she can’t say in a way that’s more palatable and allows her to maintain the moral high ground. She’s looking at me, waiting for me to fill the gap for her, waiting for me to let her off the hook. But I won’t do it. Not this time.
‘It’s just … not like you.’ She shrugs.
‘OK, it’s not like me, but why is that disturbing you so much? Don’t I have the right to change and maybe even once in a while do something that you don’t expect?’
Daisy lets out a noise of frustration and picks up the cushion on the empty chair next to her, pummelling it into shape.
‘We never compete for guys!’ Daisy says, finally. ‘I hate it! I just really hate it!’
I stare at her, genuinely baffled. How can she not see this? ‘We never compete because you always get what you want, no questions asked. Remember Joel Edwards? Patrick Saunders when we were on holiday in France? Jack Calder from our drama group? And let’s not forget Tom Greenwell! One after another I just had to watch as guys I got on with, who I felt a spark with, suddenly became your latest must-have boy as soon as I said a word about them. I was so nervous, so scared, and I pushed through it to talk to them because I liked them, and then you just swept in. Cal is the first guy who’s preferred me to you and you can’t handle it.’
‘No, that’s not it, it’s just—’ she babbles, reddening.
‘It’s just that you never expected someone you liked to be interested in me, because why would they be when they could have you, right? You’ve never been able to get your head around the thought that beauty isn’t some kind of a one-size-fits-all thing. You’re pretty, there’s no doubt about it! I’ve never, ever said you’re not. But it’s like it’s never crossed your mind that I could be too? I get that’s how a lot of people look at me, but I need better from my own sister.’
I know that look. She doesn’t know what to say to me. She thought she knew how everything worked, knew our places in the world, and now she’s finding out she doesn’t.
‘That’s not true! I don’t think that!’ Daisy is indignant.
‘Really? You really don’t think that?’ I ask her. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know that it’s how people see us and it’s the way we’ve been made to see ourselves.’
‘It’s not like I have it easy all the time, you know,’ she says.
‘I’m not saying you do. I’m just saying that, at this point in our lives, guys have a track record of going for you. And you love that there’s something that sets you apart from me.’
I wonder if she’s ever really thought about it at all before now. If she ever considered how her constant assumptions and judgements made me feel. ‘Look,’ I say. ‘I get that you’re annoyed because it feels like I’ve taken something from you, but I haven’t. You didn’t even know his name. And besides, he’s a whole person in his own right! You don’t just get to decide what he does or what choices he makes just because you saw him first.’
She’s looking at me resolutely. ‘It’s not about that, it’s about the fact you didn’t tell me.’ So this is her tactic.
‘Well I might have done if I thought you were capable of really listening. All you do is project your image of who I am onto me.’
‘You let me keep bringing him up and you knew the whole time! I saw you two making out on the street! This is a proper thing and I had no idea about any of it!’ She looks like a petulant, disgruntled child. ‘I don’t get why you stopped talking to me.’
‘I didn’t mean to stop talking to you—’ I protest, wanting to say more but not sure how to.
‘So are you going to keep seeing him?’ Daisy snaps.
Cal is really special – I feel so sure of myself with him. I’ve never had that before – usually when I fancy someone, I’m a nervous wreck. When I’m with Cal I’m not worried about anything beyond the here and now. He makes me forget about uni and how I’m leaving everything behind so soon. ‘Yes. I like him.’
‘Ugh, sure,’ she says, exasperated.
‘So you want me to just stop seeing him and then what? Tell him he has to go out with you to somehow rebalance the universe so the thin twin gets the ending she deserves?’
‘It’s not about that!’
‘I don’t get what it is about then! You’re just not used to not getting your way, and more than anything you’re not used to me getting something you want. You’ve never seen me as a threat. I’m not just an inferior version of you, I’m me. I’m a whole person.’
She rolls her eyes but I can tell it’s hit home a bit. ‘I know that.’ I wonder if she really does know it, if she really has thought about it at all before now. Maybe she never had to.
‘OK, so what’s the problem?’
‘You never tell me anything anymore,’ Daisy says, her voice burning with a kind of anger that I find shocking. ‘There’s been something going on with you for months now and once upon a time you would have confided in me but now you just don’t share anything, like I wouldn’t understand. Like I’m too dumb to understand your big, deep, sensitive life. You think I make assumptions about you? Well what about you making assumptions about me? You didn’t even tell me that we weren’t going to be together anymore. You just made a decision and went ahead with it.’
‘What the fuck? What are you even talking about?’
She swallows, her eyes wide. ‘We had a plan to stay together. We were meant to be going to uni together. That was what we were meant to be doing. And you just, out of nowhere, decided to change your mind without telling me.’
I feel like she’s hit me. I just look at her. ‘I … figured it was time to live my life and for you to live yours!’ I say finally, blinking in disbelief. ‘I didn’t know that us going to the same uni was, like, a done deal for you! I didn’t know I was locked into it! You’re always on at me about being more independent and now that’s what I’m trying to do you don’t like it?’
‘You never talked to me about it at all! It was me and you against the world until you went to college and replaced me with Cassie, and I thought we were going to be back to how it used to be when we went to uni and then you just went and decided for us that it wasn’t meant to be.’
This has been simmering under the surface for her and I had no idea. I really didn’t.
‘I thought it was for the best for us! I thought it was what you wanted! You don’t need me around! You just don’t – you find it so easy to make friends and meet people, if anyone would need to have the other around it would be me! I thought I was doing you a favour!’
‘You think you’re the only one with fears and worries and it means you completely overlook everyone else’s! How many times have you rejected my invites out?! How many times have I burst into your room and started a conversation with you? Sometimes I think the only reason you even applied to uni was to get away from me.’
Before I can respond she turns away from me and runs up to her room, puts on her garden centre uniform and leaves the house with the necessary slamming of the door. Even with her gone I feel like my adrenaline is making the atmosphere fizz furiously. Me? Replacing her with Cassie? She never needed me! It was always me clinging on to her, wasn’t it? Her, more secure, more confident, more popular, always finding it easy to make friends. I needed her, until I decided it was healthier for me to, you know, detach. Because she kept talking about how I wouldn’t! I don’t feel like I understand anything, and I can barely hear myself think over the sound of blood rushing in my ears.
I’ve got to get out of here. In a daze, I hastily dress in my leggings, sports bra and T-shirt, and pull my trainers on without undoing the laces. I swipe my keys from the shelf, slamming the door behind me, and hit the road, trying to get out of my head and into my body with a slow, steady jog.
I stew as I run. I keep turning it all over in my mind, looking at it all from different angles. The way Daisy assumed I’m just not in the same game as her at all … All these people – even my own sister – seem to think they know so much about me just from the size of my body. I feel like I have to work so hard to keep on top of my body image, but I do work on it. And that’s enough for Cal. And Cassie.
As I run under a railway bridge on the far side of town, I see a row of posters on the dark brick wall of the tunnel and my thoughts instantly switch to the promise I made Cassie to tear them down. I may be a terrible sister by all accounts, but I won’t be a terrible friend. I slow my pace and cross the road, taking my keys out of my pocket. I run the sharpest edge of my house key along the top of one of the posters, unsticking the glue and letting it flop down before pulling the whole thing off and scrunching it in a ball that I kick along to the next one. When I’ve done all four, I gather up the scrunched-up posters and carry them in my arms to the nearest bin. I shove them in and set off again, running running running.
Where am I going? I stop in the middle of a deserted road, panting, doubled over with fatigue. Actually, where am I? I go to check Google Maps before realizing that I left my phone at home. I wander about, a mixture of aimless and frustrated. I guess if I get lost or kidnapped by angry fascist poster designers it’ll mean I don’t have to deal with Daisy again. I wouldn’t have to go to university and leave Cassie behind. Or maybe, rather than a blessing, it would be more of an instant karma type thing. You know, for lying to my twin. I feel like I should be having this meltdown in the middle of a really intense rain storm, but the lovely seaside weather remains temperate as I burn inside.
Then I see it. The corner shop where we always buy fireworks for Bonfire Night. From there, it’s only a couple of minutes’ walk to Cassie’s semi-detached house on a quiet street in Seaforth. I was running to Cassie. Maybe Jogging Lily does know what she’s about.
I press the doorbell, praying she’s home, praying for comfort and praying for some familiarity. The door swings open.
‘What happened to you?’ Cassie asks, eyeing my still-red cheeks, my sweaty ponytail and my very-much-not-chic-athleisure outfit with confusion.
‘I had to clear my head …’ I say, stepping into the hall.
‘Who is it?’ Cassie’s dad calls from the kitchen.
‘Lily!’
‘I should have known!’ Carl calls back. Cassie’s done a marginally better job than me of keeping up with her old friends but … it really is just me and her a lot of the time.
‘Hi!’ I call, as brightly as I can manage. We enter the kitchen to Carl Palmer cracking eggs into a huge bowl, the top of his bald head looking … well, I suppose the polite term would be sun-blushed.
‘You’ve got good timing! I was just making me and Cassie some pancakes before I get back to the gardening!’
‘Promise me you’ll wear some sunscreen this time?’ Cassie asks, wearily.
‘Why, am I looking pink?’ Carl grabs a big spoon and looks in the back of it like a mirror, craning to see the top of his skull. ‘Bloody hell!’
‘I would love a pancake!’ I call behind me, as Cassie drags me out of the kitchen and into the living room.
She plonks me down unceremoniously on the squishy sofa and lies at one end with her feet across my lap. We’re watching the channel that only shows wedding dress programmes. Normally we would be yelling ‘vile!’, ‘grim!’, ‘how is that different to the last one?’ and very, very infrequently, a reverential ‘oooh!’ on the rare occasion they try on something that isn’t completely disgusting. But today we watch in silence.
Once the adverts start, she sits upright and gestures for us to switch positions. ‘So what’s up?’
‘Nothing’s up …’ I lie. Badly.
She rolls her eyes. ‘Something’s up. You ran here.’
‘Can’t I run places?’
‘You and I both know … you don’t do that.’ She fixes me with a serious stare. I wonder where to begin, but deep down I know I don’t really want to talk to Cassie about Cal. Not even about me and Daisy fighting because of Cal. Good job there’s all the other stuff to tell her about!
‘Ugh!’ Finally, I flop back onto the arm of the sofa. What am I here for if not comfort and advice? This is what best friends are for. Reassurance. Unconditional love. Just at that moment, Carl nudges open the living room door with his hip, carrying a tray.
‘Pancakes for the ladies!’
‘Thank you so much, this looks amazing,’ I say, eyeing the little jug of maple syrup and the fresh, fluffy stack.
‘Now, I’m off to find a big hat before I go outside again …’
We eat in silence for a moment, letting the ads for steam mops and juicers and inflatable beds pop up and fade away before our eyes.
‘I had a fight with Daisy. It started as just like a … stupid thing, you know?’ I brush off the origin of the fight as if it never happened. I wish. I really don’t want Cassie to know that Cal was Daisy’s crush. I know she’ll think it wasn’t cool for me to keep that from Daisy. ‘But then it kind of escalated and she accused me of, like, abandoning her?’
‘Huh?’
‘Well, first she said I replaced her with you – absurd – and then she said I abandoned her by changing my uni plans and accepting the offer from Leeds.’
‘That’s pretty harsh of her,’ Cassie says, chewing thoughtfully.
‘Yeah! That’s what I thought …’
‘I mean, on the one hand, taking something small and making it into a massive thing is very not cool. I’m sorry that it upset you so much you felt the need to run here. On the other, you and Daisy have been gearing up for a fight for ages. I’m honestly impressed you managed to keep the peace this long.’
‘I mean I guess so – but replacing her? Really?!’
Cassie looks at me out of the corner of her eye. ‘So you don’t think you did?’
‘No, obviously not!’
‘But do you get why she would see it like that?’
I sigh. ‘I mean … no?’ I think for a moment. ‘Or maybe … yes, but I hadn’t thought of it before? But it’s not like she’s perfect herself,’ I say, thinking about all the times she’s made me feel uncomfortable because of my body.
‘Oh?’ Cassie asks, inquisitively.
However much I mean it, suddenly I feel disloyal. No matter what, talking shit about Daisy feels wrong. ‘Ha, just kidding. She’s perfect. Hey, the brides are back,’ I say, gesturing at the TV. Cassie looks at me sideways but doesn’t press any further.
We hear the front door open and close.
‘Hi!’
‘Hi, Mum,’ Cassie calls.
‘Hi, Tracy,’ I call so she knows I’m there.
‘Oh! Hi, Lily,’ says Tracy as she appears from the hall.
‘Everything under control?’ I ask her.
‘As far as I can tell.’ Tracy shrugs brightly. ‘I haven’t seen you away from the stand for a long time, Lily!’
‘Yeah, it’s true! Thank you so much for giving me a job, I really appreciate it.’
‘Nonsense! I was happy to. How’s all your uni prep going?’
‘Oh, fine,’ I say, hoping we don’t have to talk about this for too long.
‘I bet your mum’s proud of you and your sister,’ she says warmly. I can feel Cassie’s body language change next to me. A defensive turn of the head away from our conversation. ‘Both going to university, going to get degrees.’
‘I mean, I guess.’
‘Such good girls.’ She smiles ruefully. ‘Now, I’m going to relax in the garden. Don’t you two want to get outside? Instead of being cooped up in here?’
‘We spend more than enough time outside, Mum.’ Cassie sighs.
Once Tracy has joined her husband in the garden and is sufficiently out of earshot, I turn to Cassie. ‘What was that about?’
‘Just the latest in my parents’ attempts to guilt trip me about my choices.’
‘Oh, shit, they’re still not OK with it?’
‘Nope. I think if I was going to uni that would be one thing, but for me to a) not apply to uni and b) say I don’t want to work at Palmer’s forever? That’s too far. They just don’t get it.’
‘But you’re doing an art foundation course. That’s not nothing?’
‘I know that. You know that. But they don’t know that.’ Cassie cocks her head in the direction of the garden. ‘They disapprove.’
‘Ugh, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault. You do everything right,’ she says, playfully poking at my foot with hers. ‘It’s just a bit annoying, that’s all. I wish they got it. I wish they supported me in this, you know? I had to properly fight for them to even let me do it in the first place – you know they wanted me to do business studies or something dull like that. They see it as me letting the side down in not supporting the family business after they completely rebuilt it. Like, yeah, that’s amazing and everything, but it doesn’t mean I want to carry it on? At least, not to the extent that I’m gonna study business or accountancy or something?’
‘Yeah … I’m sorry,’ I say guiltily. I realize that my mum didn’t put up any opposition to my plans, didn’t try to change my mind about anything at all. Now I would definitely feel bad about sharing my uni anxieties with Cassie.
‘It’s not your fault. They’re just obsessed with the idea that I’m going to be unemployed and living here forever. As if that’s what I want!’
‘Your mum might be the only person in the world who thinks me doing an art history degree is, like, an incredibly smart, strategic thing to do – I should keep her around for pep talks,’ I joke.
Cassie smiles weakly, but I can tell she’s not happy. ‘I know they love me unconditionally, blah blah et cetera, I just wish they were like … fully on board with my shit?’
‘They’re just protective, right? It’s scary and unstable to be an artist! You’re heading into a scary and unstable career. Of course they want you to be happy, but I guess for them, happiness looks like stability.’
She nods decisively. ‘Come on, let me do your nails.’
Not wanting to talk about Big Life Stuff anymore, Cassie paints my nails, gently layering on the vibrant red nail varnish and making sure she leaves that tiny, imperceptible gap around the cuticle that makes it look neat and fresh.
‘What can I say? I’m a woman of many talents,’ she says, admiring her handiwork. As I look at her looking at my nails, all glossy and red, I can’t help but feel bad that I didn’t know how she felt about this stuff with her parents. It makes me wonder what else she’s not telling me.
Spending time with Cassie always makes me feel better, somehow. But even so, I walk home under a bleak grey cloud of irritation. Everything good in my life feels like it’s being tarnished by other people’s bullshit. Daisy assuming a guy like Cal wouldn’t have any interest in a girl like me. Accusing me of abandonment when I’m actually terrified of the choice I made. And if I do leave home, this town that I love, when I come back it will have been taken over by horrifyingly racist, homophobic human beings who probably hate ice cream like they hate everything else good in this world. And what is it with Daisy always implying that I’m spending too much time with Cassie? It’s not my fault everyone seems dull in comparison to her.