Everyone in the conference room stared between Sarah and her sketch pad.
Her boss was doing that thing with his throat when he got embarrassed.
As if he had anything to be embarrassed about. He wasn’t the one being gawped at like he’d drawn willies on the wall.
‘Help me see where you’re going with this, Sarah,’ he said.
But I’ve literally drawn you a picture, she wanted to shout. Why didn’t people ever seem to know what she was talking about?
Instead she said, ‘It’s simple. Lots of English men and Asian women get married. This card would be for them.’
‘You mean mail-order brides?’ Harry asked.
Someone sniggered. It was Maria-Therese. That woman spent more time in Harry’s back pocket than his own wallet did.
‘No, Harry, not mail-order brides! Don’t be insulting. It’s for Asian women and English men who are in love.’
‘I think that might be a little too niche for us, Sarah,’ he said.
This time she caught Maria-Therese roll her beady little eyes. She could never look at her colleague’s twitchy needle nose and pinched lips in her thin, washed-out face without thinking of bubonic-infected rodents.
‘But we’re supposed to be thinking of niche markets. Isn’t that what you keep telling us in these meetings?’
‘Not quite that niche,’ he said. ‘Who’s next?’
The problem with Harry was that he had no vision. They’d already covered all the usual ethnic combinations, plus gay marriage and their non-standard body type range (which was Sarah’s idea).
She didn’t mind illustrating traditional boy-meets-girl cards but they were getting killed by companies like MoonPig. At the rate they were going, she’d be sketching tourists for a fiver in Trafalgar Square by this time next year.
Harry’s meetings only took an hour but they always felt like they sucked about a week from Sarah’s soul. Despite all the evidence – the growth in online cards and all the high-street shops closing down – Harry refused to adapt. He’d only make little tweaks here and there to his family’s business. That was like reupholstering the seats on your horse-drawn cart when everyone else was working at Ford.
Sarah didn’t know which she hated more – getting bollocked for not bringing an idea to the meeting each week, or getting bollocked when she did.
She hurried toward the lifts, stuffing her sketch pads back into her bag. She didn’t have a desk there. None of them did. Harry called it ‘flexible working’, but he was just too skint to pay for office space. Working from home suited Sarah anyway, with Sissy to think about.
She was waiting as usual just outside the front door when Sarah got there, beneath the big sign that welcomed everyone to Whispering Sands. What a misnomer. Nobody whispered in the care home and the only sand within thirty miles was in the car park, left over from when they gritted it last winter.
‘You’re—’
‘I’m not late,’ Sarah said. ‘Are you ready to go?’
‘I was ready at two thirty,’ said Sissy, holding her wrist two inches from Sarah’s face.
‘Your watch is fast.’
‘No, you’re slow.’
‘Whatever. Let’s go. Button your coat.’ The November days were closing in. ‘We can pick up some flowers for Mum on the way.’
She was only in the next town but travelling back there always gave Sarah pangs, like that sinking-in-the-stomach feeling when you think about an ex that you really liked.
She pushed the feelings aside as they got to the florist near their mum’s.
‘Do you like any of these bouquets?’ she asked Sissy, who was sniffing the flowers in each of the two dozen buckets by the desk.
‘These smell nicest,’ she said, pointing to the long-stem red roses.
‘Yeah, well for three quid a stem, they should. What about one of these?’ She pointed to the £10 bunches.
Carefully, Sissy inspected each bouquet. It would take her a while to decide.
Sissy never let Sarah rush her. Her scrupulous attention to detail meant that even the most mundane task took her about a million years. Plus, she liked to touch everything she saw, which made clothes shopping with her an exercise in patience.
‘How’s everything going with your boyfriend?’ Sarah asked as Sissy sniffed a purple and yellow bouquet.
‘Good.’ Sniff.
‘Still holding hands?’
‘Sometimes.’ She glanced over. ‘And kissing.’
‘Oh, kissing? Is that nice?’
‘Yep.’ Sniff sniff. ‘This one smells nice.’
‘Anything besides kissing?’
She thought for a minute. ‘He gave me his jelly.’
‘Nothing more? No hugging or … sex?’
Sissy rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be gross. We’re not supposed to do that.’
‘I’m just checking.’
‘Don’t worry.’
Of course she worried.
‘I brought a drawing for Mum,’ Sissy said as Sarah paid the florist for the bouquet she finally chose.
‘Can I see it?’
Carefully, she unfolded the pink sheet.
‘Nice one,’ Sarah said. ‘You’re really talented.’
Sissy had covered the whole page with tiny squares, then coloured each one in to create a paper mosaic. It was a zoo scene with elephants, giraffes, lions and monkeys.
‘I really like the way you’ve done the sky. Is there a storm coming?’ Sarah pointed to the roiling dark clouds in one corner.
Sissy nodded. ‘It’s going to rain.’
They walked around the corner from the florist’s shop.
‘Here we are. Ready to visit Mum?’
Sissy took Sarah’s hand and they walked together through the cemetery gates.
As Sarah dropped her sister off she tried not to mind that Sissy never looked even the littlest bit sad to leave her. She might at least wave wistfully every once in a while instead of just returning to her friends without as much as a backwards glance.
Sarah knew she should be happy that Sissy was so independent but the truth was, she wanted Sissy to need her as much as she needed Sissy. Instead she was such a typical teenager.
As Sarah got on the train back to London she called Robin.
‘All right?’ he said when he answered.
‘All right,’ said Sarah. ‘I just dropped Sissy off. We went to the cemetery. You should see the picture that she did for Mum. It was really ace.’
Kelly at the home was trying to get some funding to start running an art class since several of the residents loved drawing and painting. None of them were as good as Sissy though.
‘She’s got a boyfriend,’ Sarah told him. ‘She says they’ve been kissing.’
‘Jesus, that’s not good,’ he said. ‘They should be keeping a closer eye on her.’
‘Kelly says it’s normal and that we need to be ready for this new phase.’
‘Kelly wouldn’t say that if Sissy was her sister. She shouldn’t be letting guys kiss her. Should I talk to her?’
‘Oh I’m begging you, please don’t!’ Sarah knew how that’d go. When she was in sixth form, Robin had decided to tell her about sex. For some reason he thought it’d go down better if he used all the official words.
Her face still burned thinking about him talking about vaginas.
‘We need to let Kelly do the job she’s trained for,’ she said. ‘Please don’t talk to Sissy about it. If you spook her she’ll never tell us anything.’
‘I wish Mum was here,’ he said. ‘She’d know how to handle it.’
‘Me too,’ Sarah murmured.
* * *
Their mum could do anything, and Sarah didn’t believe that only because she was her child. She had the usual parenting skills – rooting out the monsters from under the bed and kissing away hurts – but Sarah hadn’t realised the half of it till she was older.
There hadn’t been much spare cash left over from her mum’s secretarial job after the rent was paid, but Sarah had never noticed that they were pretty poor. They weren’t exactly the sort to splash out in restaurants anyway and why would they want to, with their mum’s cooking?
She turned her hobby into a part-time job, to go with her full-time job, when Sarah and Robin were little. She made delicious beef stews, lasagnes and shepherd’s pies in bulk for their neighbours, cooking as easily for fourteen as she did for four. And when Sissy was born the few quid she charged per meal were a lifesaver. She had to quit her job then, and their carer’s and disability benefits didn’t stretch very far.
Their rented terraced house had one of those kitchen extensions off the back that opened on to a long, narrow garden. The appliances and work surfaces spread across the back half of the big room, with overstuffed sofas and the TV beneath skylights at the front. They pretty much lived in those two rooms, till first Robin and then Sarah went away to London.
Maybe if they’d still been at home when their mum got ill, they’d have noticed how run-down she was getting.
At first she wouldn’t go to her GP. ‘It’s nothing,’ she’d said. ‘Stop worrying and have some more cake.’
But she wasn’t eating her own food. That wasn’t like her.
Then she got a nosebleed one night when Robin and Sarah were home for dinner. After ten minutes it still wouldn’t stop.
‘Mum, do you get these often?’ Robin asked gently as he passed her another wad of toilet roll and made her keep her head tipped back.
‘I’ve had a few,’ she said through the tissue. ‘But it’s no big deal.’
Robin caught Sarah’s eye. I’m sorry, his look said, but watching your mother bleed is a big deal. ‘I’m making you an appointment with the GP tomorrow, Mum.’
This time she didn’t fight them, or dismiss the suggestion. Something was obviously wrong. The evidence was right there, dripping down her face.
But Sarah didn’t expect cancer. Maybe a sinus infection or haemophilia at a stretch, but not cancer.
She should have been more worried, but she clearly remembered not being that worried. She went whole days without thinking about her mum and her nosebleeds. Partly it was because she’d downplayed everything (another of her Parenting 101 skills) and partly it was because Sarah was caught up in her own life. Still pretty new at her job, she was excited about living in London. And she was more concerned with catching the last Tube home than her mother’s health.
She should have been bone-freezingly terrified for her.
The GP sent her off for blood tests and when they came back showing that her white blood cells were going haywire, it finally hit Sarah. This was no sinus infection or pollen allergy.
Her mum had lived two days past her six-month prognosis. Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia doesn’t like to be kept waiting, and by the time she’d gone to the GP it had already travelled to her spine. Her last weeks were horrible, painful and undignified, yet her only concern had been for them, her children. When Sarah had promised her she’d look after Sissy no matter what else happened, Sarah saw the relief in her expression. They’d already talked about what should happen if the worst came to the worst.
Sarah had wanted to come live in the house with Sissy.
‘No you will not,’ her mum had said with nearly her usual strength. ‘You can give her all the love in the world, but she’s only a child and you can’t take that responsibility. I’ve cared for her for thirteen years, every minute of every day and night. Believe me when I tell you it’s a twenty-four-hour job and you haven’t had the experience or training to do it. She’ll need someone qualified to look after her.’
‘I could learn!’ Sarah said.
‘I know you want to, love, but we have to think about what’s best for Sissy too. Promise me, Sarah. I mean it. I’ve got to know that she’ll be safe and looked after. There are good facilities that can do that. We’ll have to find one.’
Sarah had hated the idea of her little sister moving out of her home but her mum had been adamant.
‘It’s not just a matter of making sure she’s fed and clean and happy,’ her mum had said. ‘There are medical issues. What if you didn’t spot an infection in time? It wouldn’t be your fault, you wouldn’t know, but have you thought about that? Or have you thought about what you’d do if you came back here? You can’t leave Sissy alone in the house all day to work. Would you give up your job and your life to stay with her? Then I’d have to worry about you both while I’m up there knocking on the pearly gates.’
‘Don’t talk like that, Mum.’
‘Why, do you think I’m heading south instead?’ She’d pointed to the floor, mustering a laugh. ‘Promise me, Sarah.’
She’d had no choice. Every time she had brought it up, her mum panicked at the thought that Sissy wouldn’t get the care she needed. So they had a lot of really uncomfortable meetings with social services. Each time, Sarah had felt like she and Robin were plotting behind Sissy’s back. She knew her mother was right, but that didn’t make it any easier.
Thankfully, Sissy was pretty healthy. They had to watch for the infections but she didn’t have the heart defects that many Down’s syndrome kids did. And so far there was no sign of leukaemia either. Not that Mum’s was hereditary, at least as far as they knew, but Sissy was at a higher risk with her condition. There was so much that doctors didn’t know yet about Down’s, but what they did know was depressing. Sissy had a one in fifty chance of developing leukaemia by the age of five. Sarah was sure their mum had known this. Not that she’d have worried them with such a potentially deadly fact.
But Sissy was beating the odds (screw you, Fate! thought Sarah).
Each birthday that they celebrated put more distance between her and the disease. She could still get it, but every time she blew out her birthday candles, the odds swung further in her favour.