Mel took another gulp of whisky, offering the bottle to Karin again, but she still declined.
‘Oh I didn’t care about my dad at all,’ said Mel, enjoying the look of impending dread on Karin’s face. ‘I hated him. He’d been seeing another woman for years and my mum always covered for him, making excuses. Ever since I can remember in fact. My dad worked away a lot, gone for months on end sometimes. I knew they weren’t married, he and my mum, but turns out he was leading a double life.’
‘What a bastard.’
‘This woman was rich apparently, Swedish.’ She gave Karin a leer. ‘So I suppose that was the attraction. We never saw a penny of what she gave him though, and hardly anything from what he earned either. My mum wasn’t able to work, so it was pretty grim. I had to look after her. We couldn’t even afford to put the heating on for more than an hour in the winter, and I remember feeling constantly hungry. You know that gnarling you get in your stomach? ’Course you do, you went hobo for a while. Well anyway, when this woman’s husband died, my dad just abandoned us completely. He couldn’t get out of the door quick enough. As soon as the bloke’s body was in the ground, they got married. I’ve no idea why he hanged himself though, Karin.’ She leaned closer. ‘Have you?’
Karin made out that she needed to dislodge something in her chest. It was probably the truth that had got stuck there. Mel let her finish coughing before she carried on. She didn’t really expect Karin to answer.
Not just yet.
‘So maybe he thought his life would be hell with her after all,’ Mel continued. ‘I mean, your dad wasn’t happy, was he? Or maybe the bitch decided she didn’t want him any more? Whatever. He just didn’t seem the hanging type to me though, somehow. What do you think?’
Karin was rubbing her temples. Mel hoped the pain was the worst it had ever been.
‘I hardly even knew my stepdad,’ she replied. ‘You know that, Mel.’
It seemed like she was pleading with her to stop, but Mel had nowhere near finished.
‘Your mother never offered us a penny in compensation. She stole our lives for all of those years and not a shred of compassion. I asked her at my dad’s funeral for some help. Pretty much begged her. Where were you by the way?’
She could see that Karin was still trying to catch up. Mel gave her a moment or two; it was a lot to take in. But this was all part of the fun to see Karin struggle. In the past Mel had always had to conceal her enjoyment. Now she could revel in it.
‘Well we’d already fallen out by then,’ said Karin, mumbling. ‘I’d left home. My mother wasn’t interested in where I’d gone.’
‘Hm. Well she told me you were back at school. Anyway, I went to your house a few days after the funeral to see her. Couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the place. I told her my mum was sick, that she wasn’t able to work – gave her the full sob story. Every word of it was true, of course, but she still wouldn’t hear of it. So then I thought about going to the newspapers, expose and shame her that way, but my own mum didn’t want the humiliation. She said that would finish her off. That’s why she’d tolerated it for all those years, I suppose.’
Karin looked broken.
Mel gave her a smile.
‘But how did you know where to find me?’ she asked. ‘I was living rough.’
‘First I went to your school. Fuck me, that’s posh as well. But nobody claimed to know where you’d gone, and then one girl remembered you once mentioned Morecambe. Some connection with your dad. So I went there, but couldn’t find you.’
She could see Karin frantically trying to slot this piece of the jigsaw into place.
‘No, I didn’t go there right away. I’d-I’d already quit school, but my bereavement counsellor let me sleep on her couch for a few months. I had to lie low so that she didn’t get the sack. It was only later I actually decided on Morecambe. My dad was born there, so it just seemed right. For what I had to do.’
Her voice was thin and petered out at the end. Karin had got completely sunk in her memory. Mel ignored that and carried on.
‘Well I gave up looking for you at that point. I always knew I’d figure out a way of finding you one day though. And then, hey, there you are, right under my nose in the creepy Dark Arches of Leeds, of all places. There was something about you, I knew immediately it was you. I’d seen a photo at your mother’s place, spotted your red hair hiding under that stupid hood of your parka.’
Mel recognized the longing in Karin’s eyes. A pitiful sight. She wanted to ask about that photo. Where did her mother keep it? Which photo was it? Did she throw darts at it? Or was it on display somewhere prominent?
The photo wasn’t the only thing Mel had seen that day. When Birgitta’s phone started to ring, she said that she had to take it and began parading up and down her huge kitchen, barking out orders to whoever was on the end of the call. In the meantime, Mel looked around, her eyes immediately drawn to an email that was open on Birgitta’s laptop. She even had time to read some of it. It was to her accountant, stating that her daughter was to receive £957,000 when she turned twenty-two.
At that point, Mel made up her mind. She would find that spoilt little bitch and take the money from her. Somehow. Get revenge on the family that had completely destroyed hers. She would find a way.
Karin was staring at her. It brought Mel back into the present moment. This moment. That she had waited so long to relish.
And Karin looked like she was seeing Mel for the very first time.
Mel grinned back, nodding.
‘So we’re-we’re stepsisters then?’
‘Yup. Afraid so.’ Mel took another large gulp of whisky, swilling it round her mouth, waiting for the burn when she swallowed it. ‘But don’t get any ideas. I’ve been doing nicey-nicey for far too long now and it was a fuck of a wait till you turned twenty-two, so if you think I’m going to see that money go to waste after all of that—’
Mel broke off to enjoy the hurt spreading across Karin’s face.
She deserved it. Every bit of it.
‘You had everything I didn’t, growing up,’ Mel went on. ‘Yet you were such an ungrateful cow. Weren’t you?’
‘No! You know how unhappy I was. You know my mother sent me away when I was only eight years old, and there was no love in my childhood. Not ever. She was always in complete control and I was miserable. I missed my dad, and then he died. I ended up on the streets. You know all of this.’
‘Oh my poor heart bleeds. You had the chance of a good life, Karin, and you threw it away. You wasted it. While you were tossing it off at some ridiculously posh boarding school, I had nothing. I hardly ever went to school, and you had everything. You even had my dad.’
‘But that was nothing to do with me. And money isn’t everything, Mel. I can vouch for that.’
Mel pushed her face into Karin’s. ‘Go live off nothing again then, if you enjoyed it so much.’
You will anyway, she thought. Mel kept that to herself for now.
Karin was completely cornered; she knew she was. Yet she still persisted with her bleating. ‘You should be punishing my mother, not me,’ she whined. ‘She’s the one who had the affair with your dad. I didn’t.’
‘Except I can’t get at her though. Your mother’s too strong and powerful. But I can get at you.’
‘What about all that money I gave you on my birthday? Five thousand pounds.’
‘Oh big deal! You owed me nearly three for all the rent and bills I’d forked out for. Do you seriously think that’s enough for what we went through, me and my mum? We had shit lives, Karin. Because of you. Shit. Lives.’
‘Then why didn’t you just ask me for a bit more money?’
‘A bit more?’
‘I tried to offer it to you, I’m sure I did, and you declined. I thought you’d be embarrassed. But if you’d told me all this stuff I would have shared all the money with you. Gladly. If I’d known you were my stepsister, Mel, of course I would. Why didn’t you just do that?’
Mel took a long inhale. It was good to make her wait.
‘You know, you’re right,’ she said, eventually. ‘Money isn’t everything. It’s really not. That’s why I want everything you have, Karin.’
‘What do you mean everything?’