In the bathroom, she inspected her face. It will do, she thought, touching her lips with the tips of her fingers. She always thought that as she moved away from her reflection. It will do. She knew she’d been beautiful, as if it were a fact stored in a book at the London Library. Everyone said it and men, well, they’d ogled her, but what she saw was pointed and sharp. She saw her mother’s eyes and her mother’s mouth and wished she didn’t.

As she ran her bath she thought she heard the telephone ringing. She turned off the taps and opened the bathroom door, but the house was as still and as quiet as ever. Nothing. She shut the door and turned on the taps again. She undressed, laying her cashmere over the back of the bathroom chair and her nightgown folded neatly on the seat. Gratefully, she stepped into the deep, warm water. Thank goodness the boiler had been mended. The water was piping. But just as she dropped her head back and let the water slop over her, the phone started ringing again.

Goddamn it, she thought, sloshing her legs and getting out. She wrapped a towel around her and padded downstairs, shoulders wet, the tips of her hair dripping.

Enid, 1964

2

Enid, 1964

From her chair by the window, Enid stared at the trees which bowed and swayed and threatened to dislodge the pigeons that clung there. Her reflection was ghost-like in the glass. The light picked out her crinkled skin, the sag of her cheeks, how thin her mouth had become. Her hands, folded in her lap, conveyed the essence of her bones; gnarled with a tremor that mislaid things.

She was trying not to think of her sister. She was trying very hard indeed. She’d mostly erased her, she’d almost got rid of her completely, but this morning, up she’d come, resurfacing like so much flotsam, as present as if she were in the room – the living, breathing Joan who perhaps still lived and breathed somewhere. Enid could almost smell the trail of Turkish tobacco, the slick of gin and hint of eau de lavender, could almost see the defiant bones that broadened that face, the globe eyes, the heavy lids open on blue islands with black at their heart. One of these days it wouldn’t just be memories, it would be her in spirit, come to say sorry.

But today it was memories, and although she closed her eyes and opened them again, though she stared at the trees and counted the pigeons and made a bet with herself over which would fly off first, her sister reared before it all, blotting out everything like the ghost that she couldn’t get rid of.