Her voice cracked.
‘I mean … you know this is a very hard time for me.’
She had applied for so many jobs, but without a degree or any qualifications, she wasn’t having any luck at all, unless she either wanted to be an exotic dancer or a delivery driver. Carmen was not a hundred per cent sure which of these she’d be worse at.
She waited for her parents to spring to her defence as they always did, say she was going through a bad patch, that the shop closing obviously wasn’t her fault, that she deserved a bit of down time to recover from the blow.
Neither of them said anything. Her father stared at the floor. Her mother looked miserable, but didn’t open her mouth.
‘You all think I’m being a brat,’ said Carmen, devastated.
‘No, chica,’ said her mother. ‘It’s just … we just want to see you on your feet and … ’
‘You think I’m wasting my life.’
‘No life is wasted,’ said her father, but it had sounded an empty platitude in the tidy, tiny kitchen.
I will be nice. I will be grateful, Carmen said to herself as she finally pulled herself onto the correct street.
She’d been sent pictures of the house but Carmen had never really paid attention, just assuming it would be big and posh and stupid. She didn’t expect it to be all of those things, but also heartbreakingly adorable.
Sofia felt nervous and trepidatious answering the door. This was ridiculous, she told herself. It was her sister. They could be close. Other people were close to their sisters! She wished Federico was here and not in Hong Kong. He was good with Carmen – at teasing her and bringing out her fun side, and not prodding her sensitive spots, namely how she compared to Sofia and how skint she was. Still, at least Carmen would be slimmer than her for once. Sofia took a lot of care over her food and working out, while Carmen ate a lot of pizza and moaned that Sofia was ‘lucky’.
And their mother, while being quietly thrilled, had pledged that she wasn’t going to interfere or contact them. It was really for her own sanity: she couldn’t handle them on the phone every five minutes complaining about the other one. She would miss her grandchildren – she doted on them – but maybe this would be the spur Carmen needed to get to know her own family.
She very much hoped so.
Like many mothers, Irene couldn’t quite believe her children were adults. In her eyes, they were just little girls in grown-up dresses (or ripped jeans in Carmen’s case). She remembered Sofia trying to get Carmen to behave for five minutes so they could get an ice cream, one holiday down in Ayr. The queue stretched out of the Italian ice cream shop as more and more people came away with their 99s and oysters while the little girl was getting more and more frantic despite Sofia trying to calm her down, until Carmen got so upset she had lashed out and knocked another child’s ice cream over. It had been an entire catastrophe. Irene had bought the other child a new ice cream whereupon their sibling had started to kick off, then Irene said Carmen couldn’t have one for yelling whereupon Sofia had stared at her own ice cream, and offered Carmen ‘a lick … No, Mum, she’s taking all of it! She’s taking all of it!’ and that had more or less been the end of their day out.
But they were sisters. Sisters always came through in the end, didn’t they? It had been so hard, watching Sofia fly through school. Carmen had been such a little reader, but by the time she got to school she couldn’t bear to be compared with her brilliant sibling, and fell further and further behind, almost, it felt, on purpose.
‘Don’t call them,’ Rod, her husband, had said, reading her thoughts as usual. ‘Let them get on with it. They’ll sort it out.’
Irene had lifted her hands to show she wasn’t already on the phone.
‘All right, all right.’
‘Hey!’ said Sofia, flinging open the door with her widest smile.
Carmen, for once, was almost speechless.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Oh my God. Look at your house!’
Sofia smiled more naturally this time. She liked people loving the house as much as she did.
‘Come inside; it’s freezing,’ she said.
‘But I just want to … I mean, this is like something out of a storybook. God. Are you just, like, happy all the time?’
There was a wistful tone to Carmen’s voice, but she genuinely meant it. It was like a doll’s house come to life. She couldn’t even be jealous; it was something so lovely and far out of reach. It would be like being jealous of Amal Clooney.
Sofia smiled.
‘Come in, will you.’
The smart hallway had a cupboard for stowing away boots and coats, and Carmen started to unload, taking in the shiny parquet flooring which led to the huge opened out space of the kitchen, with glass right across the back wall, sliding out to the little square townhouse garden, which had a small football net set up on it. On the left was a door that led to a beautiful small sitting room, done out in trendy shades of black and grey. It was all gorgeous. Carmen was suddenly rather conscious of her grotty coat and mud-spattered jeans. She felt she was scruffing the place up just by being there.
‘Tea?’ she said, hoping Sofia might say, ‘Oh what the hell, let’s have wine.’ Except – durr – she was pregnant of course. Boring.
She padded on her bare feet, following Sofia into the huge kitchen, only for her sister to raise her eyebrows in a query.
Unsure what she meant, Carmen paused. Then she glanced up the beautiful stairwell, with its metal banister railings topped with wood. Standing at the top was a child in a green velvet dress with the same determined set of face as her mother. She was pretty and tidy, with shiny hair combed back down her shoulders, a ballet class posture and a direct look.
‘Oh hello … ’ Carmen scrabbled. ‘Phoebe?’
‘I’m Pippa actually. Phoebe’s still upstairs. Mummy, she should be here, shouldn’t she? It’s rude.’
Sofia nodded, as a little paper plane shot out past Pippa.
‘HI!’
‘Jack,’ said Carmen with more certainty, as he was the only boy. He was about eight, with short hair that stuck up like a brush, a round cheerful face and freckles.
‘Hihowareyou?’ Jack called, heading for the small garden out the back before it got dark with a football under one arm.
‘PHOEBE!’ shouted the larger girl in a high-pitched shriek. Carmen still wasn’t quite sure what to say as Pippa advanced down the stairs. She felt oddly judged as her niece looked her up and down.
‘You missed my first communion,’ she said accusingly. ‘It was in November. Daddy’s sister sent me this dress.’
‘Oh,’ said Carmen.
‘Pippa, darling, don’t—’
‘I’m just saying. I’m in primary six, by the way. I like dancing and horses and I don’t like K-pop so please don’t give me any K-pop things.’
‘Um, okay,’ said Carmen.
‘PHOEBE!’
‘Please don’t screech,’ said Sofia. ‘Tea?’
‘I’ll do it,’ said Carmen, conscious that Sofia had a massive bump in front of her stomach and her mother had kept reminding her that she was there to help as she wasn’t paying rent. They were still being a little stiff with each other.