They tried to make me go to my sister’s funeral today. In the end I had to give in. The
black dress Hephzibah had worn last year when Granny died hung heavy from my bones and I
wore it like armour. She’d always been bigger. Born first, stronger, prettier, the popular
twin. I’d been walking in her shadow for sixteen years and I liked its cool darkness; it
was a safe place to hide. Now I shivered in the stark January air. It was the first day of
the New Year and my sister had been dead for one whole week.
Granny had been kind and we’d looked forward to staying with her like other kids look
forward to Christmas. It was a chance to eat chocolate and watch television. A chance to
read books until well past bedtime. At Granny’s we were allowed to laugh out loud and play
dress up, she even let us try her make-up. Hephzi loved make-up, the more sparkly the
better. Granny made sure my sister got a bra when she was twelve and started to show.
Sometimes she’d take us to the cinema and we would watch unsuitable films: Disney
princesses, cartoons, Harry Potter. She was The Mother’s mother and she loved us. She used
to kiss me and tell me I was lovely. Her little love. No one else ever said that. As we
got older we visited her less and less. No need, said The Parents, we could make ourselves
useful at their church events instead of lounging about at Granny’s. Years yawned wide
with her absence. I know Granny missed us. When she rang up and one of us managed to
answer, her voice sounded thin and far away like a paper aeroplane spiralling out of
sight. And then she died.
I’ve recorded today as another black day and it’s there, a story inscribed hard on my
heart. The tales I keep hidden within are many; if you ever open me up then you’ll read
the truth. Look inside, peel back skin and flesh, excavate bone, and there you’ll find a
library of pain. Perhaps you will ask me to explain. I am, after all, the curator of this
past. But some things are too terrible to tell and those words are buried deep. Those are
the words I never even whispered to my sister, those are the words that I daren’t say
aloud. I wish they wouldn’t cry in the walls of my room and hunt me down in my dreams.
There’s a scar on my heart for when Granny died and one for the day Hephzi first didn’t
want to walk home with me from school. I had to lie to explain away her absence when I
arrived back at the vicarage alone; I said she was doing extra maths. This was when we
started college in September, four months ago. At college everyone noticed how pretty and
sweet and funny my twin was and soon she was being invited to parties and talking to boys.
Because I was her sister I didn’t get picked on all that much but I think the other kids
laughed at me behind my back. Maybe Hephzibah did too. No one would meet my eyes. Even the
teachers found it hard. But now she’s dead. And it was her funeral today. The coffin was
white. The Mother cried. The Father presided over the ceremony. When the good God-
bothering folk of the village asked him how he could bear it, he said he had to, that it
was his duty to his daughter. And I stood at the front in Hephzi’s black dress and
wondered if she could hear what was going on from inside that wooden box and whether she
was lonely and cold too. She would know now, for the first time, what it meant to be
really left out. Her school friends clustered at the back of the church crying. He
couldn’t forbid them from coming but his frozen gaze made it clear that they weren’t
welcome. I stared at the floor and loathed them all. Hypocrites. They didn’t help us while
she was alive, why were they here now when it was far too late? When the service was over
no one spoke to me and I was left standing on my own, waiting for The Parents to finish
being consoled.
Alone felt wrong; anyone could see me now that Hephzi was gone. There is usually a pair
of eyes somewhere, flicking over me in fascination and dread. I feel those looks like
they’re ants, crawling under my skin. Eventually Auntie Melissa, The Mother’s sister, came
over and asked me how I was. They’d come all the way from Scotland and I barely recognized
her at first, but she ventured an arm around my shoulders and tried to hold me. When I
didn’t answer her concerned murmurs and shrank away from her touch she backed off. I
didn’t talk to my aunt because I knew he had his eye on me and I was busy telling Hephzi
what they were all doing and listening carefully, hoping that she might answer back.
A week without her has been too long.
But now it’s dark and the day is almost over. I’m supposed to sleep in this room still,
with the other empty bed just a few feet away. Hephzi’s bed. Sometimes I wake up in the
middle of the night, disturbed by my own screams and the racket coming from the wall, and
for a moment I can see the slight hump of her body there, turned away from me, like
always, breathing softly.