he didn’t even know where she lived? Sarah sighed, exasperated. She slipped her arm out of Becky’s and turned her back to the wind, so that she could see her sister’s face more clearly. She chose her next words carefully. ‘You jumped into bed with him too quickly.’
Becky guffawed. ‘Oh, Sarah, that is so old-fashioned. People sleep with each other on first dates all the time.’
‘Do they?’
‘Yes and anyway, I like sex. A lot of the time, that’s all I want. I don’t want them to marry me.’
‘But you would like to be in a long-term relationship. You told me you’d like to settle down one day and have a family. And if that’s what you want, you’re going about it the wrong way.’
Becky came to a halt, turned her back to the wind and whipped a packet of cigarettes and a lighter out of her pocket. She put a cigarette in her mouth and, after several attempts at lighting it, the white tip burned like a cinder.
‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ sighed Sarah. ‘Do you want to end up like Mum?’
‘Oh, come on, give me a break.’ Her hazel eyes, the same as Mum’s, flashed under thin, arched eyebrows. ‘Mum didn’t die from smoking. A blood vessel in her brain burst. And she never smoked a cigarette in her life. You have to stop worrying so much.’
‘I can’t help it.’
‘Come here,’ said Becky and she put one arm around Sarah’s shoulders and gave her a big, rough hug. ‘Better?’ she said, holding the cigarette at arm’s length, her breath sour with the smell.
Sarah smiled, feeling for a rare moment as if the heavy mantle of responsibility that she felt towards Becky had been lifted – as if she was the little sister and not the other way round. ‘Yeah.’
They started walking again. The edges of Sarah’s coat flapped like black wings, and the feeling of lightness evaporated, as if blown away on the breeze. She took a deep breath. ‘To get back to the subject in hand, the problem with sleeping with someone on the first date is that you completely destroy any sense of mystery. Men like a bit of intrigue. If you just give it all out on the first date, you spoil the romance, or rather, the prospect of romance.’
Though she had slept with Cahal on their first date, she did not feel any sense of hypocrisy in dishing out this advice to Becky. Her relationship with Cahal had been different from the start.
‘Did you enjoy the seisiún?’
She’d returned to her friends and had not seen him come up. He leaned against the bar and crossed his ankles. Her friends all stared while she blushed and groped for words.
‘I could see it in your eyes,’ he went on, staring at her as if she were the only person in the room. ‘The way you connected with the music. The way it connected with you.’
The music had touched her. ‘I thought it was beautiful.’
‘I’m Cahal by the way.’
‘Ca-hal,’ she said, trying out the unfamiliar name. ‘Sarah. How did you learn to play like that?’
He shrugged as if his talent was nothing. ‘I’ve tickets for a Chieftains concert next week. Will you come with me?’
She did not hesitate. ‘Yes.’
‘So says Miss Celibate.’ Becky grinned to take the sting out of her comment.
‘That’s not fair. I did have a sex life once,’ said Sarah.
‘And you will do again,’ said Becky confidently.
Sarah smiled doubtfully. ‘Seriously, you should think about what I said.’ She spied Lewis’ hat on the ground, picked it up and shook the sand off it. ‘What happened with that promotion at work? Weren’t you to hear this week?’
Becky sighed. ‘I didn’t get it.’
Sarah’s heart sank. It was the third promotion Becky had been knocked back for. She worked as an admin assistant at Queen’s University Belfast, a job she’d taken straight after leaving school with three good A levels. Sarah had tried to encourage her to go to uni but Becky, under the influence of a no-good boyfriend at the time, had refused.
‘They recruited externally,’ Becky went on. ‘You know, I’m really cross about it. I wouldn’t have minded, but you should see the nerd who got the job. He can barely switch on the computer. Has to ask me every little thing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sarah and glanced furtively at Becky. The nose piercing was a recent one and it still looked raw and sore. ‘Did you get any feedback on why you didn’t get it?’
Becky shook her head. ‘Just vague feedback about not being right for the job. My boss said I should’ve got it, but it was up to the interview panel, not her. And I didn’t know any of them.’
They walked on, arms linked. Up ahead, Molly veered left, onto the seaweed-strewn pebbles at the top of the beach, and Lewis trailed in her wake. ‘Have you thought that how you present yourself might have something to do with not getting the job?’
Becky sighed crossly. ‘I’m an admin assistant, not a model. Surely what I do is more important than what I look like?’
‘It ought to be. But the thing is,’ said Sarah tentatively, ‘first impressions are ever so important. Everyone who knows you thinks you’re lovely but to someone meeting you for the first time, well, they might not think so.’
‘Why not?’ snapped Becky, shaking off Sarah’s arm.
‘The piercings and the tattoos and the dyed hair. They give out a message, Becky. Quite an aggressive one. Why don’t you let your hair go back to being brown? It’s the most gorgeous chestnut colour.’
Becky lifted her chin and her eyes narrowed. ‘I’m not going to change the way I look just to fit into other people’s idea of what’s acceptable. And I wish you would stop trying to change me into a clone of you. Just because you have it all – the house, the kids, the high-flying career. And the figure and looks.’
Sarah gasped in surprise. ‘How can you possibly say that? I’m a single mother struggling to run a home and hold down a full-time job. I’d hardly call that having it all.’
Becky blushed. ‘Well, you did have it all until you got divorced.’ There was an awkward pause and she sighed. ‘I just wish you would stop telling me how I should dress and what I should do.’
Sarah looked away, chastened. ‘I don’t mean to boss you around. I just want things to work out for you. In and out of work.’
Becky sighed and patted Sarah’s arm. ‘I’m okay, Sarah, really. I’m happy the way I am. You don’t have to be so protective. You’ve been mothering me ever since Mum died.’
Sarah swallowed, the mere mention of their mother bringing a lump to her throat.
The rain had stopped. A shard of sunlight broke through a chink in the pale grey, skitting cloud – and just as quickly vanished again. In the blank canvas of the sky, Sarah saw the stark grey-whiteness of the hospital ward where her mother had died.
She perched on the edge of her mother’s bed, the metal bedframe digging into her thigh. Crisp white sheets crunched between her fingers. The low hum of equipment, like a beating heart, filled her ears. The room was hot and smelt of floor polish and the fragrant sweetpeas that Dad had picked from the garden two days ago and which now sat, wilting, on the bedside table. Fear, terrible fear, ballooned in her chest.
‘Sarah.’
She leaned over her mother’s body, already still, like a corpse. She held her ear close to her mother’s lips, her heart tight and cold in her breast, and waited.
‘Take care of Becky.’ Her mother’s breath was a caress, like a summer’s breeze. ‘You’re sister and mother to her now.’
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