hurried toward the lifts, stuffing her sketch pads back into her bag. She didn’t have a desk there. None of them did. Harry called it ‘flexible working’, but he was just too skint to pay for office space. Working from home suited Sarah anyway, with Sissy to think about.
She was waiting as usual just outside the front door when Sarah got there, beneath the big sign that welcomed everyone to Whispering Sands. What a misnomer. Nobody whispered in the care home and the only sand within thirty miles was in the car park, left over from when they gritted it last winter.
‘You’re—’
‘I’m not late,’ Sarah said. ‘Are you ready to go?’
‘I was ready at two thirty,’ said Sissy, holding her wrist two inches from Sarah’s face.
‘Your watch is fast.’
‘No, you’re slow.’
‘Whatever. Let’s go. Button your coat.’ The November days were closing in. ‘We can pick up some flowers for Mum on the way.’
She was only in the next town but travelling back there always gave Sarah pangs, like that sinking-in-the-stomach feeling when you think about an ex that you really liked.
She pushed the feelings aside as they got to the florist near their mum’s.
‘Do you like any of these bouquets?’ she asked Sissy, who was sniffing the flowers in each of the two dozen buckets by the desk.
‘These smell nicest,’ she said, pointing to the long-stem red roses.
‘Yeah, well for three quid a stem, they should. What about one of these?’ She pointed to the £10 bunches.
Carefully, Sissy inspected each bouquet. It would take her a while to decide.
Sissy never let Sarah rush her. Her scrupulous attention to detail meant that even the most mundane task took her about a million years. Plus, she liked to touch everything she saw, which made clothes shopping with her an exercise in patience.
‘How’s everything going with your boyfriend?’ Sarah asked as Sissy sniffed a purple and yellow bouquet.
‘Good.’ Sniff.
‘Still holding hands?’
‘Sometimes.’ She glanced over. ‘And kissing.’
‘Oh, kissing? Is that nice?’
‘Yep.’ Sniff sniff. ‘This one smells nice.’
‘Anything besides kissing?’
She thought for a minute. ‘He gave me his jelly.’
‘Nothing more? No hugging or … sex?’
Sissy rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be gross. We’re not supposed to do that.’
‘I’m just checking.’
‘Don’t worry.’
Of course she worried.
‘I brought a drawing for Mum,’ Sissy said as Sarah paid the florist for the bouquet she finally chose.
‘Can I see it?’
Carefully, she unfolded the pink sheet.
‘Nice one,’ Sarah said. ‘You’re really talented.’
Sissy had covered the whole page with tiny squares, then coloured each one in to create a paper mosaic. It was a zoo scene with elephants, giraffes, lions and monkeys.
‘I really like the way you’ve done the sky. Is there a storm coming?’ Sarah pointed to the roiling dark clouds in one corner.
Sissy nodded. ‘It’s going to rain.’
They walked around the corner from the florist’s shop.
‘Here we are. Ready to visit Mum?’
Sissy took Sarah’s hand and they walked together through the cemetery gates.
As Sarah dropped her sister off she tried not to mind that Sissy never looked even the littlest bit sad to leave her. She might at least wave wistfully every once in a while instead of just returning to her friends without as much as a backwards glance.
Sarah knew she should be happy that Sissy was so independent but the truth was, she wanted Sissy to need her as much as she needed Sissy. Instead she was such a typical teenager.
As Sarah got on the train back to London she called Robin.
‘All right?’ he said when he answered.
‘All right,’ said Sarah. ‘I just dropped Sissy off. We went to the cemetery. You should see the picture that she did for Mum. It was really ace.’
Kelly at the home was trying to get some funding to start running an art class since several of the residents loved drawing and painting. None of them were as good as Sissy though.
‘She’s got a boyfriend,’ Sarah told him. ‘She says they’ve been kissing.’
‘Jesus, that’s not good,’ he said. ‘They should be keeping a closer eye on her.’
‘Kelly says it’s normal and that we need to be ready for this new phase.’
‘Kelly wouldn’t say that if Sissy was her sister. She shouldn’t be letting guys kiss her. Should I talk to her?’
‘Oh I’m begging you, please don’t!’ Sarah knew how that’d go. When she was in sixth form, Robin had decided to tell her about sex. For some reason he thought it’d go down better if he used all the official words.
Her face still burned thinking about him talking about vaginas.
‘We need to let Kelly do the job she’s trained for,’ she said. ‘Please don’t talk to Sissy about it. If you spook her she’ll never tell us anything.’
‘I wish Mum was here,’ he said. ‘She’d know how to handle it.’
‘Me too,’ Sarah murmured.
* * *
Their mum could do anything, and Sarah didn’t believe that only because she was her child. She had the usual parenting skills – rooting out the monsters from under the bed and kissing away hurts – but Sarah hadn’t realised the half of it till she was older.
There hadn’t been much spare cash left over from her mum’s secretarial job after the rent was paid, but Sarah had never noticed that they were pretty poor. They weren’t exactly the sort to splash out in restaurants anyway and why would they want to, with their mum’s cooking?
She turned her hobby into a part-time job, to go with her full-time job, when Sarah and Robin were little. She made delicious beef stews, lasagnes and shepherd’s pies in bulk for their neighbours, cooking as easily for fourteen as she did for four. And when Sissy was born the few quid she charged per meal were a lifesaver. She had to quit her job then, and their carer’s and disability benefits didn’t stretch very far.
Their rented terraced house had one of those kitchen extensions off the back that opened on to a long, narrow garden. The appliances and work surfaces spread across the back half of the big room, with overstuffed sofas and the TV beneath skylights at the front. They pretty much lived in those two rooms, till first Robin and then Sarah went away to London.
Maybe if they’d still been at home when their mum got ill, they’d have noticed how run-down she was getting.
At first she wouldn’t go to her GP. ‘It’s nothing,’ she’d said. ‘Stop worrying and have some more cake.’
But she wasn’t eating her own food. That wasn’t like her.
Then she got a nosebleed one night when Robin and Sarah were home for dinner. After ten minutes it still wouldn’t stop.
‘Mum, do you get these often?’ Robin asked