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“As demonstrated last night at the pub.”
“That was just teasing,” Amelia protested. “But maybe you’re right and we should have been nicer. I suppose it’s hard for her. I suppose it always was. You know she was never allowed to come to a party or anything? Or even to play out after school? She always had to practice.”
“Sounds about right.”
“We took the piss when we were kids, but it must have been hard on her.”
Jules nodded. “Must have been.”
“But then we always figured she’d get her just desserts, that she’d go up to London and become rich and famous and wouldn’t need us at all. We were kids, that’s how we justified being unkind to her, that one day she’d be better than us for real.”
“Kids can be… cruel but logical,” Jules said.
“Oh, we weren’t always nasty, or really at all nasty. We all made an effort to have her join us at some point, it’s a small village, after all. Just she never responded. Though I suppose looking back she was never allowed to respond. It was a bit of a shock seeing her back, to be honest.”
“Why is she back?” Jules asked, knowing damn well that her sister didn’t have an answer.
“Your guess is as good as mine. Why don’t you ask her since you’re new besties and all.”
“We’re not.”
“Fine, since you’ve got a crush on her and all,” Amelia said, poking her tongue out.
“I do not have a crush on Billie Brooke,” Jules protested. Even though she could admit to herself that Billie Brooke was actually attractive. More attractive now that she’d shown her more sensitive side. Attractive in a way that Jules really didn’t have time for. She had plans, plans that didn’t involve a dalliance with a piano teacher.
“Whatever,” Amelia said. Then she changed tack. “You do know that this whole plan to lure Alea into your arms is slightly ridiculous, don’t you?”
“More or less ridiculous than deciding to spray everyone in Whitebridge orange?” Jules asked.
Amelia snorted. “There’s nothing wrong with ambition.”
Jules took her sister’s hand and interlaced their fingers. “Why do you do it, Am?”
Amelia didn’t have to ask what she meant. She shrugged. “Because one day I’ll make it. It might not be tomorrow, it might not be this idea, but one day it will and I’ll be set. We’ll be set. No more scraping by, no more wondering if we can pay the gas bill, no more being dependent on granddad Jim and his ill-gotten gains.”
“He’s been good to us.”
“He has, and he deserves our thanks. But I still think he’s up to something.”
“He’s always up to something,” said Jules.
“I just want to make something of my life,” Amelia said. “There’s nothing wrong with that. And I’m no grifter, I’m not cheating my way into things, I work hard and I know that me and Cass come across as ridiculous sometimes. But one day we won’t be. Think about the bloke who invented the umbrella.”
“Think about who?” asked Jules, thoroughly confused.
“The bloke who invented the umbrella. One day he went out in the rain and thought, you know what, a piece of ceiling on a stick would solve this problem.”
Jules laughed. “Yeah, okay, I get your point.”
“It’s the difference between you and me,” Amelia said, squeezing her fingers so that Jules’s fingers got squeezed between them.
“What is?”
“How we responded to mum leaving.”
Jules closed her eyes. It wasn’t something they talked about often. She knew that mum going had broken Amelia and it had taken a long time to get her back again, she knew that granddad Jim had had a hand in bringing her back. She knew it hurt Am even now to mention the word mum. “What do you mean?”
Amelia sniffed. “I suppose it’s natural, isn’t it? I’m the eldest so my response to her going was to eventually become the one that wanted to look after everyone, that wants to make a success of myself.”
