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‘What thehell, Skye?’
I stared at my normally super-glam elder sister, hardly recognising her beneath the weird purple scarf that was wound around her neck and head, and covering most of her face. Two panda eyes peered out at me, glazed with exhaustion, as she slumped wearily against the doorframe. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’ My alarm was now focused on her coat. It was cashmere (of course) and the delicate colour of freshly-churned butter, but a big black oily mark had stained the sleeve. ‘Have you got toothache?’ I indicated the scarf over her mouth.
‘Nice to see you, too, Squidge,’ she snapped, heaving herself away from the doorjamb. Straightening with a dramatic sigh to her full five feet eleven inches, she brushed past me and stalked into the flat. ‘And no, of course I haven’t got bloody toothache.’ She whipped off the scarf and turned with a dramatic, ‘Voila!’ She shrugged. ‘It’s a disguise. In case anyone recognised me on the way here.’
‘Right.’ I frowned, thinking rapidly. It must be something serious for my sister to have left her home in London at this time of night looking like this. ‘So what happened? I mean, why are you –?’ But she was already walking away from me, dumping her coat on the hall table as she went and kicking off her shoes. I followed her into the kitchen where she went straight to the fridge and flung it open.
‘I need alcohol. Where are the glasses?’ She grabbed a half-drunk bottle of white and brandished it at me.
I stared at her, still stunned.
It wasn’t the lateness or unexpectedness of her arrival that shocked me so much as the state she was in – which was the total opposite of the image she always presented to ‘her public’.Even for a quick foray down to the local shop, Skye would always slap on the full works, including false eyelashes. But tonight, her face was pale as a ghost. Deep laughter lines were very much in evidence (she looked every one of her forty-one years, although she definitely wouldn’t thank me for saying so) and her normally polished dark hair seemed to have taken on a life of its own, standing up wildly in all directions and waving with static from the scarf. With her mascara having migrated to her cheeks, she looked every inch the witch fromMacbethI’d seen her play a few years ago in a theatre group touring the UK.
‘Glass?’ she queried impatiently.
I swallowed. ‘Tell me what happened first. For heaven’s sake, Skye. I mean, why are you evenhere?’
She groaned, deflating before my very eyes, leaning against the fridge but still grasping the bottle. ‘The truth? I lamped a woman in a pub. But before you ask, she deserved it, okay?’
‘You punched someone?’ I stared at her in horror.
‘I did notpunchsomeone. This isn’t the Wild West.’ She straightened up haughtily. ‘No, I lamped her. Quite literally. Which will obviously be a total gift for those sleezy tabloid headline writers.’ She shrugged. ‘I attempted to hit her over the head with a lamp, which was the nearest thing to hand.’
‘Over thehead? Is she all right? You... you didn’tkillher, did you?’
‘No, of course I didn’t kill her. That would be murder and I think they’d already have arrested me by now.’ She heaved a sigh, looked sadly at the wine in her hand and – glass still not forthcoming – unscrewed it and took a long slug straight from the bottle.
Wincing because my choice of wine was clearly not up to scratch, she set the bottle down on the table, although I noticed she didn’t screw the top back on.
‘Actually, as a weapon, I wouldn’t recommend a table lamp,’ she said, folding her arms defensively. ‘The she-monster ducked at the last minute so all I managed to do was snag her cheekbone with the conveniently spiky rattan shade.’
‘Ouch.’ I grimaced.
She grinned. ‘Yes, it was a bit.’
‘But why did you do it?’
Her smile vanished, her eyes sliding away. ‘I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.’
I watched her face crumple for a moment as she relived her nightmare. Quickly, she pulled herself together and gave me a brisk smile. ‘An amusing story for another day, maybe. Well, not that funny. And definitely not one to tell the grandkids.’
‘But you can’t go arounddoingthings like that.’ I shook my head in despair.
She made an exasperated noise in her throat. ‘I don’tgo around doing things like that. You know me better than that. At least, I hope you do. For goodness’ sake, Squidge, I looked after you until you were seven years old and did I everoncegive you a clip around the ears when you were cheeking me or misbehaving? No, I didnot! And I never would.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ I said quickly, feeling guilty because she was looking suddenly quite distressed and emotional. ‘You were brilliant, Skye, and I’m never, ever going to forget what you did for me.’
‘Well, good,’ she said sulkily. ‘Because I’m not a violent person. These were... well, they werespecial circumstances.’
I nodded. ‘So whowasthis woman? Did she report you to the police?’
‘Probably. I didn’t hang around long enough to find out. But there was a skanky tabloid photographer in the pub – Gerry Jackson, or “Greasy Ger” as he’s known in media circles – and he took pictures of me fleeing the scene. So I leapt in a passingtaxi, practically falling onto the bonnet to make it stop for me. Then I bought that hideous scarf from a shop at the station.’ She pointed vaguely in the direction of the hall where the scarf lay on the floor next to her abandoned shoes. ‘Then I caught the first train here. Well, it was the last one, actually. I had to walk all the way here because obviously – this being country-bumpkin-land – there wasn’t a single taxi waiting outside that shed thing that masquerades as an actual bloody station.’
‘That’s a bit unfair,’ I protested, feeling rather protective of my ‘country bumpkin’ status and the ‘shed’ which was actually a rather pretty little station building with pots of yellow and purple crocuses at the front. ‘And anyway, it’s not that far to walk.’
Skye gave a snort. ‘It is when you’re wearing the spindliest heels ever created by man. (Or woman. Don’t @ me.) Anyway, I tried walking across the green in them but I got completely stuck, so then I had to take them off and walk the rest of the waybarefoot!’ She gazed miserably at her grass-stained stocking feet. Her big toe was poking through a hole.
‘Well, I should think green feet are the least of your problems right now,’ I told her briskly, my sympathy not extending to what was clearly a first-world problem. ‘But at least no one’s going to track you down in this little backwater.’
