Sisters.

I didn’t know I had a sister until it was too late. Snow muffled sound and the weight of the outside world. We didn’t have money for the electricity meter. I couldn’t watch telly. Mum couldn’t smoke herself to death with her endless packets of fags. It was a different time.

We retreated to our rooms and huddled in bed. I tuned into her sighs and the banging of the room door as she hurried up the hallway to the toilet. But mostly I slept. I could win awards for sleeping, Mum often said. She could talk.  

When I woke the inside world was silent as outside. Slipping out of bed, it was my turn to make the mad run to the toilet. Beating the cold at its own game. Stone floors and scuffed linoleum. Icy temperatures worked its way through two pairs of socks and grabbed the soles of my feet. I bunched my nightie and sat shivering on the pan, the tinkle of urine accompanied by the sound of my stomach growling.

I was ravenous. I couldn’t work out if it was day or night. Friday or the weekend. The clock in the living room was set to twelve. It was always midnight or noon since I’d knocked it off the mantelpiece and somehow stood and danced on it twice.

Mum had a Westclock with luminous dials beside her bed. But I didn’t want to waken her. She was in one of her moods. Slipping deep inside herself. Looking through you with bleary eyes.

She’d often float through the day, not saying a word. At night time whispered, ‘Yeh don’t love me.’ Sometimes it was framed as a question.

When I was younger I was quick to reassure her. ‘I dae love yeh, Mum.’ I’d look into the emerald green of her dulled eyes and fling myself at her. Clutching her waist and breathing in enough second-hand smoke from her fiery red gypsy blouses to start a bonfire in my soul.

As I got older and started secondary school, my words were more measured. I wanted a mum like other kids had. A normal mum.

She was more measured too. She’d put her hand over my lips and prevent me from speaking.

‘Yeh pretend tae care,’ she said. ‘But yeh steal money fae my purse. And aw yeh think of is yersel and daft wee boys. Don’t think I don’t see that. Yeh steal fae ye ain mum. Yer good for nuthin and yeh’ll come tae nothin.’  

I’d listen to her and wait for her breathing to settle into the rhythm of a rumbling train. Then I’d sneak away and prove her right. I’d never take a pound note from her purse, but I’d pounce on the loose change and make my escape. Gary, my boyfriend, kissed me until our lips chaffed and said he loved me, while making a grab for my small tits.  

But this silence was different. I swallowed hard and called out her name. My voice imprinted in the cold air, ‘Mum!’

I trekked down the hall and stuck my head around the door. ‘Mum?’

The blankets on the bed had the contours of a soft grey island on the floor. She’s knocked the clock over. It was 2.50am. I wasn’t sure if it was too early or too late. I sobbed hysterically, knowing I was all alone. She’d finally left me.

Backing against the wall, I sunk to the floor. I screamed, thinking I’d seen something moving under the bed. I flicked the light. Of course it didn’t work. My mind was playing tricks on me. She said it would. Just you wait and see.

I tugged the blankets from the floor and up around me, cloaking myself in her. They smelled of her cheap perfume and fag smoke. She’d done this before.

I’d waken up and there’d be a different Mum. Smiling with her eyes. Cracking a yolky egg in the frying pan and making me the full breakfast with sausage and black pudding and potato scones. The smell alone would wake the dead.

A Sunday morning breakfast. She’d tapped her red-painted fingernails against my forehead. ‘Some people, not many, get the gift.’

I shivered and muttered under my breath. ‘Fucking hope no.’

I didn’t want to be a crazy woman like Mum. Neighbours avoiding you. Their men sidling up and putting their hands on her arm, trying to engage her in conversation that slid down to them, looking at her tits and talking to them out of the side of their mouths long enough for her to get a reputation as a slut.

‘Dead people,’ she said, ‘hate the living. Cause they’re jealous aw us. Sometimes, we’re jealous of them tae.’

I convinced myself she’d gone to the all-night garage. They sold Powercards. We were always on Emergency rations of electricity. If I fell asleep long enough, I’d awaken to the smell of sizzling rashers and non-Emergency lighting and two bars on the fire and the telly on.

‘Mum,’ I called out again. Just in case. My voice echoing in our empty house.

I got dressed and wound a scarf around my neck. Pulled up the Venetian blinds and lay my forehead on the window. Frozen inside and out. I breathed life into the ice and made it run. It gave me enough of a gap to recognise the outline of parked cars with hats, a foot of snow on their roofs. Chalmer’s garage sloped away. The grassy triangle, the pavement and road had merged into a single whiteness with one set of tracks going downhill.

Mum warned me never to follow her. ‘Yeh’ll wander aff and get lost. And then where would yeh be?’

That was when I was wee. She’d pull me close to her chest and hug me. ‘Anything could happen. Promise me!’

I warmed my hands under my oxters. Street lighting and a full moon. The snow created its own soft luminescence. I stomped my feet to get life back into them. An old set of wellies in the hall cupboard that were too small for me, but I could force my feet into them. A clear set of tracks to follow. Known my luck, they’d peter out before they got to the bottom or the road. Nothing to lose.