Shining On (8 page)

“What, dear?” asked Granny. “A treasure?”

“Well, yes, in a way,” said Jess. “Do you know, Granny, I've been trying to work out a new look for myself. You know, I look like a hobo most of the time.”

“I think you look lovely, dear,” said Granny. Well, of course she would. But looking “lovely” according to your granny is hardly going to be cool, is it?

“Thanks, Granny, but I want a change,” said Jess. “And I found this fantastic photo in an old newspaper up there….” She opened out the folded newspaper and showed Granny
the front page. “Look at her!” said Jess. “She's just amazing, isn't she? I mean, not because she's being arrested or any-thing …” (Jess didn't want Granny to panic that she was choosing deviant role models.) “She's just, well, amazing,” said Jess, leaning back and staring in admiration at the feisty and furious girl rocker. Granny looked at the picture and smiled nostalgically.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “The Whitsun Weekend, 1964. I remember every minute. Glad you approve.”

“Approve?” said Jess, not quite following Granny's drift.

“It's the only time I've ever made the front page,” said Granny with a proud sigh.

“What?” gasped Jess. “You mean that's
you
?”

“I'm afraid so, dear,” said Granny. “I was arrested because I sort of lost it, as they say, when they arrested Grandpa.”

“They arrested
Grandpa
?” shrieked Jess.

“Well, he was attacked by three mods, dear, and he sort of lashed out, you know. We were rockers, you see. We rode about on motorbikes and we liked Elvis. The mods had silly little scooters and they were all a bit soft. Sort of wimps, they seemed like, to us.”

Jess stared in total astonishment at the photo. So this iconic girl, with the wild hair and the blazing eyes, in the leather and boots, was her
Granny?
It scarcely seemed possible.

“How old were you?” she asked.

“Oh, about nineteen,” said Granny dreamily. “My dad
was furious. But although we were arrested, we weren't charged. Ah! Those were the days. Elvis's ‘Jailhouse Rock’ was our tune, but it didn't turn out to be spookily appropriate, thank God!”

As she stared at the photo of her younger self, Granny's eyes danced at the memory of that seaside punch-up long ago. Jess was amazed. Slowly it was dawning on her. She wasn't spending the weekend with a wrinkly, bereaved old lady. She was spending it with a magnificent girl biker, who rode motorbikes, wrestled with police officers and blazed out triumphantly from the front pages of newspapers.

“Right,” said Granny briskly. “I'll just make you some toast, and fresh tea, I think, and then, how about
Pulp Fiction
for the fortieth time?”

“Granny,” said Jess, “you're a legend.” And she wasn't kidding.

I
t's a beautiful gravestone. A little girl angel spreads her wings, head shyly lowered, with neat stone curls never in need of brushing. Her robe is ornately tucked and gathered, a little fancy for an angel frock, as if she's about to attend a heavenly party.

I step over the miniature rosebush and feel along the carving on the gravestone with one finger. I whisper the name.

Angela Robinson.

(My name.)

Beloved Daughter.

(Not me.)

Born 1984. Died 1991.

My sister. She died in 1991. I was born in 1992, eleven months later. Another Angela, to replace the first. I suppose that was the theory. Only it hasn't worked out that way. I'm not a little angel.

I reach out and slap the gravestone angel hard on her perky little nose. She smiles serenely back at me, above re-taliation. I hit her harder, wanting to push her right off her pedestal. A woman tending a nearby grave looks up, star-tled. I blush and pretend to be buffing up the angel's cheeks with the palm of my hand.

I haven't been here for a while. Mum used to bring me week in, week out, every single Sunday when I was little. I brought my Barbie dolls and some scraps of black velvet and played funerals. My prettiest bride Barbie got to be Angela. I sometimes pinned tissue wings on her and made her flap through the air in holy splendor.

One time, I dressed her in a nightie and wrapped her up in a plastic carrier bag and started to dig a little hole, all set to bury her. Mum turned round from tidying Angela's flowers and was appalled.

“You can't dig here. This is a cemetery!” she said.

The cemetery seemed a place purpose-built for digging, though I knew enough not to point this out. Mum was going through a bad patch. Sometimes she seemed normal, like anyone else's mum,
my
mum. Then she'd suddenly burst into tears and start a crying spell.

I was always frightened by her tears. There was nothing
decorous about her grief. Her eyes were bleary and bloodshot, her face damp and greasy, her mouth almost comically square. I'd try putting my arms round her. She didn't ever push me away, but she didn't always gather me up and rock me. Sometimes she scarcely seemed to notice I was there.

She still has crying spells now, even though Angela has been dead for fifteen years. I'll invite Vicky or Sarah home from school and we'll discover Mum crying in the kitchen, head half hidden in the dish towel. Birthdays are bad times too. And Christmas is the worst. Angela died in December. A quick dash … an icy road … a car that couldn't brake in time.

One Christmas, Mum got so crazy she bought two sets of presents. One pile of parcels for me, one for my dead sister. I don't know how Mum thought she was going to give the first Angela her presents. She could hardly lob them right up to heaven. I imagined Angela up on her cloud, playing with her big blue teddy and her Little Mermaid doll and her giant rainbow set of felt-tip pens.

After a few weeks my own teddy's plush was matted, I'd given my Little Mermaid doll an unflattering haircut, and I'd pressed too hard on my favorite purple pen so that it wouldn't color neatly anymore. The first Angela would have looked after her presents.

The first Angela didn't leave the bath tap running so that there was a flood and the kitchen ceiling fell down. The first Angela didn't get into fights at school and poke
out her tongue at the teacher. The first Angela didn't bite her nails, tell fibs or wet the bed.

My grandma would actually tell me to ask Angela for help, as if she'd already acquired saintly status.

“Pray to your sister to help you stop having temper tantrums. Ask Angela for advice on how to stop biting your nails. See if Angela can help you with wetting the bed— your poor mother can't cope with all the extra laundry.”

Dad was furious when he found out, and he and Gran had a big row. Then Mum and Dad argued too, and for a little while Dad wouldn't let me see Grandma anymore. We didn't often see my other gran or any of Dad's family—I think someone had said something tactless about my name way back at my christening and Mum wouldn't speak to them again.

We're still not on very friendly terms with that side of the family—so it was a surprise when the wedding invitation came through the letter box this morning. Mum opened it and stared, fingering the deckle edge.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Mum. She tried to crumple it up, but it was too stiff.

Dad looked up from his newspaper.

“Is that a wedding invitation?” he said. “Let's have a look.”

“It's nothing,” Mum repeated, but Dad reached across and snatched it from her.

“Good lord! Becky's getting married,” said Dad.

“My cousin Becky?” I said. “Is she the one who used to be best friends with Angela?”

Dad usually frowns at me when I mention the first Angela, because he doesn't want to set Mum off—but now he just nodded.

“And we're invited to the wedding?” I said. I got up and peered over Dad's shoulder. “To the ceremony. And the wedding breakfast. Doesn't that sound weird? It's not a real breakfast, like bacon and egg, is it? And a disco in the evening. So … are we going?”

“I don't think so,” said Mum.

“I think we ought to go,” said Dad.

“You go if you want. But I don't think I can face it,” said Mum, rubbing her eyebrows with her thumb and forefinger, the way she always does when she has a headache. “Angela and Becky were just like sisters.”

“So why shouldn't we see Becky married?” Dad said. “I've hated the way we've barely seen the family all these years. I know it's painful, I know it brings back memories— but life goes
on.
It's not fair to me to cut me off from my family. And it's not fair to Angela either.”

“Not fair to
Angela
?” said Mum. It took her a second to realize he meant me.

“I don't
want
to go to Becky's wedding,” I said.

I didn't want all the family looking at me, shaking their heads, whispering. I was sure they'd all compare me with the first Angela. I knew they'd say I wasn't a bit like her.

“There,” said Mum. “That settles it.” But she looked
doubtful. She picked up her teacup, but then put it down without a sip. The cup clattered in the saucer. It was obvious her hand was trembling.

“We'll all go,” Dad said firmly.

“Oh please, don't, both of you,” I said, getting up from the table. “I'm going to school.”

I rushed off before I could get caught up in the argu-ment. I tried to forget about it at school. I mucked around with Vicky and Sarah, I got told off for talking in class, I got the giggles in singing, I played the fool on the hockey pitch doing a sword dance with my hockey stick, I wrote a very rude but very funny joke on the toilet wall—while Angela hovered above my head, her wings creating a cold breeze.

I didn't get the bus home with Vicky and Sarah. I walked right through the town and out to the cemetery instead.

I don't know why.

Maybe I want to talk to Angela. And yet here I am as-saulting her, slapping her stone angel around.

“I'm sorry,” I whisper, and I reach out and hold the angel's hand. Her fist stays clenched. She wouldn't want to hold hands with me. The bad sister.

I'm very late home. Mum is at the window, white-faced. She's already phoned Dad and he's come rushing home from work.

“Where have you
been
?” Mum says, bursting into tears.

“How could you be so thoughtless?” says Dad.

Mum can't bear me being even ten minutes late, be-cause she's so scared there will have been another accident.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm
sorry,”
I gabble. “Look, I went to the cemetery, OK?”

“Oh, darling,” says Mum. She gives me a hug.

Even Dad looks sheepish.

I feel guiltier than ever. They think I'm so devoted to my dead sister. They have no idea I sometimes can't stand her.

“Let's have tea,” says Mum.

“What's happening about Becky's wedding?”

“We needn't go. I'll write a note to explain—and we'll send her a nice present,” says Dad.

“Well. Maybe we
should
go. I think I was being a bit… selfish,” says Mum. “We should wish Becky well. Angela— you know,
Angela
—she'd have wanted to go, wouldn't she? And it's right, we have this Angela,
our
Angela, to think of.”

“But,” I said, “I don't want to go.”

It doesn't matter what I say. We're going. And that's that. Dad phones his sister. Mum writes an acceptance note. Dad buys a crystal decanter and glasses as a wedding gift. Mum chooses a new suit, blue with a black trim.

“You'll have to have a dress, Angela.”

“Me?”
When I'm out of school uniform I live in jeans and T-shirts.

“Come on now, Angela, use your head,” Mum says
impatiently. “You can't go to a wedding in trousers and trainers.”

She drags me all round this grim department store looking at the most terrible outfits. I moan and complain. Even-tually we fetch up in Topshop and I get a dress and a purple jacket and new shoes. I get quite excited at the way I look. Older, for a start, and although the shoes pinch like hell, it's really cool to be wearing sexy high heels.

“You look lovely, Angela,” says Dad, when I dress up. I
feel
lovely too.

Not on the wedding day, though. My hair won't go right, for a start. It sticks out in a terrible frizz and won't be subdued. I've got little spots on my forehead and chin and I slap on so much makeup to cover them that it looks like I'm wearing a beige mask. I have to wash it off and start all over again. I splash water on my dress and I'm scared it will mark. I'm not sure it really goes with the jacket now. My shoes are still beautiful, but whenever I try to walk I go over on my ankle.

I'm going to look a right sight at the wedding. I stare at myself in the mirror. The first Angela peeps over my shoulder, her fine eyebrows raised.

Mum's having second thoughts too. When we set off, her eyes are red and her nose is shiny and she clutches her lace hankie as if it's a cuddle blanket. Dad puts his arm round her and gives her a quick squeeze.

Everyone stares at us when we get to the church. People hang back as if our stale mourning is contagious, but then
my aunt gives my dad a hug and soon everyone's whispering and waving and Mum manages to smile bravely and wave back. I keep my head down, glancing up under my bangs every now and then at all these relations who are practically strangers. I haven't got a clue who half the peo-ple are.