Tales from the Tower, Volume 2 (32 page)

Did I tell you that her skin was beyond flawless? It was as fine as silk, with the faintest pink flush on both cheeks, which of course made us both feel like lizards in comparison with our greasy spots and Noosa tans. She had a long, swan-like neck and when she pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail you immediately noticed the high cheekbones that all the models have (or dream of having
or
have painted on
or
cut in by the surgeon's knife), not to mention the small, straight, slightly upturned nose and wide mouth. God, she was . . . 
gorgeous!

Reine and I were not ugly – at least we weren't until we met
her
. We were short, though – stocky rather than fat – and we both had long noses, biggish hands and ugly feet. Reine had good eyes, and I've been told I've got a nice smile – if only I'd use it more – but my eyes are too close together and there isn't much you can do about that. I was booked in for liposuction because my thighs and bum are too heavy, but that never happened because of the money issue. Reine had already had it done at sixteen, along with a nice boob job, but I'd decided to wait for all that. A few of Mum's friends had had dodgy jobs that made them look weird, so . . . yeah, I was putting off going under the knife.

I guess we were just two ordinary-looking chicks who had to work hard to make ourselves attractive, and spend a fortune on it, too. It figures that what you haven't been born with, you have to cultivate or create or buy if you can. Mum, Reine and I dieted constantly and spent heaps on skin treatments, massages, hair and nail products – so what? We thought nothing of it; it was just what girls like us did. Our father was rich. We
had friends. We went around with stylish people. Okay, we weren't up there with the really hot
chicks, but . . . we'd never considered ourselves
ugly
!
We'd both had guys ask us out – not exactly the guys we wanted to ask us out, but hey . . . we were
on the map
,
definitely part of a scene. Life was bearable.

But by the end of that first day, after meeting her, things had changed – we were ugly. It wasn't fair that just because of her we had to feel like that every day. So . . . we decided we'd keep her out of sight as much as possible.
Not that Reine and I sat down and talked about it exactly. It was just understood. Life would be better if we didn't have to look at her.

{2}

The surgeon was in again this morning. No sidekick this time. I must have frightened him off. He sat on the bed and started to loosen the bandage over my right eye, then I felt some sort of cold instrument slipping under it and pressing gently around the area. It didn't hurt but I couldn't tell what he was doing. Was he shining a light in? I still couldn't see.

‘Are you going to take them off?' My heart was pounding, though I'd managed to keep my voice even.

‘No no,' he murmured and he taped back the bandage and did the same on the other side. ‘We'll wait for tomorrow or the next day. Try to be patient.'

I nodded meekly. This guy doesn't know it, but he is the only person in the world I trust.

‘So how are you sleeping?' he asks.

I shake my head and turn away.

Last night a sudden rush of wind and a terrible sharp cry woke me. Was it human? Suddenly there was a crushing weight on my chest. I struggled but couldn't move. But I could see. A huge bird with a long hooked beak had landed on my chest. I felt the sharp talons pierce the flesh as it folded its wings into place, bouncing slightly from side to side as it took hold and settled itself. All the while its huge head was turning casually from left to right, so utterly
indifferent.

‘Oh God, please.'
I couldn't move. ‘Help me!' Confident that it had no competition, it lowered its head and started to pick delicately at my right eyelid with its sharp beak.

‘I sleep okay.' I tried to smile at him. ‘But I look forward to the morning.'

‘Ah yes,' the surgeon mumbled, as if he knew exactly what I meant. He rested one hand on my shoulder for a moment.

‘Always give thanks for the morning,' he said softly. And you know I've found myself thinking about that all day.
Always give thanks for the morning.

{3}

The temptation is to gloss over this next bit; just throw it away with a few lines like ‘we were mean to her right from the start' or ‘for some reason we felt the need to belittle her' or ‘baiting her became fun for us'. It would be the truth and we could get on with the next bit, but . . . it would be weak. Real life is in the details, so I must tell at least some of them. Looking back, I see that it got pretty bizarre. I could point to many reasons, but why make excuses? None of them are adequate.

I guess the room thing gave us the idea from the start that she was pretty malleable. You could spin her a line and she'd believe it. First off it was innocuous enough. She'd come home from school and we'd be sitting about doing nothing and I'd raise my eyebrow at Reine and say, ‘God, I've had this terrible headache all day.'

‘Do you want an aspirin or something?' Ella would say, all concerned. She was always sort of tentative, as if she was still working out how to please us. I don't know why, but it brought out the worst in both of us.

‘No, but I haven't had any lunch,' I'd say. ‘Reckon you could bring me a sandwich and a coffee?'

‘Oh sure,' she'd say, ‘no worries.' She was so gullible you see, so eager to please, and she kept coming back for more. Baiting her became a kind of sport for us. Neither Mum nor Reine nor I knew the first thing about cooking, so it wasn't long before we started to expect her to do it all.

Her presence at meals used to annoy Reine and me because she ate everything she felt like without ever putting on any weight. And we had to look at those dainty hands.

‘Look, why don't you have your meals later,' Reine said at last. ‘I mean, it's annoying having to look at you eating like a pig when we're all on diets.'

‘That's a good idea,' Mum said sharply. By this stage she hated her too.

So that's what happened. Not only did she do all the cooking, she wasn't really allowed to eat with us either, except when her stupid father was around. He used to get home late most nights and seemed unaware of what was going on. He'd come in and do the big cheery act, kiss Mum and ask if we'd had a good day, then he'd make himself a drink and head out to tend to his sick birds. Anyway, sticking up for his daughter would have meant crossing our mother, and he must have decided by that stage it wasn't worth it. For some reason Jack was in absolute thrall to Mum. Reine and I used to snigger together as we speculated about what she must be giving him, because he was constantly trying please her. Sometimes we'd get scared that Ella would tell him about how mean we were, but although she looked miserable sometimes, she never said anything. I think she didn't want to ruin his happiness.

That suited us just fine.

The three of us weren't used to doing housework, of course. We'd always had someone do it for us and Ella acted so willing and able at first that it seemed natural for her to keep doing it all. She'd rush home from school to get the dinner on, and there would be dishes all over the sink. Once she asked us to clean up after ourselves.

‘Why should we?' Reine said.

‘Well, I do the cooking and the rest of it,' Ella said in that soft way she had. ‘It's not fair that I should have to do everything.'

‘But you're good at it,' I said. Believe it or not, little miss prissy-pants started to cry.

‘What's up?' I said.

‘Why do you have to be so . . . horrible?' she whispered.

‘Look, it was a joke, okay?' I said uncomfortably. But Reine flew at her, quite unfairly I guess.

‘Horrible?' she shouted, jumping off the couch and advancing on Ella menacingly. ‘I'll give you horrible. You think we care about this shitty little dogbox of a house? Well, we don't. We hate living here. We hate your stupid father and his ridiculous birds and we hate you. So if you want the dishes done, do them yourself!'

Ella ran off to her room and Reine and I were left looking at each other. Reine was feeling it even worse than me, if that was possible.

‘God, I hate living here,' she said before switching on the television. Then Ella came back out, tears streaked across her face. I have to say that there was a determined look about her.

‘Why?' she said. ‘Why do you hate it here? Why do you hate us so much?'

I remember being on the point of apologising. We'd gone too far. But Reine had other ideas.

‘You're just too dumb to take seriously,' she sneered. Then she picked up one of the cushions and threw it straight at Ella's head. The girl gave a startled cry and retreated to her room.

It wasn't just her looks that made us jealous. Oddly enough, it was her life as well, even though by our former standards it was totally pathetic. But at least she had a life, with friends and homework and school choir and drama club. Sometimes she helped her father with the sick birds before she left for school. After a few weeks, more birds were brought into the cage, none of them as big or mean-looking as that huge black critter who continued to stay in his little fenced-off section looking horrible – but we never asked about them. Nothing about any of it interested us. Reine and I would watch Ella and her father working together inside the wire enclosure, chatting away as they cleaned out the feed bowls and mucked around with medicines like all that stuff really mattered. When they were in with the birds they both wore ridiculous big leather gloves and masks, which made us snigger. Ella's interests and activities were complete crap, of course, but at least she had something to do. Reine and I had nothing. Mum had enrolled us into a shonky business course, but we soon dropped out when it became obvious we'd have to work. So we spent our days sitting around watching television, bitching at each other, eating and getting fat.

After a few months Ella began staying back late a couple of nights a week for choir and theatre rehearsals, and that's when we really felt it. Apart from the fact that she wasn't on duty to cook and clean and wait on us those nights, it seemed unfair that she had outside interests when we didn't. But it wasn't like we could stop her going to school. So we took advantage of her absence to poke around her room and go through her things.

There was only one small bathroom in that ridiculous house, which we were all supposed to share. One morning when Ella was in there getting ready for school and Reine wanted to use the toilet, she had the bright idea that the bathroom was way too small for all of us to share. There was a cold shower in one corner of the old laundry out the back near the bird enclosure – no curtain or towel rail, but a big sink and an old leaky toilet that you had to pull a chain to flush. The floor was concrete, the door was battered and cracked and the whole place was covered in dirt and dust because it had been used to store bird feed, straw and medicines for the birds. After checking the place over, Reine declared it Ella's ‘new' bathroom.

By the time Ella came home that night, Reine had moved her few things out there along with an old chair and a small cracked mirror.

‘You've got your own private bathroom now,' she said.

‘But there's no hot water.' Ella seemed more stunned than anything else.

‘So you bring it out in a bucket if you need it.' Reine sniffed, as though she didn't have a long hot shower every day herself. ‘But we thought you'd be keen to save water. And you'll be near your beloved birds.'

Ella stared at her silently for a few moments, then went to her room. We only just managed to wait until her door had closed before we doubled up with laughter.

‘God, it worked,' my sister chortled.

‘But she'll tell her father,' I said under my breath.

‘No, she won't. She doesn't want to upset dear Daddy,' Reine chuckled, ‘and he won't do anything to upset Mum.'

It was true. Jack seemed oblivious to anything except what was right under his nose. So from that day, Ella used the old laundry as her bathroom. I must admit to a twinge of guilt when I'd see her heading outside with her bucket on cold mornings!

The day we decided we'd destroy the stash of journals hidden under her bed was a kind of watershed moment. Naturally we read them and hooted and chortled about all the crappy poems and deep-and-meaningful rubbish she'd written there, but it was when I found the huge, bright pink
Live Your Dreams
sticker on one of them that I lost it. I'll be honest here, that little motto sent me completely
spare.
It had silver stars all around it and little girly flowers, and not only that, she'd written it out again a few times underneath. It was too much.

Live Your Dreams
.