Sisters

by Prue Leith

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Carrie is beautiful and untamed, a single girl with her own business and the pick of the men. Her older sister Poppy is an earth mother, with a successful career in the theatre and happy home life. Since they were children, Poppy has always looked out for her sister--she knows Carrie has a darker, destructive side. But she never dreams Carrie would hurt her. But Carrie can't help herself. She provides danger, excitement, great sex--all the things that had faded in Eduardo and Poppy's marriage. And in destroying her sister's peace of mind, she risks losing all those who love her.

Release date: November 5, 2013

Publisher: Quercus

Print pages: 304

Sample

Angelina put her arms round her little brother’s bottom and tried to hoist him into the upper basket of a luggage trolley. She staggered a few steps backward, then lurched forward, her waif’s face contorted with effort.

Poppy watched, a little anxious. Tom was 14 months old and too heavy for a nine-year-old. She said,

“Darling, don’t do that. He can’t sit in it. It’s not a supermarket trolley—there’s nowhere for his legs to go.”

Poppy took the child from her daughter, and allowed him to stand in the top basket, one fat hand clutching her shirt and the other a hank of her hair as he swiveled this way and that, looking for diversion.

Angelina leaned into her from behind, and threaded sly hands between the trolley and her mother’s body, knotting them round her waist. How pale she is, thought Poppy, caressing Angelina’s skinny arms with her free hand. “Not long now,” she said. “A few more minutes and you’ll have a sister.” Angelina didn’t respond, and Poppy thought, Please God let her love Lorato.

Poppy was sure it was right to have brought Angelina and Tom with them. Angelina had been there (well, in the next room) when Tom was born. It had been wonderful. Both she and Eduardo had cried, relief and triumph and joy shared just as at Angelina’s birth. Maybe even more so: the first time some of the euphoria was due to the astonishment and wonder they’d both felt at the birth itself—the marvel of Mother Nature you could say. But with Tom they had been conscious of their extraordinary and continued good fortune. Seven years on, her fame as an actress had reached the household name level, which still astonished her. Eduardo’s architectural practice was booming; they had money, they were still in love, they adored their daughter and they’d longed—well anyway, she had longed—for another child. And there he was, healthy, perfect, and bawling his head off.

Now she wanted a similar right of passage for her soon-to-be-adopted daughter, a proper importance given to her arrival. They were all there to meet her, to share the first moments of the enlarged Santolini family.

Eduardo looked at his plump wife, unmade up, dressed in jeans and a sloppy jumper, and hung about with children. He said, his perfect English modulated by an Italian cadence,

“Poppy Ferguson, I wish your fans could see you now. Do you think they’d recognize Cleopatra, or Ophelia, or Kate?”

Angelina stuck her head under Poppy’s elbow and said, “She’s not Poppy Ferguson. That’s only a pretend name. She’s Mummy Santolini.”

Eduardo smiled at his daughter and said, “Quite right Angel. She’s Mummy Santolini all right. And we are here to collect another bambini. We must be mad.”

Perhaps we are, thought Poppy. Certainly everyone else seems to think so. The Harley street psychiatrist more than anyone. He’d been adamant:

“It will be an enormous risk, Mrs. Santolini. No one can suffer what that child has suffered without being scarred.”

“But she was only a baby.” Poppy could hear the pleading note in her own voice.

“Just because she may not remember, doesn’t mean she won’t be damaged. With her history of loss, fear, hunger, etc., the change of languages could be one step too far for her.”

Poppy, clutching at the language question as the easiest to deal with, had said: “But she’s too young to speak. Why should it matter?”

“Because children learn almost all they need to know about their mother tongue before they speak a single syllable. She would have heard nothing but her own language until she was separated from her mother. Since then she will have been thoroughly confused by Afrikaans and God knows how many African languages before you came on the scene with English. I am not exaggerating, Mrs. Santolini: That child will be traumatized. I would not be surprised if she doesn’t speak a word until she is five, maybe longer. She may never speak.”

Eduardo’s mother, Guillia, had been as negative and more forceful. She’d said, her thick Umbrian accent becoming thicker with emotion:

“She is not of your blood, Eduardo. She is not Italian. Not even European.”

Eduardo had tried to calm his mother, putting his hands on her small shoulders, trying to catch her eye, but she silenced him with a click of her tongue. She demanded, “Why you not make a bambino like everyone else?”

With a sharp shake of the head, she turned her back to mop down the sink, a hairpin spinning out of her bun and making a tiny ringing sound on the marble tiles. She said, “Or OK. If you buy one, why not you buy a white one?”

“Oh Mama! Are you are becoming a racist in your old age?” asked Eduardo, bending over her shoulder to kiss his mother’s angry cheek.

“Scemo!” barked the little woman, confronting him again. “It is not racist to see plenty plenty trouble. For black children in this country it is impossible. Even for Italian child. But you want black child in Italian family, white parents. How can she be happy. Eh?”

Even their family doctor had been less than supportive: “It’s not the girl that worries me. It’s obviously a wonderful stroke of good fortune for her. But have you considered the effect on Tom? He . . .”

Eduardo cut in, “Why? It will be like having a twin sister. He’ll love it.”

Dr. Bartley pushed her slipping glasses back into place and said with professional patience:

“He might. But all children find a new rival in the house hard to cope with—even though the sibling is tiny, and can’t do anything except demand attention. That’s bad enough. But this child will be a serious rival: slightly older, walking. Tom isn’t walking yet, is he?”

Poppy laughed: “No, but that’s only because he’s lazy and has sussed that if he curls his fat legs up, someone will carry him.”

Dr. Bartley didn’t smile. She said:

“There isn’t much research on unnatural age-gaps. It may be perfectly OK. But there is no denying you’d be giving Tom a real challenge.”

Poppy looked down at the little bruiser in the luggage trolley, pummeling her breasts and head-butting her neck, and thought they need not worry about Tom. He’d be fine.

*

Lorato’s plane was late and Eduardo took the children off in search of Coca-Cola and a balcony from which to see the planes.

Poppy folded her ancient Barbour jacket into a cushion and sat on the luggage trolley. It wasn’t very comfortable. Useless architects, thought Poppy, it wouldn’t occur to them to provide seating in Arrivals. You were only meant to hang about in Departures.

But Poppy was glad of the time to herself. She wanted to think. Steady herself for Lorato’s arrival.

Mummy Santolini, she thought, or Poppy Ferguson? Why had the choice not been harder? She knew that adding another child so soon after Tom wouldn’t help her career. She’d taken almost a year off for Tom. If she really wanted to stay at the top, and maybe make the big leap into big-budget movies, then she should be riding the wave her success at the National and at Stratford had brought her. She should be prepared to go to Hollywood, to go on tour, to be Poppy Ferguson more than Mrs. Santolini.

But the decision had made itself. Six months ago she’d been sitting in the Green Room at the National between the matinee and the evening performance, eating a flavor-free sandwich from the vending machine while half-listening to cast gossip. She was idly opening the mail she’d scooped up from the floor of the flat, putting the bills in one pile, the appeals to open fêtes and appear at events in another, the junk in the bin.

She heard someone say that the new director wanted to cast a woman as Othello. How ridiculous, she thought. The whole point of Othello is his maleness. Then her mind fastened on the letter she’d just opened. Maisie’s letter, the one that decided the Poppy Ferguson vs Mummy Santolini contest.

Poppy shifted her bottom on the luggage trolley, and took the letter from her wallet, where she’d kept it like a sort of talisman during the long months of bureaucracy that had led so tortuously to this day.

Dear Miss Poppy,

I am writing to you because you will help me, God willing. You and Miss Carrie are always in my heart. I am old woman now, but I mind me of the good times when Master and your good mother was in Kaia Moya and I was your honored cook.

I have picanin, one year old, Father he is being killed. Her brothers and sister all dead. Her Mother in Tzaneen prison. Soon go back Mozambique. Baby have nobody. Not a one.

My husband say I must give her to the Police. But she is good girl. No cry. I no want to give her to Police. But I have no money. Ag, Madam, the poor mother. She just want one of her family stay living. She was so happy when I keep Lorato.

You are rich lady. And your father was good man. Maybe you help. Baas Karl, he know about Lorato (she is Name Lorato). He say Also I must give to police. But he say he say nothing while I write to you, my old family. He say if you telephone he explain better than poor old cook woman, knows nothing.

In God we Trust. Yours with honor faithfully, Maisie n’Tumalata

Poppy’s mind went back to what she knew of Lorato’s short history. Her parents had been among the thousands of Mozambicans, made destitute by war, flood and famine, who try to enter South Africa illegally. They believe, if they can just get across the border, they will find work and food. Some are so desperate they cross the Kruger National Park on foot.

Poppy had seen the army patrols in the game reserve searching for “illegals”. But they do not catch them all. A small percentage make it through to a life of misery in the squatter camps around the big cities.

But an even smaller and even unluckier percentage are killed in the park, mostly by lions looking for food, or hippos protecting their territory. Occasionally by crocodiles. Karl had said Lorato’s father had been killed by lions.

There was a gruesome example of natural adaptation going on in the park. A pride of lions, a large one of several lionesses and one heavyweight male, had learned to hunt under a line of pylons running hundreds of miles across the park from the Mozambique border to the western boundary. The Mozambicans, who travel by night to avoid the patrols, use the pylons as route markers to avoid the danger of wandering in circles in the dark. The lions use the pylon strip as its larder.

Poppy knew that once lions realize just what easy meat man is, they give up the arduous business of catching buck, and just help themselves to people. Their victims included rangers, park workers, even the occasional tourist. But mostly they killed illegal immigrants. The rangers had already shot several previous families of “pylon” lions. But others soon moved in. As long as South Africa represented a Mecca to starving Mozambique, there wasn’t an answer.

Poppy shook her head slightly, trying to banish the horror. She would not think about it. She wanted to greet her new daughter in calm and happy mood. But the images kept coming: of stick-thin shrieking women; of shouting men trying to fight off a lioness with branches or spears; of their gasping flight as the rest of the pride arrived; of Lorato’s father’s screams as the animals dragged off an arm, tore out his throat.

Poppy closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on the positive: Thank God for Karl. He ran Kaia Moya now as an upmarket Game Lodge and he owned a third share in it, with Poppy and Carrie as equal but absent partners. It was not the first time desperate immigrants had arrived, exhausted, in the camp. He had done what he usually did, which was to tell Maisie to feed them all, allowed them to sleep for eight hours, then turned them over to the police. But Maisie had hidden Lorato.

Poppy had known as soon as she read Maisie’s letter, written in careful capitals on a blue airmail letter, (ironically bearing a picture of a snarling lion), that they would adopt Lorato.

She’d shown the letter to Eduardo, who’d guessed at once what she was thinking. He’d been typically generous, saying, “If you want to adopt her, we’ll adopt her. Why not? I like big families. And we can afford it.”

Poppy had thought Eduardo was too casual about it, as if he was giving her a present, not taking on a daughter. But she didn’t argue. It wasn’t as if they were making a decision today.

She rang Karl.

“Ja, Poppy, it’s all true,” he said. “I knew old Maisie was writing to you. I tried to stop her, but you know Maisie. She considers you her family and me the hired help.”

Poppy smiled, an image of Maisie’s not-to-be-thwarted face crossing her mind. She said, “But tell me about the child.” She found her heart was thudding. How odd.

Karl told her the story: “Her mother persuaded Maisie to keep her. Poor woman, she’d seen the rest of her children die in less that two years: starvation, flood, AIDS. She just wanted to save her last baby.”

Poppy felt the anguish of that other mother. For a second she could feel someone tearing Tom or Angelina from her, and she said, “Oh Karl, we’ve got to do something. What will happen to the mother? Isn’t there a way to help them both? Can’t we employ the mother? So she could keep the baby?”

“I’m sorry, Poppy,” said Karl, emotion flattened out of his words. “There’s no way. Believe me.” He paused, then said, more kindly, “Poppy, we live with the immigrant influx every day. We cannot employ any more illegals than we do already. We have to give them up. That way at least they get fed.”

Poppy heard the tiredness and the kindness, and understood. “OK.” Then she said, “Karl, We could have her. You know Eduardo and I want another baby. We could adopt her.”

Poppy knew Karl would say this was a bad idea. She braced herself for his objection. He said, “Poppy, You don’t know what you are saying. For a start she’s not the best looking kid in the world . . .”

Poppy’s voice rose: “We’re not buying a Barbie Doll . . .”

“Sure,” said Karl, ignoring the outburst. “But you haven’t even seen her. She’s not starving, but she’s nearly so. Stick thin legs, extended belly. Maisie says she’s a good child. But she’s quiet and silent because she’s weak . . .”

Poppy made an effort to be unemotional. She said, “Karl, those are reasons for helping her, not for rejecting her. Besides, we do want another baby, and it took us seven years of trying to get Tom, and this seems like fate . . .” Poppy’s voice trailed off. Karl would think she was an idiot, but she felt an extraordinary pull toward this unknown African child.

Karl waited to see if Poppy was going to continue. When she didn’t, he said, “Poppy, think about it. If you really want to adopt an African baby, maybe you should talk to the agencies. There were hundreds of deserving . . .”

But Poppy was only interested in Lorato. She would fly out, she said.

She took Tom with her, telling herself that her mind was not yet made up and she’d watch the children together before it was. Then, if she wanted to proceed, Eduardo would fly out too, and they’d decide together.

Her first sight of Lorato was a let-down. She was asleep on a blanket in a battered playpen in the rich-smelling gloom of Maisie’s kaia. As Poppy’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she made out the small lump of Lorato’s blanket-wrapped bottom, sticking up uncomfortably over her folded legs. The little girl was sleeping on her knees, her face squashed sideways against the bars of the playpen.

Lorato was snuffling in her sleep, her mouth open. Poppy put Tom down next to the playpen, and knelt beside him, twisting her own head to see the baby’s face. Though asleep, Lorato’s lids did not quite close, leaving two thin white slips of eyeball showing under the deep brown skin.

Oh God, thought Poppy, could I love this child? She waved the flies away from Lorato’s cheek, wet and shiny with childish dribble. Is what I feel pity? Or what?

As she crouched in silence beside the sleeping Lorato, Tom used the playpen rails to haul himself upright. Then he let out one of his piercing vocal experiments, half shout, half hiccup, right above Lorato’s head. Lorato’s eyes fluttered open. She shifted, and her bottom toppled sideways to roll her onto her back, releasing her face from the bars. She didn’t cry, and she did not look at Poppy. Her eyes were fixed on the bouncing Tom, who was reaching through the bars to clutch her nose with his fat fist.

Poppy, kneeling up, reached into the playpen and lifted Lorato out. She looked deeply into the child’s face as she held her aloft and brought her down onto her lap, but Lorato never glanced at her. On the whole up-and-over journey her solemn brown eyes were glued to Tom’s dancing blue ones. As Lorato landed on Poppy’s lap Tom lurched forward as he crash-kissed Lorato somewhere between her broad flat nose and her wide round forehead.

Poppy put her arms round the two children, lowering her head to kiss the unfamiliar crinkly hair, breathe in the unfamiliar musky smell. Tom looked up at her, his face alight with pleasure. Yes, she thought, oh yes.

*

When Poppy telephoned Eduardo that night, she tried to be detached and clinical, explaining how silent the child was. Should they perhaps get her looked at by a Johannesburg pediatrician before they made a decision? Eduardo had cut in:

“You want her, don’t you?”

“Well. . . . I . . . No. I don’t know. You need to see . . .” A short pause and then, “Oh Eduardo, how did you know? Yes I do. I want her. I think I’ll die if we can’t have her.”

“I’ll catch tomorrow night’s flight.”

Poppy was naturally law-abiding, and wanted to follow South African adoption procedure by the book. But Eduardo argued that Lorato would be grown-up before the combination of socialist bureaucracy and government incompetence would allow her hand-over. He hired a Johannesburg lawyer not averse to distributing small bribes, and Lorato had an exit visa and adoption consent forms (presumably forged, Poppy dared not ask) in a fortnight.

The English end had taken longer. But at last the Foreign Office was satisfied that the toddler would not take some Brit’s job or cost the State anything, and had agreed to let Lorato in. Social Services, in the person of an earnest young woman with a folder of forms, had gone through the Santolinis’ life with a nit-comb. She’d found no reason for objection either. A guardian ad litem was appointed and adoption proceedings would begin as soon as Lorato was with them.

She’d be a paid-up Santolini before she was two.

When the airline rep arrived with Lorato in a pushchair, it was an anticlimax. The child was asleep, so there was no bouncing and hugging and laughing. Eduardo signed where the stewardess told him to. Angelina said, “Can I push her?” and commandeered the buggy. Eduardo put Tom on his shoulders and Poppy picked up the Kaia Moya carrier bag containing Lorato’s worldly wealth—half a packet of nappies and a baby’s bottle filled with juice. They were on the Heathrow Express within five minutes and back at the flat in half an hour. Lorato was still asleep.

Poppy was determined to win over her reluctant mother-in-law and her own mother that first evening in the Paddington flat. She had not yet managed to extract a word of approval about the adoption from Guillia, and Lucille could not retain any information for long enough to develop a view. Poppy hoped the physical presence of Lorato would somehow gain a foothold in her mother’s muddled mind.

Poppy had planned her offensive with care. Guillia was coming up from the Oxfordshire farmhouse to inspect the child, and Poppy had suggested the best time would be early evening. That way Lorato could sleep all afternoon so she would not be grumpy; she’d be fed and watered to prevent hunger, drama and mess; then she’d be dressed in a white Italian lace dress and black patent leather shoes (Guillia had said Tom’s baby-gro made him look like a Martian). Carrie would fetch Lucille and arrive in time for Lorato to wow them all for half an hour, then Poppy would tuck the two little ones up and park Angelina in front of Pocahontas.

Carrie had promised to cook the dinner. And, thought Poppy, she’d cast her usual happy spell. Poppy loved her younger sister, who was everything she was not: as captivating and beautiful as she, Poppy, was bespectacled and dumpy. Carrie was carefree and confident, sometimes wild. People tended to stop talking when Carrie came in, to stare at her at bus stops, look round when she swung by. Poppy would not have said so, but she was proud of having such a sister. She felt her stock went up when Carrie was there.

So that was the plan: heart-warming family scene with enchanting children, followed by convivial family dinner.

But Lorato, who had slept all morning, refused to sleep at all in the afternoon, and cried instead. Poppy knew the little girl was exhausted, but every time she tried to lower her into her cot, Lorato would curl up her legs as though she were being dipped in hell-fire and scream blue murder. Tom, usurped as the center of attention, screamed too.

Poppy gave up and decided food had better precede sleep. She knew Lorato had been weaned on African sour porridge and mielie meal, neither of which was available in the local M & S. So she’d opted for fish fingers, sausages and chunks of raw tomato.

The appearance of the food mercifully silenced the children. They sat in matching high chairs and ate with their fingers. Angelina helped Lorato, who opened her mouth, chewed and swallowed at an alarming rate. If Angelina did not immediately respond to the open mouth by putting something in it, Lorato would cram food into it herself with efficiency and concentration.

When Tom had reached the well-fed stage of trying to force his sausage into the spout of his tippy-cup, Poppy wiped his protesting face, his hands and his tray, and lifted him to the floor. He plunked down on his Pampers-padded bum, and directed his energies to climbing the head of the long-suffering Great Dane, Olaf.

But Lorato did not give up so easily. Her belly was tight as a drum, and she had a pouch of unswallowed food in her cheek, but she would not agree that supper was over. One hand held a fish finger, the other a sausage. It was clear she had eaten all she could, but when Poppy tried to pry food from her fists, she opened her mouth and wailed. Poppy used this opportunity to hook the wad of half-chewed food out of her mouth with a bent forefinger. This spurred Lorato to a higher pitch of protest.

Poppy’s heart sank. Oh God, she thought, she’s got an eating disorder. It wasn’t surprising. She’d been hungry all her life until a few months ago.

“It’s alright, darling,” she said, lifting the child and rocking her, “you can keep the sausage and the fish finger. There, my baby, shush, shush.” But Lorato, perhaps fortified by food, cried harder. Her yells and her distress intensified—tears spouting from her lower lids and running in small streams into her open mouth. No rocking or crooning or shushing could stop her. Tom, unsettled by the noise, climbed off the dog, and crawled to his mother’s feet. He got his arms round an ankle and joined in, his wails every bit as loud as Lorato’s.

This was the scene that greeted Guillia.

“Oh dio! What’s this?” she asked, kissing Poppy, glancing at the yelling Lorato, hugging Angelina, lifting Tom. “You have a very noisy new sister, eh?”

Tom stopped crying as soon as he was in his grandmother’s arms. Poppy continued to bounce the struggling Lorato up and down to no avail. Then Carrie came through the door, leading their mother by the hand. Poppy caught Carrie’s eye and forced a laugh. Angelina said, “Why is it funny, Mum?”

“It’s not, darling. But I’d hoped to present your two grandmothers with a dream grandchild, and look what I’ve got.” She had to shout to be heard over Lorato’s wails. She kissed the child’s wet cheek, which prompted further writhing and crying.

Lorato smelt different, unfamiliar, not like Tom. The word alien blew into Poppy’s head and she suddenly felt unsure of herself. How could this wild and furious thing be her daughter? Tom would duck his head into her neck when he cried, but Lorato clearly wanted to get away from her.

“Oh Guillia, she won’t stop.” Poppy was tempted to put her down and let her scream. She turned so her mother-in-law could see the bundle of rage in a smeared baby-gro, face streaked with tears and dribble, a lump of food in each hand.

Poppy went on: “She stinks too. I was going to have her bathed and in a pretty white dress, smelling of Johnson’s baby powder.”

“Heavens, who is that child?” Lucille asked Carrie, her face a picture of distaste.

Carrie answered, steering Lucille to an armchair, “That’s your new grandchild.” Lucille looked baffled, and Carrie said, “I’ll g. . .