Letters From My Sister by Alice Peterson Read Free Book Online Page B

jacket covered with lots of badges, a round embroidered hat that looks more like a doily over her head, and a red football scarf. She carries a large purple bag and a couple of plastic Sainsbury’s bags.
    ‘Bells!’ I say, quickening my pace towards her.
    ‘Hello, Katie. How’re you?’ I’m so relieved she has arrived that I almost hug her, but instead I take her luggage. ‘Well done! You made it,’ I say, as we walk away from the platform, past the guard at the entrance. There’s a heavy silence after the mobs of people have moved on.
    *
    We arrive back at Sam’s and I show Bells around the house. The kitchen is in the basement; on the ground floor is a large airy room that looks like a smart waiting room. In here are Sam’s new leather sofas and a fireplace controlled by slick silver controls; he has a dark mahogany bookcase filled with glossy hardback books that he hasn’t touched. He doesn’t read anything apart from the
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. On the second floor are the bedrooms, and a cosy room with suede beanbags and a large Stanley Spencer print. The bay window looks out on to the other rainbow-coloured houses along the crescent. If we’re in, we pretty much live in this room. Sam plays poker here. On the top floor is the steam room with the old-fashioned bath. ‘This is my favourite room, Bells,’ I tell her.
    ‘Sam rich?’ she asks.
    ‘Yes, he is. He works very hard.’ I take her back downstairs to her room, a large bedroom with a double bed, wardrobe, a long mirror whose frame I gilded and one small bedside table with an orange and white stained-glass lamp on it. More or less everything in this room is white – the shutters, the walls, the bedspread. The only other piece of colour is the rug with great big orange and red circles on it. Bells sits on the bed, looking around. It’s hard to know what she makes of Sam’s house.
    ‘What’s your room like in Wales?’ I ask, sitting down next to her.
    ‘I wish you would go and visit your sister sometimes,’ Mum says to me.
    ‘She’s a forgotten sister,’ Dad adds.
    ‘Not big like this,’ says Bells, waving her arm around. ‘Have small bed and television and lots of posters. Room looks out on garden and sea. In my plot of land, I grow carrots and potatoes. We grow strawberries this year too. You like strawberries, Katie?’ She sticks her thumbs up at me.
    ‘I do. We don’t have a garden here,’ I say apologetically. ‘I think you have Mum’s gardening skills. I’d kill everything! There would only be weeds in my plot of land.’ She doesn’t say anything.
    ‘Now, you’ve got your own TV in here, so that’s something, isn’t it?’ I point to the big silver machine with the wide screen in the corner of her room. ‘You can watch the tennis. Who do you think’s going to win Wimbledon this year then?’
    ‘Agassi.’
    ‘You cannot be serious,’ I say, imitating John McEnroe.
    She looks at me with no hint of a smile. I’m going to have to try harder than a poor imitation of John McEnroe.
    ‘Shall we unpack?’ I open her zip bag and out comes a medley of junk and clothes. ‘Why have you got Mary Veronica’s jumper?’ I ask, showing Bells the nametag in the jumper, like the ones we used to have to sew on our school socks and PE kit. ‘Bells, you don’t have many summer clothes in here. Is this all you packed? Odd jumpers, a few T-shirts and a pair of dungarees? Oh, hang on, you have one frilly pink blouse here that says it belongs to Jessica Hall. I think I’m going to have to get you some new clothes,’ I say, talking to myself rather than to her. ‘You put all this away while I put the fish and chips on. Deal? You like chips on Fridays, don’t you?’
    ‘You have crinkle chips, like ones Mum makes?’
    ‘I’m going to make homemade ones, like Aunt Agnes’s.’
    ‘Oh,’ she acknowledges, and it’s hard to tell whether she’s pleased or not. ‘How’s Aunt Agnes?’
    ‘I think she’s fine.’
    ‘Uncle Roger? He died. Poor