Sisteria by Sue Margolis Read Free Book Online Page A

get landed. There’s a big difference. Do you know something, Bev, you’re a fool. You’re a fool for giving a damn and you’re a fool because you’ve made nothing of your life. You married too young, you had children too young and all you’ve succeeded in doing is turning yourself into a sad domestic drudge, a fat semi-animated matzo pudding with nothing better to do all day than worry about whether her children are wearing vests. Now you want to martyr yourself into the bargain.’
    Instead of standing up to Naomi, Beverley immediately burst into tears.
    â€˜I may not have a career,’ she sobbed, ‘but at least I’ve got a husband and children to love and who love me back. Who do you have to hug when life gets rough?’
    â€˜Easy. My Alfa Spider,’ Naomi snapped, standing up to go.
    At that moment, Melvin walked in. He had come home early because the game had been rained off and had been standing in the hall listening to the last minute or so of the sisters’ exchange. Melvin traditionally mishandled disagreements. While he would smile inanely at being grievously insulted, he couldn’t even take a dud transistor radio back to Dixons without getting so worked up that he frequently ended up threatening to punch out the lights of some blameless seventeen-year-old shop assistant. On this occasion, however, for once in his life, Melvin got it right. He simply walked over to Beverley, put his arm round her and in a very quiet, calm voice suggested that Naomi leave, carry on enjoying her life as a weather girl or whatever she was, and never show her face in his home again.
    â€˜My pleasure,’ she hissed. ‘And for your information, I’m a senior news reporter.’
    â€˜Yeah, right, famous throughout Luton,’ sneered Melvin. A few seconds later the door slammed and she was gone.
    Beverley was more proud of Melvin at that moment than she had ever been.
    ***
    Today, five years on, Beverley could only think about all the time she and Naomi had wasted. ‘Pair of idiots. Somebody should have bashed our heads together ages ago,’ she said, taking a couple of crispbreads out of the packet and spreading them with cottage cheese. The warmth she was feeling towards her sister was suddenly overtaken by the animosity she was feeling towards her lunch. Why did going on a diet always involve eating sheets of stuff which tasted like they should come in a flat pack with an Allen key and cheese which looked like it had already been digested once? As she took a bite and grimaced, it occurred to her that Benny had eaten nothing all day. Her son had refused to go to school that morning, claiming he had silicosis.
    â€˜Silicosis,’ she repeated with more than a hint of ridicule.
    â€˜Yeah. I’ve been up all night coughing,’ he said weakly, falling back on his pillow, like some Victorian heroine in a swoon. ‘Plus I feel tired and my legs have gone all weak.’ He illustrated his point with a few seconds of highly theatrical hacking and wheezing.
    â€˜Benny, this is Finchley, not a twenties Nottinghamshire pit village. You do not have silicosis.’
    She felt his forehead. Neither did he have a temperature.
    â€˜I promise you, there’s nothing the matter with you other than you’ve been reading too much D.H. Lawrence. Come on, Benny, I’m not daft. I suspect the only reason you don’t want to go to school is because you have a piece of course work due in today which you haven’t finished. Well, you’re going to have to face the music. You’re not ill. Get up and go to school.’
    â€˜I can’t, Mum. Honest, I feel dead ill. I want a second opinion.’
    â€˜OK. I’ll tell you again. You’re fine.’
    â€˜God,’ he said indignantly, ‘why won’t you ever believe me? If I say I’m ill, I’m ill.’ There was more melodramatic coughing.
    She looked down him. Despite