The Bad Sister by Emma Tennant Read Free Book Online Page A

carpeted in hard cord, lights on and standing on the landing, I can smell us there together: from the sitting room, where we drank cold Stolichneya vodka before we left and Tony complained at me spending too much of my money on it; in the bedroom, which is just on my left, I can see the dresses and skirts I tried on and then threw on the bed in despair. The whole place feels both over-occupied and totally empty. Perhaps I never will return.
    I can imagine how Tony is doing at the party. He has a small affected smile on his face and he is pretending he isn’t working his way ever nearer to the daughter of an American film producer who might make his life a little more exciting for him. Although he’s a screenwriter, the editor of a literary quarterly has just asked him to write on the new Spanish cinema. Tony is secretly more pleased by this than by an offer to write a Hollywood blockbuster. He can’t forget Cambridge, and the poets and writers in old tweed jackets who give a short surprised laugh when they bump into Tony now. Or perhaps he has been trapped by Fay Langham. She is telling him about feminist cinema. His eyes are wandering, his tongue suddenly becomes dry. ‘Let me get you a drink, Fay.’ I laugh as I go into the bedroom and then into the tiny bathroom beyond.
    There was no time to lose. The familiarity of the flat had deflected me for a moment, and had reconciled me to my skin – I sat in both uneasily for so many years that it was hard to imagine I could change. But now it was happening. I sat down on the bed because the floor seemed to be moving under me. Over the pile of discarded clothes, the scarlet flowers on black background, black roses on white nylon crêpe de chine, layered skirts and flimsy tops, I reached for the scissors that lay on the table beside mybed. I picked them up and my hand brushed the soft dresses: I thought of Meg – Meg whom I had seen again tonight, her dress of gypsy handkerchiefs and the eyes that had made me turn on my heel and leave the party as if I had immediately read her command. I hadn’t expected her to follow me. But I knew that she knew tonight was my first real chance to escape.
    With the scissors I started to hack at my hair. Long pieces of blonde hair, highlighted every three months and slightly curled for the party, fell onto the rumpled clothes. I almost immediately felt calmer and more peaceful. I wandered to the bathroom, and watched my face look out as naked and surprised as a sheep at shearing. Aren’t you trying to cut it properly? my eyes seemed to be saying back to me from the mirror. This is a terrible thing to do. Think how long it’ll take to grow out again!
    I shrugged at the reflection and strolled this time to the bedroom window, still hacking away with the scissors, which seemed to have taken on a determination of their own despite the protests of the owner of the hair. I pulled back the curtains, leaned on the window sill and looked out. I had often imagined myself flying on my broomstick from here – as my mother flew on that icy night after the brawl – but she fell, even the strength of her beliefs couldn’t keep her in the air, and when they took her from the bank of snow to the lorry she knew the battle was lost. I would fly so as not to be with Tony any more, so as not to be me. Yet Tony could go if we decided it wasn’t working out. We didn’t have to marry. I didn’t even have the risk of pregnancy: an IUD like a computer gadget lay inside me, with a thin cord for removal if I decided to ‘start a family’. How many times had I dreamed of launching myself from that window sill, floating into the black night until I banged up against the stars! And now I was going, but by a different route, and into quite another Universe.
    The scissors had reached my fringe and decimated it, little spikes of straw stood on my head and it was quite rough when I ran my hands through it, like