The Sister by Poppy Adams Read Free Book Online Page B

stuff was unnecessary, these days. My immediate instinct—as you can imagine—was to resist the novelty, but I tried it and found the bags so much easier to handle with the poor grip control I have in my fingers. I used to have such trouble, especially on those mornings when my fingers curl up with pain, in keeping the leaves on the spoon rather than shaking off and skidding all over the counter. Then, when I’d maneuvered as many as I could into the infuser, the trap that stops them free-roaming the pot, I’d fiddle about for several exasperating minutes trying to close the catch to shut the little devils in, only to be given yet more trouble hooking the tiny link over the pot’s rim. In the end the strength of the tea was more dependent on my deftness for delivering the leaves into the tea trap, rather than consistent with my own preferences to taste, and often I’d have to start all over again. Now that I’ve tried the bags I’ll never go back to the loose. Michael is trying now to convince me that teapots aren’t necessary. I’ve been pretending I agree with him, to avoid having to discuss it, but between you and me, Michael knows nothing of the satisfaction in the ritual of making tea.
    I fill Belinda’s pot with boiling water and put on the lid to let it brew. Perhaps today it would have been better to deal with the leaves. I’d have had a longer task to concentrate on, to take my mind off what Vivien is doing and thinking. She’s now upstairs making shuffling noises and wandering between the room directly above me and the one over the pantry that used to be her childhood bedroom. Her driver is carrying up the last of her belongings.
    I take down two cups and saucers from the dresser and fetch the milk from the fridge, arrange them by the steaming pot and wait. I won’t pour the tea until she comes down, or it might get cold.
    I’ll tell you a strange old thing that I’d never have predicted. I can feel the start of Vivien’s and my relationship re-forming again, but—and this is what is odd—it’s
exactly
the same as it was half a century ago, as if we’ve not matured at all, as if our childhood is flooding in and scrabbling to catch up with our old age. Here I am again, leaving the decision with her, waiting for her to judge whether our little altercation is over and to resume our reunion. Vivien sets the rules and the boundaries, she takes the risks, and I’m there waiting for her when she needs me. I’d almost forgotten that that was my role.
    Those sisterly boundaries shifted when, two years after Vivi’s accident, we were sent to Lady Mary Winsham’s School for Girls. Maud gave us a little talk the night before we left for our first term. “I want you to look after each other so that if either of you gets into any sort of difficulty,” she said, looking at us sternly, one after the other, “you know that you can go and find your sister and talk about it.” As I was the eldest, I was sure she was asking me, especially, to look after Vivi.
    Our parents thought that if we started at the same time we’d be a support to each other, but as it turned out, Vivi didn’t need my support. While she started at ten in the lower fourth and found herself instantly popular with the forty other new girls, I was the new girl at thirteen, looking for a niche in a long-assembled year group where friendships and alliances had been brokered for three years already.
    The school was an hour’s journey away, and at the start of each new term, Vivi and I were squashed up with our trunks in Clive’s light blue Chester, which he’d converted into a mobile moth-setting station. He’d ripped out the backseats to make way for a setting table that he’d bolted to the floor, so Vivi and I squeezed in on either side of it and worried that our heads might bump if the road got rough. Bottles of bromide, cyanide, ammonia, sodium nitrate and other noxious potions rattled casually in the back, loosely tied into a