This Could be Everything Page 2

  The weeks following that night passed in a blur. People always say that, don’t they? But I suppose they say it because it’s true, and certainly I struggle to recall anything meaningful from those days, beyond a flat calm of silence pricked by moments of sudden chaos, and the smell of bacon sandwiches and the ringing of the telephone. Mama’s sister, Ann, moved down to the cottage to look after us, while her husband Robert prepared for the moment that his two nieces by marriage would move into their house in North Kensington, a house we had only ever visited twice before in our lives. When we first walked through the door of St Quintin Avenue, Ann actually said things like: ‘This is where you live now, girls’ and ‘You must treat this house like your home now, girls’ – the sort of lines that feel like they belong in the opening pages of fairy tales before disaster befalls – and we just said: ‘Oh. Thank you,’ because what else was there to say? I remember Ann and Robert’s cat wound itself around Diana’s legs and she bent down to stroke it, and I remember being dimly aware of the hum of traffic on the Westway.

  When we were very little, at the start of our lives in the Deep South, I would climb into bed with Diana and hug her to me like she was a teddy bear, and after the fire, when we first moved to London, I would close my eyes and beg to the Lord above that nothing bad would happen to her, that she would be safe forever, that she would live to be a hundred and three years old, and for a while, it felt like someone was listening to me. Then, whoever I was talking to must’ve stopped listening because two months before our nineteenth birthday, a van ploughed into the car that my sister was a passenger in. The car was being driven by Lisa, who was one of the only people Diana truly trusted besides me, but that afternoon, Lisa turned the wrong way down a one-way street. Lisa was thirty-five and walked away without a scratch. Diana was unlucky. Diana was not quite nineteen years old, and Diana – my twin sister Diana – died.

  The small, manageable fire of my darkness that had burned quietly in the corner of my life was overcome all of a sudden just exactly as had happened at King’s Cross. The fear, the dread, the anxiety, the horror, the guilt and the pain that had been contained since my parents had died roared suddenly up the inclined surface of my life. Whoosh!

  So here we are. I’m nineteen and everything feels over already. The Trench Effect is efficient in its intent. I shake like a leaf most of the day. My heart bangs into my dry mouth as I lie on my bed. I am nearly sick every time the telephone rings. I dropped out of everything, and speak to only my aunt and uncle, and I am afraid of all the things that once pleased me so much. Yes. That feels about right. I am afraid of all the things that had once pleased me so much. I could list what it was that I had loved right here like Julie Andrews does in the song, but, if you will, just imagine all of your favourite things, and then imagine that they were mine too, and you’ll understand what I feared, and believe me, it was everything from warm woollen mittens through to cracks on the pavement, walks in the park, the full moon, tennis balls, newly sharpened pencils and, of course, my sister.

  I fear her ghost: Diana as directed by Tim Burton – a sort of see-through version of her earthly self, floating vague and Gothic-cool – on trend as hell, obviously – and wailing at me. Sometimes I would picture her in the wedding dress of Princess Diana, whom my sister had loved on the grounds that they shared a name and a romantic leaning towards the underdog, or sometimes I would picture her barefoot in pyjamas, holding her toothbrush, ready for bed. I didn’t want to see her, and yet of course I desperately did. But like I said, everything now contained fear; all light, all happiness burned away by the wildfire of grief, leaving me only faintly aware of my aunt standing in my bedroom doorway, helpless, shattered by her own shock and sadness, but trying to work a way through mine for me. I suppose she thinks I might try to kill myself when she and Robert go to work, but these fears are quite wrong; death would have required a bit of effort, and I don’t have any of that going on. Ann makes sure that the windows are locked so that you can only open them a couple of inches if strictly necessary, although once a week, she marches into the kitchen and opens them as wide as wide, and makes me come downstairs and we sit and drink Ceylon tea – black, no milk, no sugar – with her back to the open glass and the lilac-in-winter and the almost-bare plane trees, and she watches me carefully in case I might decide to run past her and jump out, which of course I never do.

  But last night, something had chosen to jump in. To fly in. Now this. Maybe it had gone forever. Maybe it never happened at all. I guess I find it hard, these times, to know the difference between life and dreams.

  4 Little Earthquakes

  Since Diana died, my aunt comes home every day at lunchtime to check on me, even though it must be the most gigantic pain in the neck for her, as the walk to and from the school where she and Robert work is twenty minutes each way. Westbury House is one of those private schools for girls aged eleven to eighteen that considers itself to be enlightened, but is actually full of rich white girls with names like Claudia and Anneka, none of whom like to operate outside Zone 1, unless they’re heading for Heathrow to board flights to Sotogrande or Vale de Lobo, where they sit by the pool in Hunza bikinis pretending to be far stupider than they are, laughing at jokes made by boys with names like Charles Duckworth and Olly Bentinck-Metivier. Most of these girls sat up a bit when Diana and I arrived at school, because we were new kids with almost-Texan accents who emerged for the sixth form only, and although there are an awful lot of clever, sporty, pretty girls at Westbury House, we at least held the ultimate trump card of being orphans.

  Ann and Robert had worked in the state sector for years before they arrived at Westbury, and occasionally spoke to us with a kind of shadowy disgust at their decision to move away from the tough business of educating kids who really needed their help. Robert, in particular, spoke every few weeks about ‘going back’ to where it ‘made a real difference’ but then something would happen at Westbury – a charity evening, a play, a decent GCSE result from someone quite stupid – and he would be so delighted that he would kick that thought of leaving into the long grass for another term. His relief at being able to get Diana and me a place in the sixth form at Westbury House felt like a big deal. He could do this for us, after all we’d been through; he would make sure we got our exams done and made new friends. Within a week or two of our arrival, I beat everyone in the year at tennis, which really wasn’t difficult – non-swanks – and half-way through week three, everyone worked out that Diana had been on the cover of Just Seventeen, and she knew Eric Elliot, who had modelled for Levi’s and looked like River Phoenix. Eric Elliot was something else. I found it hard to talk when he was around; Diana found it hard not to.

  We were twins too. Twins always get noticed. You can explain to people a million times that if you’re non-identical, you only tend to look as alike as normal sisters might look, but that seems to disappoint everyone so much.

  ‘I thought you were twins!’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘But you don’t look like twins!’

  ‘We’re non-identical.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re still twins…’

  In a way, I get their point. I mean, we shared a womb, but Diana launched into the world twenty minutes before me, at almost double my weight, and unlike me, was capable of feeding without a tube straight away. We were six weeks early. I swear it must have been my sister who had forced us into the world before we were fully cooked, ready for her close-up, impatient to get on with the show. Sure as anything wouldn’t have been me.

  What I mean is that none of the heroic effort that is associated with children who survive early birth seemed to have been in me. Most premature babies, especially girls, are gifted the spirit of Boudicca. Oh! She was barely bigger than my hand, but from day one, she was a born fighter! Yet I languished in an incubator for two weeks, thank you very much, unconcerned about gaining weight or the need to find a place in the actual world. Diana had a head-start over me in my mother’s affection, that was for sure. I never shook the feeling that while I was lying in a plastic cot, Diana was out there in the room, holding court, and as we grew up, that feeling never really went away. It wasn’t helped by the fact that her name had the credibility it did – Diana was the moon goddess, the hunter, the child-bearer – while Mama chose to name me February. When we were back in England, where there were six Lucys and four Annabels in our class at school, my name felt insane.

  ‘Why did you name me February?’ I would ask Mama.

  ‘Because you were meant to be born on Valentine’s Day.’ Mama looked at me with impatience.

  ‘But we weren’t.’

  ‘But you were meant to be.’

  ‘But no one likes February. Kate Simmons’ mum says it’s cold and depressing.’

  ‘Well, she would know. Anyway, it’s not cold and depressing in Texas.’

  ‘But we’re not in Texas. The English think it’s a silly name.’

  ‘The English can go fuck themselves. I think it’s magnificent.’

  ‘Mama!’ I wailed. I hated her swearing back then.

  ‘Kingdom is the best surname in the world,’ she said, ‘and think of me and your poor aunt! Growing up Lily and Ann Bones! Bones! I ask you! My friends said I only married your father for his surname, and they were more than half right, I can tell you—’

  ‘Yes, but February Kingdom! It’s like eternal winter—’

  ‘No,’ said Mama. She looked at me with sudden urgency. ‘It’s eternal spring. Eternal hope. Who wants to be called Summer? You’re already there with Summer, and in case you hadn’t realized, Feb, life is very often not about the arrival, it’s about the journey. Oh, God in heaven, pull those carrots off the boil, will you?’

  * * *

  At about ten past
one, I usually hear Ann opening the front door, then walking slowly up the stairs and into my bedroom where she sits down on the end of the single bed. Sometimes she says nothing, sometimes she turns on lights, or tidies, or turns down the volume on the stereo. Often, she talks me through her morning. She expects no response from me, and usually she gets none, although I always thank her when she walks out again, and I think she likes that. It’s a routine now, something that both of us accept but neither of us are ready to change, and there is something almost feverish in the whole thing; there’s an agitation in her quietly sitting there, craving a reaction from me that rarely comes. What Ann talks about makes for uneventful listening, which is a deliberate choice on her part, because at heart she is extremely funny – far more so than my uncle Robert who doesn’t really have a discernible sense of humour and is most times perplexed by her ability to scatter wit into chat about the school lunch menus, or parking suspension in Notting Hill during Carnival. Often, I pretend to be asleep, and Ann pretends to believe me. But sometimes, when she talks, I close my eyes and I hold her hand, and she squeezes my hand in hers, and she knows that it has been worth coming home to me.

  The wallpaper wraps around my box-shaped bedroom in St Quintin Avenue, North Kensington, in a defiant chintz, with heavy curtains of the same pattern, so that when they are pulled closed, it’s like being inside a teapot, a little enclosed world decorated with the repeat of periwinkle blue Chinese men on swings surrounded by bamboo. Ann had decorated the room imagining it might become a nursery for a baby, but then she and Robert had never been able to have children, so I suppose it languished quietly until I took it on.

  ‘I like the repetition of it,’ Ann had said when she showed me the room for the first time, reaching out and touching one of the figures on the wall. ‘I thought a child would like to count their hats.’ She’d laughed at the improbability of it all, as though she couldn’t believe she’d ever entertained such a mad thought, but the next morning at breakfast, I’d sat down and looked at her.

  ‘There are one hundred and forty hats. Just so you know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The wallpaper. The hats on the men on swings in the bedroom. One hundred and forty.’

  ‘Fancy that!’ Ann nodded and smiled, but then she got up from the table and I saw her wiping her eyes when she left the room.

  There’s a fireplace in my bedroom too, the edges decorated with original William Morris tiles of parrots, but the chimney is used now by nesting pigeons. A salmon-pink basin stands in the corner of the room, and Robert moved an Edwardian writing desk in front of the window for me, where I used to stare out onto the street below as I did my homework every evening after school. This all feels like about a hundred years ago, even though it was only last year, but the pot of pens that I used during my A level revision still sits there, along with a pile of cards and letters from people sympathizing with me after Diana died. ‘Your sister was a one-off.’ ‘Your sister was extraordinary.’ ‘Your sister was so full of life.’ Full of life, I now realize, is post-death analysis for someone with too much energy who pissed people off and inspired envy in equal measures. That was Diana all right.

  Beside these cards is a cardboard box containing copies of Smash Hits with the pages ripped out where they print song lyrics, because how else are you going to find out what Neneh Cherry is saying when she’s talking in Spanish at the start of ‘Kisses on the Wind’, for example? Every fortnight from the age of twelve, Diana and I would buy the magazine and I would read the lyrics out, and we would memorize them like we were sitting an exam. Ann still collects Smash Hits for me from the newsagents even now, and when I read it, I’m back with my sister by the bus stop in the village, eating Mentos and drinking Fanta… Except of course, I’m not. And under my bed, like I said, there’s Diana’s T-shirt, along with a folded copy of the Evening Standard, the newspaper that had recorded my sister’s death in a simple paragraph and explained to anyone in London who might have cared to read it that a model called Diana Kingdom had been killed in a car crash. I never look at it, but I know it’s there. I’d like to throw it away, but that would mean picking it up, and I don’t think I can do that right now.

  Above the bed is a poster of Brother Beyond from the centre pages of Just Seventeen. Nathan Moore is there in the middle, standing next to Carl Fysh and Steve Alexander, wearing a white T-shirt and pointing at the camera and smiling like he can’t believe his luck. Diana stuck it up because I had once told her that I thought that Nathan was good-looking – she drew a huge heart over his head and had scribbled ‘Febby 4 Nathan’ inside the heart. I hadn’t found it very funny at the time – I generally didn’t like Diana telling me who I was in love with – but when I tried to take it down, the Blu Tack started to peel the wallpaper away, so I left it up. Now the poster feels half sacred to me.

  Today Ann came into my room earlier than usual. U2 were on the stereo. I allow myself an hour on a Saturday morning when I listen to the radio in real time, not the recorded charts from Sunday before, and this hour usually coincides with Ann’s arrival in my room. She opened my curtains and opened the window and breathed in.

  ‘Good old Bono,’ she said, still looking down on the street. She pronounced the long Os, so that the name rhymed with ‘oh no’. ‘All I Want Is You,’ she said. ‘This was last year, no? Peaked at number 3?’

  ‘Number 4,’ I said.

  ‘Of course. Of course!’ said Ann. She speaks like this sometimes – throwing sudden loud exclamations into her sentences, which feels like a kind of self-conscious, long-form torture for Robert who loathes anything stagey, and I’ve noticed people who are married do these sorts of things to each other, poking away at the hornet’s nest then running away like kids. Ann has absorbed our obsession with chart music by osmosis, and she once told Diana and me that being able to rattle off the top five singles every week to her tutor group did wonders for her image at school, but really, Ann didn’t need wonders doing. Ann had more power than other women, Mama used to say, because she was the person most like herself. It’s only now that I really get what she meant by that, but as usual it’s too late to say to Mama that she was right. Too late to tell her that I know what she means, and she’s the clever one for working it out and putting into words what others feel and can’t quite express. That was Mama’s great gift, no question.

  Ann pleated the embroidered rug at the end of the bed and looked out of the window.

  ‘Feb,’ she said quietly. ‘Feb,’ she said again. ‘There’s a bird downstairs in the kitchen. A canary. Do come down and look. It must have come in through the open window last night, like Peter Pan. Do come and look,’ she said again.

  I felt a jolt through me. Canary! Can. Ar. Y. The American on the telephone had been right. I sat up; it felt involuntary. It was still here. Ann’s eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘I saw it in the kitchen last night,’ I said, my words rushed. ‘I thought it had flown away again.’

  ‘Well, it hasn’t flown away. It’s still here.’ I could see that Ann was afraid that if she said the wrong thing now, this progress would be immediately undone again. I was sitting up and talking to her at lunchtime. This was not in the script. Often, I hate myself for making her work so hard. Sometimes I hate her for making me work so hard.