Page 49 of Still Me
“Yeah. I looked that up, but it doesn’t seem to fit. She’s never manic, as such, just sort of... energetic.”
“I’m not sure depression is a one-size-fits-all thing, Lou,” my sister said. “Besides, hasn’t everyone got something wrong with them in America? Don’t they like to take a lot of pills?”
“Unlike England, where Mum would have you go for a nice brisk walk.”
“To take you out of yourself.” My sister sniggered.
“Turn that frown upside down.”
“Put a nice bit of lippy on. Brighten your face up. There. Who needs all those silly medications?”
Something had happened to Treena’s and my relationship since I had been gone. We called each other once a week, and for the first time in our adult lives, she had stopped nagging me every time we spoke. She seemed genuinely interested in what my life was like, quizzing me about work, the places I had visited, and what the people around me did all day. When I asked for advice, she generally gave me a considered reply instead of calling me a doofus, or asking if I understood what Google was for.
She liked someone, she had confided two weeks previously. They had gone for hipster cocktails at a bar in Shoreditch, then to a pop-up cinema in Clapton, and she had felt quite giddy for several days afterward. The idea of my sister giddy was a novel one.
“What’s he like? You must be able to tell me somethingnow.”
“I’m not going to say anything yet. Every time I talk about these things they go wrong.”
“Not even to me?”
“For now. It’s... Well. Anyway. I’m happy.”
“Oh. So that’s why you’re being nice.”
“What?”
“You’regettingsome. I thought it was because you finally approved of what I’m doing with my life.”
She laughed. My sister didn’t normally laugh, unless it was at me. “I just think it’s nice that everything’s working out. You have a great job in the US of A. I love my job. Thom and I are loving being in the city. I feel like things are really opening up for all of us.”
It was such an unlikely statement for my sister to make that I didn’t have the heart to tell her about Sam. We talked a bit more, about Mum wanting to take a part-time job at the local school, and Granddad’s deteriorating health, which meant that she hadn’t applied. I finished my muffin and my coffee and realized that, while I was interested, I didn’t feel homesick at all.
“You’re not going to start speaking with a bloody awful transatlantic accent, though, right?”
“I’m me, Treen. That’s hardly going to change,” I said, in a bloody awful transatlantic accent.
“You’re such a doofus,” she said.
—
“Oh, goodness. You’re still here.”
Mrs. De Witt was just exiting the building as I arrived home, pulling on her gloves under the awning. I stepped back, neatly avoiding Dean Martin’s teeth snapping near my leg, and smiled politely at her. “Good morning, Mrs. De Witt. Where else would I be?”
“I thought the Estonian lap-dancer would have sacked you by now. I’m surprised she’s not frightened you’ll run off with the old man, like she did.”
“Not really my modus operandi, Mrs. De Witt,” I said cheerfully.
“I heard her yelling again in the corridor the other night. Awful racket. At least the other one just sulked for a couple of decades. A lot easier on the neighbors.”
“I’ll pass that on.”
She shook her head, and was about to move away, but she stopped and gazed at my outfit. I was wearing a fine-pleated gold skirt, my fake fur gilet and a beanie hat colored like a giant strawberry that Thom had been given for Christmas two years ago and refused to wear because it was “girly.” On my feet were a pair of bright red patent brogues that I had bought from a sale in a children’s shoe shop, air-punching amid the harassed mothers and screeching toddlers when I realized they fitted.
“Your skirt.”
I glanced down, and braced myself for whatever barb was coming my way.
