My sister and I had never been close.
She was four years older than me. It would be a stretch to say we were total opposites, but we certainly didn’t have a huge amount in common other than having the same parents. Sally was hard-working, conscientious and devoted to the family. I was more laid-back and coasted through life, being blessed with reasonable good looks and an excellent memory that allowed me to do better in exams than I really deserved. As for my family — I found them suffocating and dull. My parents were dutiful rather than affectionate, as if having children and raising them was just another line on the list on the fridge. After I left home at eighteen I would only return home when I absolutely had to, and would usually be counting the minutes until I could leave again.
After my parents died — within eighteen months of each other — my sister would make periodic attempts to get together. I resisted the majority of them, saying I was busy with work or some other lame excuse. She never missed my birthday though. Every year, without fail, I would get a card with some lines scribbled inside updating me with the latest news. Same at Christmas. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t always read what she’d written. I don’t think I ever sent any cards back. I wasn’t good at that sort of thing.
So no, my sister and I had never been close. And now we never would be. She was dead at thirty-nine, courtesy of a drunk driver as she crossed a road on her way home from work. Her body was thrown twenty yards by the impact. She was killed almost instantly, they said.
I went to her funeral, though I did debate it at some length with myself. What was the point? Who would have known if I hadn’t? But in the end I decided I should go, though I couldn’t tell you exactly why. I turned up quite late, slunk in at the back, listened to the mercifully brief service, and sidled away a few minutes before it finished.
I was half way back home when my phone rang. I listened to the message, sighed, and turned the car around.
And now I sat in her solicitor’s office, my annoyance at being forced to return tempered by my curiosity. Perhaps there was some small bequest she’d made me, though that was unlikely. She wasn’t a rich woman. Her divorce had been messy, as they usually are, but there hadn’t been much money to fight over.
But she hadn’t left me anything. Except, perhaps, unwittingly, one thing.
I stared at the lawyer in horror.
“Me?”
“You are the next of kin.”
“Well — yes. But… she’s old enough to be on her own now, surely?”
“Not until Penelope turns eighteen, I’m afraid.”
“And when’s that?”
“In about… five months’ time.”
“Five months! I can’t look after a teenage girl for five months! I’ve… I’ve got work! I’ve got… my own life!” Even as I said this I disliked the slightly whining tone of my voice.
“I understand, Mr Kemp. You are not obliged by law to do anything, of course. But if you don’t, she will effectively become a ward of the state.”
“So… like a foster home?”
“Something like that, yes. Though I should tell you… some friends of the family have offered to take her in.”
It was like a huge weight lifted.
“So — they were friends of my sister?”
“I believe the mother — she is divorced — was a close friend, yes. And her daughters are very close in age to your niece. I believe they are also friends.”
“Well, that’s just perfect,” I said. “Great. We’ll do that.”
He looked at me sharply. “Would you perhaps like to meet the lady in question, before deciding? This is your niece’s life, after all.”
I felt rather small. There was nothing about this conversation I was particularly enjoying. I supposed he was right.
“Yes — of course. Very happy to. You can give me her details?”
He could and he did. Five minutes later I was outside his office reflecting on what had just happened. If I’m honest, I felt like I’d just dodged a massive bullet. I’d meet this lady, I was sure she’d be fine and certainly a far more competent guardian than I would be, and then I’d check with Penelope that she was happy, and we’d be sorted. I could check in on her from time to time, but that would be the extent of my obligations.
It didn’t quite go like that.
**
I called her and introduced myself, and she invited me to come out to their house to meet them all. Her name was Belinda, and she said her two daughters were devoted friends of my niece, and were already hugely excited about the idea of getting an ‘extra sister.’ This all sounded exactly like what I wanted to hear.
Around 3pm I drove up and parked in their driveway. It was a large house, very secluded, and clearly this was a family with a good amount of money to spend. The gardens were well-kept, the house looked freshly painted, and a large, expensive looking four-wheel drive was visible through one of the open garage doors. Another tick. Although there was some insurance money to go towards Penelope’s living expenses, she wasn’t going to go short of anything here.
As I walked towards the house the door opened and a red-headed woman came out and smiled at me. I recognised her. She’d been one of the people who’d given a short address at the funeral earlier that day. I’d thought then she was attractive. As I got closer I saw she was more than that. She was one of those women I would have paused to take a second look at if I’d passed them in the street, knowing that doing that was rude and improper and more than a little boorish — but also something that I had no control over.
We shook hands, her palm cool and dry. Then, to my slightly embarrassed surprise, she leaned forward and gave me a gentle peck on the cheek. There was a wonderful, subtle scent about her, something earthy and enticing, and I had a sudden, crazy urge to grab her and kiss her deeply. But, of course, I didn’t.
“I’m so sorry about Sally,” she said. “Do come inside, Rob.”
We sat at the breakfast bar of their large, open-plan kitchen. Every surface gleamed. Although everything was tidy and neat there was still a friendly feeling about the house. There was a scattering of family photos on various tables, in which I could just make out the dim outlines of family groups. I wanted to go and peer at them, not least because I had the classic male curiosity as to whether her daughters had taken closely after their mother — what a thought if they had. But instead I just sipped my (very good) coffee and listened as Belinda spoke quietly about my sister and my niece.
“Yes, we were quite close,” she said, in answer to my question. “There was a group of four of us who all got on well, but I felt a real bond with your sister. She was very special.”
I nodded in what I hoped seemed like a sympathetic and approving manner. Perhaps my sister had been special, and I’d just missed it. I’d thought she was rather average, really, just like the rest of us. Saying somebody was ‘special’ seemed like one of those things that people said on occasions like this.
She looked at me intently. “You don’t believe me.”
I probably blushed a little. Her gaze was quite knowing.
“I… honestly… I don’t think I knew her that well. We’d, kind of, drifted apart these last few years.”
“Yes. And that was largely down to you, I think.”
This woman was a straight-talker, all right.
“Um… yes, perhaps it was.”
“She was always hoping you’d come and stay for a long visit. Get to know Penelope a little, perhaps. Your sister adored you.”
The surprise must have shown on my face, and for a moment she looked impatient and cross.
“You didn’t have a clue, did you?”
I took a breath. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. Not now, perhaps not ever.
“Can we just talk about Penelope, perhaps? It’s… a very generous offer you’ve made.”
“Sure,” she said coolly. “Let’s get to business, shall we? My girls — Jessica and Ellie — they adore Penny. As I told you on the phone, they’ve been friends for years now. Jessica’s nearly the same age as Penny and Ellie’s eighteen months older. We’ve got a spare room here which we hardly ever use, and she’s more than welcome to it for as long as she needs it.”
She fixed me with another one of those penetrating stares. “A girl that age needs a home. Some stability.”
“Yes,” I said, not knowing the first thing about what teenage girls needed or didn’t need. “You’re right. And I’m very grateful to you for… taking her in.”
“Taking her off your hands, you mean. Solved your problem, haven’t I? Have you even spoken to her since her mother died?”
In point of fact I hadn’t. I had — and I wince to recall this now — I had texted her. I had told myself that kids that age preferred that medium, but I knew it was also a much easier, less stressful, less troublesome option. I could have spoken to her at the funeral, but she’d been surrounded by others and I told myself it was simpler and less embarrassing all round if I just slipped away.
“We’ve swapped messages,” I said. Penny’s message had been one word. ‘Ok’, she’d said, when I told her I’d see her soon.
Belinda sighed, but didn’t pursue it. I could sense that what she’d like would be nothing better than to really lay into me, tear me off a strip, as if in some way I was to blame for my sister’s death. It annoyed me. Not least because she was so lovely. I was used to being able to charm women like her, with my boyish looks and sly wit. I’d been looking forward to a little mild flirtation as we discussed the arrangements, not a scolding. And now I found I was angry too, and looking to lash out.
“I think perhaps I should know a little more about you,” I said, rather pompously and aggressively. “Does your husband work, for example? What does he do?”
She recognised the counter-attack and was more than equal to it. There was an undercurrent of scorn in her voice.
“My husband — my late husband – was a civil engineer. A good one. He had his own company that he sold when he was diagnosed with the tumour. He got a good deal. Penelope won’t have to worry about food being on the table, Mr Kemp.”
I had gone from ‘Rob to ‘Mr Kemp’, I noticed.
“I’m sorry,” I said, though at that moment I wasn’t. Mainly I was annoyed at her for having a dead husband. That gave her too much of the moral high ground for my liking. A widow, raising two daughters on her own, offering to take in my niece as well.
We glared at each other for a few seconds. I was angry, yes, but deep down I felt a twinge of sadness. I knew she didn’t like me, didn’t rate me, didn’t think I was a suitable guardian for Penelope. And she was right. She had inadvertently held up a mirror, and I wasn’t liking what I was seeing.
We were saved by the sound of the front door opening.
A female voice shouted “Hey! It’s me.”
For a moment Belinda looked a little flustered. “That’s Ellie, my eldest,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll just go and see why she’s home early.”
She went with some alacrity out of the living room and back towards the entrance hall. There was something furtive about the way she went that intrigued me.
So I followed her, moving quietly across the floor.
I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t.
**
In the hallway Belinda was hurriedly arranging a coat on her daughter’s shoulders. She was standing slightly to one side of the girl, allowing me a full view of her. This was fortunate — for me, if not for the girl — because she was, as far as I could tell, almost completely naked. The only things she was wearing, save for the coat that was being draped on her, were some hold up stockings.
The girl saw me and flushed a deep red.
“Shit! He’s… right there!”
Belinda spun around and saw me gawping at them.
“Go upstairs,” she told her daughter. “And take your clothes with you.”
The girl bent over and picked up a small pile of what I assumed were her recently discarded clothes. She covered her chest with them, leaving me with a memory of a near-perfect set of firm teen breasts, and scurried upstairs, face still burning.
Belinda looked at me. “I suppose I should give you some kind of explanation.”
“I think you should, yes.”
She pondered for a moment. “My husband and I — the entire family — he was… we are… well, we’re nudists. So when the girls get home — they like to… get more comfortable.”
“Nudists?”
“You are familiar with the word?” Sarcasm dripped from every syllable. But I hadn’t forgotten our charged exchange of just a few moments ago, and I sensed now that I had the moral ground was under my feet, not hers.
“I am familiar with it. Were you planning to let me know this, before I cheerfully deposited my niece with you?”
“I don’t see that it makes the slightest difference.”
“You don’t! You think it would be just fine for her to be here, at her age, surrounded by… all this bare flesh?”
“She’s been here, many, many times. She and her mother… they both know — knew — we had this lifestyle. It wasn’t a problem for them at all. They often joined us.”
I couldn’t quite imagine my sister, who I always thought of as rather uptight, wandering around somebody else’s house stark naked. But that scarcely mattered now.
“It’s out of the question,” I said. “She can’t stay here. Absolutely not.”
Even as I was saying this I realised I was digging a hole for myself, but I was still livid. This woman wanted my niece to stay with her. This woman also annoyed me intensely. I now had a reason not to give her what she wanted. I’m afraid it was as simple and childish as that.
“And so… what exactly are you going to do with her? Take her away from all her friends? Make her change school, home, everything, just at a time when she needs stability and continuity? Is that your brilliant plan?”
I didn’t have a brilliant plan. I didn’t have any kind of plan. I just wanted to be mean and score points.
“I’ll move here,” I said. “Just until she finishes her studies. It’s only a few months. And then… we can decide what we do next?”
“You’re going to look after her? You don’t even know her!”
“I’m her family. I’m all she’s got. That’ll have to be good enough.”
She took a step forward, her face only a few inches from mine. Even in her fury, she was lovely. A distant part of my mind wondered what would happen if I kissed her. But the rest of my mind, thankfully, warned me against it.
“Your sister told me all about you. You never stick at anything. Everything’s been too easy for you, and as soon as it gets difficult, you move on. Well, let me tell you, raising a teenage girl is HARD. She needs somebody who loves her, like we do. Not some… slacker uncle who she’s only met half a dozen times!”
Half a dozen times was probably a generous estimate.
“Thank you for your concern,” I said. “I think we’ll be just fine.”
I turned and opened the door. I was half a dozen steps down the drive when her voice called out.
“Rob!”
I looked back. Some of her anger seemed to have gone. She looked sadder now.
“Just think about it, will you? The nudism… it shouldn’t be a big deal, not really. We love her, and I loved her mother… I just want what’s best for her.”
I nodded, but didn’t say anything else. I just got in my car and drove away.
**
Penelope wasn’t taking this well.
“You what? You’ve got to be fucking kidding!”
I had arranged to meet her after class at a coffee shop. I’d explained that my plan was to take over the rental of the small house she’d lived in with her mother, which was only a short bus ride from her college. We’d live there until the summer, when she would turn eighteen and then could make her own choices.
“We don’t even know each other!”
“No,” I agreed. “We don’t. But… I think it’s the best choice, in the circumstances.”
“Why can’t I go and live with Jessica and Ellie?”
“I don’t think… that would be appropriate.”
“Why not? Just because they’re nudists?”
I took a breath. “Well… that’s certainly a factor, yes.”
“We all have bodies, Uncle Rob.” She used my name in a heavily ironic way that I didn’t much care for.
“Indeed we do. And we also have clothes, and society is much more comfortable with us wearing them. So… until you’re old enough to make your own decisions, I’m afraid that’s how it is.”
She glowered at me. “Why do you even care?”
This was a good question.
“Because you’re my niece.”
“Crap.” The comeback was instant. “You hardly ever spoke to my mum. And this is the longest conversation you and I have ever had.”
“We spoke more often than you think.”
“Oh come on! She was also trying to get you to come and see us, and you couldn’t have cared less. It made her really sad. But I bet you don’t even care about that.”
That did actually give me a small pang of guilt. I remembered all the cards, the emails, the texts, never pushy or needy, but always holding the door open for me to come and visit them. How many had I even acknowledged? Very few, I thought.
“I do care,” I said. “And that’s why I’m here now, trying to do the best for you.”
“Well, I don’t want you here. I want you to go, and I want to live with them.”
An ex-girlfriend had once told me, while itemising in some detail all of my character defects, that my absolute worst quality was a pig-headed stubbornness. “If somebody tells you that you can’t do something, Rob, or what you’ve done is wrong, you just put your head down and dig your feet in and it’s fucking impossible to get you to change your mind no matter what.”
That quality, for want of a better word, was coming to the fore now.
“Well, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.”
“Fuck,” she said. “Fuck fuck fuck.”
“And mind your language,” I said, trying to exert some authority.
“Fuck. Off.”
I sighed. This had been a huge mistake, I knew. But I couldn’t back out now.
“In five months,” I said. “I will do just that. Until then – you’re stuck with me.”
**
The first few weeks were the hardest.
Not only was interaction with Penny limited to a few syllables a day, but I found it hard to adjust to a quieter pace of life. I was used to the city, the clubs and bars, the night life. Evenings for me then would start with a few beers with “the lads” — though in truth none of us were really close friends. We’d move onto a club, check out the girls, see if we could get lucky. I wasn’t lucky every time, but I was lucky often enough for it to be worthwhile and enjoyable. I’d snuck out early in the morning from many a young woman’s bed before she woke up. And a few older ones too, come to that. No chance of anything like that in my new neighbourhood.
Penny avoided me as much as possible, leaving the house early before I got up and usually returning late. She seemed to be taking the approach that by working as hard as possible on her studies she could get through her grief. But sometimes at night I heard her crying in her room. When I did I usually put some headphones in and listened to some music until I fell asleep.
My work kept me busy some of the time, but not enough. I could perhaps have taken on more clients, but the ones I had paid me enough, and taking on more clients would have just meant more of the same. I was good at what I did, but I didn’t particularly enjoy it, I realised. When I lived in the city, the pace of life had been enough to stop me from examining myself and what I was doing that closely. Now I had time to reflect on it a little more, and I didn’t much like it. But I could make some changes later, I told myself. Get through the next few months, then head home. That was the time to re-invent myself.
One afternoon, while debating the merits of either going for a run or, much more likely, watching something on Netflix, I saw that Penny had left one of her textbooks on the kitchen table. I recognised the cover. It had been one of my textbooks nearly twenty years ago. Not the same copy, of course, but a later edition of it. It was a book on Shakespeare. On his tragedies, to be more precise. I remembered it being one of the better books, one where I’d read more than just the prescribed chapters.