‘God, I’m so sick of hearing about you getting dumped!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re not the first person on earth to go through a break-up. You’re so used to everyone pandering to you, that’s the problem. Baby of the family, everyone’s favourite, poor little Gwen.’
Cerys always knew exactly how to set me off. It was a good job we’d never come up against each other at work; wailing ‘I know you are but what am I?’ then crying in the toilets never went over well with a judge.
‘I am not the favourite!’ I argued, extremely close to tears. ‘They always paid more attention to you and Manny than they did to me and I never complained. I’m trying to fix things and you won’t even let me.’
‘Can you even hear yourself?’ She lowered her voice to a mocking hiss. ‘Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I’m just going to study law?’
I pushed my hair back from my face, trying to work out how we’d got here.
‘Why are you so angry with me? All I said was I didn’t grow up dreaming about being a lawyer.’
Cerys pushed her chair away from the table and stood up.
‘Maybe that’s why you’re so happy to throw it all away now.’
I stared at her and she stared at me, each of us as stubborn as the other. Finally, she turned away, tutting loudly as she grabbed her handbag.
‘Don’t go!’ I pleaded, jumping up to my own feet. We were so close to getting somewhere, even if I wasn’t quite sure where that somewhere might be. ‘Please don’t leave, Care, I really want to talk about this.’
‘Can you calm down?’ she whispered, slipping off her coat and draping it over the back of her chair. ‘I’m going to the toilet.’
‘Oh,’ I said, sitting down slowly. ‘OK.’
‘Drama queen,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Try not to spill your drink on my coat like you spilt your tea on my Sweater Shop top.’
‘It was twenty-five years ago!’ I called after her.
She would never, ever let that go as long as she lived.
Moving my glass away from the edge of the table, I took a gulp of gin and looked out the window at the heavy white clouds. I’d spent years trying to live up to Cerys’s example, earn her approval, and all this time she thought I’d been trying to outdo her. She was half the reason I’d gone into law in the first place, Dad being the other half. But what did that leave for me? I thought of all the things I’d inherited or learned from my family, my wavy hair, my round eyes, a superhuman ability to bottle up my emotions and a digestive tract that did notcare for too much dairy. If only you could pick and choose your own traits or at least tailor them to your own needs.
‘Don’t use the toilets if you can help it.’ Cerys sat back down at the table and squirted herself with hand sanitizer, a grim look on her face. ‘Plus, someone left the door open to the basement; if you do have to go, try not to fall down and break your neck. Although if you did fall, we could sue, they’re a death trap. So, Mum said you’re living in a flat over a shop? That’s depressing.’
‘You’re just going to change the subject?’ I replied, opening my palms to her as she held out the little squeezy bottle. ‘Pretend the last ten minutes never happened?’
‘Ideally, yes.’
It really would be easier that way. Finish our drinks and go back to a comfortable, simmering resentment, but what was the point? Changing our relationship would be hard but whoever said worthwhile changes were easy?
‘I know I haven’t been the world’s best sister,’ I said, forcing out the words the same way I’d forced myself to eat Brussels sprouts every year. I didn’t like them, I didn’t want them but I knew it was the right thing to do. ‘But I’m going to do better. I want to spend more time together, I want to know what’s going on in your life.’
‘Are you sure you aren’t dying?’ Cerys asked with suspicion.
‘Almost positive,’ I nodded. ‘What if I came to stay with you and the kids for a few days? Or we could go somewhere like Center Parcs all together, I bet Dad would bloody love that. Or I could look after the kids while you and Oliver go to Paris for a romantic weekend away, that might help you two?’
‘Are you trying to make things better or worse?’ she said, shaking her head. ‘If I went to Paris with Oliver right now, only one of us would come back alive. You can stop trying so hard, Gwen, you’ve made your point.’
‘My point is I should already know all this stuff that’s going on with you,’ I exclaimed, ignoring the judgemental looks from the ladies at the next table for raising my voice. God help me, it was two of the women from Mum’s aqua-aerobics group. I was in for it when this got back to her, Bakers did not air their dirty laundry in public. ‘I should know your stuff and you should know mine and neither of us should be ashamed or embarrassed or trying to score points off each other. I can’t go back in time and fix how we felt when we were kids but I can change how we feel today.’
‘No, you can only change howyoufeel,’ Cerys replied, pulling the sleeves of her dress over her fingers the same way I did when I was uncomfortable. ‘You can’t control other people’s emotions.’
‘But I can try to understand them,’ I reasoned. ‘And I can want them to be different. That’s half the battle, isn’t it? Understanding why things are the way they are and working to make a change?’
Cerys dropped her head back and groaned. ‘So what? Now you’re not just younger than me, cleverer than me and prettier than me, you’re more insightful as well? How very dare you.’
‘I am not prettier than you,’ I scoffed. ‘And I wasn’t trying to be more anything I—’
‘Gwen, I’m joking,’ Cerys interrupted me with an unexpected laugh. ‘You’re right. You know I hate to admit it but you’re right.’ She took my hand off my glass andcovered it with her own. ‘And don’t worry, I know you’re not prettier than me.’