SIPS, SLIPS AND SNIPPETS OF LOVE 43

Sunday 16th July

Money was slipping through Phil’s fingers like water – and his debts were just getting worse and worse, it seemed everything he touched was going wrong.  Two of the shops which Jones and he had the leases on were empty, but the mortgages still had to be paid.  Jones, of course was unflustered, ‘Oh, a tenant will come along sooner or later, and besides we can up the rent then.  Be patient, my boy, just be patient, we are sitting on a little goldmine.’   It was all very well for him; he hadn’t borrowed to put the money down in the first place like Phil had.  He had long ago said goodbye to the two grand he had ‘borrowed’ from June and Julie’s inheritance and was desperately running out of cash to pay his own mortgage, let alone the other loans he had taken out.

What you must understand is he never meant to hurt anyone, so he reasoned to himself – he just got himself into a bit of trouble.  He fully intended to repay everyone, he just needed a little time, and maybe a couple of thousand to tide him over until things came good.  He couldn’t have such bad luck for ever, surely.

*  * *

And in those few quiet moments before the storm broke June realized that Ted would never leave Julie.  If she was ever to escape it would have to be on her own.  She couldn’t rely on Ted at all, she had completely mistaken him.  In her blind infatuation with him, (though how can you describe something that has lasted for nearly twenty years as an infatuation she was not sure), she had never really asked herself if he felt the same way as she did.  It was just so wonderful when they were together that she stupidly imagined it was meant to be, that Ted and she were meant to be together forever.

What a fool she had been, how stupid to have pinned all her hopes on Ted, when if she had tried harder to love Phil it might have been okay, she thought to herself, if only she could have learned to forget this stupid man.  She looked down on him as he lay in her bed.  They were there in Phil’s and her bed; she sitting up trying to rationalize her life, while trying desperately to hear any sound from downstairs, maybe she had imagined it, or it was the cat pushing a door open, and Ted was laying back half asleep and looking so bloody contented with himself, he had it all; her beloved sister so loyal and waiting for him at home, and she, her sister, acting like the biggest slut in the world, gracing him with sexual favours whenever he deigned to pop around.

*  * *

Janes parents seemed even more detached from the pair girls than ever, noticing nothing and commenting even less, and in truth of course her family was falling apart in front of her eyes, probably had been for years, if it was ever together in the first place.  Now she looks back and only see the cracks in their little edifice, she only sees the flaws.  Her mother’s apparent disinterest in anything the girls said or did, and her father’s absorption in business and almost boredom whenever their paths crossed seem so glaringly obvious later.

But was that all with the benefit of hindsight, that is all now seen through the prism of what happened next.  Could it be that hundreds, thousands of middle-class families like theirs existed in this state of not caring especially about each other and nothing terrible ever happening, they just carried on for years.  Maybe her family could have carried on like this for years too, maybe somehow Harriet could have managed to shake off, or at least control her habit, maybe her mother would start to inhabit the same planet as them occasionally, maybe her father would start to realise there was more to life than the making and multiplying of money.  But what’s the use of maybes; ‘what-ifs’ was always a stupid game and anyway none of them had bothered to read the rules, or even read each other enough to realise what was going on.

And it was all beginning to come to some sort of a head.  Lots of days Jane felt like her head was in a kaleidoscope of crashing beads and fragmenting mirrors, nothing was making any sense anymore; it had all been alright while Harriet was her sister.  Because she suddenly felt sister-less, she felt not that she had lost her exactly; because she was still around, but she didn’t quite recognise her anymore.  She sometimes couldn’t really remember how she used to be, how fantastic she was, how Jane had looked up to her, how she had seen herself as Jane, little sister to her big sister Harriet.  Now she wasn’t even sure who Jane was, and as for Harriet; the sister she had known far far better than anyone else in the whole world, she was really a stranger to her now, and Jane didn’t know what to do about it.

She had only ever had Harriet to turn to, she had only ever confided in Harriet; Harriet had been everything to me, for ever and ever, only now – for ever and ever had ended with a jolt.  Jane was on her own.  And on her own she really didn’t like herself very much and so she was constantly trying to find a bit of herself she could recognise, a bit of Jane she could like.  Maybe that was why she used to hurt herself, to see if the pain would take her back to how she used to be; to who she used to be.

But it couldn’t, could it, because that person was no more.  She was no longer the little sister of her big sister, she was the sister of Harriet the junkie, Harriet the druggie, and this Harriet didn’t need her anymore.   That was the hardest thing to realise, because all the time she had needed Harriet, to establish her own identity, to define who she was; she had always thought that Harriet needed her too, that somehow Jane also defined who Harriet was; her teacher, her mentor, her older sister, her protector.  And now she didn’t need Jane, all she needed was heroin.

And she really didn’t know what would have happened if what was about to happen hadn’t happened.  What would have become of them all?  Well, of course it all did happen, though jane realises that even now it is hard to piece together the exact sequence of events, how one thing broke, and that breaking led to the next thing.  She just feels so tired now.  She feels tired so often these days, tired of work, and tired of people and their pathetic unreliability, and most of all tired of herself, tired of her, Jane – failure.