The Sister Who Left

Helena arrived on a Thursday, in a taxi, with one suitcase and a bag of gifts that turned out to be mostly chocolate. Petronella watched from the kitchen window while her sister paid the driver. She noticed first that Helena had cut her hair, and then that she was counting her change twice, in the careful way of someone who is not yet sure of the coins. Fifteen years of telephone calls had not prepared her for that small, ordinary detail: her own sister, hesitating on the street where they had both grown up.

The calls had been good. Every second Sunday for fifteen years they had gone through the same routine: the weather, the children's marks, the price of things, a joke about their mother's cooking. Both of them had worked hard at keeping the line bright. Neither had ever mentioned that the silences between the jokes were getting longer.

The frictions came in small pieces, all day. Helena said "back home" and meant the city she lived in now. She asked whether the bathroom tap still stuck, and it did, and she laughed as though this proved something. She let words from her new language slip into her sentences without noticing, and when Petronella raised an eyebrow, she apologised for it, which was worse. At lunch she left a tip so large that the waiter looked startled, and Petronella, who had been counting out her own coins, felt her jaw tighten in a way she did not like.

"It's only money," Helena said.

"Yes," said Petronella. "To some of us, it is only money."

By the afternoon they were walking the old route to the river, saying very little, and it was on the bridge that Helena stopped. She put both hands on the railing and looked down at the water, which looked much smaller than either of them remembered. "On the phone I always said I was fine," she said. "I nearly cancelled this visit three times. I was afraid you would see at once that I had turned into someone else."

Petronella thought about lying. Not until she opened her mouth did she realise she had already decided not to.

"I did see it," she said. "The hair, the words, the way you count your change. It made me angry, and I couldn't have told you why." She watched a leaf turn slowly under the bridge and come out the other side. "I turned into someone else too, you know. I just stayed in the same place to do it."

Helena said nothing for a long time. What Petronella noticed was that her sister's shoulders had come down from around her ears, where they had been since the taxi. If either of them had said these things on a Sunday, down a line that cost money by the minute, they would have rung back an hour later to talk about the weather.

Back at the flat, Petronella put the kettle on and found the wrench that lived under the sink. She held it out, handle first, and Helena took it with the faint, startled look of a woman being handed back a piece of her own life. Together they went to deal with the tap.

"Tomorrow," Petronella said, "you cook. Mother's soup."

"It will be terrible."

"I know," said Petronella. "Do it anyway."