Chapter 29

29

SEAGLASS

1985

“What happened to your hair, Mum?” asks Trixie.

It’s a good question, and terrifying is the only word to describe Lily’s 1980s hairstyle on the TV screen. To be fair, I’m sure everyone has at least one haircut from the past that comes back to haunt them. I’m guessing it must have been 1985. It’s the same tape, but what we’re seeing now would have been filmed a year or so after the family play on the lawn. Lily has very short, big hair in this home movie, and it doesn’t suit her. But it definitely got her noticed.

“I had a bad haircut,” is all she says to Trixie.

“There is a tape in the camcorder already,” says the younger version of herself on the TV, like a whining echo from the past.

The seesaw of power constantly changed between my sisters and me as we grew older, but even on the rare occasions when it was my turn at the top, Lily still seemed to look down on me. Rose blossomed as a teenager, in looks and personality, and became a kinder version of the person she had been before. It’s her fifteen-year-old smile that we all see next. She has taken the camera from Lily and turned it to face herself before speaking.

“This is Rose Darker, reporting for Crazy Town News…” The sight of her looking so happy shocks me. Her beauty has never faded, but her happiness diminished over the years, and it’s rare to see her smile. “I’m joined now by Mr. Conor Kennedy,” she says in a deep voice, imitating a newsreader. The camera swings around to show Conor, clearly going through his Michael J. Fox look-alike phase. I think Back to the Future must have come out that year, because he’s dressed like Marty McFly. I remember him becoming slightly obsessed with the scientific theories about time travel, and writing about the space-time continuum for his school newspaper every week until the teachers begged him to stop. “Tell me, Conor Kennedy, why are you celebrating Lily’s birthday with the Darker family this year, and has it been fun so far?”

“Because I was invited and thought it would be an interesting social experiment to witness. As always.”

“Was it interesting because my little sister, Daisy Darker, somehow won a game of Trivial Pursuit this afternoon? Even though she’s never been to school!”

The camera turns to where childhood me is sitting, on the other side of Conor. I watch myself stick my tongue out at Rose, but then I smile, in both the past and the present. I look happy in 1985. We all do. I was almost ten and had become even more of a bookworm by then. I liked teaching myself about things other people didn’t seem to know. I remember wanting to vanish, and books helped me to escape. I longed to disappear inside a dream of the world that was less cold and lonely than the life I lived in. I read more and more, hiding inside my room and my books for hours. Mostly murder mysteries, while dreaming of one day writing my own.

“Or … are you really here as a secret detective?” Rose asks Conor. “Trying to solve the mystery of what will forever be known as … Hairgate.”

“That’s enough, Rose,” says my mother.

In this home movie, we are all sitting in the music room, on our individually painted chairs from the kitchen, waiting for someone to play the piano. We might not have been able to perform family plays on the lawn anymore, in case my problematic heart couldn’t take it, but there was never going to be a way to stop Lily wanting to show off. She craved attention like oxygen, and because it was her birthday, we all had to watch and listen. Belinda Carlisle was her firm favorite that year. I’d been forced to hear “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” so often, I’m surprised she didn’t wear out the cassette tape.

Teenage Rose continued her family news report. “I’m now joined by Nancy Darker, a.k.a. my mother, but she doesn’t like to be called that because it makes her feel old. Nobody knows how old my mother really is, but scientists say she was probably born in the Dark Ages. Any words of wisdom for the next generation, Mrs. Darker?”

“Yes. Make sure you film Lily or I’ll never hear the end of it. You’ve caused quite enough trouble for one day,” said Nancy before smiling for the camera. She was sitting next to Conor’s dad, and the shot zooms in on them holding hands, then returns to the front of the room.

My dad appeared then, walking out through the door that connects the music room to the kitchen. He sat down at the piano as though he had just stepped onto a stage. My father seemed to make more of an effort to attend family birthdays, and come home for the holidays, after my mother started dating other men. Lily walked through the door next. Then Nana followed her, which was a complete surprise for most of us, because Nana was actually painfully shy when it came to performing. Even around her own family. Just like me.

Dad started to play the piano, and I recognized the song immediately; it was another of Lily’s favorites. “I Know Him So Well” was always blaring from her bedroom, behind the permanently closed door. She was in love with the performance by Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson, so much so she had twisted Dad’s arm to play it and Nana to sing it with her as a surprise for the rest of us on her birthday. And it was a surprise. Because it was really very good. I didn’t even know Nana could sing. They hit every note, and every harmony, and when the song was over, we all clapped in genuine admiration.

I remember how Lily sang the lyrics staring at Conor the whole time, and now that I’ve seen the video evidence, I know I didn’t imagine it. Lily got goggle-eyed whenever Conor walked into a room back then, and she had started blushing whenever he spoke to her. Which was one of the many reasons why I was pleased to see her looking so ugly with her short hair.

The night before this scene from our family past was filmed, Lily’s hair had been down to her waist. She had gone to bed in the room she shared with Rose, with two long plaits just like always so that she wouldn’t wake up with a head full of tangles. But when she sat up the following morning, on her fourteenth birthday, she screamed. Her two plaits were on her pillow. Someone had cut them clean off her head in the night. Nana’s kitchen scissors were on Rose’s bedside table. But Rose didn’t cut off Lily’s hair. I did.

The people who love us the most hurt us the hardest, because they can.

When I found Nana and Lily secretly rehearsing together the day before, something inside me snapped.

Lily was always my mother’s favorite daughter.

Rose was my dad’s favorite because she was beautiful and clever.

But Nana was supposed to love me the most. She said I was her favorite.

Seeing Nana and Lily together felt like some kind of betrayal.

Lily and I had had a squabble a week earlier, and Nana said something I’ve never forgotten.

“You should always fight, especially if you think you are going to lose. That’s when you should fight the hardest.”

So I did. Fight. But I did it quietly, and carefully, and planned the whole thing so that I wouldn’t get caught. I borrowed my mother’s sleeping tablets, I put them in my sisters’ hot chocolate before they went to bed that night, then I crept into their room and cut off Lily’s hair. Everyone thought that Rose had done it in her sleep—she was studying for exams, had been exhausted for weeks, and had already sleepwalked once before. I could tell that Rose—the clever daughter—didn’t believe she had done it. But she didn’t have an alternative explanation either. I’m not sure Lily ever really forgave her or trusted her again. Nobody suspected me. Nobody. As though a good person is incapable of doing something bad.

No one ever noticed me in my family except for Nana. Lily couldn’t have her too; Nana was mine. I hated her for trying to steal the affection of the only person who really loved me. And people can make a hobby out of hate. The more they practice, the better they get. The rage I felt when Lily and Nana sang together was all consuming. And it wasn’t just jealousy. I wanted revenge for all the horrible and unkind things that Lily had said and done to me over the years. I decided that cutting off my sister’s hair was just the start.