‘The mother was kind to me, and tried to love me, and helped me a great deal. Most of all, I grew up in a mildly intellectual atmosphere, which could never have been the case with my real parents, and this certainly did a lot to make my life richer. The house was full of books, books read, books talked about. I found out later that most of them were no good, all second-rate except for writers like Dickens and Thackeray, Jane Austen and Shakespeare. So I read those avidly, because I was soon able to tell what books were good and what were trash. Catherine went to a grammar school, and I followed her there as soon as I was old enough. If only she had been my real sister, then I wouldn’t have gone through so much suffering because of her. All the love I had in me I put on to her, and when I saw her getting a crush on somebody else, whether boy or girl, I got so jealous and tormented that I thought I’d have to kill myself to get over it! It was crazy, and bad for both of us. Not that she didn’t love me as well, in her way, as a friend, though at times this was almost enough to make me happy and satisfy me, but mostly she was interested in everything and just wanted to get on with her self-absorbed life.
‘Our parents noticed how I mooned after her, but they thought I had only the same worshipful regard for her as they had, because after all she was their only child. I always felt that I was nowhere near as good-looking and well favoured as she was, which wasn’t all that true, but that’s what I felt at the time. It’s terrible being a child, when you don’t know what’s happening to you. You’re just at the mercy of these supercharged underground emotions that gnaw you away like black midnight wolves, and you suffer because you can’t tell what’s happening to you. You’re able to see it more clearly when you get older, but by then it’s too late to do any good, and in any case underground emotions are still taking you to pieces and not putting you back together again, just as they were then, and you still don’t have the detachment to know what’s happening. In fact I suppose it’s even more dangerous because you think that you do, and actually get the illusion that you are in control of yourself. I have the horrible feeling this goes on all your life, and that at death the final question whose answer can solve everything and tell you everything can only be answered after death itself, which really is too late. It gives me the horrors, throws me into despair if I go on thinking about it for too long. But as there’s no answer, I try to block it out, though I’m not always capable of it.
‘For a year or two Catherine went cold towards me, and I was put into a walk of death by it, getting thinner and, it seemed to me, smaller so that I was only a few inches above the earth. Once when I was walking alone along a lane I thought I was small enough to get into a pothole in front of me, curl up and go to sleep in it so that I’d be perfectly safe even if a car went over it. But I did very well at school, and surprised everybody by being best in the class at almost everything.
‘Catherine had been used to having her own way, and she’d been seeing a boy for a few weeks. I think they’d been making love because a group of us used to go out on our bikes at the weekend, and sometimes Catherine and her boyfriend would creep off for half an hour. Then he went away with his parents and didn’t write to her, and she was shocked as she’d never been before. I found his address and wrote, telling him how upset she was, but nothing came of that, which was good I suppose. She used to come into my room at night and weep, and get into my bed for some sort of comfort. Now it was my turn to put on weight, and for Catherine to get thinner — but only for a time because soon she more or less forgot about him.
‘We became very close to each other after that, and she loved me as if I’d been through her experience, as if it ran in my blood as well as hers. We were both young women by now, and our parents, apart from pushing us gently along the educational railway, more or less left us alone. They were generous with pocket money, so we were able to buy extra dresses and what paperbacks we needed, and go to the cinema now and again. Neither of us went with boys, though we were well looked at by any we happened to meet, and many of the boys in the sixth form were friendly with us. But I think we were both mad for a time. We talked crazily about books, films, paintings, plans for the future. We were going to become teachers or doctors and go to Africa together. It was a marvellous age of innocence. We took our baths at the same time. We often slept in the same bed, not being able to stay apart after an enthralling conversation. We even started to learn Swahili, so that we’d know at least one African language. If I told Gilbert any of this he’d mock me to death, but I know I can tell you. Our parents thought we were model daughters, because we helped in the house whenever we could, though this really wasn’t necessary because we were well-off enough to have an Austrian maid, and a man to look after the garden. We went to Wales or France for holidays, and life was good for all of us.
‘The boy Catherine had known two years earlier came back, and she went out with him. He left again after a month and she was pregnant. We didn’t know what to do. She was let down, and horrified. We talked for hours, wondering whether to try and find out how to get rid of it, or tell our parents, or whether she should say nothing, but just go off to university and perhaps have the baby in secret. The weeks went by and we even prepared an elaborate plan for both of us to kill ourselves. It was as if I were pregnant as well, I felt so much a part of her. What we did was worse than anything. We decided to run away together. We discussed it with such enthusiasm as the final, sensible, unalterable answer to the disaster, that all our troubles seemed to be over. I shall never forget the illumination I felt during those few days. I walked as if I were sanctified. It’s crazy. It was crazy, absolutely mad, yet it’s the most wonderful memory.
‘There was seventy pounds between us, and we decided to go to London, find a room, get jobs, and pool whatever we earned. It seemed as if she were no longer pregnant, for in our keenness to escape we almost forgot the blow that had caused it all. I had the insane idea of driving to London in our father’s car. Some nights he and Mother would go to see friends on the other side of town, which meant that if we went away in it it would have to be in the evening. Catherine had taken some lessons, and drove rather well. I had seen her, and I couldn’t drive at all.
‘We hurriedly packed our cases and put them in the car. She drove though the open gate, and both of us were trying not to laugh out loud at this easy getaway, all set as we were for a long and happy life together. It was a fine summer’s evening, with a few hours of daylight left, as Catherine took the car slowly but confidently along the lane and towards the main road. There was hardly any traffic, and she seemed radiant. But there were tears on her cheeks: “Do you think we should?”
‘“What else can we do?” I answered, touching her wrist. “It’s wonderful to be leaving everything behind.”
‘She smiled: “All right. It is.” From the other side a car was approaching the brow of a hill, not going very fast, and at the same time a lousy motorcyclist was overtaking the car. He actually missed us, but his sudden black appearance startled Catherine so that she screamed, and our car went through a hedge and down a slope. The world rushed over me like a blanket, hammers beating at me though the woollen padding. Then I was being pulled clear.
‘The blackness came back, and I opened my eyes in hospital. I asked about Catherine, and was told she was all right. She was in a better state, in fact, than I was. Both my legs were broken, my ribs were smashed, and I’d been concussed, apart from sundry other wounds. When I left hospital Catherine was married to her boyfriend, who’d been made to admit his part in getting her pregnant. She went to live with him near Newcastle, and now they have three children. I was able to say goodbye to her, but we hardly knew each other. I was said to be the evil one who had led her into bad ways, and I didn’t deny any of this. It would at least give her something to remember me by.