Sisters - Michelle Frances Page 0,88

to explain all her actions away, she just didn’t want all this to stop.

Not yet.

Abby made her way back over to the shops but she couldn’t see Ellie. She must have gone for a wander somewhere. Abby didn’t mind. It would give her a bit longer to compose herself. She sat on the wall outside the boutique, the dress staring her in the face.

After a couple of minutes, Abby got up. She opened the door of the shop and stepped inside. She stood there, feeling the air conditioning soothe her hot skin, smelling the sharp, welcoming tang of new clothes. She went up to the window and reached out a hand to touch the dress.

‘¿En qué puedo ayudarle? Can I help you?’

Abby turned to see a dainty woman with stylish glasses smile at her.

‘This is a nice dress,’ said Abby.

‘Would you like to try it on?’

Abby looked back at it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you. But I would like to buy it.’ She felt an involuntary flutter of anxiety but fought it back.

The sales lady was surprised but appraised her customer professionally. ‘I have your size here,’ she said, plucking one of the same dresses off a rail.

‘I need two,’ said Abby.

‘Two?’ The lady’s professional stance was slipping. This was unusual indeed.

‘Yes.’

‘The same size?’

Abby nodded. She stared, feeling slightly sick as the sales lady wrapped each dress in tissue paper and placed them in a paper bag.

‘That’ll be—’

Abby thrust some cash at her. If she heard the amount said out loud, she wouldn’t be able to go through with it. Other than her properties, she’d never spent so much money in one go in her entire life.

She saw Ellie returning from further down the street. ‘I got you a present,’ said Abby, then plunged her hand into the bag and pulled out one of the tissue parcels.

Ellie frowned, then as she opened it her mouth dropped. ‘I don’t understand . . .’

‘Nothing in the world can bring us down,’ said Abby, pulling out the second dress. She almost laughed when she saw her sister’s expression, except she was still recovering from the purchase.

‘Oh my God, Abby,’ said Ellie, stunned. ‘Thank you.’ Abby smiled as her sister threw her arms around her.

They put them on in the car. Two sisters in two blue dresses in a red Fiat 500, on the run through Spain.

SIXTY-FIVE

2002

It was as bad as she’d expected. A scraped pass in English and maths and a C in geography. Everything else was a monumental fail. It was certainly a far cry from her sister’s ten A* and A grades a few years ago. Abby was at university now, doing a degree in economics at Manchester, where she was on track to receive a first. She came home only occasionally, preferring to spend her term breaks in Manchester, working in her local bar.

Ellie tried not to mind about her grades. She stood amongst the crowd of students in the main hall, each of them clutching the piece of paper with their future written on it. Most of the teenagers were celebrating, eyes shining as they hugged each other, peering over at one another’s results. Ellie knew her mother was waiting for her to call to announce the news. Might as well get it over with. She left the main hall and found a quiet spot outside the front of the school. Her mum was working in the boutique but had promised to answer, even if she was with a customer.

As Ellie relayed the sum of her total life’s work to her mother, she felt her bravado crumble. By the end, she was reduced to tears.

‘Don’t worry,’ said her mother quickly, ‘life isn’t all about university. Look at that Richard Branson – he didn’t even finish school and he’s a billionaire.’

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, Mum,’ said Ellie, through her tears. ‘I’m just not very clever.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Susanna, but Ellie recognized a desperate consolation when she heard it. ‘You just had a difficult start in life, that’s all.’

My illness. Her bloody illness. If she hadn’t been sick for all those years when she was younger, things would have been so different.

After a year of helping out in her mother’s boutique, she decided to take a gap year off. She had longed to go travelling ever since she was small, inspired by all those years being holed up at home clutching a sick bucket. Her mother had a small amount of savings that she gifted to her and