Tell Me How This Ends

by Jo Leevers

Jokes, in her experience, feel like a ball thrown at great speed: hard to catch; even trickier to keep a rally going. And Henrietta has never been a games person.

For so long, she’s tried to ignore them, but the minute

she lets her guard down they’re back, nipping and tugging, crowding around her like hungry children. And now she’s tired, so tired, of trying to make them behave.

These days, even her happy memories feel tainted by what came later or what was simmering under the surface all along.

Because sometimes, Kath needed taking down a peg or two, and no one else was going to do it, were they? And what sisters didn’t fight every now and then? But then came that dreadful night in December and Kath was gone for good. And Annie would have taken back every cross word, every spiteful snipe and secret pinch, just to have her sister back by her side.

Here it comes, thinks Henrietta. She doesn’t want to do her story. Only I could manage to lose a client before she’s even died.

‘The funny thing is . . .’ Here, Annie pauses to drink her tea. ‘When you look back, you don’t see your own life in an orderly way. It’s more like snapshots – like in a photo album. And sometimes it’s hard to remember the bits in between, like what happened the moment before the photo was taken or just after. Do you know what I mean?’

Annie stands up and, as she passes behind Henrietta, she pats the girl on the shoulder as if it’s her, not Annie, who has just been through something difficult. It’s only once she’s on board the minibus that Annie lets go. She rests her forehead on the fogged-up window and her tears feel thin and mealy, as if they’ve dried up after such a long time. She cries for Kath, for herself, for the whole damn mess. And as she cries, she feels a knot in her chest beginning to loosen.

Maybe talking to Henrietta was easy because she reminds Annie of herself. Not Annie as she is now and not even Annie as a naive nineteen-year-old who just wanted to have fun on a Saturday night, but Annie of the long, empty years after she was married. The woman who had lost a sister, married a bully and moved out to suburbia, where she discovered that making herself very small and quiet was the best way to survive. And then one day, many years later, she looked in the mirror and realised that life had silently passed her by. Her grey hair, that ache in her knees, the muffle in her left ear – they weren’t going away. While she’d been busy washing up and cooking Terry’s tea and wiping kids’ noses, she’d grown old. Henrietta doesn’t wear a wedding ring, so maybe there isn’t a man like Terry waiting for her at home, but Annie is pretty sure that someone in that girl’s life has made her feel like she’s no good, told her to shut up, put up and behave. For the rest of the journey, Annie keeps her forehead on the cool window and her eyes tightly closed, right up until she feels the minibus rock up and over the first of the speed bumps, the sign that she’s nearly home.

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