Gothic novel of two sisters who are really close.
Not bad, and the "secret" is alright".
This the house we have come to. This the house we have left to find. Beached up on the side of the North York Moors, only just out of the sea. Our lips puckered and wrinkled from licking crisp salt, limbs heavy, wrought with growing pains. The boiling-hot steering wheel, the glare off the road. It had been hours since we left, buried in the back seat. Mum said, getting into the car, Let's make it before night. And then nothing else for a long time. We imagine what she might say: This is your fault, or, We would never have had to leave if you hadn't done what you did. And what she means, of course, is if we hadn't been born. If we hadn't been born at all.
Times loses its line and jiggles out of place. Everyone is living and dying at the same moment. The house has been standing for nearly fifty years, the foundations have only just been laid, the land is bare and barely good even for farming. There are whales on the beach
We keep drinking. I check often to see that September is there and she smiles at me and touches my face and hair, holds my hands and moves them towards bottles of beer, bottles of sugary cider. The conversations run around us like a river with us catching only occasionally on loose, unstuck phrases or questions directed not at us but in our general direction. I find myself talking or look and see that September is talking for the both of us. She is, at times, sharp and mean the way I know her to be when around anyone but me - and occasionally Mum - but at other moments she seems to soften towards them, those strangers, and I hear her talking about what our mum does and the things we are interested in. And, looking across the fire, I see how they lean close to her to hear and nod or laugh in agreement and ask her more questions or say something to try and draw her approval. I am drunk. Yes. I think then, as I have so many times, she is the person I have always wanted to be. I am a shape cut out of the universe, tinged with every-dying stars - and she is the creature to fill the gap I leave in the world.
And then I feel, like a chilly exhalation, September arriving into me. She does not come gently or with peaceful intentions. My sister is a black hole my sister is a bricked-up window my sister is a house on fire my sister is a car crash my sister is a long night my sister is a battle my sister is here. September is holding my lips shut. I understand, for the first time, the promise that I made her and exactly what it means: If there could be only one of us it would be you. My arms are yours, my legs are yours, my heart and lungs and stomach and fingers and eyes are yours. She is familiar as a song, my hands lifting without my say-so, my legs clicking to attention. A moment where I think no (nononononononono) but it is too late. There is someone else inside me, using my mouth to speak, holding me still.
