The Sisterhood by Emily Barr Page A

I had to go along with it. Tom was adept at excusing himself but, somehow, I never, ever managed to get out of it. I supposed they saw him all the time because he lived with them, in term time. I kept myself as far away as I could, but I was utterly dependent on their money. Their insistence that I sit down with them and submit to a cringingly formal meal once a week was their way of reminding me that they owned me.
    I did not want to be owned. I was aching with frustration. I was holed up here, on this stupid oversized estate, and the whole world had forgotten about me. I knew I should leave, but because I didn't have to, I hadn't dared. The moment we found Elizabeth, I would be out of there.
    I knew the parents were glad when I left the big house, even though they never said it. They exchanged glances when they thought I wasn't looking, whenever I was in the same room as them, and they thought I didn't notice. Tom had spotted them doing it too, so I knew it wasn't my imagination. We looked at each other and rolled our eyes when they spoke, in retaliation.
    I liked things tidy, and when I took it over, the little house was in a state. Before I moved in, I vacuumed all the floors and washed the linen. I polished every wooden surface and dusted away a citadel of spider webs. I mopped the downstairs tiles. I bought a few curtains for the bare windows. None of this got rid of the musty smell. The downstairs floor was paved with cheap orange tiles, some of which I had covered with rugs. The upstairs floors were wooden, and they creaked, even when there was no one there. Sometimes I had a feeling that there was a ghost, but then I laughed at myself, because I knew that there were no such things, that credulous people invented them to make life more interesting.
    I had a little kitchen, kitted out as cheaply as possible by my unstintingly generous parents (I even had to boil water in a tinny little pan on the gas ring, in true French fashion, because they didn't stretch to a kettle). The tiny sitting room had a foldaway table at one end, which presently bore my laptop and broadband connection. Upstairs, I had two poky bedrooms and a crappy little bathroom.
    Tom had to live with Mum and Dad because he was still at school. He was gratifyingly jealous of my freedom. In the holidays, he came to live in my spare room. It was a tiny room, but a light, bright one. He had white sheets on the bed, and he made the place come alive. When he was there, I was the boss. I liked being bossy to Tom. It was the only area of my life over which I had control.
    Now I left him on the computer, and dragged my feet along the gravel path that separated my old shed from the big house. The vines were half hidden in thick, low cloud. It was hard to see exactly where the sky began. There was no sign of the sun. The cold instantly made my jumper and jeans irrelevant. I might as well have been naked. The parents had become so exasperated by my turning up frozen last winter that, for my birthday, they bought me an expensive coat. When I wore it, I felt like a spy. It was beige, or rather 'camel', and it was an incredible disguise for me. It reached halfway down my calves, and its belted waist and wide, luxurious sleeves made me into someone else entirely. I adored it. Unfortunately, my relationship with my parents could not have accommodated my raising my hands in joy and exclaiming, 'I love it!' This meant, perversely, that I only wore it if I knew they weren't going to see me. I couldn't bear to let them think that they had got something right.
    Mother was waiting at the top of the nine steps that led up to the front door. I looked at the front of the house as I approached. It was bleak and enormous. The outside was grey and weatherbeaten, and although it could look all right in the summer, when the flowers were out in front, in the winter it was austere and grim. There were rooms and rooms in there that were never used, which were dotted with ugly pieces of