Chapter 19
THE SISTER
Hello, Sister.
Over the years that I’ve watched you, I’ve often wondered what it would have been like if we’d never been separated. Sometimes we would visit your house and watch you from afar. You were always happy. I resented you for that, for the life you were handed on a plate.
Were you always happy? Or am I romanticising it?
Does your life just seem brighter when I compare it to my own?
One thing I do know is that you’ve always wanted me.
You’ve wanted that connection. And I have too.
Or at least I did when I was a child. I would have done anything to have you in my life but then something snapped inside me.
Maybe it’s to do with circumstances. Maybe it was finding out you’d moved back up north, closer to me again.
You may not know this, but I left you alone while you were in London with your husband.
Oh, and do not get me started on that man.
I judged you for marrying Scott. And I was right about him all along.
Still, I let you live your life undisturbed during that time and, in the end, I regretted that. Because those feelings fermented inside me, turning sour with each passing year. I thought my life would get better, that I’d make up for lost time somehow.
But I’m not that woman.
I wanted to love myself, but the simmering rage in my body wouldn’t allow it.
I despise you and everything you stand for, everything you had that I didn’t.
All the love and warmth from a safe environment.
Do you understand that? Have you ever raged about someone before?
Truly wanted them dead? No, of course not, because you had a perfect life.
I tried to move on and get past it, but I just ended up hating you more. And now it has gathered power and taken the form of something I can’t control. That hatred is a volcano waiting to erupt, spitting fury, ready to blow.
I can’t stop the volcano. The eruption has already started and soon that lava is going to burn away everything in its path. Including you.