Miriam lives in a compact top-floor attic conversion in a Victorian terrace that has seen better days. I thought her place would be an overpowering gothic melodrama of heavy fabrics, lashings of black paint and sinister lighting. I thought there would be more chaos; clothes and shoes strewn about the place. But it’s the opposite. Evening light glides through curtains that shift in the wind from the open window. Two rugs adorn the floor, one blue, the other white, both toe-huggingly fluffy. There’s a warmth in here, a homeliness that the rich tangerine walls lock inside. A small TV is on mute in the background.
I must be the portrait of a human car crash. Quickly, I scrub my fingertips at the hollows beneath my eyes, batting away any stray tears. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘What for?’ Miriam stridently cuts in. ‘For being human? For having feelings? For having a lousy childhood when the world keeps telling us that our childhoods are the best years of our life?’
I shake my head, curling my fingers together. ‘I barely know you and I’m already dumping my troubles at your door.’
Miriam pulls out a ready-to-toke joint and lights up. Her eyes close for a moment, her head tilting back a touch, savouring the smoke and no doubt the hit to her bloodstream. Drowsy-eyed, she holds the weed out to me. I firmly shake my head. We might be sisters but we’re so different. Miriam’s the type of woman Sugar warned me against as a teen.
‘When they go down – and they always do – they’ll take you with them,’ was his strong opinion.
Smoke lazily lifting from her mouth, the pungent smell of pot punching the air, Miriam tells me, ‘I don’t know how your story ends but I’ll tell you this for free: if I ever get my hands on those people who did that to my baby sister I’ll stomp on them until nothing is left.’
Baby sister. Two very simple words that choke me up. Miriam will never know how much it means for me to hear her keep calling me that. Her sudden anger nearly tips her off the sofa. The pugnacious set of her features tells it loud and clear that she’d be ready to attack on my behalf in a heartbeat.
‘Little Eva could’ve done with a saviour like you.’
‘I could’ve done with a saviour like me.’ Her voice is so quiet I suspect her words are for her ears alone.
Miriam looks up at me from under her electric-blue fringe. And I see what I should’ve seen before. All that thick mascara is a tiny trick. It’s to ensure the watcher’s gaze remains on her make-up, deflecting them from delving deep into her eyes. But I see them. The haunted, hollow depths. In her lifetime Miriam has been hurt many times.
Frowning, joint hovering a hair’s breadth from her lips, she digs into my past. ‘Why do you call your young self that? Little Eva?’
I consider my answer; I know it sounds weird. ‘Because it distances me from all the nonsense that went on. It’s like I can pretend it happened to someone else. Some other kid. That someone else allowed others to have that destructive power over her.’
Miriam says, ‘You’re crippled every time you go back there.’ She rests her joint in the ashtray and her chin in her cupped hands. ‘I’ve been through many a field with slings and arrows firing at me from all directions, most of the time not able to dodge them.’
Self-consciously, my sister tugs down the sleeves of her hooded dressing gown. I know what she’s trying to hide, but I already saw them at Danny’s house during dinner. Her arms are lined with track marks, old ones. I’ve seen them, sadly, too many times as a doctor not to recognise them.
‘For years I went off the rails,’ Miriam continues. ‘Boozing, shagging as many women as I could get my desperate hands on. Anything to not have to face the screaming scars of my past.’ Including shooting up a load of junk into my veins, she doesn’t add.
Pointing to a photo on the wall showing Miriam all cosy with a redhead, I ask, ‘Is that your girlfriend?’
‘Was.’ She directs my gaze to a photo in a similar frame next to it, showing Miriam close to another woman, slightly older, cropped hair with silver strands. ‘The first one is Sandy and the other Lauren. I put a picture up of any girlfriend who can withstand more than six months of the Miriam Experience. Though I’m still not finished with Lauren yet.’ Her mouth droops.
I want to ask what happened to her, but maybe it’s best left alone. Miriam will tell me in her own time. Instead, I tell her what happened at Sugar’s. The burglary and more significantly the four missing women, although I don’t reveal their names or talk about the Good Knight.