‘So start at the beginning.’
It took her a while to get going.
‘I spent the latter years of my childhood in Switzerland – my father was originally from there and always wanted to return so took us all back when I was ten years old. You wouldn’t know it from my accent – we lived in an area with other expats, I went to an international school with kids from all over the world, and my parents spoke English at home. Even my dad’s accent had faded.’
His understanding and patience encouraged her to continue.
‘My father passed away a couple of years after we settled in Switzerland but apart from that, I had a relatively normal upbringing. Mum didn’t want to disrupt us and leave; she’d grown to love it there. She never married again but the three of us did okay. It was when we were older, when Monica became a teenager, that things really started to unravel.’
She told Hudson about a lot of the good times but she also recalled the punctuation of the moments along the way that set the path for the remaining chapters of their time as a family.
Monica was four years younger than Nadia and looked up to her older sister. When Monica started high school, she began to have real problems. She struggled in class, she was getting behind with her work, and at home, she seemed to get her way no matter how many times she snapped or broke the rules.
Monica got worse as time went on. The way she spoke to their mother made Nadia wince and the disrespect, the condescension and the sheer selfishness of her younger sister really started to affect her. It made Nadia resent her sister’s presence, especially when their mother worried so much about her youngest child that she was regularly unwell – there were doctor visits for stress, pills for this and that, and Nadia was worried something serious might happen. Monica meanwhile just continued to take: their mother’s time and energy, their mother’s money in the form of extra tuition that she often didn’t bother to turn up to. She took their mother’s focus and left very little for Nadia, who tried to fade into the background until Monica got herself sorted, except that never seemed to really happen. Her little sister was all about take, take, take and didn’t care how she did it or who it affected.
‘Mum, you have to talk to her; she’s a mess,’ Nadia told their mother one night as she helped dry up the dishes after dinner. Monica wasn’t back yet, late for curfew again: one of the many things she got away with.
‘I don’t want her to think we’re not there for her, Nadia.’
‘She knows you’re here, Mum, but she needs to take some responsibility.’ It was the most polite way of saying that Monica had been getting away with things for ages – no punishment if she broke curfew, no reprimand for not doing her chores, no threat of stopping tutor sessions if she didn’t show up and wasted their mother’s money again. ‘It’s the only thing that will teach her how to be a part of the real world.’
But her mum didn’t want to hear it. She changed the subject, the way she always did, and when Monica came home stinking of smoke and couldn’t even make polite conversation with anyone, she was allowed to eat her dinner and then take a bath.
‘I know you think I’m being too easy on her,’ said her mum when it was only Nadia and her again. ‘She’s really struggledat school and I feel terrible; I should’ve noticed there was something wrong years ago. I didn’t, and I’m her mother. I feel like I neglected her when I should have got her more help.’
Nadia gave her mum a hug. ‘You’re too hard on yourself.’
But the niceness disappeared when she went upstairs.
‘When are you going to start putting some effort in?’ Nadia demanded when she cornered her sister outside the bathroom.
Monica pushed past without an answer, with no flicker of guilt that she was making things so hard.
Nadia followed her into her bedroom and her eyes were immediately drawn to her sister’s bag, which must have fallen off the bed, its contents spilling out all over the carpet.
‘What is that?’ But she knew even before she paced over to the bag of weed and picked it up. ‘You’re fourteen years old!’
‘All right, Miss Goody Two Shoes.’
She went to snatch it back but Nadia held it out of reach.
‘Give… it… back,’ she spat.
Nadia tossed it onto the bed. She would’ve taken it straight down to her mother if she didn’t think it would distress her even more. She would rather Monica found her own way out of this, did some growing up without having to upset everyone else in the process.
‘You need to sort yourself out, Monica. Mum is tearing her hair out with you.’
‘And what are you, her spokesperson?’
‘I don’t want to see her unhappy.’ She softened. ‘I don’t want to see you unhappy either.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘I don’t.’ She sat on the bed. ‘Is school getting better now you’ve got some extra help?’
‘School is great, Nadia. I’m crap in every subject. It’s a total ball.’
‘No need to get annoyed with me.’
