The One Before The One. Katy Regan

chocolate-dark, a flick of black eyeliner accentuating their feline quality, and framed by slightly too bushy eyebrows, which give her a naturally exotic look, like she might look ridiculous in too much make-up.

      She talks to Dad for ages. At first there are the usual sullen grunts and rolls of the eyes and a ‘Yeah, all right, Dad, don’t give yourself a nosebleed about it.’

      But then her voice becomes much quieter and softer and when I next look, a big fat tear is rolling down her face.

      ‘I know that, Dad,’ she’s saying. ‘I know it’s coz you care … Course I’d tell you if there was something. You know I tell you everything …’

      Liar, I think. Girls don’t tell their dads anything. At least, I didn’t, but then, that’s probably because Dad was always doing the talking.

      ‘But there isn’t, I promise,’ she carries on, wiping her nose on the palm of her hand, and something, despite myself, squeezes my heart. Even if this was just boyfriend trouble she was gutted, really upset – and she’d dropped out of sixth form. It must be serious.

      Eventually, she says, ‘I will. I miss you, too. Yep, love you too.’ Then she hangs up and looks at me, mascara running down her cheeks. ‘God, look at the state of me,’ she says, laughing through the tears. ‘What sort of total minger must I look now?’

      ‘Wanna talk about it?’

      I’m sitting down beside her now.

      ‘No. Honest. I’m all right.’

      ‘Sure?’ I nudge her with my elbow. ‘I might be able to help, you know. Especially since I am such an exceedingly sensible, level-headed and mature person.’

      Lexi looks at me in my wedding dress.

      ‘Yeah, right!’ She laughs. ‘I used to think you were – now I’m not so sure.’ There’s a pause.

      ‘Anyway,’ I say, eventually, putting my hand on her knee. ‘We’ll sort this out, yeah? Me and you, whatever it is, we’ll get you back on track.’

      ‘Okay.’ She sniffs. ‘Thanks. You’re very nice to me.’

      ‘Oh, I know – my benevolence knows no bounds.’

      ‘I’ll be okay,’ she says. ‘I just need some time out of Doncaster, to be honest, some time away.’

      Then she leans her head back on the radiator and studies me, her dark eyes still glassy from crying.

      ‘And d’you know what?’ she says, absentmindedly stroking the fabric of my wedding dress. ‘It’s all right to get dumped. We all get dumped. Carly’s just been dumped, so it doesn’t make you a freak.’

      I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

      * * *

      It’s only when Lexi’s in bed that I do what I’ve been dying to do all day. I sit back on my pillows, take my notebook – all perfect in its lovely, stripy hardness – out of my bedside-table drawer and I begin, asterisking new items.

      To Do:

       MINOR

      *Make something with Quinoa

      Pluck eyebrows

      Get spare room painted

      Sort out photo albums (buy photo corners)

      *Get drippy tap fixed

      Get involved in local culture: this coming weekend: installation by interesting sounding German artist at The Pump House Gallery. (Toby to come? Impossible. Shona and Paul? Possible. Martin? Pretty much a cert. Call him tomorrow.)

      Learn how to use i-pod that have now had since Christmas. Just do it!!

      *Do 3 x 12 squats and 3 x 12 sit ups before bed (start tomorrow)

       MAJOR

      Incorporate two hours of admin into every weekend. No excuse!

      Every day, do something for self and de-stressing, even if just breathing (alone, concentrating on, rather than just breathing breathing.) for ten minutes. Work: Step things up a gear. Seal deal on two new clients per week.

      *FIND OUT WHAT’S WRONG WITH LEXI ASAP!!! Fix it. Then send her back to Doncaster asap.

      Was only joking about that last bit … Kind of.

       CHAPTER TWO

      I should say that when I say my ‘sister’ I actually mean half-sister. Lexi was born when I was fifteen – which makes her seventeen now – about seven months after Dad moved in with Cassandra, which means he must have got her up the duff whilst he was living with Mum. My mother never lets me forget that.

      I remember the day she was born – 12 September 1991. It was a Thursday morning, a school morning, and Mum was putting a load of washing on. Mum was forever putting a load of washing on, back then, especially after Dad left. It was ridiculous; she was either stuffing it into the machine or hanging it out, like some manic, nervous tick, which I now realize it was.

      She had her bottom in the air, and was wearing the aqua elasticated trousers that couldn’t have helped in Dad’s final decision to walk, that’s for sure!

      ‘Well, your father’s had his second daughter,’ she announced. ‘God help her, Caroline, with two lunatics for parents! Alexis Simone, they’ve called her, poor little sod. Surely the work of the She Devil.’

      The ‘She Devil’ was what Cassandra was known as in our house, which, even at fifteen and abandoned by my dad, I felt was a little harsh, but what did I know? Mum’s a black and white kind of a woman. It’s love or hate with her.

      I remember an immediate pang of envy that she’d got Alexis Simone, where as I got Caroline Marie, something you’d surely call a canal barge. But then there was another emotion that took me by surprise: excitement. Surging, dizzying excitement that made me unable to swallow my Weetabix. I had a sister! I’d always wanted a sister. Especially since I’d always felt short-changed by my brother, Chris, whom I strongly suspected was off the autism scale and whose one great love in life was his biscuit-infested Nintendo.

      ‘And is she okay? I mean, is she healthy?’ I asked. I liked to think I was a caring sort who rose above personal politics even then, mainly out of necessity, since if anyone had two lunatics as parents, it was me.

      ‘Oh yes, she’s fine … physically,’ Mum said, ramming the soap-powder dispenser shut. ‘Only time will tell what they do to her head.’

      I don’t know what I expected having a half-sister would be like. I guess I was thinking along the lines of swapping clothes, discussing boys, although since Alexis – Lexi, as she quickly came to be called – was a day old, I’d have to wait years to do all that.

      I was travelling from Mum’s in Harrogate to Dad’s (well, Cassandra’s house) in Doncaster every other weekend back then. Cassandra was a flamboyant American who could talk a glass eye to sleep and had a good line in enormous dresses that looked like she’d had a run in with a box of water-colours. Dad had met her on a residential course called Heal Your Life at the height of his midlife crisis.

      Anyway, I was desperate to get to Dad’s that weekend so I could meet this new, coolly named sister of mine. My little sister. My very own confidante! Someone to save me from my mental family and, above all, myself and this altogether below-par existence I was leading.

      As soon as I walked in, however, I realized the other thing I hadn’t thought through – as well as the fact that it would be approximately sixteen years before I could discuss my concerns about still being a virgin with my sister – (and at the rate things were going, I’d still be a virgin then) – was the fact that my father would be madly