Blood Sisters: Can a pledge made for life endure beyond death?. Julie Shaw

Acknowledgements

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       Prologue

      Clayton Village Hall Youth Club, Bradford, 1983

      It’s late on a summer Friday, the sky just turning peachy, and two twelve-year-old girls who’ve been best friends since nursery are hiding behind the stage curtains in the village hall.

      They’re making a solemn oath. It’s the most important kind of oath. Which is why they’ve taken the trouble (which has been both a risk and a challenge) of ‘borrowing’ the craft knife from the art drawer in the hall kitchen, which they are now using, in turn, to slit the skin on their right thumbs.

      The blood forms beads, dark and glossy behind the drapes, as they squeeze, and in perfect synchrony, despite neither of them consciously timing it, they touch their thumbs together, allowing the blood to mix.

      ‘I solemnly swear,’ whispers Vicky Robinson, who is the taller of the two, ‘that no boyfriend will split us up, or anyone else come between us. I swear we will be sisters for the rest of our lives … Your turn,’ she then finishes, smiling at her friend.

      ‘I solemnly swear,’ agrees Lucy Briggs, her voice equally low, ‘that no boyfriend will split us up, or anyone else come between us. I swear we’ll be sisters for the rest of our lives …’

      ‘Blood sisters forever!’ they both whisper, in unison.

      Then they put the knife back in the drawer, roll up the waistbands of their skirts, and, giggling as they both re-apply a sheen of lip gloss, feel their way round the edge of the musty stage curtains and go back to join the boys in the smoking shed.

      Life was good in the summer of 1983.

Part One

      Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him – a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

      Ecclesiastes 4:9–12

       Chapter 1

      Clayton, Bradford, July 1987

      The world always seemed to melt away when Vicky was doing her make-up. Particularly her eyeliner, which, being a posh liquid one, required total concentration: lips slightly parted, brows raised, good light and a steady, steady hand. Even Rick Astley, who had up to now held at least half her concentration, seemed to oblige by taking a breath so she could get the line exactly right.

      ‘Victoriaaaaa! Door!’

      Vicky swore under her breath as she lowered the eyeliner brush. Her bloody mother. And, judging by the way she was bellowing her name, this wasn’t the first time she’d yelled it up the stairs either.

      She slipped the brush back into the tube and reached for a cotton-wool ball. One day, perhaps one day, her mam would stop yelling, get up off her fat backside and actually answer the front door herself. But she doubted that would be happening anytime soon.

      ‘Mam, it’ll be Luce!’ Vicky yelled down through the open bedroom door. ‘Let her in, can’t you? Please? I’m not dressed yet!’

      Though she ought to get her skates on, she realised. She’d been getting ready for over an hour now, and she still wasn’t done. Though, in her defence, she decided, as she spat on the cotton wool and carefully wiped the outer edge of her left eye, this was their first night out as working girls – no more school, ever – and she was determined to look old enough to get into every pub and club in town. She just hoped Lucy had done a decent enough job of stuffing her bra with socks. She hadn’t yet been blessed with Vicky’s natural assets, and they were always so bloody strict down at the Caverns.

      ‘I’m not your bleeding slave!’ Vicky’s mum yelled back up the stairs, predictably. And she had a point, Vicky conceded, as she redid the final flick of eyeliner. Most of the time, these days, it felt like the other way round. But she also felt the tell-tale breeze that meant the front door was open, so she got up from her dressing table and danced across to her bed, humming along with Rick, in her bra and knickers.

      ‘Whoah,’ came a deep voice, moments later. ‘Now that’s what I call a welcome.’

      Vicky whirled around, astonished, then grabbed the bath towel from the back of the dressing-table chair. ‘Oh my God – Paddy!’ she exclaimed, colouring. ‘What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were off out with the lads!’

      Paddy’s gaze travelled appreciatively over her as he shut the bedroom door. Bold as you like, as per usual. What on earth had her mam been thinking, letting him come up? ‘Well, I’m not now, am I?’ he said, grinning as she tried to wrap the towel around herself. She thought he might try and yank it off her, but instead he nodded towards the tape player. ‘And you can get that shit off, for starters,’ he added, pulling something from one of his jeans pockets and flinging it on the bed. It was a worn-looking cassette tape. One Vicky recognised immediately, because she’d sat there, bored to tears, while he’d made it. ‘Put that on for us, will you, babe?’ he asked. ‘Please?’

      That was the thing with Paddy. He walked into a room and had this disarming way of owning it. That and filling her stomach with butterflies. It had been almost a year that they’d been seeing each other now and the way he made her feel never seemed to change. Her mam always went on about how all that fluttering hearts stuff soon wore off and then you saw the sort of man you were really dealing with, but her mam was just bitter, because of her dad up and leaving. Still bitter, despite it being years ago now; they’d seen nothing of him since and though Vicky had heard he was with a younger woman in Leeds now, she never dared mention it, because any mention of him got her mother in such a state that she’d go on a crying and eating binge that could last for days.

      No, her mam really didn’t get it. Paddy wasn’t a bit like her father. He was different. He worshipped the ground Vicky walked on. Literally. Only last week he’d flung himself down on the pavement outside the Oddfellows Arms to prove it – just like that, after she’d torn him off a strip, with everyone watching. She’d called him an idiot – it had been raining, and he’d got his new jacket soaked – but, secretly, she’d loved how he didn’t care who knew it. Loved that he didn’t do that whole offhand thing so many of the lads her own age thought was cool. No, the butterflies were still there, and she loved that.

      She breathed in the scent of his aftershave as he ambled across to kiss her. ‘And you know, you don’t need to get dressed on my account,’ he whispered, tugging playfully on the towel.

      Wriggling away from him, she reached for the black dress she’d hung out to wear, and quickly slipped it over her head, letting the towel flump to the floor just a calculated couple of seconds before she’d properly smoothed the dress down her thighs.

      ‘I bloody do,’ she said, picking the tape up and going over to the cassette player, pressing the button to eject her beloved Rick Astley and replace it with his Northern Soul