Read Online The Alphabet Sisters by Monica McInerney - Free Book Online Page A

Work.”
    “Oh.”
    Say it, Anna, say it. “And how’s Matthew?”
    “Fine. Good. Busy.”
    The air grew tense, and the silence stretched out.
    L ola had seen Carrie’s car arrive. She flung open the door with a flourish, talking loudly to Ellen, deliberately interrupting. “And here we are back in the kitchen. Oh, and look who’s here, your Auntie Carrie. Carrie, you remember Ellen, our beautiful Ellen?”
    Carrie turned and after a flicker of something passed over her face—shock, surprise—so quickly that only Lola noticed it, she bent down to her niece, who had gone straight over to Anna. “Hello, Ellen. It’s great to see you again. Did you have a nice trip?”
    The little girl nodded, her face pressed against Anna’s side.
    “She’s gorgeous, isn’t she?” Lola said proudly. She glanced around, judging the mood. It was like Iceland in here. Time for some defrosting. “Carrie, don’t tell me that pile of twigs over there is for my party, is it? Are we having a bonfire tonight?”
    “They’re for the flower displays,” Carrie said sulkily. “You told me you wanted a bush theme.”
    “Did I?” Lola asked. “Good heavens. Was I drunk?”
    A t Adelaide airport at that moment, Bett was walking up to the car-hire desk.
    A young man in a badly fitting suit smiled at her. “Can I help you, madam?”
    She smiled back. Madam? How sweet of him. A more honest query would have been, “Can I help you, you bedraggled-looking weirdo?”
    “I’ve booked a car, thanks,” she said, handing over the paperwork. As he started pressing keys on the computer, she saw her reflection in the mirror behind him and only just stopped herself from poking her tongue out at her own rumpled, baggy-eyed reflection. She looked like the beagle she’d seen sniffing at suitcases in the arrivals hall.
    Was it too late to find a gym and lose a stone? she wondered. First impressions were going to be very important. She wished that Lola had called this party two years ago, when for five glorious months, after a long bout of flu and poverty, Bett had actually been skinny, a size twelve, and change rooms were welcoming places, not temples of fear and doom. Anna had always had a comforting theory about women and body fat—that there was only so much fat in the world and what it did was redistribute itself around women all over the planet. When someone on a diet lost a few kilos, another poor unsuspecting woman in a country far away would discover to her astonishment that she had gained a few. Please, God, let Anna be wrinkled and plump and Carrie scruffy and taken to wearing nylon clothes that stick to her all over. With split ends. And adult-onset pimples. Bett turned side on, sucked in her stomach as hard as she could, and nearly fell over in the process.
    “Is everything all right, madam?”
    “Fine. Just doing some after-flight exercises.”
    He looked a little suspicious.
    Standing sideways again, she wondered whether it would be possible to buy a pair of those super-control tights somewhere nearby. Mind you, her only experience with a pair had been disastrous. When she finally pulled the things on, it was as if they had dragged every spare bit of flesh up with them. She’d been left with slimmish thighs, certainly, but also with the most extraordinary roll of fat over the top of them, as if she’d been stuck in a life buoy.
    “Madam?”
    The young man was now looking concerned. “Your keys, madam. Car number fifteen.”
    Pulling her case behind her, she stopped at the airport door, struck by the high temperature now she was outside the air-conditioned building. It felt as if someone had opened an enormous oven nearby, sending out a hot, dry rush of heat. A woman in the arrivals hall had been full of the news that it had been one of the hottest summers in years, nine days straight of temperatures in the high thirties. Bett looked around for a phone box and spied one in the carpark. She’d promised Lola she’d call and let