Лиза Марклунд: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 137, No. 1. Whole No. 833, January 2011

The only time he paid hard cash was when he bought tap shoes for Skye. He’d begun to teach us dance steps in the kitchen. “Shuffle,” he’d yell above the music, “kick ball change, turn... come on, girls, dance for Daddy.”

The next day Nathan didn’t want to go out. His friend came to the door wanting a kick-around but ended up playing on the computer instead. I didn’t say anything, but I knew he was waiting for Skye.

At the end of the day, there was nothing I could do but make his favourite, shepherd’s pie, and read Harry Potter to him in bed. I could see his heart wasn’t in it

I wasn’t surprised — Skye had been taught unreliability by experts — but I was angry. She’d had a chance to show him that a woman could be as good as Batman and she’d blown it. All he had left was me and I was not the stuff of heroes. What had I done in the past nine years except to keep him warm, fed, healthy, and honest? Also, I made him do his homework, which I think he found unforgivable. I thought I was giving him solid gold, because in the end, doing my homework and passing exams were the tools I used to dig myself out of a very deep hole. But how can that compare to the magic conferred upon a boy by ownership of coveted football boots? At his age, he thought the right boots would transform his life and give him talents beyond belief. Magic boots for Nathan; dancing shoes for Skye.

Mr. Bo tried to teach us both to do the splits. Maybe, at eleven or twelve, I was already too stiff. Or maybe, deep down inside, I felt there was something creepy about doing the splits in the snow-white knickers and little short skirts that he insisted we wear to dance for him. Either way, I never managed to learn. But Skye did. She stretched like a spring and bounced like a ball. She wore ribbons in her crazy hair. Of course she got the dancing shoes.

One evening he took us to the bar where Mum worked, put some money in the jukebox, and Skye showed off what she’d learnt. Mum was so impressed she put out a jam jar for tips and it was soon full to overflowing.

Now that I have a child of my own I can’t help wondering what on earth she was thinking. Maybe she looked at the tip jar and saw a wide-screen TV or a weekend away at a posh hotel with handsome Bo Barnes. Or was she just high on the free drinks? Once, she said to me, “Wanna know somethin’, kid? If you’re a girl, all you ever got to sell is your youth. Make sure you get a better price for it than I did. Wish someone tol’ me that before I gave it all away.” Of course, she wasn’t sober when she said that, but I don’t think sobriety had much to do with it; it was her best advice. No wonder I did my homework.

Skye showed up when Nathan had stopped waiting for her. “C’mon, kid,” she said, “we’re going shopping.”

“You’re smoking.” He was shocked.

“So shoot me,” she said. “You have dirty hair.”

“So shoot me.” He grinned his big crooked smile.

“Needs an orthodontist,” she said. “I should take him back to L.A.”

“Over my dead body,” I said. “Nathan, get in the shower. Skye, coffee in the kitchen. Now.”

She wrinkled her still-pretty nose at my coffee. I said, “What’re you up to? What’s the scam?”

“Can’t an auntie take her nephew shopping?” She widened her innocent eyes at me. “’Tis the season and all that malarkey.”

“We haven’t seen each other in over fifteen years.”

“So I missed you.”

“No, you didn’t. How did you find me?”

“Were you hiding?” she asked. “How do you know what I missed? You’re my big sister, or have you forgotten?”

“I wasn’t the one who swanned off to the States.”

“No, you were the one who was jealous.”

“I tried to protect you.”

“From what? Attention, pretty clothes, guys with nice cars?”

I said nothing because I didn’t know where to begin.

She stuck her elbows on the table and leant forward with her chin jutting. “It all began with Bobby Barnes, didn’t it? You couldn’t stand me being his little star.”

“He was thirty. You were nine.”

“A girl doesn’t stay nine forever.”

“He ended up in prison and we were sent to a home. He robbed us of our childhood, Skye.”

“Some childhood.” She snorted. “Stuck in that squalid little apartment — with no TV or anything.”

“And how did Mr. Bo change that? Did he stop Mum drinking? Did he go out to work so that she could look after us? Okay, he bought us a flat-screen telly, but it got repossessed like everything else.”

“He gave us pretty clothes and shoes...”

“He stole them. He taught us how to steal...”

“But it was fun,” Skye cried. “He taught us how to dance, too. You’re forgetting the good stuff.”

“He taught you to dance. He taught me how to be a lookout for a pickpocket and a thief. You weren’t a dancer, Skye; you were there to distract the rabbits.”

“Why’re you two quarrelling?” Nathan said from the doorway.

“We’re sisters,” Skye said. “If you’re good, I’ll tell you how a pirate came to rescue us from an evil wizard’s castle and how your mom didn’t want to go and nearly blew it for me.”

“No, you won’t,” I said.

“Is it true?” He was as trusting as a puppy.

“Do you really believe in wicked wizards and good pirates?” I asked.

“Next you’ll be telling him there’s no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy.”

“I know there’s no Tooth Fairy,” he said. “I caught Mum putting a pound under my pillow and she pretended she’d just found it there, but she’s a rubbish liar.”

“She is, isn’t she? Bet you took the cash anyway. Now let’s go shopping.”

“I’m coming, too,” I said, because I didn’t know my own sister and I was afraid she might have inherited Mr. Bo’s definition of buying shoes.

“You’ll spoil it,” my loyal son complained. “The only thing she ever takes me shopping for is a school uniform.”

“What a bitch... sorry, witch.” Skye dragged us both out of the house with no conscience at all.

A big black car, just a couple of feet short of being a limo, was waiting outside — plus a driver with a leather coat and no discernable neck.

Oddly, Mr. Bo was not sent down for anything serious like contributing to the delinquency of minors or his sick relationship with one of them. No, when he was caught it was for stealing booze from the back of the bar where Mum worked. Of course she was done for theft, too, thus ensuring that we had no irresponsible adults in our lives, and forcing us to be taken into Care.

By the time I was fifteen and Skye was thirteen, we’d been living in Care for two and a half years. Foster parents weren’t keen on me because I didn’t want to split up from Skye, and foster mothers didn’t like Skye at all because she was precocious in so many ways.

Crockerdown House, known for obvious reasons as Crack House by the locals, was a girls’ care home, and judging by the number of non-visits from social workers, doctors, or advisors, and the frequency of real visits by the cops, it should’ve been called a No Care home. No one checked to see if we went to school or if we came back. Self-harm and eating disorders went unnoticed. Drugs were commonplace. There was a sixty-percent pregnancy rate.

I was scared rigid and spent as much time as I could at school. Teachers thought I was keen — most unusual in that part of town — and they cherished me. After a while I became keen.

Skye was the opposite.

It was only when a strange man turned up at the school gates in a car with Skye sitting smug as you please on the backseat that I realised she’d stayed in touch with Mr. Bo while he was inside.