Ellie Phillips - Scissors Sisters & Manic Panics

‘I’d like a stripe,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘with a sort of pink fleck. Like he had on that detective programme you were watching the other night, Zé.’

Uncle Zé said nothing.

‘What was it called?’

‘What?’ said Uncle.

‘That programme with the head in the bag. What was it called?’

‘You mean Blood Bath ?’ said Uncle.

‘Eughh,’ said Mum. ‘Could we talk about this after tea perhaps, sis?’

‘No, but the flooring, Angela – it was lovely, wasn’t it, Zé?’

‘What?’

‘The flooring on that programme. Y’know, the bit where they came in and the head was in the bag . . .’

‘Lilah, I don’t know what you’re talking about, my love,’ said Uncle. ‘I wasn’t looking at the flooring; I was looking at the head in the bag. How come you were looking at the flooring?’

‘It sounds gross, Mum,’ said Billy. ‘Like Serial Killer Interiors .’

‘Oh, all right then,’ said Aunt Lilah. ‘Just forget it.’

She looked crushed for a moment. Like her family didn’t appreciate her sensitivity and attention to detail or something.

‘How about you, Abe?’ said Mum changing the subject. ‘Did you have a good week?’

‘Actually I had a letter from someone,’ Abe said. He folded his serviette neatly in his lap and glanced up at me.

‘Oh yes?’ said Mum.

‘Someone who I believe is my daughter,’ said Abe. Then paused and corrected himself. ‘Someone who I believe is another daughter.’

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There was a sort of stunned silence, during which time my heart did a tsukahara -double-twist-with-crash-landing in my chest. In case you don’t know, that’s like a really complex vault that gymnasts do in the Olympics. But this wasn’t gymnastics. This was a potential sister.

‘What did he say?’ boomed Great Aunty Rita after a few seconds. She’s a bit deaf and her voice has a tendency to sound a bit like the foghorn on the Woolwich ferry.

Nobody responded. We all just sat there. I could feel my face going very hot and I wondered if I was about to pass out. After all, I – Sadie Nathanson, only child – had just found out that I might have a sister. I gripped the table, trying not to swoon into my plate of mostly pig products. I am not joking. This sometimes happens to me.

‘Well, my word,’ said Mum eventually. ‘That puts all our news to shame. This is huge.’

‘It’s big,’ said Abe.

‘What is?’ said Great Aunty Rita.

‘Abe might have another child, Rita,’ said Aunt Lilah.

‘Good grief,’ said Aunty Rita, ‘that was quick.’

Nobody knew quite what to do with that comment and so we all carried on like it hadn’t happened.

‘It turns out that this Marie – her name’s Marie by the way,’ continued Abe. ‘Well, Marie’s dad died last year and then she found out that he wasn’t her natural father after all. Then her Mum got out all the papers with my details on it from the sperm donor website . . .’

I was quite sure that Great Aunty Rita flinched when Abe said the words ‘sperm donor’, but maybe her hearing aid was just giving her feedback.

‘. . . and she’s not so far away,’ Abe continued, oblivious to Aunty Rita. ‘Canterbury, I think she said in her letter – I must have read it three times! But it’s so hard to take in . . . even after Sadie getting in touch last year!’

‘Well!’ said Mum, and she reached under the table and squeezed my hand. I couldn’t work out if this was meant to be a comforting gesture or if she was clinging on to me for support. She’s like that, my mum. Overemotional. Hysteria is my family’s default position.

‘Well, what d’you think about that, Sadie? Turns out you’ve got more family out there!’ said Mum.

I could see tears behind her smiling eyes. Please don’t cry , I thought. And then I looked at Aunt Lilah and thought, Please don’t say anything annoying.

‘Sadie – what do you think?’ said Abe.

‘Amazing,’ I whispered, because it was truly amazing. ‘Maybe I might get to meet her one day. Did she send a photo? I mean, do you know what she looks like?’

‘No,’ said Abe, ‘it was just a letter.’ I tried to picture a sister.

‘Right now she doesn’t know she has a half-sister. She’s sixteen years old – exactly the same as you – and up until last week she thought her dad was her . . . Dad.’ Abe looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Odd what parents don’t tell their kids, isn’t it?’

It was odd. And, I realised, it was potentially sort of wonderful too . . .

On his way out later that evening, Abe said, ‘I sent Marie my phone number – I’m hoping she’ll call me.’ He stooped so that his face was level with mine. ‘Would you like me to mention you? It’s up to you. I don’t have to, if you’re not ready for it . . .’

He put his hand on mine and I could see that both were shaking slightly. His hand; my hand. We were nervous. It was like we were both full of energy and it had nowhere to go.

‘No . . . Yeah . . . Sure. Mention me to her. Tell her I exist. Give her my details if you like – she might want to call me or visit or something. I mean, we could get to know one another. I wonder what she looks like. I wonder what her hair’s like . . .’ And then I laughed because I knew I sounded ridiculous.

‘You’re a prize loon!’ said Abe. ‘If she calls I’ll tell her you asked after her hair.’

Sometimes I just loved having a donor parent. You wouldn’t get moments like this if you were conceived by a regular mum and a regular dad in a regular kind of set-up. You had other stuff of course – like maybe a dad who you got to know over loads of years and who you could look at pretty much every day of your life and know that you got your nose from him, or the way you lifted your eyebrows or your natural talent at fractions. But you didn’t have moments where you finally found the provider of 50 per cent of your DNA spiral, or discovered a half-sister called Marie totally out of nowhere.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. I went home and sat on my bed and stared into my embarrassing kiddy Snow White mirror for the longest time, imagining what Marie’s face might be like, her eyes, her hair.

Of course, I always have to imagine the hair. I accuse my cousin Billy of being a guitar geek, or a computer nerd, but the sad fact is that I’m a hair geek. Really they need to put me and Billy in a lab and isolate that geek gene.

I don’t even know if I can explain it, but hair to me is like this giant puzzle – like a labyrinth or something that you have to solve. You see it and you think, Yuh-uh, I am going to figure out how this works. And then you get your fingers into it and sometimes it feels totally different from how you imagined it would feel, and it has this whole life of its own – like it knows what it’s going to do – and sometimes it defies you with its curl or its porosity. But the thing is, you don’t know how hair is going to work until you’re in it and you don’t know how you’re going to be with the hair until you’re doing it. And that pretty much sums up my life too.

I’ve been obsessed with hair forever – since I got my first Girls World Style Head, which was from Uncle’s cousin Moss (the one who buys and sells on eBay for a living). The Style Head was a talking one from the Philippines and it said, ‘Hello, ang pangalan ko ay Minnie!’ when you switched it on.