Lola Jaye - While You Were Dreaming

‘Don’t bank on it. This is just typical behaviour for her, putting herself first. Even when her daughter’s in hospital, she just can’t be bothered,’ Cara burst out, then immediately felt guilty. Lena didn’t need to hear that.

‘We’ll find her okay?’ assured Ade, gently rubbing her tense shoulder.

But Cara turned back to look at her sister and felt more than a little bit hopeless.

‘MILLIE!!!’

‘Huh? Cara?’ said Millie into her mobile phone as she switched off the vacuum cleaner.

‘I’ve been calling you for the last half an hour!’

‘I was hoovering.’

‘Now I know you’re lying!’

‘I was!’ protested Millie.

‘I don’t care! Just get your skinny arse over to the hospital, right NOW!’

‘Has something happened?’ She froze.

‘We’ve been waiting for you for ages and Ade and I have to get to the bar!’

‘Oh that.’ She wondered why the poxy bar couldn’t just wait. Surely Lena was more important?

‘I’m sorry, Cara, I forgot,’

‘That your sister’s in hospital?’

‘No! Of course not!’ Millie really wished she could stand up to Cara, just this once.

‘Get down here, Millie!’

Her heart sank at the thought of another ‘shift’ at the hospital. It wasn’t that she resented going, it was so much more than that.

She packed the vacuum cleaner away and pushed a pile of magazines under her bed. She’d tidied up her room the best she could and made a slight dent on the lounge, which in Lena’s absence had begun to resemble a pigsty. Cara was right about one thing–she didn’t do cleaning. But with all that was going on, it really helped to keep busy–especially as she still didn’t have a job. Besides. Lena would need a clean house to come home to. So, perhaps in a day or two, she’d even tackle the bathroom, spare room, and maybe even the kitchen. Lena’s room would remain the same, though, just as she’d left it. In fact, Millie hadn’t been in that room since Lena’s accident.

She freshened up and slid into a pair of skinny jeans, running a tube of lip gloss over her full lips. She looked good. Presentable. Sexy even. And her arse was far from skinny–more shapely and firm, apparently, judging from the reaction of the builders renovating the house a few doors down. Millie grabbed her handbag off the floor and glanced round proudly at her almost tidy bedroom. The place definitely needed a dust–now if she could only find out where Lena kept that huge green feather duster she used every Sunday as she listened to her MP3 player, singing at the top of her voice. Millie giggled, picturing the image in her head–Lena wasn’t the greatest singer!

As she turned to leave, Millie caught the glimmer of something shimmery on top of the television and spotted Rik’s watch. He’d have to come back now, she thought, with a lurch of excitement.

Millie blocked out Cara’s whingeing as she placed a finger softy onto Lena’s cheek. It wasn’t cold. She always expected it to be.

‘Are you even listening to me, Millie?’ questioned Cara. She’d been moaning about her lateness and how she needed to be at the bar, blah, blah, blah. Millie could never win with Cara.

‘I am listening,’ she replied with a sigh. Actually, Millie had been trying to remember the last telephone conversation she’d had with Lena, but she couldn’t. Had it been after her shopping spree at the pound shop, when Lena had called to see if she was all right because she’d been stood up by Rik the night before? No…it was some time after that in the form of a text. Yes, that was it. Lena had done a load of shifts at Kidzline, one after the other, whilst Millie had been spending quite a bit of time at Rik’s. Their paths weren’t crossing much, even though they lived in the same house, but Millie remembered Lena sending a text one day just before the accident. She’d read and deleted it straight away, though, because her phone was running out of memory space, which had been taken up with all the texts she’d kept of Rik’s. Now, she felt her throat constrict as she remembered with absolute clarity what it had said: ‘I miss you, little sis . Lets have breakfast sometime!’

She suddenly began to recall all the times she’d ignore her sister’s calls and texts when she’d decided to go AWOL because of some guy. Yet, when she got kicked out of her bedsit, Lena had been the first one there for her whilst Cara had just berated her for being so irresponsible. And when each and every boyfriend dumped her, Lena was the one to hold her, smooth down her soft curls, wet with tears, and tell her that everything was going to be all right. Just like when they were kids.

‘I just wish this hadn’t happened,’ Millie said helplessly. She waited for a dig from Cara, who actually surprised her for once.

‘Don’t we all,’ she said wearily as they both stared at Lena, as if the joint force of their stare could magically force her eyes open and they would once again see those beautiful emeraldy-green sparklers. To think, as a child, Millie believed they made her older sister look like an alien.

‘Hurry up and get out of this…Please. I–we–need you, Lena.’ She placed a hand on her sister’s arm but, instead of being overcome with the usual sadness, Millie was gripped by a new but just as powerful emotion that swished about inside of her; holding on so possessively, she missed a few breaths.

Guilt .

What Cara felt, she didn’t know, but for her, it was definitely guilt.

The sprawling four-bedroomed house on Underhill Road was where they had grown up and spent their entire childhoods. It had a wooden gate at the front of a small garden that matched most of the other houses on the street. Now though, it seemed to stand out more, as the Curtis household was one of the few that had retained the original layout, as most of the others had been converted into flats.

Now, without Lena, the house felt incredibly lonely. Admittedly, since moving in again, it had only been the two of them–once the lodger Meg had moved on–but Lena had this ability to make it seem like the house was full again. She was like a huge rainbow of light, with flashes of stars sprinkling all around whenever she walked into a room. Not just because of her eyes, but the mad hair, often bunched into a hairband or up in a ponytail (which Millie hated). She always seemed to be in that suede gilet with the fur trim, multicoloured scarf, jeans skirt or bootcut jeans and those massive Uggs she seemed to live in; not because they were fashionable, but because they were comfy. How Millie hated those boots! Millie scrolled down to ‘Lena’ on her mobile, and called the number for the third time, waiting to hear her sister’s answerphone message.

‘Hi, it’s Lena. Leave a short message and I will get back to you. Thanks for calling. Bur bye!’

She dialled again.

‘Hi, it’s Lena. Leave a short message and I will get back to you. Thanks for calling. Bur bye!’

And again.

‘Hi, it’s Lena. Leave a short message and I will get back to you. Thanks for calling. Bur bye!’

She’d called the number every day for the past week, hoping that Lena might actually answer with a noisy laugh, claiming a well-deserved victory in the biggest wind-up ever, admitting that the last two weeks had been a joke.

Millie scrolled down to ‘S’ on her phone. No, she wouldn’t. Not yet. In fact, she was going to do everything in her limited power NOT to do THAT this time. So what if her sister was in a deep sleep? Or that she was alone, jobless and without a boyfriend? She was not going ‘there’ .

She glanced around her room, which was now neat enough after the overdue trip to the launderette, the rest of her clothes now packed into her wardrobe and out of the suitcases they’d lived in ever since she’d got thrown out. That hadn’t been her fault, though–she’d defaulted on a couple of months’ rent because her benefit had stopped when she’d found a job. No one had bothered to tell her she’d have to start paying full rent immediately , had they? Lena had bailed her out of that mess by letting her stay after the lodger had left. As always, Lena had been there for her. And, as usual, she’d repaid her by not helping out around the house or even attempting to cook a meal with which to present Lena after one of her long and demanding shifts at Kidzline. Sometimes she didn’t get home until 11 p.m.