Sarah-Kate Lynch

Emily wondered, briefly, as she hauled Lucy’s bag up the stairs if perhaps it had been a mistake to try and get together with her sisters and attempt happy families. It had seemed like such a good idea, such a necessary one, when she and Paul had talked about it earlier but now that she was here and the tension was pinging off the walls, she wondered if perhaps she was better off without them. And they without her.

But Emily had long been the peacemaker of the Shoemakers and was also not one to change her mind. She would persevere with her plan, no matter how difficult, she decided, as she watched Lucy’s smirk light up her face when she realised she had scored the premiere suite.

It was just as well she embraced the challenge because the night did not pan out as she had planned. Lucy and Charlotte bickered so much before Emily had even put dinner on the table that her younger sister went to her room in a huff and her older sister spent the entire evening hooked up to her computer, working.

The next day Emily had imagined that they would walk on the beach or perhaps visit the craft shops in the local village but Charlotte disappeared in her ancient VW beetle and Lucy spent the entire morning stuck to her cell phone.

Emily walked on the beach by herself, lapping up the feeling of the warm spring sun on her face, wishing the weekend was unfolding more as she had dreamed, but determined that by the time they all went home, she would have said what she came here to say.

When Charlotte got back at two o’clock she was clutching a brown paper bag that clinked when she walked.

“We’re supposed to be de-toxing,” Lucy said to her, sucking on a Marlboro. “You do know what that means, don’t you, Princess?”

“Get fucked,” Charlotte answered and headed for the kitchen.

Emily watched the two of them and her heart ached. They were actually very alike, she thought, not for the first time. All Lucy had that Charlotte didn’t was a killer instinct. Take that away, and they were cut from the same cloth.

To her sisters’ surprise, she reached into a large cabinet in the front room and pulled out three big tumblers.

“I hope it’s vodka,” she said to Charlotte, who nodded. “I hope you’re having some,” she said to Lucy, who nodded too.

Three vodkas each later, the sisters sat almost cosily in the front room, Charlie having abandoned her funk and Lucy her work. Emily felt flushed with success…and Sea Breezes. The alcoholic kind. They were actually managing to have a sisterly moment.

“It is nice to be away from it all,” Lucy said, closing her eyes, leaning back in her chair and letting her guard down. “Extremely nice.”

“How’s Hugh?” Emily asked her. Hugh was Lucy’s long-suffering husband, a struggling journalist wanting to be a novelist whom she treated like dirt but who stuck with her regardless.

“The same,” Lucy answered, her eyes still closed, “unfortunately.”

“You’re always so vile to him,” Charlotte said.

Lucy’s head snapped forward. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Like I would take relationship advice from you, little miss can’t keep a boyfriend for more than ten minutes.”

To Emily’s surprise, Charlotte stayed relatively calm.

“You don’t know the slightest thing about me,” she said with something that approached a laugh as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a joint, which she proceeded to light. “For your information, I happen to have been having a relationship for two years.”

Her two sisters looked at her as she drew on the joint.

“Is that pot?” Emily asked. Charlotte nodded and passed it over to her.

“Nobody calls it pot any more,” Lucy said looking disparaging. “In fact, nobody smokes it any more."

Emily took in a lungful with astonishing skill, holding it down without coughing, then coolly exhaling. “I’m not a complete nerd,” she said. “I have done drugs before you know.”

“Next you’ll be telling us you and Paul drop Ecstasy and go raving,” laughed Lucy, “after which we shall have to look up in the sky and count the pigs.”

“Well, they might, for all you know,” snapped Charlotte. “What makes you the expert?”

“Fifteen years of family law and ten years of marriage make me the expert, Barbie,” Lucy shot back. “But if we want to know about manicures you’ll be the first person we ask."

“You are such a bitch,” Charlotte spat. “You don’t deserve a husband like Hugh.”

“Hah! That’s a laugh,” Lucy said as Emily felt the last of the sisterly moment pack its bags and take its leave. “I don’t deserve him? A spineless gimp who spends too much time smoking that ridiculous weed and not enough time sorting out his career? You haven’t got a clue.”

“Just because –“ Charlotte started to say but Lucy had an evil gleam in her eye and a full head of steam.

“I don’t need someone who I have to motivate to get up in the morning. I need someone strong. Someone focussed. Someone dedicated to getting ahead not bloody mindless idling. Someone who can do a decent day’s work and cook a meal. Who likes opera, not Supertramp; who goes to galleries not car shows; who wears Armani not Billa-bloody-bong. Who deserves ME.”

She stopped, aware that she had gotten carried away.

“Sounds like you have someone in mind,” said Emily. “And I’m thinking it’s not Hugh.”

Lucy looked at her as if realising for the first time that this was in fact the case.

“It’s not,” she said simply.

“Who is it?” asked Emily quietly.

“Her name is Valerie de Fresne,” Lucy said. “She is the wife of another partner in our law firm.”

“You bloody lesbian!” breathed Charlotte. “You bloody filthy lesbian!”

Lucy had leapt out of her chair and slapped her face before Emily knew what was happening. Charlotte, supine and helpless, lifted her hands to shield her face. Lucy never stopped at one.

“Don’t you dare call me that,” Lucy screamed. “Don’t you dare say that word you simpering, shallow, pathetic little supermarket demonstrator.”

“Get her off me,” shrieked Charlotte as Emily tried and failed to grab Lucy’s flailing arms. “Get the big dyke off me. Get the great enormous lezzer awayyyy,” she squealed, fending off more blows. “Get her off.”

Charlotte finally got clear of her sister and jumped to her feet, taking up a rather dramatic Tai Chi position that looked far from threatening.

Emily was suddenly aware that the air was thick and suffocating. Something - too many things - remained unspoken.

“You are mad,” Lucy finally said.

“I am bonking your husband,” Charlotte replied.