Chapter 2

I think the main reason I was always happy to be in the background was my sister. We'll call her Anna. That's not her real name, but it will do for my story.

Anna was a bitch.

I love her, I have always loved her dearly, but she was Hard Work. Three years older than me, effortlessly beautiful and slim and exciting and all those other words that I can't think of right now because I have always felt them and never said them out loud. She wasn't Hard Work for me, but for everybody else around her, she caused mayhem wherever she went.

When we were small, she used to look after me. Nobody would ever bully Anna's baby sister, not if they wanted a quiet life anyway. A boy pulled my hair at school once when I was about six. Anna punched him square in the face, breaking his nose in front of all his friends. She was suspended for a week and came back a hero. Nobody ever pulled my hair again. She was popular with a capital 'P' and in normal circumstances, it should have rubbed off my way. However, I reacted to her eternal sunshine by embracing her silhouette and was grateful, particularly at home, for the fact that people would forget I was there if she was. I loved the darkness almost as much as she loved the light and, I suppose, all those things They say about opposites getting along was more than true for us. With me she could be still, which wasn't something that happened very often. With her I could be loud. That didn't happen very often either. You would never have thought it had you known us, but behind closed doors we were closer than close.

My mother revelled in her wonderful daughter. She was always entering Anna for competitions and events, like she was some sort of pedigree show-dog. As far as my mother was concerned, I was irrelevant and I was left alone, until I fled the nest at sixteen, to do whatever I chose. My grades would never be as good as Anna's. I wasn't as pretty. I refused point blank to go to family gatherings and if forced would be a horrible, sullen embarrassment. My mother will never admit it to you, but she breathed a long sigh of relief the day I stopped darkening her doorstep.

Anna understood.

She knew that I wasn't like her and she didn't care. I've never met anybody as accepting and giving and loving as my sister and I never shall.

So I never had to be best, or first, or smarter because that was her job. I just existed and that was always enough. Enough for us, in any case.

My mother would disagree.