belonging creative full marks

Dinner is at half past seven, she called over her shoulder. The screen door banged shut and she was gone. Jackie stood at the door long enough to see the red Chevrolet roll out of the driveway, bearing Judith down a sun-drenched street lined with freshly painted, white picket fences.

The talk had been unfruitful, completely unfruitful. She shouldn’t have sought out her sister. But what did she expect? Judith was of another world. She would just have to leave without saying goodbye, and send a letter back home when she got there.

‘Honey, do you know what they’re saying about you? They’re saying you’re uncouth, uncouth’. Judith spat the word out like a seed in a cherry, her red lips forming a perfect circle. Jackie had a sudden thought of leaning forward and kissing them, just to see her sister’s reaction. She imagined the outrage in Judith’s eyes and snickered to herself. But she merely sat there and drew on her cigarette, waiting for her to finish.

‘When are you going to get married, darling?’ Judith had a habit of stressing particular words in her sentences, so that they left indelible marks on the listener’s impression of the conversation.

‘When I find someone to marry. That seems sensible enough doesn’t it?’

‘Ha!’ Judith exclaimed, crossing one leg over the other and tossing her head back in that regal fashion she did things in, as though she was not sitting in a kitchen talking to her baby sister, but dining with the Duchess of York under a painted ceiling.

‘Darling, I’ve told you so many times. Why won’t you listen? Husbands don’t simply fall into a girl’s lap – you have to seek them out. You’ll have to go to parties, dinners, meet people, meet friends of those people. Of course it’s too late for you to have a debut, god knows you’re almost twenty-five. But you have to do something, before it’s too late –

‘You make it seem as though I don’t socialise. I go out, I meet men –

‘Oh you meet men, sure you do!’ Judith’s voice shot through