Shortly after turning eighteen, my littlest sister announced to all the world that not only was she madly in love, but also pregnant. For anyone who knew Lydie, this was hardly a shock, but it was a matter of concern. This new love-of-her-life was George, a photogenic young soldier in his late twenties who wedded boyish charm with the seriousness of one who has served overseas in these hellish times.
George was not the marrying kind, though that did not stop Lydie's increasingly wild plans for a grand wedding. The rest of us - her sisters and parents - knew perfectly well that it would end disastrously, with my parents having inevitably to raise yet another child. (Despite an obviously frisky youth that had led to five daughters in quick succession, they had decided after Lydie that enough was most certainly enough and my father had had a vasectomy.)
Fortunately - in the sense of every cloud having a silver lining - my paternal grandfather had just recently passed away, leaving to my father not only a significant sum of money (after tax) but also a good-sized house just south of the River Tyne, coincidentally close to George's next posting. My father decided, for the sake of everyone's sanity, to buy George's undying affection by paying off his gambling debts and putting the house in trust for the impending offspring.
This outrageous generosity did not extend to the lavish wedding of Lydie's dreams, but like a star in the heavens she glowed with unfiltered happiness as she documented the burgeoning of her belly daily via her Instagram. Next to her often, of course, was George, whose apparent contentment with his fate had perhaps less to do with Lydie and more to do with Katy. The two sisters had always been inseparable, and it seemed this extended even to the marriage bed.
"Do you think she's pregnant?" I asked, squinting at the latest photos in the feed.
"Of course she is, silly," Mum said. "She's due in April."
"No," I said patiently, "not Lydie. Katy."
Mum peered over my shoulder at a photo of George with his arms about both grinning sisters. "Huh, maybe."
"Quite the ménage à trois."
Mum sighed. "If I were ten years younger..."
I scowled at her. "Don't even say it," I said. My mother's strict diet and self-care regime had blessed her with a body that defied her age. Not only did she often dress like my sluttier friends, she was able to pull it off too. My father clearly enjoyed having this flirty, energetic woman as his wife, but I really didn't need to hear her enthuse over George. I really didn't need a picture in my head of her in a ménage à quatre with two of my sisters.
"You look good, by the way," I added as a peace offering. She did too. She was wearing a glittery gold dress and knee-high black leather boots. Her blonde hair was styled and tied up, and her make-up subtle enough to seem almost natural. You could see in her exactly where my older sister Jane got her looks - none of which I myself inherited.
"Thanks, Lizzie," she said, practically beaming. "Your father's taking me to the theatre. He'll be here any moment. Are you sure you'll be alright?"
"I'll be fine," I assured her. "You guys have fun."
Ten minutes later she was gone and I was all alone. Not for the first time, I wondered where Jane was. She was supposed to be here. After all, she was the one sister who still lived here, even if she was away so often with her work. Photoshoots all over the world - although work had dried up for her over the past year. It was a cruel irony that I saw her more often in magazines than in real life, dressed in sexy lingerie and gazing seductively into the camera.
Jane was blessed with infinite patience and a good nature, and there was always something in her photos that made her look like a virgin on her wedding night, at once dressed for sex and entirely innocent of the act itself. The reality, of course, was a little different. Being a model got her invites to all sorts of posh parties, and for the past year she'd been dating a footballer called Charlie who not only earned a million a year but also probably spent it.
No doubt she was out with him somewhere, but I had hoped she would be at home.
This would be the first Christmas we weren't all home together on the day. Mary had accepted her younger sisters' invitation to spend Christmas up north, and I hoped that didn't mean I would soon have three sisters all pregnant by the same man.
Although I doubted it. Mary might be an anarchist (political and relationship) but being aromantic she was probably safe from George's seductive charm.
I made myself dinner, alone just when I had hoped not to be. The past year had been hard and lonely, what with the lockdowns and everything, but I was nearing the end of my doctoral thesis. I had been looking forward to spending time with Jane, gossiping about her men and my women - not that there had been any of those recently.
Indeed, my sex life of late had consisted mainly of visiting porn sites and putting my vibrator through its paces, and I wasn't about to gossip about that.
Sighing, I resigned myself to a solitary evening of Netflix and social-media doomscrolling. I even drifted off for a while - but suddenly I was wide awake...
You know how when you know you're alone in the house but you hear noises that you can't identify? And you panic that there's an intruder, or a ghost, or something? This was like that. Not helped by it being a big house outside of town, an old farmhouse with creaky timbers.
To suit a family with five daughters, the house had been redeveloped extensively, with what had once been the servants' quarters now a secluded downstairs bedroom suite for our parents, and upstairs (first floor and attic) were now five bedrooms and three bathrooms. The sounds were coming from the first floor, from Jane's room. Maybe she'd left the window open. Maybe it was just the wind - although I'd stuck my head in at lunchtime when I arrived, hoping to find her there, and didn't remember there being an open window.
A sudden cry dispelled that idea. A cry muffled by the thick wooden door, but unmistakably a human cry. If Jane were to cry out in distress, it would sound like that.
I charged in bravely, unsure what exactly I would find - and found what I could not have imagined.
This was in the early days - or, to put it another way, it was only two weeks after that notorious asshole post ("AITA for dumping my gf of 3 years cos she has a cock?") that was widely dismissed as a hoax; and a full three months before the famous Cosmo article, "Meet the REAL Chicks-with-Dicks!" As such, I had seen maybe one or two Twitter threads about cis women waking up to the shock of their lives, but I was far from believing it.
