The Girl Who Wanted Everything

The broken sisterhood

Giselle was tall and exotic. She had been a runway model in her youth and had the thin, broad-shouldered, arresting look that one might expect. She was also a ceramicist, which I found terribly artsy and exciting.

She had decided to have Sam on her own, and his father's identity was never revealed, or possibly known. Sam looked like he had sprung completely from his mother anyway.  He had her wide-set eyes and generous lips and that same sort of European mystique that just marked him a little apart. Also, like his mother he was one of the gentlest, kindest people I knew.

I think Sam stole my heart when I was five. Back then, our mothers would hang out together almost weekly and the three of us were expected to play. I had been running across Sam's yard when I fell and grazed my knee. It was painful and bleeding, but I never called to my mum. I didn't have to because Sam was there. He went to fetch a plaster and cleaned the wound. He rubbed my back and told me it was ok. He was all of five years old himself. 

Having him care for me made me feel like everything would be ok. I wanted to feel like that always.

Besides that, we were friends. We played at making a fort in the bushes and pretended it was Neverland. We set up booby-traps for imaginary enemies and hid from Captain Hook. It sounds quite wild, but Sam and I were both introverts; our games were based more on imagination than daring. 

It was Jamie who climbed the trees and yelled war-cries.  

At times, one of our mothers couldn't make the get-together, so Jamie and Sam and I were a fluid presence in each other's lives. It never occurred to me what the two of them did on the days when I was the one who was absent.

I found out one week when I arrived at the playdate expecting an exciting follow-on to the Neverland saga.

"Today we are playing family,'' Jamie announced. "Nadine you are Sam and my baby.'' 

What was this absurdity? Surely Sam would not stand for it. I looked quizzically over at him, but he seemed not to notice.

"Why?'' I asked. "I thought we were going to play Neverland today.''

"Be-cause,'' Jamie replied with an impatient air, "Sam and I played wedding last week when you weren't here. We are married now, so we are going to have a baby.''

I was flabbergasted. Married? I was too stunned to object further and went along with the painful baby charade (although I would much rather have been the family dog if I had to participate at all). On the way home I was angry with my mother and thumped repeatedly with my feet on the back of the driver's seat.  It was her fault we had not been there last week, maybe I could have stopped the wedding if we had.  Maybe Sam would be mine.  

Deep down I think I was really angry at myself. I didn't want to admit that if I had been there, the wedding would not have been stopped. Instead, I would have been the flower-girl, watching from the sidelines as my heart got broken.

After a while, the family game subsided and our imaginary play turned to more mature pursuits. Jamie became popular and sophisticated – on her phone from a surprisingly young age. Sam and I played computer games. We both loved Minecraft and could sit companionably for hours playing together in the same world while saying barely a word.   

I relished these occasions. I had Sam all to myself in a comfortable little bubble and I could peer over my screen from time to time and catch a glimpse of the face that seemed to be growing more handsome by the day. When we were nearly thirteen, I allowed myself one of these glances and saw that Sam was looking up too. He wasn't staring in my direction though. His eyes were fixed over my shoulder into the next room where Jamie was sitting on the bed, texting.

Not long after that, Giselle announced that she was taking Sam and moving to Geneva. Her family lived there, and she wanted Sam to know them and to complete his schooling in Europe. Jamie's mother and mine were crushed, doubly so because Ronnie had recently gone through a bitter divorce and the sisterhood of the other two had become her emotional rock. I was equally crushed. What a cruel trick for the universe to play on me – taking Sam instead of Jamie.

My only consolation was that we still had access to Jamie's beach house. Ronnie had gotten the beach house in the divorce, and because she didn't like holidaying alone, she had always invited my mum and Giselle along every summer. My dad, a quiet, introverted type much like myself, was all too happy to let the girls have their fun. Ronnie could be a handful, especially in her post-divorce era and he didn't really enjoy her vibe.    

I loved the beach house, and the small quirky town in which it was situated; loved it so much that I was happy to go each year even though that meant enduring Jamie alone for a couple of weeks. We were growing further and further apart anyway, she having departed for an expensive private school as we entered our teens. 

Our mothers tended to see each other without us now that we were older, which was blissful, and we had very little to say to one another really.

And that's how it ran for four years, until the spring I turned seventeen and I heard my mum shrieking with delight one afternoon. She had received an email from Giselle saying that she and Sam would be coming over for the summer and could they join us at the beach house for old-time's sake.