My Sister's Escort

By Harmony Shaker

I met my sister after having lunch with the rest of our family at a brasserie in Chelsea, which my father likes us to go to because it was very loud, and busy and my stepmother liked it because it reminded her of Paris. My sister had been so late that she missed lunch entirely so decided to just not show up, so I met her around the corner to hang out for the afternoon and if I was lucky the night too. I hadn’t seen her in months.

She had just got out of rehab the week before. She seemed better but still the same, thank god. She was accompanied by some friends she'd made in rehab. They were ‘sloaney’ and had gone in for alcoholism and bulimia. They dressed how my sister used to dress when she was about 15, which was embarrassing, but I liked how they made my sister act, like the Sloane she had been for a while when we were younger.

She convinced me to come to Portobello with her because they were meeting another friend there. I’m not sure why, but I loved making her convince me to do this with her. I think it was because I could see the pleasure she derived from feeling like a bad influence. I would always make up excuses that we both knew were irrelevant, like ‘I shouldn’t come out too long as I have homework’ or I’d say ‘I’ve planned to hang out with Dad’.

Honestly, I would go anywhere with her at any time, it always felt like a treat to see her, as I never knew how long it would be until the next time, and of course because she was fascinating. 

As soon as we arrived at Ladbroke Grove station she said goodbye. I felt hurt and disappointed. I had been tricked into believing I would have a whole day and evening with her! She greeted the boy who’d been waiting for us at the station and ran off. She said a boy had messaged her to meet him and she had to leave straight away. I told her off, telling her she wasn’t supposed to have boyfriends at this time, and should be focusing on herself and getting better.

Along with drugs, men were a deep problem for her. She charmed me and left. I could tell she had also charmed the boy we’d come to meet, he had certainly already fallen madly in love with her and would love nothing more than to listen to her speak, read her stories and have millions of her babies. This was the common effect of my sister, and so, I found myself with two Sloanes in west London. Which was a complete nightmare at the time, as I thought of myself as very cool, wearing dirty clothes and listening to Razorlight.

Eventually, the girls trailed off somewhere else to do god knows what, and I found myself alone with a boy who was also sourly disappointed by my sisters desertion. He was very thin and wore a hat which made him look a bit like a mystical junkie train driver or just a try-hard, I wasn’t sure. I was definitely attracted to him.

The boy and I then spent the entire day and some of the night walking up and down the Portabello. We talked through our whole childhood, our feelings about our parents and siblings, and music. He sang with an acoustic guitar, he wasn’t very good but very sweet. He sincerely felt he was doing something huge when he sang. He kept commenting on how mature I was for my age but also made it clear that age didn’t actually mean anything. I was fourteen at the time and he was eighteen. On the short tube journey we shared, he perched on the half seats which will never be functional for short people like myself. When we parted I felt all giddy about him and wondered if he wanted to kiss me and assumed he did in some small way. 

Later in the week, I called my sister asking for advice on how to message him via Facebook. I wanted to go on dates with him. She advised me to tell him something completely out of context. No hello. No how are you? Just don’t you ever think about whether we're living in a black hole? or ‘how all space is completely silent.’ I can't remember if I ever actually had the guts to do as she told me.

Just a few weeks after, while laying on the couch watching something which probably made it so I could actually feel my brain getting smaller with one of my oldest friends, my sister texted me. The texts were in capitals and many sentences were repeated and there was heavy use of exclamation marks. ‘FREDDY DIED! WTF! FREDDY DIED LAST NIGHT! HE OVERDOSED!!! 12!! HE’S DEAD!’  First I couldn’t believe my sister had only texted me and that the text sounded more like a fourteen-year-old talking about kissing a boy for the first time than the death of a young boy. But then everything just got very thin and quiet. 

I hadn’t known him for long and I didn’t feel distraught, just very sad and disappointed. Recently, I found that it was my sister's heroin that had killed him. I now think that’s why she’d texted me. She was trying to distance herself from it. A phone call and my voice may have made it too real. At the time the only silver lining I could find from knowing him and his death was that it may scare my sister, but soon I remembered who my sister was and knew that couldn’t be the silver lining. I’m still not sure what the ‘silver lining’ could be but I do think of that day we spent together often and always very fondly. I think I’ll just leave him there perched on the tube half seats slightly wanting to kiss me. Maybe that’s just where he’s supposed to be.