I did not hear the service, I was not listening that closely. I didn’t need to. I knew what I would have said if I’d been invited to give the eulogy; if I’d been given the opportunity to stand up in front of family and friends, and God Almighty to say goodbye.
After all, who knew her better than me?
It mattered not a single jot that she excelled at senior school; that she had been a Carnival Queen, had gone to Oxford, gained a first and passed over offers of high-profile positions to become a mathematics teacher.
Accolades were bestowed on her from an early age; she could have been anything she wanted. Everyone knew that! What they did not know was how those tributes paled into insignificance compared to what she had in her heart.
That’s what made her irreplaceable.
She was special.
Above all else … she was my sister and my best friend.
January 1998
EMILY GOT IT INTO her twelve year old head that time was working against them. Rita’s recollections of her mother began to fade despite Emily trying her hardest to keep her memory alive through photographs and bedtime stories. Rita had been no more than a toddler when her mother had become seriously ill; she had experienced her mother’s love for less than five years and only had flashes of what it was like to be a real family.
Emily had no trouble remembering what it was like to come home from school to warm, chocolate muffins and a frisky puppy called Jet. She knew her father was a builder, but he had left them for another woman not long after Rita had been born. She could picture her mother’s eyes bursting with tears as she spoke of their love affair before marrying; he had worked away and called her every day, bought her flowers, been present at Emily’s birth…
But all that changed.
Some nights, Emily dreamed of her mother; flashbacks became flickering memories long forgotten. They ignited, creating a single explosion that shone a light on her creation.
She was conceived in a second hand bed on a mattress that insisted on drawing two disparate souls together. Carol and Ray Derbyshire slotted together like a couple of leftover frankfurters in a bread roll. That tiny spark of life they ignited became Emily, the end product of a marriage that stretched out for almost nine years like sour dough, shaped and kneaded by her mother.
Her mother said she knew from the day Emily was born that she would turn out okay, make something of herself. She had made her presence felt in the womb; conjured up a rippling storm in her stomach, her mother said. And when her first born appeared and smiled the storm disappeared, like magic. Emily reshaped her world with her presence, and didn’t stop until Rita, her baby sister, came along seven years later to steal her thunder.
Carol Derbyshire believed, “Good little girls weren’t made, they were born…” In an attempt to become a self-fulfilling prophesy, Emily became mummy’s little angel, her special helper, a good girl.
Oftentimes she wondered, ‘What if an angel falls to earth, a special helper, helps herself to things that don’t belong to her; what if a good girl defies her good girl genes and goes off the rails? What would her mother have to say about that?’
Truth be known, Emily did not regard her baby sister as a ‘bundle of joy.’ Why would she? She had had her mum to herself for seven years; she’d crawled, taken her first steps and peddled her first bicycle knowing her mother was there to catch her. When she trundled off to school, it was her mum’s hand she held tightly and her brilliant blue eyes that met hers at the end of the school day. She knew what it was to be cherished and loved and was not prepared to welcome a squalling infant into their home, demanding her mother’s milk and all her attention.
Less than a year after Rita’s arrival, unable to make ends meet on a single wage, the Derbyshire family were forced to downsize—that’s how her mum described moving out of a three bedroomed house with a garden to a third floor apartment in Bristol town centre where the walls were thinner, the neighbours were louder and the view comprised of a neglected playground frequented by undesirables and local gangs. They had to make, “compromises,” her mum said. A grown-up’s way of downplaying doing without.
Carol Derbyshire became a ‘we’ll have to wait and see’ kinda mum unable to commit to anything: buying new shoes, going on school trips, having friends round. Most nights Emily watched her mum batten down the hatches and make the best of things; things over which she had no control. She was a woman under siege, not only from the outside but from the inside too—her body was a ticking time bomb.
While Emily went to school, her mum attended a beginner’s course for accountancy run by their local college. She left Rita in the crèche and set about getting herself qualified. It was one more distraction to take her away from her first born, and Emily worried that she would have to share her with her studies too.
She didn’t.
Once Rita was bathed and put to bed, Emily and her mother helped each other with homework and studied hard for exams as if their lives depended on passing them. Not until she was old enough to reflect on their special time together was Emily able to appreciate the work her mother put in and the challenges she faced as a single parent. She pushed Emily hard and pushed herself even harder, so hard that some nights she would be too tired to eat dinner. At the weekend, she stayed in bed until lunchtime leaving Emily to see to Rita.
During those weekends Emily became her baby sister’s carer. For all her apparent displeasure, Emily began to love everything about Rita; she made her laugh with her tuneless sing-a-longs to TV programmes. Playing games of hide and seek which ended in a tickling session, became a weekend tradition. Even bedtime was fun. Rita would snuggle up to Emily while her mum worked and she would fall asleep long before the story had ended, but that was okay, Rita was a good girl with a big smile, golden curls and was as easy to love as chocolate chip ice-cream.
Over the years, Emily began to understand the depth of her mum’s love for them both, and stopped feeling jealous. She knew she hadn’t been sidelined by her mum. If anything, they became closer—they became a flawless family of three that she pictured as being heart-shaped.
Over a four year period, Carol Derbyshire worked tirelessly to raise her girls without help from anyone. Through hard work, determination and the belief of a supportive boss, at the age of twenty-nine she became a member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants—a proud moment for someone who had little by way of family for support and encouragement.
Two years later, she was dead.
Emily’s chest inflated with pride on the odd occasion when she spoke of her mother, but the air quickly dissipated and she folded when she recalled how her mother had suffered, fought to the very end, tried every possible avenue to secure a home for her girls. But all her efforts came to nothing. They still ended up in Summerville Children’s Residence.
When Emily sorted through old photographs, she felt the need to speak to her mother to tell her, “You did everything you could for us. Thank you for giving me Rita. We love you. We’re doing okay.”
But that wasn’t entirely true.
Rita couldn’t have known the precarious nature of her existence and Emily’s desperation. In four short years when her big sister turned sixteen she would have to leave, and who would keep her safe then? Who would protect her from bullies who would steal what few things she had? Who would shield her from unscrupulous members of staff who knew the little ones were utterly dependent on them for everything?