“THE GOOD SISTER” by Sally Hepworth

Even if they were twin sisters and lived together, Rose and Fern had different memories of their childhood.

“When we were five, my mother took my sister, Rose, and me to the library every day for a year.

<<A better education than school will ever give you>>, Mum used to say, and I quite agree.

If it were up to me, every child would have a year in the library before they went to school.
Not just to read, but to roam.
To befriend a librarian.
To bash their fingers against the computers and to turn the pages of a book while making up a story from their superior little imagination.
How lucky the world would be if every child could do that.

I was lucky.

These days, researchers seem to be saying that we don’t form explicit memories until the age of seven, but I have a number of memories from the year I was five.
Memories of Mum, Rose, and me waking up with the birds, scrambling into our clothes and racing out to the bus stop. Because of our eagerness, we nearly always arrived before the library opened… When we got inside, Rose and I took turns sliding our books into the return slot and then racing to select our beanbags for the day.
Often, we didn’t see Mum for the whole day. That was part the fun. 
We went to the toilet by ourselves, we went to the water fountain by ourselves.
At the library, we were in charge of what we did and when.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Do you know what I remember from the library years?

Sleeping on couches that smelled of dog; being dragged from our old flat in the middle of the night and not being allowed to bring any toys; hauling striped plastic bags out of strangers’ houses every morning and putting them in the boot of Mum’s little car to take wherever we were headed next; waking up every morning with a pain in my stomach, a combination, I realize now, of hunger and fear.

You know something funny? I don’t think Fern even knows we were homeless that year.
She probably told herself it was an adventure, or a holiday or an experience. Or maybe she didn’t tell herself anything at all.
She had a gift for accepting life the way that it was, rather than questioning.

Some days– heck, everyday– I envy her that.”

Kindle, 2022