Letters From My Sister by Alice Peterson Page A

diamond geezer.’
    ‘Lakemore.’ Thump on the back. I can hear their shoes clicking across the wooden floor. They go into the poker-playing room. Sam turns the sitting-room into the games room, puts out the card table with the polished casino chips. ‘Weh-hey, Davey!’
    ‘Crisps! How goes it?’
    ‘Who Crisps?’ Bells asks me in an even louder voice. Perhaps she’s unable to whisper?
    The door knocks again.
    ‘MAGUIRE!’ shouts Sam. The door crashes open.
    ‘LAKEMORE!’
    ‘They all deaf?’ Bells asks me, rocking forwards and putting her fingers into her ears.
    ‘Good question,’ I tell her.
    ‘Davey mate …’
    ‘Maguire, what you up to?’
    ‘Crispin, you diamond!’
    I laugh quietly to myself. I can’t tell who is talking, they all sound the same.
    *
    ‘You OK, Bells?’ She’s doodling on my newspaper. ‘Give us a clue,’ I suggest and put my files down. Sam has been playing poker for about an hour now, and I don’t know why he worried about me listening to their conversations. Boys together are about as interesting as a night out in Slough.
    ‘I’m gonna raise you twenty quid,’ I can hear one of them say.
    The chips go into the pot.
    ‘I’ll play,’ one of them says, more chips going in.
    ‘Fold,’ another says.
    ‘Are we all on for Ibiza this summer?’
    ‘Absolutely,’ one of them says.
    ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely,’ echoes another.
    ‘Tobes isn’t coming this year, his wife has well and truly put the mockers on that.’
    ‘D’you think he played away?’
    ‘’Course he did,’ one of them guffaws.
    ‘I wonder how she found out? Pub rules. What goes on tour, stays on tour,’ someone says.
    Bells and I look at each other. I pull a silly face at her and when she laughs I’m taken aback by how pleased I am. She lifts her right hand, thumb pointing up, near her nose. Sometimes, when I look at Bells, I wonder where she came from. Apart from the colour of her hair and eyes she looks like no one else in the family, but her laugh is almost identical to Granny Norfolk’s.
    ‘Stupid boys,’ I mouth at her, hoping to hear her laugh again.
    ‘Very stupid,’ she repeats, rocking forward with her thumb up.
    I move closer to her. ‘Boring, aren’t they?’ I whisper into her ear.
    ‘Ha-ha!’ she grunts, and almost laughs again. ‘That’s right. Very boring.’
    ‘She was a right moose too,’ one of them carries on. ‘I said to Tobes, “Mate, you could have done better than that.” Sam, who was that bird you got friendly with last year?’
    I tiptoe towards the door.
    ‘Can we go now?’ Bells asks impatiently. ‘I’m bored.’
    I put a finger over my lips.
    ‘Need loo,’ she says, getting up.
    ‘Boys, can you keep the noise down?’ I hear Sam asking, firmly but politely.
    ‘What’s got into you, Lakemore? You’ve turned a bit quiet. He must be holding seriously bad cards. Where’s your poker face gone?’
    ‘I could be bluffing, Maguire.’
    ‘You’re coming to Ibiza, aren’t you, Lakemore?’
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘What was that girl’s name?’
    ‘Er, I don’t know. Cigar, anyone?’
    ‘Scared the missus will find out?’ They all laugh.
    ‘I wasn’t going out with Katie then,’ Sam reminds them. ‘I would never cheat on her,’ he says loudly, rather overdoing it. ‘Music, anyone?’
    Come on, answer the question. Who did you meet, Sam? It doesn’t matter, we all have a history.
    ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ starts to play. The boys laugh.
    ‘What the …?’ Sam is clearly ejecting the CD. ‘Must be one of Katie’s,’ he says, trying to keep his composure.
    I put a hand over my mouth to try and stifle a nervous giggle when Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Ebony and Ivory’ plays next.
    ‘Blimey, mate. What’s happened to your taste in music?’ Maguire roars with laughter. ‘Next you’ll be playing Celine bloody Dion!’
    ‘It’s Katie’s,’ Sam mutters.
    I can hear Bells now, laughing in the loo, and then there is