Strawberry Sisters by Candy Harper Page B

we’d eaten and I’d reminded Chloe it was her turn to supervise Lucy doing the washing-up.
    ‘I don’t need supervising,’ Lucy complained. ‘I’m already super.’
    ‘Fine,’ Chloe said, opening her wrestling magazine. ‘I won’t supervise you; I’ll just watch you to make sure you do it right.’
    ‘I don’t need that either!’
    Leaving them to it, I went to find Mum. She was standing in front of her wardrobe staring at the contents.
    ‘Do you think these blouses make me look old?’ she asked.
    ‘You are old,’ I answered.
    Mum laughed. ‘I know I seem ancient to you, but in the grand scheme of things forty is actually—’
    ‘Very old.’
    Mum shook her head. ‘But do you think I should get some new outfits?’
    I nearly said I didn’t think it mattered because I didn’t imagine anyone would notice, but it seemed like Mum was a bit bothered by her clothes all of a sudden, so I said,
‘Yes, why don’t you go shopping and get something that you really like?’
    ‘Something youthful?’
    ‘Why do you care about how wrinkly you look anyway? You’re always telling us that it’s what’s inside that counts.’
    Mum sat down on the bed. ‘That’s true. It’s not that I really want to look young; it’s more that I’ve realised that I haven’t given much thought to my image
for a long time. Most of these things I bought when I went back to work after Ella was born and that was over a decade ago.’
    ‘Then you should get some new stuff. Is it to wear to work?’
    ‘Maybe. I thought it’d be nice to have some casual things to wear out as well.’
    ‘Out?’
    ‘Mmm, you know, at the weekend or to my book club.’
    Now I got it. Mum wanted some new clothes to impress her new friends at book club. ‘You should definitely go shopping,’ I said.
    Mum nodded. ‘Perhaps I will.’
    It seemed to me that she was thinking about something other than just clothes, but before I could ask she said, ‘Now what can I do for you? You look like you’ve got something on your
mind.’
    So I told her about Lauren.
    ‘Oh dear,’ she said when I’d finished. ‘Poor Lauren. It’s so hard to be struggling with your health.’
    I thought that made Lauren sound like a pensioner who can’t walk without one of those frames and wheezes every time they stand up. ‘It’s not that bad,’ I said.
‘Sometimes she’s completely fine. And the doctors are doing tests on her so they can find out exactly what it is.’
    ‘That’s good. Just remember she might not be able to manage to do everything she did before. You’ll have to be patient with her.’
    ‘Of course I’ll be patient with her!’
    Mum patted my arm. ‘I’m sure you will, sweetheart. I’m just saying that things might be a bit different from before.’
    Personally, I thought that things could only be better than they’d been for the last couple of months because at least now I knew what was going on. If Lauren needed a rest or for me to
carry her bag then she could actually tell me, and we wouldn’t fall out because she was trying to hide how tired she felt and being weird. But I didn’t get to say this to Mum because
Chloe bellowed up the stairs, ‘
MUUUUUUUUUUM!
’
    ‘What is it?’ Mum called back in a normal voice, which is actually all it takes to be heard between upstairs and downstairs.
    ‘There’s a man on the phone who wants to interview me about that letter Suvi helped me write to the paper about what pigs they’re being at the rugby club, but he says he has to
talk to you first in case he’s dodgy and a kidnapper. I told him that I could tell he wasn’t a kidnapper because a kidnapper wouldn’t say he wanted to talk to you, but he says he
still has to talk to you and you have to be there when he interviews me, but it can be all my words. But he says they probably won’t call the rugby club pigs. Can you come down?’
    ‘Coming!’ Mum called, rolling her eyes. She stood up and smiled at me. ‘You girls are