Page 3 of Role Model
Fizz. My older sister and not someone I enjoy spending time with, let alone being related to. She’s twenty years old and too loud. Her hair is a different colour every time I see her. She has tattoos and clothes that she buys on the street. She chugs caffeine and is always too happy and too excited about everything.
I feel like I’m a sensible pencil, the kind you’re supposed to take tests with, and Fizz is a sparkling, fluffy, brightly-coloured gel pen. The pen the teachers tell you not to bring to school.
11We don’t look right together.
Ilya walks silently to the door and I know that’s his silent signal. We’re leaving. Everything is going to take so much longer now. Getting to and from places will require Ilya and the wider security team to check that it’s safe. He’ll follow me like a shadow. Dad is making arrangements with the school already.
I think a part of me was hoping Mum might lose the election and we could all go home.
Silly.
I wait for Mum to say goodbye. I hover in the doorway. But she’s murmuring with Keren and reading something on a tablet. Her frown lines are showing and two more people have come into the room.
So, I leave. Without her even noticing.
*
When we’re safely away from Whitehall and in Green Park, we both spot Fizz under a tree. It looks like she’s asleep. I feel myself scowl. Of course, she’s the kind of person to happily sleep in public. Her long hair is candy-floss pink today. Her earrings are enormous and she’s wearing a denim jacket that has loads of different signatures scribbled on it. She has a beauty12mark tattooed onto her upper left cheekbone. When Mum confronted her about it, she said it was easier than drawing it on every day.
I clear my throat and her eyes shoot open.
“Well, good afternoon, babe.”
She calls everyone ‘babe’. “Why didn’t you come to the house?”
She stays on the grass, her back still pressed against the tree. “The house? Is that what we’re calling it? I think it’s more of an office. Or a prison.”
Fizz is a lot older than me and was in boarding school for most of her life. She moved away from home when she was seventeen and went to Paris. Then Dublin. Then Prague. When she finally crash-landed in London, Mum would call and ask her about going to university to get a degree and it would always end in an argument.
I’ve never really lived with her. She doesn’t feel like a sister. Just a colourful stranger who comes over for Christmas.
“Looking very serious there, babe. But then, you always do,” she says to me.
“Can you get up? I want to go.”
“Where are we going? What could be better than this big old tree? I’ll give you a boost, you can climb it!”
13“Anywhere else is better.”
“Fine,” she sighs. She reaches out to Ilya. “Give me a hand, comrade.”
His lips twitch and he helps her up. He’s the only one in our entire family circle who finds her amusing.
“So,” she says as we walk across the frosted grass in the cold November sun. “How’s school?”
Awful.Weird.Ihavethesefriendsbuttheymakemewanttocryeverysingleday.“Fine.”
“Uh oh.”
I scowl. “No, it’s fine.”
We’re walking up Regent Street and as we pass Hamleys, the toy shop, Fizz squeals and throws her body against the big glass window.
“Oh, babe, look at the beautiful dolls!”
Ilya smiles a tiny smile, but I feel my ears turn red. I glance around, making sure that none of the passers-by have seen a grown woman cry in delight over some children’s toys in pink dresses.
“They’re stupid and they’re for little kids.”
