Un-Wuthering Heights

“It finally happened. He broke up with me.”

Nicola spun around from where she’d been admiring the view from the London Eye as it began its rotation. She’d booked the trip for her and Saffy as an early Galentine’s gift. The sisters had made a pact to celebrate each other since they were 11 and 12, following the earth-shattering news that Chloe’s crush at the time was moving to another school.

“Oh, Saffy,” said Nicola, pulling her sister into a hug. Nicola worked as a nurse on a Care of the Elderly Ward. The Powell family had always predicted as much for their firstborn. Nicola was always running around making sure everyone was okay, dampening the fires of any fallouts between school friends, and attending to their chronically ill mother who was largely confined to her bed.

Saffy, on the other hand, worked at getting men to like her. She was the romantic one, doodling and writing and singing her way through adolescence, while Nicola was the practical one who did the bulk of the chores and the homework.

Nicola inwardly sighed as she felt Saffy crumple under her embrace, and shot a look at the other travellers in the pod that said “don’t ask” when they turned to look at what was making the keening noise. Thankfully they were out of high tourist season, so there weren’t that many witnesses.

“I’m nothing without him. This is my worst nightmare,” Saffy managed to get out between hitches. “I swear I’m going to smash through this glass and jump. If it ever reaches the top.” She rambled on while more London landmarks came into view and Nicola wished instead she were having tea at Buckingham Palace.

Nicola bit her lip. This wasn’t how she’d planned her gift going down. She thought it might get Saffy to view the bigger picture. She’d always been so introspective. Filling journals, analysing every little thought and emotion. They were both now in their thirties, but in some respects it felt like Saffy had never flown from the cave that was her teenage bedroom.

“Everything we’d built together...” Saffy was saying, making Nicola think of the IKEA wardrobe that Saffy and Evan had taken a fortnight to put together combined with Saffy’s running commentary over text, “...gone. I’ve got nothing left.”

Nicola let Saffy go. “Saffy. You’ve got your mind. Others have lost theirs!”

Saffy looked confused.

“My Alzheimer’s patients?” Nicola prompted. “Honey, you wouldn’t feel so alone if you would only learn to like yourself a bit more. You have to learn to be happy in your own company. This is what keeps pushing men away, the insecurity. Constantly needing confirmation it’s going well, instead of…just making it go in the first place.”

Saffy’s lower lip had finally stopped juddering. This was the first time she was hearing her sister talk like this.

“Look. Just look around you.” Nicola gestured at the landscape. “Go out into the world instead of hiding indoors looking through old photos and listening to Nirvana.”

“I don’t listen to Nirvana anymore!”

“Well, whatever sad sacks you’re into now. Leave an imprint on this Earth instead! Make something! Be something!”

Saffy fished her phone out of her handbag, hauling several notebooks out of the way first, tapped at the device a few times, then showed it to Nicola. “Cute isn’t he? I’m thinking of adopting him.” Nicola glanced briefly at the black cat, who was named Paco and apparently liked being indoors and disliked small children.

“Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?”

“A cat wouldn’t give very good foot rubs though,” Saffy pondered, while fresh tears threatened to spill.

“I’ll tell you what won’t attract any potential foot-rubbers – all this snivelling and self-pitying.”

“It’s okay to feel emotions.”

“Feel them, yes. But don’t become them. Don’t define yourself by them.”

“Oh look! They’re waving. Let’s wave back,” said Saffy, who began flapping at a group on the top deck of a passing boat.

Nicola huffed at the blatant deflecting. She was good at simmering down, however – one had to be in her role, which included attending to downright insulting pensioners some days, and looking on the bright side of things (aforementioned pensioners wouldn’t be around forever). At least Saffy was now taking in some of the view she’d paid for.

“Look,” said Nicola, sugaring her tone a little. “I know we grew up obsessed with all those heroines, but if you dig a little deeper…Cathy in Wuthering Heights? Ends up dead. Ophelia? Flips out. Tess? She of the D’Urbervilles?” Nicola mimed a throat slitting.

Nicola saw the tension in Saffy’s face slacken a little.

“Sleeping Beauty? She was asleep while men were snogging her. Definitely not cool,” Saffy contributed.

“Yeah, now you’re getting it!” The sisters laughed, with Nicola’s honking startling a teen who’d been pouting for a selfie, causing her to drop her phone, which only make Nicola honk harder.

“But look at that though,” Saffy said quietly, nodding at a couple holding hands. As they watched, the man brought his lover’s hand up to his lips and kissed it fervently. “That’s what my heart yearns for.”

“And look at her,” Nicola said, pointing to a woman standing on her own, who looked just as happy as the couple. “She’s happy to be here, and isn’t fannying about with selfies like your lovebirds are now doing, patting their hair and checking whether their lunch is in their teeth, while all this beauty of creation passes her by.”

“You sound like a self-help book.”

“Well, maybe that’s the sort of literature you should be moving onto, Saf. Also: I’ve read your stuff. You’ve got a real gift. Share it with the world. Don’t wait for some guy to tell you the same. Because if you hang about waiting for that, that’s all that energy that could be going into writing instead.”

“And they mostly want to confine me to the bedroom for the first few months of it, and not to do any writing.”

“There you go. It’s a bit difficult to think straight, let alone write straight, when someone’s wriggling around on top of you.”

“You’re wasted on that ward. You should become a private counsellor.”

“Oh believe me, it’s all part of the service. Who do you think it is cheering up the frail old men whose kids can’t be bothered to visit?”

“So you’re saying you essentially exist to please men too?” Saffy asked with a sparkle in her eye; a sparkle that gave Nicola the utmost relief, as she knew then that her sister was going to be okay.

Nicola gave her a playful shove. “Oh shush, you.”

The pair looked out of the pod in companionable silence for a while.

“We’re nearly at the bottom now. Do you feel any better?”

“Oddly, I do feel lifted. For someone who was at rock bottom when she got here.”

“WAS. I’m liking that sound of that ‘was’. Listen, I’ve got a few other things to say while we wind down.”

“Thought this was Galentine’s day, not Pick on Saffy day. But go for it. I’m not going anywhere. Not for another few hundred metres, anyway.”

“Okay. So.” Nicola drew in a deep breath, drilling into the well of all the home truths she’d ever wanted to say to her sister that she’d been suppressing for too long. “You’ve got to be your own stamp of approval. Don’t wait for someone to come along and brand you with theirs, or tells you what to approve of. Decided what’s meaningful for you. For some it’s that old blueprint of university/marriage/house/kids. Yours might be enjoying, I don’t know, how grand the Houses of Parliament looks while also being grateful for not being inside it right now. Own it. Be it. Some people are brain surgeons. Some people might do no more in their day other than hold a door open for someone. Both are good, wonderful people, who deserve to be around.”

Saffy shook her head. “I get what you’re saying, but I always feel like I need permission before I can actually enjoy anything.”

“Whose permission are you asking for, and for what exactly?”

“I’m…asking for permission to be validated. To be seen as loveable.”

“I think you’re loveable.”

Saffy smiled tentatively.

“So how does that make you feel?” asked Nicola.

“Well, that’s nice and everything, but I’m not going to ask you to divorce Tom and shack up with me.”

“Good. That would be most confusing for the boys if mum announces she’s going to live at Auntie Saffy’s.”

Saffy smirked, before her expression returned to one of doubt. “I just want to be myself, and for that to be enough.”

Nicola clapped her hands. “Great! But you can give yourself permission to do that. And once you have that inner comfort, you’ve put the groundwork in. And can then start building. You can create. Share that gift of yours with others. The needy.”

“That’s what he always said of me. That I’m too needy.”

“Well, maybe your basic needs weren’t being met.”

Saffy considered this. “True. Now I think about it, that’s very true.”

Nicola was cut off from what she was about to say next by an announcement shrieking through the speaker she’d only just noticed was above her head.

“Hey, why have we stopped?” Saffy asked.

“If you shush, I think they’re trying to tell us.”

“Apologies everyone, there’s a mechanical fault we’re doing our best to resolve. Our engineers are aiming to have everything up and running as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.”

Nicola looked ashen. She was only good in confined spaces when it was for a set time. She had learned this quickly when Saffy had locked her in the garden shed when they were aged seven and eight.

Nicola’s chin began to wobble. “Oh no. This is my worst nightmare.”