Weird Sister by Kate Pullinger

looking to move on,’ I replied. We talked for a while until it became clear that Julia and David Trevelyan had found their new employee. We shook hands, and I said I’d be at their house Monday morning.
    I left the party on my own sometime after ten p.m. I walked past the Black Hat but didn’t notice anything strange. I had expected to make my way much earlier, but I was so cheered by the idea that I was now gainfully employed that I actually began to enjoy myself. I helped Robert organize the food for supper. I sat outside under the canopy, near one of the blow-heaters. Jenny came and sat beside me. We could see the autumn stars above the hedge at the end of the garden. Jenny dipped her head briefly, laying it on my shoulder for a moment, and I found her presence reassuring. She was not a happy girl and her teenage years were proving especially turbulent. I worried about her. But tonight she radiated charm and confidence.
    ‘You look fabulous,’ I said.
    ‘Elizabeth,’ she was a little breathless from all the excitement and drink, ‘I’ve got a sister now. Can you believe it? Look at her.’ We could see Agnes standing in the garden with a group of people, her figure illuminated by a torch burning near her feet. Her dress shone white against the dark night. ‘She’s like a beacon,’ Jenny whispered, ‘blazing away.’

The Black Hat flies off
    At three a.m. Robert pushes his father’s wheelchair to his bedroom. He lifts him into bed fully clothed, foregoing the nightly ablutions that Karen performs without fail. Robert strokes his father’s forehead and says, ‘Well dad, Agnes and I are married.’ His father makes no response, but Robert doesn’t expect him to. Most of the guests are gone, Jenny is asleep on a couch in the sitting room, still wearing her matching dress and coat. Jim and Lolita are labouring in the kitchen, but they have urged Agnes and Robert to go to bed.
    Agnes’s hair is in a lovely state of disarray. Robert insists on carrying her up the stairs to their new bedroom, cleaned and repainted for the occasion. He helps her get out of the wedding dress and with every button his anticipation mounts. She licks her teeth and looks at him with an open sexual knowing that he finds absolutely compelling. They slide into bed together and begin the gorgeous process of celebrating their marriage.
    Elizabeth walked past the pub earlier and she didn’t notice. Other people walk past on their way home from the wedding and they don’t notice either. There is a low light burning in The Black Hat, but they think nothing of it – perhaps Jim left it on for security. Inside three young men are at work. They wear black puffy jackets and small woollen caps and faded blue jeans and though they are young, their faces are marked and hardened and stern. They look like what they are – thieves. They are inside the Black Hat robbing it clean. They have broken down the back door using crowbars and a large gleaming axe. ‘Why did no one hear them?’ Jim will wail very early the next morning when he and Lolita make their weary way home. ‘How could no one hear them? We weren’t all at the wedding.’
    ‘This village,’ sputters Lolita, ‘this village is run through with envy and malice. I swear, they could have knocked us down in the street and no one would have done a thing.’
    ‘Lolita,’ says Jim, ‘that’s not true.’ But he hasn’t been inside yet.
    They have torn down the curtains and smashed the glasses – every glass, not one survives. They have stolen the Toby jugs and taken or drunk or poured out all the booze, holding open the draught taps until the floor is awash with lager and bitter and Guinness and coke. They took an axe to the new computer till and when that yielded nothing, they used the axe on the polished oak bar, the shining counter that has long reflected back the faces of the punters who sit there with their beer. There was no money anywhere in the pub for them to steal, not –