On Turtle Beach by Lynne Fisher

Author:Lynne Fisher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lynne Henderson
Published: 2020-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

11

Where Hides Sleep?

That night and the next three days were fraught with escalating tensions.

After the cruise, Lucy and Rhea bickered more than usual, and sharing a room was becoming increasingly difficult. The only thing they managed to agree on was to keep the rumbling air conditioning switched off when trying to go to sleep.

Lucy was feeling the heat and was sunburnt from not being vigilant enough on the cruise. Her back was the worst area from all the snorkelling she’d done. She wanted the balcony door kept open in the vain hope that some cool breezes might drift in, but Rhea wanted it closed to keep the mosquitoes out, and to shut out the sound of cicadas she was certain she could hear. Lucy reluctantly surrendered. But when Rhea lit up her evening cigarette, Lucy insisted she take it outside. Rhea conceded this point and went down to the pool area, relieved to be sharing her musings with what turned out to be only crickets chirping in the shrubs.

By this time in the holiday, they had got used to some of the practicalities of sharing a room and had been negotiating them with great care. Bathroom privacy was the highest priority - at no point, and for any reason, could one sister walk in on the other. They were also not allowed to watch each other changing or shaving their legs. Seeing each other’s bodies ‘up close and personal’ after all this time was simply out of the question.

There was a territorial borderline between their beds, and those which divided the dressing table, drawers and wardrobe in half. Rhea’s side of the room was nearest the door and bathroom, and she was keeping it in trim like an Elizabethan knot garden, whilst Lucy’s side, next to the balcony, was more Gertrude Jekyll, all luscious growth and full of surprises. They had automatically adopted this approach from their experience of sharing a room when they were girls, an experiment to see how they got along, said George at the time. They had managed, back then, to make it work for about a whole year, before their respective territories were bombed and invaded, when they flung each other’s clothes and cuddly toys all over the floor. As a result of numerous fights, Lucy’s teddy bear, unsurprisingly called Ted, had needed one of his eyes gluing back on, but the blonde hair of Rhea’s Barbie doll could never grow back after Lucy had hacked it short. And so Lucy had to be relegated back to her box room. Shortly afterwards, the family moved to a larger house, where a big bedroom each, meant they could establish an uneasy truce in what was to be the family home for the rest of their teenage years.

Sleeping had always being difficult during that year they shared a room, due to Lucy being a light sleeper. She would be just stretching towards the edge of oblivion when an already fast-asleep Rhea would start making breathing noises. This would snap Lucy back into a coiled spring.

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