Then we were explorers in the jungle, making sure that everything was ready for the day ahead as we broke camp. We had camping stoves, backpacks, and tents aplenty, but Mum was worried that we might have forgotten to bring enough cat food for any lions we might encounter along the way.
"Lions don't grow in jungles, Mum," I said with a grin, although I wasn't so sure of that. I was sure that The Lion King had been set in a desert kingdom.
"They might be lost." Well, what could I say to that?
"Let's leave the lions to feed themselves," Lindy said. "I don't see how hungry lions is anybody else's problem. They should get a job. Then we'd have extra space in the bags for Sally's diapers. Baby needs her diapy, doesn't she?"
"Maybe occasionally," I said, and forced a smile. I could tell from the way she shifted in her seat that Mum was getting ready to yell. I didn't want Lindy teasing me now, after the way she had made me feel, but I also didn't want to ruin the trip. This was a special event, as sisters. I had to take the high road, at least until I could knock Lindy down a peg or two without spoiling Mum's day too.
We did a little role play for each new scene we heard the background noise of. It would start playing and we improvised, riffing off each other and running with whatever silly jokes the others came up with. It felt like we were a family again, and I could start to cheer up. But every time, Lindy found an excuse to slip in some barb about me being a baby, and that just reminded me of what she had said. It always lowered the mood, but I did my best just to laugh it off, so that we weren't all sitting in silence.
After a while, I was picking out a couple of scenes in advance. A choice of three or four that the app would choose from to play next, so it was never quite predictable. I could select how long I wanted them to last as well, from ten minutes to an hour, and it would attempt to make the sounds flow smoothly into each other. I was pretty impressed by how smooth the app was; especially when I found that it would let you use your own recordings and some AI to try and generate a loop of just the background noise from a place you'd been before.
It was a fun game, and I barely noticed the car eating up the miles until I noticed the sound of the road change from a smooth highway purr to the slightly uneven growl of a surface that hadn't been recently maintained; and then the clicks and pops of bark chips kicked up against the bottom of the car. Our first break of the day; Gresham Wold Woods had arrived.
This place was little more than a wide clearing in the woods; parking spaces weren't even marked out, and people squeezed in wherever they could between ruts in the dirt, stray branches, and a scattering of picnic tables that were assembled annually from fallen wood by the Gresham and Migeley Scout Troop. There were no permanent fixtures, but you could buy food from a trailer with a galley kitchen inside and a bunch of serving hatches.
"Short break," Mum announced. "We need to get back on the road quickly, so we're not getting lunch yet. This is a rest stop only. Got that?" We nodded, and then headed for the edge of the woodland. About three minutes walk later, we found a couple of sheds with toilets inside. Pretty much routine; we did this every year. This was the point where Dad would have said that he forgot to turn the TV off, or lock one of the windows, or say goodbye to his secretary. I sat on the toilet sobbing for a few moments, before I dried my eyes on my sleeve and forced myself to move on. Those memories would always be there, and we would always stop to remember; but they didn't rule our lives.
Lindy was standing outside. She was shaking, crying. And in that moment I just wanted her to feel better. I could understand how intense the feelings could be, coming back to a place that was familiar but with little things different to let you know that life would never be the same. She was staring at the door to the men's shed. A couple of years before Dad would have burst out with a snappy slogan like he was onstage, or feigning panic at the thought we might live without him. Now there was just a closed door, waiting for a group of people that included men to come past. A faded poster on the door flapped in the breeze, proclaiming "We are with you." It seemed like the ultimate irony.
I knelt down beside my sister and hugged her close, not saying a thing. This wasn't something I could fix, but I could at least try to make her feel a little better. I didn't notice Mum approaching until her arms wrapped around both of us. And then we were standing there, comforting each other. That moment lasted a long time. It was Lindy who broke the silence, muttering "We should go" under her breath.
We got a fried breakfast from the food trailer, just because the smell of frying bacon was too good to pass up. We passed through the 'gift shop' as well: a half dozen vending machines chained to the outside of the trailer, ready to be packed away at the end of the day. Lindy wanted to buy something, but she wouldn't say what it was. I saw her put something in her pocket, and figured it must be some kind of memento that might help to bring her a little cheer. I didn't want to pry. But much to my surprise, she bought me a drink as well.
"To say sorry," she mumbled.
"Thank you," I answered. And then I gave her a bottle of her own. Zesty Lime, her favourite of all the bottled tea blends, which we'd never been able to find closer to home. "And I'm sorry too. I should have been more supportive in previous years. And I hope we're all past that now."
"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I shouldn't have said anything about what a baby you are. I should have kept quiet just in case your boyfriend was close enough to hear. I should just ignore you laughing at me and treating me like a baby." I didn't know what to say to that; she'd admitted practically everything she had tried. And she still wanted to pretend like it was all my fault. I wouldn't let myself retaliate; I couldn't say anything more to her. But as we walked back over to the table Mum was sitting at now, I didn't want to hurt my sister, no matter what she had tried. Mum had got food for all of us, and it was more than we would have for breakfast on any normal day. We weren't getting food here, of course. We were just stopping to use the restroom, but the smell of good cooking had been too much to resist. Just like every year.
"You know, we really were just looking for a bathroom," Mum mused. Her mind was on the same memories. "The first time we came here. I misread the map and thought it would be like a three minute detour, not three extra miles along dirt roads. Then Sally was throwing a tantrum because she wanted to know what white pudding is, so we got some food, and then we saw Shirly and Leanna with their kids, and you wanted to go on the squirrel walk while we were here..." There was a smile on her face now, all the good memories coming back.
"And she was such a baby always throwing tantrums," Lindy grinned. "You went for a run in the woods and let your friends take her off your hands. I bet you really needed a break."
"Yeah. Kids at that age can be a real handful."
"Shame she hasn't grown up any in the last ten years." Lindy added, and I responded in the only way that made sense: I stuck out my tongue in her direction, letting the tension vanish.
"You should be glad your sister was wearing us out, Lindy," Mum said with another little smile; and this one I found it harder to guess the meaning of. "While Leanna was looking after Sally we went for a run in the woods, see how much we could burn off all those calories in twenty minutes. Then we came back and they hadn't returned yet, so your oh-so-mature father decided to start climbing trees. We realised that behind all the leaves, we could see everyone on these benches while we were completely hidden from the ground." She glanced over her shoulder with a wistful smile, and pointed to a space that looked no different to any other. "Lindy was conceived halfway up that oak tree."
"Mum!" my sister and I spoke together for once, both feeling like the revelation had come out of nowhere. Then Mum laughed, ate the last bite of her massive breakfast wrap, and stood up again. "Come on. We can't have that much of a delay today. Finish your coffee, trash in the bins, and meet me back at the car. Five minutes."
The bins here were weird. All the wrappings from the food trailer, and the packaging from the gift shop machines, even the generic gacha thing, was recyclable. But the bins were in different corners of the clearing, or a dozen yards into the woods, and there was a little leaflet that was supposed to make a game for the kids out of sorting out what goes where. It was a silly quirk, and we were probably too old to play the game now, but we still split the trash between us to take in opposite directions. I got the plastics; there weren't many, aside from the bottle from Lindy's peace offering.
"Think you can find the right bin, baby?" she said with a smirk. I blushed even without a reason; and if the memory of what she'd said to Hugo hadn't been at the front of my mind, I might have liked that feeling. "Oh, you finished all your drink too. That was a bit silly."
I looked at her bottle; still half full. Mum had got us coffee, so we'd opened them while we waited for it to be cool enough to drink. Then raised an eyebrow. Why did that matter?
"There's this prank Harper taught me," Lindy explained. "With some herbs. I think you knew about that. But now I looked them up and found out how to make it work. There's one that makes you extra thirsty, so you finish the whole bottle. And one that makes you need the bathroom faster. So I get to see my baby sister do a potty dance like a little kid."
"What?" I asked; I couldn't believe she was doing this again. "Why?"
"It was supposed to be revenge for making Niall think I'm a baby, but I got some more texts and I might be able to forgive you for that one. But I already made the plan and I don't want to waste it. And I got a cheap camera from the machine, so there's no parent controls. If you don't want me to share pictures the next time you wet the bed, you have to play my game." She didn't say she was going to do the bowl of water trick again, but I could assume that much. She didn't know if I even knew about that, but the fact of my wet nights would be enough to make the threat real whether I knew the cause of them or not.
"Okay, what do you want?"
"I'm just going to have some fun and laugh at my baby sister. You drank a big bottle and one and a half coffees, didn't you? But you're not allowed to ask for an extra stop. You need to hold it until Fort Boondoggle. Or you can ask Mum to diaper you in the back of the car. She might, she said before that she'd do it to me. But you can't tell her why unless you want you-know-who to see those photos tonight."
My cheeks were burning. I couldn't believe she was doing this, after so much effort to bring us together as a family. Ten minutes before, I'd thought that it was us together against the world again, but it had all been part of this game. And it was just a game to her; this wasn't her lashing out over some imagined disrespect, she was just trying to hurt me for the sake of it. My sister was a monster. But she wasn't winning; because she had no way of knowing that she was doing something I had a good chance of enjoying; she was trying to force me into getting babied. The photos worried me, but that was only a threat. If I went along with her demands, I didn't need to worry too much. She needed to learn some humility before she tried behaving similarly to anybody else, but for now I didn't have that much inclination to stop her.
"Oh, and don't worry about what Hugo heard," she added, an afterthought as she grabbed a bundle of cardboard trays and bamboo cutlery. "He'd never be interested in a big baby like you anyway."