Sisters’ Weekend

Starting a fire in the little fireplace is dead-easy and so something even I can manage. With the little blocks of paraffin to help me the fire is soon ablaze. And I feel the small living room warming up quickly. This is bliss. All the other rooms are still damp and cold, in spite of the fact we started to heat this place up upon arrival, yesterday afternoon. This is late November and most of the other cottages in this recreational park are empty. Our cottage number 361 appears to stand somewhat alone, on the edge of the terrain. When I look out of the big window I don’t see other lights around. I do spot Beatrice, my older sister, who has just finished stretching her hamstrings and is now taking off for a run in a steady pace. I watch her disappear behind the bushes and trees. She’s going to sweat out her hangover, I know. This is a sound plan, but I feel too weak and wobbly this morning to follow her footsteps. Maybe later.

I turn to my eldest sister Lea. ‘The place is deserted,’ I say. ‘Which is a good thing I guess. Now we’ll be able to kill each other later today without disturbing any of the other guests.’ Lea doesn’t look up from the couch; she continues to read the newspaper in silence.

Fanny, my youngest sister, enters the room and grunts a soft ‘Hallo’ in reply to our inquisitive looks. When Fanny walks on to the kitchen block I sit down next to Lea on the yellow couch. Fanny’s face is tight and pale. I hear her fill a glass of water, drink it down in big gulps, and open the tap for a refill. Lea and I exchange looks. Lea rolls her eyes, but still doesn’t say a thing and turns back to her newspaper when Fanny walks back to join us with a glass of water in her hand. Fanny is tired and irritable, I can tell. Ready to lash out. She must be feeling cold in that skinny tall body of hers. Fanny takes the chair next to the fireplace, and moves it dangerously close to the heat. ‘Why don’t you take a seat in the flames,’ Lea says without looking up. Fanny ignores her, sits down and throws back her long dark hair. Then she activates her iPhone and starts to enter a long text message. For the next few minutes the three of us are just sitting there. The only interruptions are the sound of pages being turned by Lea, and soft discrete pings coming from Fanny’s phone. Notifying us of her sending and receiving replies. My hang-over is playing up. I am in no mood to break the tension that is slowly but steadily building up in the cottage, by asking the one obvious question. Who is Fanny texting to?

I slowly start to recall parts of last night. Fanny’s tears. She was crying and telling us about the cold war-fights she and Henry were having­­. How they were unable to reach each other anymore these days. So this sure isn’t Henry. Didn’t she hint at a lover? Yes she did, and Beatrice and Lea had been judgemental about it. I remember the mood changing from warm and playful drunkenness to us all coldly taking positions. What else did we talk about last night? I search my memory with growing nervousness, which is not good for my pounding head. What did I tell my sisters? I rub my temples and sigh. This is going to be a long day.

Every year my 3 sisters and I plan a sisters’ weekend away somewhere. We look forward to it, dying to spend some quality time alone together. But we can’t seem to escape this repetition of stages. It´s like a play with set scenes. The opening scene: yesterday. Late in the afternoon we arrived, all of us cramped in Lea’s small car. Laughing, overloaded with joy and bags of food and drinks. ‘ Anyone else care for some wine,’ Beatrice had opened the first bottle while I searched for glasses in the kitchen cupboards. With a glass in our hands we had inspected the rest of cottage. ‘Oh my god, this stuff is ancient. How much are we paying for this dump?’ Lea was checking the bathroom. I tried out the mattress on my bed. ‘Should you decide to engage in some solo sex tonight Mare, please try not to scream louder than this,´ Fanny banged on the wall from the adjacent room. After the tour we drank and talked and laughed all through dinner, with more wine and port and vodka afterwards. And when we had finally called it a night, the fire had long gone out. We were merely ´shutting down temporarily´, Beatrice had whispered in my ear.

But this morning that light heartiness of the previous evening seems impossible to retrieve. Replaced by a slightly ominous mood. A few hours of sleep later we find ourselves back in this room. All masks shed; we are the girls we once were again. Today we’ll be taking no prisoners.