Birdie

A quick note before you start: this is a story I wrote last year. I don't know what to do with it. I'm not even sure, structurally, it counts as a complete short story. But I can't get these two characters out of my head. So here you go ...

My sister is a sparrow. Tiny and delicate, like a moderate breeze could send her tumbling away. That's not actually why I call her Birdie, though. Her appropriate stature was more of a happy accident, an interesting twist of fate. I call her Birdie because when I was two, my parents brought her home from the hospital wrapped up in layers of blankets, and all I could hear were sharp squawking sounds.

'That's not a baby,' I said, refusing my mother's offer to come closer. 'That's a bird. I wanted a sister!'

And I stormed off to my bedroom.

Some time later, curled up on my father's lap, I caught my first proper glimpse of this new arrival.

'It is a baby,' I conceded.

'It is, yes.' Dad smiled. 'Your birdie baby.'

I stroked her face delicately with one pudgy little finger. 'Hello, Birdie.'

I don't remember saying this. In fact, I don't remember meeting Birdie at all. This is one of those family legends, stories told so often they burn into your brain as though they always existed there, as though they haven't been slowly and subtly formed in the retelling.

My earliest memories of Birdie are hazy, foggy, one moment blending into another, like a long dream. Mum pushing the pram while I skipped alongside her on a cold spring day. Birdie trying mushed-up broccoli for the first time and forcefully ejecting it from her mouth in disgust. Birdie and I holding hands on my first day of school, butterflies in my stomach, smiles on our faces.

Then again, I'm not even sure if I remember any of this. Mum has this photograph in a frame, of her two daughters, small and precious, best friends clinging to each other on the cusp of a great change. Me with my big fringe and a serious expression, her with her fuzzy curls. Maybe what I actually remember is looking at this photograph again and again.

Memory is a funny thing. It's slippery, fallible. I'm not sure if I trust it at all.

Anyway, Birdie was on her way home. It was my task to pick her up. The fact that I was heavily pregnant was not a factor in this conversation.

'You don't have to,' Birdie said, reasonably, on our fortnightly family call. 'I can book an Uber.'

But Mum didn't like this idea. 'Oh no,' she said. 'Ava, I'm not sure you'll be safe in an Uber.' (Ubers were never a realistic option: Mum always thought Birdie was one step away from being kidnapped.)

'I don't mind getting you,' I said.

'If you're sure,' she said, sounding uncertain.

'Positive,' I said, sounding just as uncertain.

That's how I find myself sitting outside the airport in the car park, waiting for a break in the rain. It's pelting it down, a fine LAX-LHR welcome. Mum's brain will be going into overdrive. I imagine her making a cup of tea, quietly Googling the impact of hailstones on plane aerodynamics.

She looks tired by the time she finally gets through the gate. Birdie, I mean. She appears almost aggressively casual; navy jogging bottoms, clunky off-white trainers (the kind you genuinely exercise in, not the kind you buy to go with outfits), a grey sweatshirt with a slogan in thick white letters, and a Nike cap pulled so low over her head I can barely see her face.

By the time she reaches me her eyes are brimming with tears.

'Your bump,' she says, choking over her words, 'your bump.'

We stand there for a moment and cry together, my enormous round belly pressing into Birdie, her arms awkwardly wrapping up and around my back. It's a strange thing to cry about, but that's how it is when you have a sister living on the other side of the world. The smallest things can set you off: a different haircut, a new hobby, a redecorated house. Anything that reminds you of the fact that you no longer exist, physically, in each other's orbit.

Birdie hasn't been home for seven months. The last time she saw me, she didn't know I was pregnant. Although, to be fair, neither did I.

We mop ourselves up. Birdie buys us a takeaway coffee to bolster us for the journey home. Decaf for me. I blink, temporarily taken aback by this thoughtfulness.

'Well, you're pregnant, you have to be careful.' She frowns at me, faintly annoyed. 'I do pay attention to these things, you know.' When she's angry, Birdie loses her American twang completely, and I find this very comforting.

'How's Mum?' Birdie asks when we make it back to the car. It should take about an hour and a half to get home from the airport, but we're moving slowly in a sea of blurry headlights. I have the seat pushed back as far as it will go to accommodate my belly, making it even more difficult to see. It suddenly occurs to me that this might be the last time I drive for a while.

I consider the question. 'She's okay. She's, you know, Mumish.'

'Mum-like.' Birdie nods. 'She's feeling okay about, you know. Everything?'

Everything, in this case, refers to the unfortunate timing of my child's imminent birth. In another interesting twist of fate, my baby will be born around the anniversary of our father's death. It's a big one, too. Fifteen years. A blink of an eye and an unbearable eternity all at once.

While she waits for my answer, Birdie fiddles with the car radio, flicking from one station to the next. Her hair is much longer in person. Birdie's ever-transforming hair has been a topic of much conversation in our family calls over the years; she's gone from choppy, bright orange layers to Hollywood-glam red to a sleek black bob to a kind of strange blonde mullet. This time, she's decided to keep the blonde, but she's gone full Barbie, with waist-length extensions. The colour makes her look paler than usual, accentuating the dark circles under her eyes. 

Mum doesn't understand this decision.

'She looks so pale,' she said, when we watched some YouTube footage of Birdie's latest tour together a couple of months ago. 'Sort of … fragile.'

'I like it,' I said, with the surprising force of someone who didn't realise how much they liked a particular thing until the exact moment they are made to defend it. 'I think it makes her less like a normal pop star. It gives her, like, an edge.'

Birdie is a pop star, yes. Perhaps I should have opened with that. Birdie's career is the most interesting thing about her to strangers and, by extension, the most interesting thing about me. When people ask about my sister, I try to keep her true identity under wraps for as long as I can feasibly get away with; when colleagues or acquaintances ask about my family, I keep it vague ('I have a sister, but she lives far away') or I make it incredibly specific ('I have a sister. I call her Birdie. She's funny. She has seven cats.')

As soon as people find out my sister Birdie is actually Ava George - the Ava George, no less! - it's game over. All other topics of conversation cease to be relevant. Part of why I found my last boyfriend so intriguing was because he didn't actually know her name.

'You know,' I said. 'She wrote that song. Just Us.'

He looked at me, genuinely uncomprehending. 'What?'

I sang a few lines. 'Because after all is said and done it's … just us, just us ...' I elongated the 'us', but sadly, I do not share Birdie's vocal skills.

'I think I know what you mean,' he said, but he clearly didn't.

I keep hearing Just Us recently because of TikTok, of all things. All it took was for one person to make up a dance, and then it spread like wildfire all over again. The other day my phone suggested an article: Whatever Happened to Ava George? The History of TikTok's Latest Sensation.

I couldn't help but feel insulted. 'Whatever happened' to Birdie after Just Us was one dodgy album followed by two successful ones, a small-ish but dedicated army of fans, appearances on everything from Good Morning America to Saturday Night Live, and several sell-out tours. I told her about that article, and she laughed solidly for almost five minutes.

'Anyway,' she said, when the laughter subsided into hiccups, 'What did you think of the new song I sent you?'

'I like it,' I said, truthfully. It was quiet, more electronic than her usual stuff, and a little more contemplative. 'It kind of reminds me of Postal Service.'

'I know, right?'

You see, this is the problem. Even I get swept away with Birdie. In the excitement and the magic of it all.

'She's trying to see it as a positive thing, I think.' Back in the car, back to Mum and the impending joy, or doom, or whatever it will be. 'Buying lots of baby stuff. You know. I think it's a good thing, maybe. A distraction.'

Birdie leans her head against the window. She's sitting cross-legged with the casual flexibility of a yoga enthusiast. 'And how are you feeling?'

'Heartburn. Tired. Everything hurts. I feel like I'm carrying around a bowling ball.'

'An adorable bowling ball.' Birdie smiles. She turns her phone in my direction, and I can see she has set my scan picture as her wallpaper, which is both lovely and a bit much. Suddenly, I can imagine the kind of aunt Birdie will be: extravagant in her praise and attention, smothering the baby with kisses and love. 'I can't believe you're going to be a mother.'

'I know. It's terrifying.'

'No,' Birdie says. 'You've always been the grown-up one.'

The words come out of my mouth before I can stop them. 'I have to be.'

Birdie's smile freezes. 

This is an age-old argument, the constant undercurrent in our otherwise amiable relationship. It always flares up when we meet. We can't resist the temptation; the opportunity presents itself and one of us will pull on it, compulsively, a magpie yanking at a golden thread.

I think for a moment that Birdie might let it go, but she doesn't. 'That's kind of a loaded statement.'

'It's not.' I suddenly feel exhausted. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that.'

Birdie turns away from me. 'Right.'

On the face of it, this is how it appears. Birdie decided to run away to America to become a pop star, leaving me behind to look after a still-grieving Mum and try to retain some sense of normality. I'm the one who had to live in the shadow of Dad's loss while Birdie chased an impossible dream. I'm the one who had to ease Mum's anxiety while Birdie bounced from sofa to sofa, half the world away from us.

On the other hand, it also appears that I am the left-behind one. The average, less talented, and generally less interesting one, with an oversized chip on her shoulder. Birdie provides for Mum financially; she flies us over to L.A whenever she can, she messages us several times a week. She doesn't act like a diva. Everyone who runs into her on the street comments on it: 'I asked her for a selfie and she said yes! She was so sweet.' She never takes advantage of her position, and in tour season, works until her skin turns grey with exhaustion, barely stopping to eat, one city fading into the next.

In fact, it was Birdie who paid off the last of Mum's mortgage. Initially, she tried to persuade both of us to come and live with her. She was writing her difficult second album, and the flaming success of Just Us had finally dulled to a quiet ember. Birdie was panicking, and in her immense stress, she wanted home. She wanted to transplant part of Kent, somehow, into Los Angeles. But Mum didn't want to go.

'I can't,' she whispered to me, with the deep sadness of a woman about to break her youngest daughter's heart. This was the morning after Birdie's offer, and that night, neither Mum nor I had slept. Mum for worrying, and me for daydreaming about jacking it all in, moving far away, somewhere warm and bright and different. 'I'm sorry, Becs. I can't leave Dad.' 

And the thought of nobody staying behind to maintain Dad's grave - the thought of it becoming overgrown, sad, and neglected, as though nobody cared - made me cry, too. And, of course, I couldn't leave Mum behind. That was inconceivable.

I called Birdie to tell her the news. 'I'm sorry Birdie. We can't leave Dad.'

'Dad's not there,' Birdie snapped. 'He's dead.'

It's stupid, because of course I know he's dead, but hearing the words so bluntly took my breath away.

'Well, we can't uproot our fucking lives for you,' I said. 'You think you're the sun, and we're like, your fucking -' I stammered, tripping over my own tongue in fury, 'your little fucking planets! But we're not! We don't exist to revolve around you!'

We didn't speak properly for a month.

The truth is, that's not far from the truth. Birdie is the star, bright and gorgeous and blazingly talented; Mum and I exist somewhere in her periphery, a less interesting but structurally important part of the system. I feel fine with that now. Most of my bitterness has evaporated, especially since I found out about the baby. But once you've said something in rage, you can't unsay it.

'I've been seeing a therapist,' Birdie says, now.

This sudden change in direction takes me by surprise. 'Oh. Right.'

'Yeah. She says I have a guilt complex about my own success. She thinks that the reason why I can't commit to anyone is because I have, like, abandonment issues. She wants me to start working on my sense of self, because maybe then I can stop pushing people away and start living my truth.'

It takes me a full minute to process this. 'That's the most Hollywood thing I've ever heard.'

Birdie smiles. 'I know. I mean it sounds like bullshit. But I think it might be true, you know?'

We are at a standstill. The radio plays softly, under the sound of the rain and the soft whoosh-thump of the windscreen wipers. I rub my temple, trying to massage away the headache. 'Where are you going with this?'

'I think we should start telling each other the truth. About how we feel. And stuff.'

'I do tell you the truth.'

'No you don't.' It's not an accusation, more a statement of fact. 'We never really talk about how we feel. I'm kind of sick of it.'

'Okay.'

Birdie looks at me, as though expecting me to say something else.

'I mean,' she elaborates, after a slightly less comfortable silence, 'You haven't even told me who the father is.'

'That's because the father is irrelevant.'

This is true, sadly. It turns out, basing a relationship on the fact that your new man doesn't recognise your sister's hit single is a terrible idea. We had a grand total of four dates. This was the third time I'd ever slept with him. I was on the pill. It didn't work. It took a long time for this contraception failure to dawn on me.

I wish I had a more romantic origin story to tell my son, but that's how it is.

'He's not irrelevant, Becca. He fathered your child.'

'He deposited his sperm in me. I wouldn't call that fathering.'

I can feel myself blushing, but Birdie waves her hand at me as though this admission of sex doesn't bother her. It probably doesn't; half of her songs are about sex. ('Intimacy,' she corrects anyone that suggests this idea, 'not just sex.')

'Do you not think he's, you know. Important. In some way. At least genetically.'

I move the car forward what feels like three inches before being forced to stop again.

'Birdie,' I say, 'I don't want to do this right now.'

'Okay, but I think we should at least -'

'Fine!' I slam my hand down on the steering wheel, making Birdie jump. 'His name is Matt. He's tall. He has these round glasses. Kind of long, shaggy hair.'

'You're describing John Lennon.'

'Shut up.' I can't look at her; it's easier to pretend she isn't staring at me, so I watch the windscreen wipers instead. 'He exclusively listens to music from the sixties and seventies. He's into history. He knows stuff about wine.'

'Like what?'

'I don't know! Like, where it comes from. What it's supposed to taste like. Stuff like that.'

For a moment, Birdie says nothing. Swoosh. Thump.

'Huh,' she says, eventually.

'He's a tutor. For children sitting their eleven plus exams.'

'The what exams?'

'Never mind. He tutors kids. I thought he was nice. I thought he was interesting and intelligent and he had nice eyes. And he was a good kisser. And he didn't know who you were. Genuinely. He didn't know.'

'Well,' says Birdie, again, quite reasonably, 'I'm not that famous.'

'He didn't even know Just Us.'

I chance a look at Birdie. She's watching the windscreen wipers, too, and smiling slightly. 'Well. That is a little surprising.'

'I sang it to him. He had no idea. I thought it was refreshing, you know. That he didn't know you. That I might be able to get to know someone without them asking me questions about what it's like to be related to someone famous.'

'Oh.'

My throat starts to burn. 'It turns out, I think he didn't know your song because he's an ignorant twat.'

'Becs.'

I wave her away this time. If I'm going to let this out at all, it has to happen now, all at once. 'And now I'm pregnant. And do you know what he said to me when I told him?'

'What? What did he say?'

'He said, 'You're getting rid of it though, yeah?''

Birdie lets out a low hiss. Less of a sparrow, for a second, and more of a snake. She's looking at me with such sympathy and horror. I find it vindicating, and mortifying.

'I'm so sorry.'

'It's not your fault.' I wipe my eyes, resting one hand on my belly, where my son shifts his weight slightly, sticking his buttocks outwards, making my belly appear lumpy and misshapen. 'You didn't make me shag him.'

'I feel like I did, in a way. Because of the song thing.'

I laugh shakily. 'I didn't mean it like that. I just - sometimes it's hard.'

'What's hard?'

'Nothing.'

Birdie hisses again, and it's so venomous that it makes me jump. 'This is the problem. You treat me like a child.'

I am so astonished that I let out a strangled sort of laugh. 'I just told you something incredibly painful and personal, and your response is to accuse me of treating you like a child.'

'You do, though!'

Because you are a child, I think.

Birdie is looking at me with a strange intensity. 'You're doing it again! You keep things from me. Like I can't cope with your grown-up problems.'

I feel a sudden flash of rage and the baby kicks, as though in solidarity, although I'm not sure which side he's on. 'You're talking bollocks.'

'I am not!'

'Fine!' I say. We're fully unravelling, and I feel frightened by the speed of it. 'You do act like a child, sometimes. Fine.'

'Only because you treat me like one.'

I want to point out that this in itself is childish, but I switch gears instead. 'You make everything about you.'

Birdie laughs, a kind of wild, angry sound. 'You make nothing about you. I pour my heart out to you all the time, and you tell me nothing.'

'That's not true!' I imagine someone driving past us right now, peering into our car to find two grown women screaming at each other, rendered silent under the sound of the rain.

'You didn't even tell me about the father of your child!'

'Because you were busy! Like always! Which is another thing.' I have to admit, there is something darkly enjoyable about this. 'You're always too busy for us. Always forgetting stuff.'

'I haven't forgotten your birthday in forever.'

'Only because you've got a personal assistant!'

Birdie can't argue with this. One point to me.

'You talk to me like I'm an idiot.'

'Sometimes you are an idiot.'

'You're jealous of me.'

The thing about sisters is that you know each other's sore spots; the only thing stopping you from destroying each other is the unspoken agreement that you won't.

Suddenly, I find myself thinking about Matt, and that first night, the one in which I said I wouldn't sleep with him but then did, kissing him deeply in those precarious moments between here and there. 'You're incredible,' he kept saying, whenever we came up for air. 'Oh my God, you're incredible.'

'Yes, I am jealous! I yell, suddenly furious. 'I'm jealous of you because you fall in love all the fucking time.'

'I fall out of love, too!'

'But you make it sound - in your songs -' I want to sing an example, and in any other circumstance I would think of a dozen songs, would be able to bring them forth as easily as reciting the days of the week. In the heat of the moment, they have escaped me. 'You make it sound so easy. So exciting.'

'It is!' Birdie says. 'It is glamorous and exciting. And it's sad, too. I can't help it. It just happens.'

'You're gorgeous and talented and men fall at your feet. So yes. I'm jealous.'

'Maybe if you didn't hide yourself away all the time, you'd -'

'Get pregnant by a complete pillock?' I roll my eyes. 'Don't even go there.'

The traffic picks up, and I'm forced to concentrate on the road. For a moment, we are quiet.

'Do you think we'll ever move past this?' Birdie says, eventually.

The truth is, I don't. This is how we are. Seething with tension, explosive. When we're together, we love and despise each other with the kind of intensity that can only exist in short bursts.

'I don't know.' I rub my belly again. I can't recall ever being this tired.

'You do treat me like a child.'

'Fine.' I say. 'True. But you think you can buy your way out of every problem.'

'True. You think I don't care about Mum as much as you do.'

You don't, I think, but I feel guilty immediately because it's not true. 'You always forget to call on Dad's anniversary.'

I can't look at her now, because the traffic is too busy. This is probably a good thing.

'You talk to me like I'm emotionally illiterate.'

'Well,' I say, 'That's not true. You feel too much, if anything.'

We keep going back and forth like this, an exhausting game of emotional tennis. We could do this forever, I think.

'You martyr yourself.' Birdie says.

'You don't do enough.' I say.

'You do too much.' Birdie says.

'You left us!'

This last attack comes as a sob. Birdie says nothing, and suddenly I am twenty again, standing in Mum's empty kitchen, two family members down, bewildered and afraid in the cold, quiet night.

Birdie is crying too, but I keep going.

'You left us all alone.' The betrayal of it feels raw, even now. 'You were my best friend, and Dad died, and you left me.'

'I'm sorry,' she says. 'I'm sorry. I just - I had to. I couldn't cope there. In that house. Without him.'

I've heard this all before. In interviews, in candid conversations with friends. Dad died and Birdie felt afraid of her own mortality; she had to chase a dream, and it was too hard to stay behind. How terribly difficult it had been in the early days, how for three years she and her writing partner played awful gigs and were functionally homeless before they 'made it.' I don't need to hear this from her. I know it all. And really, I know I'm being unreasonable to still be angry. Because she was right, wasn't she? She did make it.

'You fucked off and left us,' I continue, thickly, 'And you got famous, and do you know what I did? I waited up every night to hear from you. Every night. I looked at my phone a million times a day. Wanting a text. A scrap of communication. And nothing. You called because you needed us. You never called when I needed you.'

Birdie mumbles something that might be 'sorry,' but it's hard to make it out.

'And do you know the really fucking annoying thing?' The baby kicks again, and I wonder, briefly, whether this is having some kind of dire impact on his cortisol levels. 'My whole life revolves around you. And Mum's. And I can't help but love you. Because you're so adorable. And so nice.'

'Not that nice, clearly.' Birdie says.

'You were grieving.' I say. And now we're back here, with me defending her again. 'You were young.'

'I don't think I deserve it.' she says. 'You. Mum. The job. Any of it.'

We stop at a traffic light, and I look at her. Maybe Mum was right. She is very pale these days. Her eyes are swollen, her nose red and running. She keeps wiping it on her sleeve, which might be the least glamorous thing I've seen her do since the broccoli incident. 'I want to come home. But I can't. I don't belong there really, but being here, it just - it does things to me.'

I see her, suddenly, as a puzzle piece warped out of shape.

She wipes her nose again. 'Maybe I shouldn't have come here.' she smiles in a watery sort of way, and gestures to my belly. 'You're about to have a baby. I think I'll just make it worse.'

'Well,' I say, 'that is extremely selfish.'

'Why is it selfish?'

'Because I want you here!' I'm yelling again. 'And I love you!'

'I love you too.'

I keep raising my voice because it's funny and ridiculous. 'I love you more!'

'I love you more! I wrote a song for you and everything. You haven't done that for me. Not yet, at least.'

This makes me pause. 'What? Which song?'

'You know the one.'

'But you only ever write songs about sex.'

'Intimacy!' she shouts. 'And don't be stupid. Not those ones. Just Us.'

My heart is racing so fast that I can't quite understand what she's saying. 'Just Us is a love song.'

Birdie's still smiling. 'Think about it.'

She sings, and her voice, slightly strained, fills the car.

The world could shatter around us, babe

And our love will be enough

Because after all is said and done 

it's always been us, just us.

A long moment passes.

'Oh,' I say.

My son arrives a couple of weeks later, slightly short of Dad's anniversary. We make it to the hospital just in time, and he arrives thirty-one minutes later in a slippery, burning rush. Birdie and Mum are by my side, but the pain mostly obscures them; I don't hear or see them as much as I feel the steadying weight of their presence.

I call him Benjamin. He is red and plump with dark, serious eyes, and he immediately takes my heart. I needn't have worried about never falling in love. That feels like a worry from a different lifetime. Birdie and Mum will go on to say that Ben's birth changed everything, and that it was a profoundly healing experience for both of them.

'That's nice for you,' I will say, when they bring this up, 'given that neither of you had to have your vagina stitched up afterwards.'

But I understand. Sometimes - rarely - the barrier between life and whatever exists outside it feels less solid. Like a door creaking open ever so slightly, cold air flooding through the gap, rushing against your bare arms, leaving a trail of goosebumps behind it. Holding my new son, with the two most important people in my life sobbing on either side of me, is like being on holy ground. We all feel it, a collective shiver.

Birdie holds Benjamin for the first time. She's smiling so wide I can see the deepening wrinkles on either side of her mouth. Suddenly, with my son in her arms, she looks like a grown-up. 'Hello baby boy. I love you so much.' She looks at me with a kind of awe, like she can't believe what she's seeing, that she can't believe what I've done. 'I love him so much!'

I still don't trust my memories. They're slippery, fallible. But maybe some moments burn into your head so deeply that you can't ever forget them, and I'm hoping this will be one of them.