Sister: A Novel (28 page)

Mr Wright is concentrating intently on what I am telling him, his body bent towards mine, his eyes responding; not a passive but an active participant in the tale and I realise how seldom people are fully listened to.

‘When I left the police station I went straight to Kasia’s flat. I needed her and Mitch to be tested for the CF gene. If either of them tested negative, then the police would have to act.’

Kasia’s dingy sitting room had become damper since my last visit. A one-bar electric fire didn’t stand a chance against the coldly seeping concrete walls. The thin fabric of the Indian throw at the closed window flapped in the draught around the window frame. Three weeks had passed since I’d last seen her, and she was nearly eight months pregnant now. She looked bewildered.

‘But I don’t understand, Beatrice.’

Again I wished someone wouldn’t use the intimacy of my name this time because, coward that I was, I didn’t want to be close to her as I distressed her. I put on my corporate distancing voice as I spelt it out, ‘Both parents have to carry the cystic fibrosis gene for the baby to be born with cystic fibrosis.’

‘Yes. They tell me in clinic.’

‘Xavier’s father doesn’t carry the gene. So Xavier couldn’t have had cystic fibrosis.’

‘Xavier not ill?’

‘No.’

Mitch came in from the bathroom. He must have been eavesdropping. ‘For fuck’s sake, she just lied about who she had sex with.’

Without the plaster dust his face was handsome, but the contrast between his finely sculpted face and muscular tattooed body was oddly menacing.

‘She had no embarrassment about having sex,’ I said. ‘If she’d been having sex with someone else as well she would have told me. There was no reason for her to lie. I really think you should get tested, Mitch.’

Using his name was a mistake. Instead of sounding friendly I sounded like a primary school teacher. Kasia was still looking bemused. ‘I have cystic fibrosis gene. I test plus for that.’

‘Yes. But maybe Mitch is negative, maybe he isn’t a carrier and—’

‘Yeah right,’ he interrupted, sarcasm biting. ‘The doctors are wrong and you know best?’ He looked at me like he hated me, perhaps he did. ‘Your sister lied about who the father was,’ he said. ‘And who’d blame her? With you looking down your nose at her. Patronising bitch.’

I hoped he was being verbally aggressive for Kasia’s sake; that he was trying to prove that your baby did have cystic fibrosis, like their baby had had cystic fibrosis, that the treatment wasn’t a con. And the only way for that to be true was for you to be a liar and me an uptight, patronising bitch. But he was enjoying his verbal attack too much for it to be for a kinder reason.

‘Truth is, she probably fucked so many men she had no idea who the father was.’

Kasia’s voice was quiet but clear. ‘No. Tess not like that.’

I remembered how she’d said you were her friend, the simplicity of her loyalty. The glance he gave her was spiked with anger but she continued, ‘Beatrice is right.’ As she spoke, she stood up and I knew as I watched that reflexive movement that he had hit her in the past, that she’d instinctively stood up to avoid him.

The silence in the room met the damp coldness in the walls and as it continued I wanted the heat of a row, for words to be fighting, rather than the fear that it would be fought later with physical brutality. Kasia motioned me to the door and I went with her.

We walked down the stained sharp-edged concrete steps. Neither of us said anything. As she turned to go back I took hold of her arm. ‘Come and stay with me.’

Her hand moved to her bump, she didn’t meet my eye. ‘I can’t.’

‘Please, Kasia.’

I startled myself. The most I’d ever given of myself before was my signature on a cheque to a worthy cause, but now I was asking her to stay and really hoping that she would. It was the hope that startled me. She turned away from me and walked back up the stained concrete steps towards the cold damp flat and whatever waited for her there.

As I walked home, I wondered if she’d told you why she once loved Mitch. I was sure that she must have done, that she wasn’t the kind of person who had sex without love. I thought how William’s wedding ring was a sign that he was taken, spoken for, but that the small gold crucifix Kasia wore around her neck wasn’t about ownership or promises; it was a ‘no trespassing’ sign unless you have love and kindness for the wearer. And I was furious that Mitch was ignoring it. Because he did ignore it, violently.

At just after midnight, the doorbell rang and I hurried to answer it, hoping that it would be Kasia. When I saw her standing on the doorstep I didn’t see her tarty clothes and cheap hair colour only the bruises on her face and the welts on her arms.

That first night we shared the bed. She snored like a steam train and I remembered you telling me that pregnancy could make you snore. I liked the sound. I had spent night after night awake, listening to my grief, my sobbing the only sound in the room, my heart screaming as it rhythmically thumped into the mattress, and her snoring was an everyday sound, innocent and annoyingly soothing. That night I slept deeply for the first time since you’d died.

Mr Wright has had to go off to a meeting, so I am coming home early today. It’s pouring with rain when I leave the tube station and I get drenched as I walk home. I see Kasia looking for me out of the window. Seconds later she greets me, smiling, at the front door. ‘Beata!’ (It’s Polish for Beatrice.) As I think I told you, she has the bed to herself now and I have a futon in the sitting room and it feels absurdly cramped; my feet touching the wardrobe and my head the door.

As I change into dry clothes, I think that today has been a good day. I’ve managed to keep my morning resolutions of not being afraid or intimidated. And when I felt faint and shivery and sick, I tried to ignore it and not let my body dominate my mind, and I think I succeeded pretty well. I didn’t get as far as finding something beautiful in the everyday, but maybe that’s just a step too far.

Now changed, I give Kasia her English lesson, which I do every day. I have a textbook for teaching Polish people English. The book groups words together and she learns a group before our ‘lesson’.

‘
Piękn
,’ I say, following the pronunciation instructions.

‘Beautiful, lovely, gorgeous,’ she replies.

‘Brilliant.’

‘Thank you, Beata,’ she says, mock solemn. I try to hide how much I like her using her Polish name for me. ‘
Ukochanie
?’ I continue.

‘Love, adore, fond of, passionate.’

‘Well done.
Nienawiść?’

She’s silent. I am on the other side of the page now and the antonyms. I gave her the Polish word for hate. She shrugs. I try another, the Polish for unhappy, but she looks at me blankly.

At the beginning I got frustrated at the holes in her vocabulary, thinking it was childish that she refused to learn the negative words, a linguistic head-in-the-sand policy. But on the positive ones she’s forging ahead, even learning colloquialisms.

‘How are you, Kasia?’

‘Tip-top, Beata.’
(She likes 50s musicals.)

I’ve asked her to stay on with me after her baby’s born. Both Kasia and Amias are delighted. He’s offered us the flat rent free, till we ‘get on our feet again’ and somehow I’ll just have to look after her and her baby. Because I will get through this. It will all be OK.

After our lesson, I glance out of the window and only now notice the pots down the steps to your flat. They are all in flower, a host (a smallish host but a host nonetheless) of golden daffodils.

I ring on Amias’s bell. He looks genuinely delighted to see me. I kiss him on the cheek. ‘The daffodils you planted, they’re flowering.’

Eight weeks before I’d watched him planting the bulbs in snow-covered earth and even with my lack of gardening knowledge knew they couldn’t survive. Amias smiles at me, enjoying my confusion. ‘You don’t need to sound quite so surprised.’

Like you, I see Amias regularly, sometimes for supper, sometimes just for a whisky. I used to think you went out of charity.

‘Did you pop some in ready potted when I wasn’t looking?’ I ask.

He roars with laughter, he’s got a very loud laugh for an old person doesn’t he? Robust and strong.

‘I poured some hot water in first, mixed it with the earth, then planted the bulbs. Things always grow better if you warm their soil up.’

I find the image comforting.

19

Wednesday

When I arrive at the CPS offices this morning, I discover other people also have diminutive hosts of daffodils growing because Mr Wright’s secretary is taking a bunch out of damp paper. Like Proust’s tea-soaked
petites madeleines
, the soggy kitchen roll around their stems pulls me sensuously backwards to a sunny classroom and my bunch of home-picked daffodils on Mrs Potter’s desk. For a moment I hold a thread to the past back to when Leo was alive and Dad was with us and boarding school hadn’t cast its shadow over Mum’s goodnight kiss. But the thread frays to nothing as I hold it and is replaced by a hardier, harsher memory five years later - when you brought a bunch of daffodils to Mrs Potter, and I was upset because I didn’t have a teacher I wanted to bring flowers to any more, and because I was off to boarding school where I suspected even if they had flowers they wouldn’t let me pick them. And because everything had changed.

Mr Wright comes in, his eyes red and streaming.

‘Don’t worry. Hay fever. Not infectious.’

As we go into his office I feel sorry for his secretary who even now must be binning the happy beauty of her daffodils out of loving consideration for her boss.

He goes to the window. ‘Would you mind if I close it?’

‘No, that’s fine.’

He’s clearly in a great deal of discomfort, and I’m glad I can focus on someone else’s maladies rather than my own, it makes me feel a little less self-centred.

‘We’d got to Kasia coming to stay with you?’ he asks.

‘Yes.’

He smiles at me. ‘And I see that she’s still staying with you.’

He must have seen it in the paper. I was right about that photo of me, my arm around Kasia, being in all the newspapers.

‘Yes. The next morning I played her the lullaby on the answerphone. But she just assumed it was a friend who’d been unknowingly horribly tactless.’

‘Did you tell her what you thought?’

‘No, I didn’t want to upset her for no reason. She’d already told me, when I first met her, that she didn’t even know Tess was frightened, let alone who may have been frightening her. It was stupid of me to play her the lullaby.’

But if I’d seen her as fully my equal would I have told her what I thought? Would I have wanted company in this, someone to share it with? But by the time I’d spent that night listening to her snore, by the time I’d woken her with a cup of tea and cooked her a decent breakfast, I’d decided my role was to look after her. Protect her.

‘And then the answerphone tape ran on,’ I continue. ‘There was a message from a woman called Hattie, who I didn’t know, and hadn’t thought important. But Kasia recognised her, and told me she was at the “Mummies with disasters” clinic with her and Tess. She assumed that Hattie had had her baby but didn’t expect her to call. She’s never been close to Hattie; it was Tess who always organised their get-togethers. She didn’t have a phone number for Hattie but she did have her address.’

I went to the address that Kasia had given me, which makes it sound easy but without a car and a rudimentary knowledge of public transport, I found getting anywhere stressful and time-consuming. Kasia had stayed behind, too self-conscious about her bruised face to go out. She thought I was going to see one of your old friends out of sentiment and I didn’t correct her.

I arrived at a pretty house in Chiswick and felt a little awkward as I rang the bell. I hadn’t been able to phone ahead and wasn’t even sure if Hattie would be there. A Filipino nanny, with a blond toddler in her arms, answered the door. She seemed very shy, not meeting my eye.

‘Beatrice?’ she asked.

I was perplexed about how she could know who I was.

She must have seen my confusion. ‘I’m Hattie, a friend of Tess’s. We met at her funeral, very briefly, shook hands.’

There had been a long line of people queuing to see me and Mum, a cruel parody of a wedding reception receiving line, all waiting their turn to say sorry - so many sorries as if it was all their faults that you had died. I had just wanted it to be over with, not to be the cause of the queue, and didn’t have the emotional capacity to take in new names or faces.

Kasia hadn’t told me that Hattie was Filipino; there was no reason why she should I suppose. But it wasn’t just Hattie’s nationality that surprised me, it was also her age. While you and Kasia are young, one foot still in girlhood, Hattie is a woman nearing forty. And she was wearing a wedding ring.

Hattie held the door open for me. Her manner demure, deferential even. ‘Please, come in.’

I followed her into the house and strained to hear the sound of a baby, but could only hear a children’s TV programme from the sitting room. I watched her as she settled the blond toddler in front of
Thomas the Tank Engine
, and remembered that you had told me about a Filipino friend of yours who worked as a nanny, but I hadn’t listened to her name, irritated by another of your trendy liberal friendships (a Filipino nanny for heaven’s sake!).

‘I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask you, is that OK?’

‘Yes, but I have to pick up his brother at twelve. Do you mind if I . . .’ She gestured to the ironing board and laundry basket in the kitchen.

‘Of course not.’

She seemed so passively accepting of me just appearing on her doorstep and asking her questions. I followed her into the kitchen and noticed her flimsy cheap dress. It was cold out but her shoes were old plastic flip-flops.

‘Kasia Lewski told me that your baby was on the cystic fibrosis trial?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you and your husband both carry the gene for cystic fibrosis?’

‘Clearly.’

The tone was sharp edged from behind her meek façade. She didn’t meet my eye and I thought I must have misheard.

‘Have you been tested for the cystic fibrosis gene in the past?’ I asked.

‘I have a child with CF.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘He lives with his grandmother and father. My daughter is also with them. But she doesn’t have cystic fibrosis.’

Both Hattie and her husband were clearly CF carriers so my theory about Gene-Med treating healthy babies wasn’t going to be backed up by her. Unless,

‘Your husband, he’s still in the Philippines?’

‘Yes.’

I started to imagine various scenarios as to how a very poor, very shy Filipino woman may become pregnant when her husband is back in the Philippines.

‘Are you a live-in nanny?’ I asked and I still don’t know if it was a crass attempt at small talk or if I was hinting that the dad of the house was the father of her baby.

‘Yes. I live here. Georgina likes having me here when Mr Bevan is away.’

I noticed that the mum was ‘Georgina’ but the father ‘Mr Bevan’.

‘It would be nicer for you to live out?’ I asked, back on my Mr Bevan-as-dad scenario. I’m not quite sure what I imagined, a sudden confession along the lines of ‘Oh yes, and then the master of the house won’t be able to have his wicked way with me at nights.’

‘I am happy here. Georgina’s a very kind-hearted person. She’s my friend.’

I instantly discounted that; friendship means some kind of parity between two people.

‘And Mr Bevan?’

‘I don’t know him very well. He’s away a lot on business.’

No further info from going down that track. I watched her as she carried on ironing, meticulous and perfect, and thought how Georgina’s friends must envy her.

‘You’re
sure
that the father of your baby carries the cystic fibrosis gene?’

‘I told you. My son has cystic fibrosis.’ The sharp tone I’d heard earlier was back and unmistakable. ‘I see you because you are Tess’s sister,’ she continued. ‘A courtesy. Not for you to question me like this. What business is it of yours?’

I realised my impression of her had been completely false. I’d thought her eyes didn’t meet mine out of shyness, but she had been carefully guarding the territory of herself. She wasn’t passively shy but fiercely private.

‘I’m sorry. But the thing is, I’m not sure if the cystic fibrosis trial is legitimate, which is why I want to know if both you and your baby’s father carry the CF gene.’

‘You think I can understand a long English word like “legitimate”?’

‘Yes. I think I’ve patronised you enough, actually.’

She turned, almost smiling, and it was like looking at a completely different woman. I could imagine now that Georgina, whoever she was, really was friends with her.

‘The trial is legitimate. It cured the baby. But my child in the Philippines cannot be cured. It’s too late for him.’

She still wasn’t telling me who the dad was. I’d have to revisit it, when hopefully she’d trust me with the answer.

‘Can I ask you another question?’ She nodded. ‘Were you paid to take part in the trial?’

‘Yes. Three hundred pounds. I need to collect Barnaby from nursery school now.’

There were so many questions I still hadn’t asked and I felt panicked that I wouldn’t have another opportunity. She went into the sitting room and coaxed the toddler away from the television.

‘Can I see you again?’ I asked.

‘I’m babysitting next Tuesday. They’ll be out from eight. You can come then if you like.’

‘Thank you, I—’

She motioned at me to be quiet, the toddler in her arms, protecting him from a possibly unsuitable conversation.

‘When I first met Hattie I thought she wasn’t anything like Tess or Kasia,’ I say. ‘She was a different age, different nationality, had a different occupation. But her clothes were cheap, like Tess’s and Kasia’s, and I realised that one thing they had in common, as well as being on the cystic fibrosis trial at St Anne’s, was that they were all poor.’

‘You found that significant?’ asks Mr Wright.

‘I thought they were more likely to be seen as financially persuadable or open to bribery. I also realised that with Hattie’s husband in the Philippines all three were effectively single.’

‘What about Kasia’s boyfriend, Michael Flanagan?’

‘At the time Kasia was put on the trial he had already left her. When he did come back they were only together for a few weeks. I thought that whoever was behind this was deliberately choosing women on their own because there would be no one who would look too hard, care too much. He was exploiting what he thought was an isolated vulnerability.’

Mr Wright is about to say something kind, but I don’t want to go off on a guilt/reassurance tangent so I briskly keep going.

‘I’d seen footage on TV and at Gene-Med of babies who had been on the trial, and there were fathers as well as mothers very much in the picture. I wondered if it was only at St Anne’s Hospital that the women were single. If it was only at St Anne’s that something terrible was happening.’

Hattie had carefully settled the blond toddler into the pushchair with drink and teddy. She set the alarm and picked up her keys. I had been looking for signs of a young baby but there had been nothing - no sound of crying, no baby monitor, no basket of nappies. She herself had said nothing. Now she was leaving the house and it was clear that there could be no baby upstairs somewhere. I was on the doorstep, halfway out, before I could muster the nerve or the callousness to ask the question, ‘Your baby . . . ?’