Sister: A Novel (30 page)

I was grasping at straws, and I knew that, but I had to keep grasping. The only thing that might help was the identity of the father of Hattie’s baby, but I didn’t hold out much hope.

When I rang on Hattie’s doorbell a pretty woman in her thirties, who I guessed to be Georgina, answered the door, holding a child’s book in one hand, lipstick in the other.

‘You must be Beatrice, come in. I’m a little behind, promised Hattie I’d be out of here by eight at the latest.’

Hattie came into the hallway behind her. Georgina turned to her. ‘Would you mind reading the children the cow story? I’ll get Beatrice a drink.’

Hattie left us to go upstairs. I sensed that this had been engineered by Georgina, though she seemed genuinely friendly. ‘
Percy and the Cow
is the shortest, start to finish in six minutes, including engine noises and animal sounds, so she should be down soon.’ She opened a bottle of wine and handed me a glass. ‘Don’t upset her, will you? She’s been through so much. Has hardly eaten since it happened. Try and . . . be kind to her.’

I nodded, liking her for her concern. A car hooted outside and Georgina called up the stairs before she left. ‘There’s an open Pinot Grigio, Hatts, so dig in.’ Hattie called down her thanks. They seemed more like flatmates than a boss and a nanny both in their thirties.

Hattie came down from settling the children and we went into the sitting room. She sat on the sofa, tucking her legs under her, glass of wine in her hand, treating the place as home, rather than as a ‘live-in’ domestic helper.

‘Georgina seems very nice . . . ?’ I asked.

‘Yes, she is. When I told her about the baby she offered to pay my airfare home and to give me two months’ wages on top. They can’t afford that, they both work full time and they can only just about manage my wages as it is.’

So Georgina wasn’t the stereotypical Filipino-nanny employer, just as Hattie didn’t live in the broom cupboard. I ran through my, by now, standard questions. Did she know if you were afraid of anyone? Did she know anyone who may have given you drugs? Any reason why you may have been killed (bracing myself for the look that I usually got at this point)? Hattie could give me no answers. Like your other friends she hadn’t seen you after you’d had Xavier. I was now scraping the bottom of my barrel of questions, not really thinking that I’d get very far.

‘Why didn’t you tell anyone the name of your baby’s father?’

She hesitated and I thought she looked ashamed.

‘Who is he, Hattie?’

‘My husband.’

She was silent, letting me have a stab at working it out. ‘You took the job pregnant?’

‘I thought no one would employ me if they knew. When it became clear I pretended that the baby was due later than it was. I’d rather Georgina thought I had loose sexual morals than that I lied to her.’ I must have looked bemused. ‘She trusted me to be her friend.’

For a moment I felt excluded from threads of friendships that bind women together and which I’ve never felt I needed, because I’d always had you.

‘Did you tell Tess about your baby?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Hers wasn’t due for another few weeks. She cried when I told her, on my behalf, and I was angry with her. She gave me emotions I didn’t have.’

Did you realise that she was angry with you? She was the only person I’d spoken to who’d had any criticism of you; who you had misunderstood.

‘The truth is, I was relieved,’ she said. Her tone was one of challenge, daring me to be shocked.

‘I understand that,’ I replied. ‘You have other children at home that you need to look after. A baby would mean losing your job, however understanding your employers are, and you wouldn’t be able to send money home to them.’ I looked at her and saw I was still off-track. ‘Or couldn’t you bear to leave another child behind while you came to the UK to work?’ She met my eye, a tacit confirmation.

Why could I understand Hattie when you could not? Because I understand shame, and you’ve never experienced it. Hattie stood up. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to know?’ She wanted me gone.

‘Yes, do you know who gave you the injection? The one with the gene?’

‘No.’

‘What about the doctor who delivered your baby?’

‘It was a caesarean.’

‘But surely you still saw him or her?’

‘No. He wore a mask. When I had the injection. When I had the operation. All the time in a mask. In the Philippines there’s nothing like that. No one’s bothered that much about hygiene, but over here . . .’

As she spoke I saw those four nightmarish canvasses you painted, the woman screaming and the masked figure over her. They weren’t a record of a drug-induced hallucination but what actually happened to you.

‘Do you have your hospital notes, Hattie?’

‘No.’

‘They got lost?’

She seemed surprised that I would know.

I drain my cup of coffee and don’t know if it’s the caffeine hit or the memory of those paintings that makes a shudder run through me, spilling some of the coffee on the table. Mr Wright looks at me, with concern. ‘Shall we end it there?’ he asks.

‘Yes, if that’s OK.’

We go out into reception together. Mr Wright sees the bunch of daffodils on his secretary’s desk and stops. I see her tensing. He turns to me, eyes reddening.

‘I really like what Tess told you about the gene for yellow in a daffodil saving children’s sight.’

‘Me too.’

Detective Sergeant Finborough is waiting for me in Carluccio’s near the CPS building. He phoned me yesterday and asked if we could meet. I’m not sure if it’s allowed but I agreed. I know he won’t be here for his own sake, no pleas to buff up the truth of what happened so he reflects better in it.

I go up to him and we hesitate a moment, as if we may kiss on the cheek as friends rather than as - what? What are we to one another? He was the person who told me it was you they’d found; you in the toilets building. He was the man who’d taken my hand and looked me in the eye and destroyed who I was up until that moment. Our relationship isn’t cocktail-style pecking on the cheek but nor is it simply that of policeman to relative of a victim. I take his hand and hold it as he once held mine; this time it’s my hand that’s the warmer.

‘I wanted to say sorry, Beatrice.’

I am about to reply when a waitress pushes between us, tray held aloft, a pencil stuck businesslike into her ponytail. I think that we should be somewhere like a church - a quiet, serious place - where the big things are talked about in whispers not shouted above the clatter of crockery and chit-chat.

We sit down at a table and I think we both find it awkwardly intimate. I break the silence. ‘How is WPC Vernon?’

‘She’s been promoted,’ he replies. ‘She’s working for the domestic violence unit now.’

‘Good for her.’

He smiles at me and, ice broken now, he takes the plunge into a deeper conversation. ‘You were right all along. I should have listened to you and believed you.’

I used to fantasise about hearing exactly that kind of a sentence and wish I could whisper to my earlier self that one day a policeman would be telling me that.

‘At least you had a query,’ I say. ‘And acted on it.’

‘Much too late. You should never have been put in jeopardy like that.’

The sounds of the restaurant suddenly mute, the lights are dimming into darkness. I can just hear DS Finborough talking to me, reassuring me that I’m OK, but then his voice is silenced and everything is dark and I want to scream but my mouth can’t make any sound.

When I come round, I’m in the café’s clean and warm Ladies’. DS Finborough is with me. He tells me I was ‘out’ for about five minutes. Not so long then. But it’s the first time I’ve lost sound too. The staff at Carluccio’s have been solicitous and call me a taxi to get home. I ask DS Finborough if he’ll accompany me and he willingly agrees.

I’m now in a black cab with a policeman sitting next to me, but I still feel afraid. I know that he’s following me; I can feel his malevolent presence, murderous, getting closer.

I want to tell DS Finborough. But, like Mr Wright, he’d tell me that he’s locked up on remand in prison; that he can’t hurt me again; that there’s nothing to fear. But I wouldn’t be able to believe him.

DS Finborough waits till I’m safely inside the flat, and then takes the taxi on to wherever he is going. As I close the door, Pudding bends her warm furry body around my legs, purring. I call out Kasia’s name. No reply. I dampen down flaring sparks of anxiety then see a note on the table saying she’s at her antenatal group. She should be home any minute.

I go to the window to check, pulling back the curtains. Two hands pummel the glass from the other side, trying to smash it. I scream. He vanishes into the darkness.

21

Thursday

It’s a beautiful spring day, but I take the tube to the CPS offices, rather than crossing the park, so that I’m always in a crowd.

When I get there I am glad for the crush in the lift but anxious, as usual, that my pager and mobile don’t get reception and it’ll get stuck and Kasia won’t be able to get hold of me.

As soon as I’m spat out onto the third floor I check that they’re both working. I didn’t tell her about the man at the window last night, I didn’t want to frighten her. Or to admit the other possibility - that it’s not just my body that is deteriorating but my mind too. I know that I am physically unwell, but never thought I might be mentally unwell too. Is he simply a delusion, a product of a diseased mind? Maybe you need physical strength, which I no longer have, to keep a grip on sanity. Going mad is the thing I fear the most, even more than him, because it destroys who you are inside a body that somehow, grotesquely, survives you. I know you must have been afraid too. And I wish that you’d known it was PCP - not some weakness or disease in your own mind - that threatened your sanity.

Maybe I’ve been given PCP too. Has that thought crossed your mind before it has mine? Perhaps a hallucinogenic is responsible for creating the evil that stalks me. But no one could have given it to me. I’ve only been at the CPS offices, the Coyote and the flat, where no one wishes me harm.

I won’t tell Mr Wright about the murderer at the window, not yet; nor my fear of going mad. If I don’t tell him, then he’ll treat me normally, and I will behave that way in return. He has expectations of me to be completely sane and I will rise to meet them. Besides, at least for the hours I’m with him, I know that I am safe. So I’ll wait till the end of the day and tell him then.

This morning, Mr Wright’s office is no longer bright; there’s darkness around the edges, which I try to blink away. As I start talking to him I hear my words slur a little and it’s an effort to remember. But Mr Wright has said we may be able to finish my statement today so I will just have to push myself on.

Mr Wright doesn’t seem to notice anything wrong. Maybe I’ve become adept at hiding it or he’s just totally focused on getting through the last part of my statement. He recaps the last part of our interview.

‘Hattie Sim told you that the man who gave her the injection and delivered her baby wore a mask?’

‘Yes. I asked her if it was the same person and she said it was. But she couldn’t remember any more - voice or hair colour or height. She was trying to blank out the whole experience and I couldn’t blame her.’

‘Did you think that the man who delivered her baby also delivered Tess’s?’

‘Yes. And I was sure he was the man who murdered her. But I needed more before going to the police.’

‘Heavy counterbalancing facts?’ asks Mr Wright.

‘Yes. I needed to prove that he wore a mask to hide his identity. I hadn’t been able to find out who had delivered Tess’s baby - deliberately, I realised. But maybe I could find out who had given Tess and Hattie the injections.’

By the time I got to St Anne’s Hospital from Hattie’s house in Chiswick, it was late, past midnight. But I had to find out
straight away
. When I arrived the wards were in darkness and I realised this wasn’t the most sensible time to start asking questions. But I’d already pressed the buzzer on the maternity ward door, and a nurse I didn’t recognise was opening it. She looked at me suspiciously and I remembered the security was to stop babies being stolen.

‘Can I speak to the senior midwife? I think her name is Cressida.’

‘She’s at home. Her shift finished six hours ago. She’ll be back tomorrow.’

But I couldn’t wait till then.

‘Is William Saunders here?’ I asked.

‘You’re a patient?’

‘No.’ I hesitated a moment. ‘A friend.’

I heard the sound of a baby crying, then more joining in. A buzzer went. The young nurse grimaced and I saw how stressed she looked.

‘OK. He’s in the on-call room. Third door on the right.’

I knocked on the door, the nurse watching me, and then I went in. The room was in semi-darkness, just lit by the open doorway. William woke up instantly, fully alert, presumably because he was on call and was expected to be functioning at a hundred per cent immediately.

‘What are you doing here, Bee?’

No one but you has ever called me that and it was as if you’d lent him some of our closeness. He got out of bed and I saw that he was fully dressed in blue scrubs. His hair was tangled from where it had been on the pillow. I was conscious of the smallness of the room, the single bed.

‘Do you know who gives the women on the CF trial their injection?’ I asked.

‘No. Do you want me to try to find out?’

That simple. ‘Yes.’

‘OK.’ He was looking businesslike, totally focused, and I was grateful to him for taking me seriously. ‘Are there any other patients, apart from your sister, that you know about?’

‘Kasia Lewski and Hattie Sim. Tess met them at the CF clinic.’

‘Can you write them down?’

He waited while I fumbled in my bag and wrote down their names, then gently took the piece of paper from me. ‘Now can I ask why you want to know?’

‘Because whoever he is wore a mask. When he gave the injections, when he delivered the babies.’

There was a pause and I sensed that any urgency he’d shared with me was dissipated.

‘It’s not that unusual for medical staff to wear masks, especially in obstetrics,’ he said. ‘Childbirth is a messy business, lots of body fluids around, medical staff wear protective gear as a matter of course.’

He must have seen the disbelief on my face, or my disappointment.

‘It really is pretty routine, at least in this hospital,’ he continued. ‘We have the highest percentage of patients with HIV outside Johannesburg. We’re tested regularly to avoid infecting our patients, but the same isn’t true the other way around. So we simply don’t know when a woman comes through our doors whether or not she’s ill or a carrier.’

‘But what about giving the gene? Giving the injections?’ I asked. ‘That doesn’t have fluids around does it? So why wear a mask then?’

‘Maybe whoever it was has just got into the habit of being cautious.’

I had once found his ability to see the best in people endearing, reminding me of you, but now that same trait made me furious.

‘You’d rather find an innocent explanation than think that someone murdered my sister and hid his identity with a mask?’

‘Bee—’

‘But I don’t have the luxury of choosing. The ugly violent option is the only one open to me.’ I took a step away from him. ‘Do you wear a mask?’

‘Often I do, yes. It might seem overly cautious but—’

I interrupted. ‘Was it you?’

‘What?’

He was staring at me and I couldn’t meet his eye. ‘You think I killed her?’ he asked. He sounded appalled and hurt.

I was wrong about conflict with words being trivial.

‘I’m sorry.’ I made myself meet his eye. ‘Someone murdered her. I don’t know who it is. Just that it
is
someone. And I have probably met that person by now, talked to them, and not known. But I don’t have a shred of proof.’

He took hold of my hand and I realised I was shaking.

His fingers stroked my palm, gently; too softly at first for me to believe that this was really a gesture of attraction. But as he continued I knew, hardly believing it, that there was no mistake.

I took my hand away from his. His face looked disappointed but his voice sounded kind. ‘I’m not a very good bet, am I?’

Still astonished, and more than flattered, I went to the door.

Why did I leave that room with its possibilities? Because even if I could ignore the morality of him being married - not insurmountable I realised - I knew it wouldn’t be long term or secure or anything else I wanted and needed. It would be a moment of passion, nothing more, and afterwards a heavy emotional debt would be exacted from me. Or maybe it was simply him calling me Bee. A name that only you used. A name that made me remember who I had been for so many years. A name that didn’t do this.

So I closed the door behind me and stayed wobbling but still upright on my narrow moral tightrope. Not because I was highly principled. But because I again chose safety rather than risk short-term happiness.

On the road a little way from the hospital I waited for a night bus. I remembered how strong his arms had felt when he’d hugged me that time, and the gentleness of his fingers as he’d stroked my palm. I imagined his arms around me now and the warmth of him - but I was alone in the dark and the cold, regretting now my decision to leave, regretting that I was a person who would always, predictably, leave.

I turned to go back, even started walking a few steps, when I thought I heard someone, just a few feet away. There were two unlit alleys leading off the road, or maybe he was crouching behind a parked car. Preoccupied before, I hadn’t noticed that there were virtually no cars on the road, and no one on the pavements. I was alone with whoever was watching me.

I saw a black cab, without a light on, and stuck out my hand praying he would stop for me, which he did, chastising me for being on my own in the middle of the night. I spent money I no longer had on him driving me all the way home. He waited until I was safely inside the flat before driving off.

Mr Wright looks at me with concern, and I’m aware of how ill I feel. My mouth is as dry as parchment. I drain the glass of water his secretary has left for me. He asks if I’m OK to carry on, and I say yes; because I find it reassuring to be with him and because I don’t want to be on my own in the flat.

‘Did you think about the man following Tess?’ asks Mr Wright.

‘Yes. But it was a sense of someone watching me, and a sound I think, because something alerted me, but I didn’t actually see anyone.’

He suggests we get a sandwich and go into the park for a working picnic. I think it’s because I’m becoming groggy and inarticulate and he hopes that a spell outside will wake me up. He picks up the tape recorder. It never occurred to me that it might be portable.

We get to St James’s Park, which looks like that scene from
Mary Poppins
, all blossom and buds and blue sky with white meringue clouds. Office workers are splayed over the grass, turning the park into a beach without a sea. We walk side by side, closely, along a path looking for somewhere less crowded. His kind face is looking at mine, and I wonder if he can feel my warmth as I feel his.

A woman with a double buggy comes towards us and we have to go single file. On my own for a few moments I feel a sudden sense of loss, as if the warmth has gone from the left-hand side of my body now that he isn’t there. It makes me think of lying on a cold concrete floor, on my left side, feeling the chill of it go into me, hearing my heart beat too fast, unable to move. I’m panicking, fast-forwarding the story, but then he’s beside me again and we get back in step and I’ll return to the correct sequence.

We find a quiet spot and Mr Wright spreads out a rug for us to sit on. I am touched that when he saw blue sky this morning he thought ahead to a picnic in the park with me. He switches on the tape recorder. I pause a moment while a group of teenagers walks past then I begin.

‘Kasia woke up when I got in, or maybe she’d been waiting up for me. I asked her if she could remember the doctor who’d given her the injection.’