Sister: A Novel (31 page)

She pulled your dressing gown around herself.

‘I don’t know name,’ she said. ‘Is there problem?’

‘Was he wearing a mask, is that why you don’t know?’

‘Yes, a mask. Something bad? Beata?’

Her hand moved unconsciously to her bump. I just couldn’t frighten her.

‘Everything’s fine. Really.’

But she’s too astute to be fobbed off so easily. ‘You said Tess baby not ill. Not have CF. When you came to flat. When you ask Mitch to get tested.’

I hadn’t realised that she’d really understood. She’d probably been brooding about it ever since but hadn’t questioned me, presumably trusting me to tell her if there was something she needed to know.

‘Yes, that’s true. And I’m trying to find out more. But it’s nothing to do with you. You and your baby are going to be fine, right as rain.’

She smiled at ‘right as rain’, an expression that she’d recently learned; a smile that seemed forced, on cue for me.

I gave her a hug. ‘You really will be all right. Both of you. I promise.’

I couldn’t help you and Xavier, but I would help her. No one was going to hurt her or her baby.

A little way away the teenagers are playing a game of soft-ball and I wonder for a moment what the person who listens to these tapes will make of the background noises of the park, the laughter and chatter around us.

‘And the next day you got an email from Professor Rosen?’ Mr Wright asks.

‘Yes. On Saturday morning at around ten fifteen.’

I was on my way to work a shift for ‘weekend brunch’, a new idea of Bettina’s.

‘I noticed it was sent from his personal email,’ I continue, ‘rather than the Gene-Med one he’d used before.’

Mr Wright looks down at a copy of the email.

To: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

From: [email protected]

I have just come back from my American lecture tour to your message. As is my custom on these trips, I do not take my mobile with me. (My close family members have the number of the hotel should I need to be contacted urgently.) It is
ludicrous
to say that my trial is in any way dangerous to the babies. The whole point of my trial is that it’s a safe way of getting the healthy gene into the body. It is to affect a cure in the safest possible way. Alfred Rosen. Professor. MA Cantab. MPhil. Ph.D.

From: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

To: [email protected]

Can you explain why the doctor at St Anne’s wore a mask, both when he delivered the babies and when he gave the injections of the gene?

From: [email protected]

To: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

Clearly medical staff wear appropriate protection when they deliver babies but it is not my area of expertise so if you are concerned I suggest you ask someone in obstetrics.

In terms of the injections, whoever it was must have completely missed the point of my chromosome. Unlike a virus, it carries no infection risk whatsoever. There is no need for such precautions. Perhaps, they are just in the habit of being cautious? However, at your sister’s funeral I said I would answer your questions so I will look into it. I very much doubt there will be anything to find.

I didn’t know whether to trust him or not. I certainly didn’t know why he was helping me.

Bettina’s brunch initiative was a success and by twelve the Coyote was packed. I saw William pushing his way through, trying to get my attention. He smiled at my evident astonishment.

‘Cressida, our senior midwife, told me you worked here; I hope that’s OK.’

I remember I’d given her my contact details at the flat and the Coyote when she was looking for your notes.

Bettina grinned at me and took over the drinks order I was doing, so that I could talk to William. I was perplexed that she wasn’t more surprised at a beautiful man coming to see me. I went down to the end of the bar and he followed me.

‘I couldn’t find out who gave Tess the injection, or the other women, their notes have seemingly just disappeared without trace. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have offered to do it.’

But I’d already realised it would be impossible for him. If no one could find out who was with you when you gave birth to Xavier, an event covering at least a few hours, it would be impossible for him, without notes, to find out who gave you an injection, which presumably was quick and uneventful.

‘I knew I’d let you down,’ continued William. ‘So I did a bit of asking around at the genetic clinic. Pulled in a few favours. I’ve got you these.’

He handed me a packet of hospital notes as if giving me flowers. ‘Your shreds of proof, Bee.’

I saw the notes were Mitch’s.

‘Michael Flanagan is Kasia Lewski’s partner,’ William said and I realised how little I’d told him about my friendship with Kasia. ‘He isn’t a carrier of the cystic fibrosis gene.’

So Mitch had got himself tested - and clearly hadn’t told Kasia the results. I presumed that like Emilio he had assumed - or chosen to assume - that he wasn’t the father of her baby. I imagined his relief at the result, his get-out clause, turning Kasia into the trollop who’d tricked him. I wondered if he could really believe that.

From my silence and lack of excitement, William thought I hadn’t understood. ‘
Both
parents need to be carriers of the cystic fibrosis gene for their baby to have it. This dad doesn’t carry the CF gene so there’s no way the baby could have had it. I don’t know what’s going on with the CF trial but something’s clearly very wrong and these notes prove it.’

Again he misinterpreted my silence. ‘I’m sorry. I should have listened to you properly, supported you from the beginning. But you can take these to the police, can’t you? Or would you like me to?’

‘It won’t do any good.’

He looked at me, perplexed.

‘Kasia, his former partner, she’s the type of person people make mistakes about. The police will think that she was wrong about Michael Flanagan being the father, or lied about it. Just like they did with my sister.’

‘You don’t know that for sure.’

But I did, because I myself had once been prejudiced against Kasia. I knew DI Haines would see her, as I once had, as a girl who most probably slept around; a girl who could easily be mistaken, or lie, about the father of her baby.

William’s bleep went off, a strange sound amongst the conversations and clinking drinks at the bar. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go.’

I remembered he only had twenty minutes to get back to the hospital.

‘Will you make it?’

‘Absolutely. I brought the bike.’

As he left, I saw Bettina grinning at me again. I returned her smile. Because despite the fact that his shreds of proof were worthless I was buoyed up. For the first time someone was on my side.

Bettina sent me home early, as if giving me a present for my smile.

When I got home, I found Kasia on her knees scrubbing the kitchen floor.

‘What on earth are you doing?’

She looked up at me, face sweating. ‘They said it be good for baby; get in right position.’ Your flat had quickly come to resemble hers, everything gleaming around the chips and the rust and the stains. ‘Anyway, I said. I like cleaning.’

She told me that when she was a child her mother worked long shifts at a factory. After school, Kasia would scrub and polish so that when her mother got home the apartment would sparkle for her. It’s a gift, Kasia’s cleaning.

I didn’t tell her that Mitch wasn’t a carrier of the CF gene. I hadn’t yet told her that Hattie’s baby had died. Last night I’d thought I was protecting her, but now I wondered if I was betraying her trust in me. I honestly didn’t know which was true.

‘Here,’ I said, handing her tickets. ‘I have something for you.’

She took the tickets from me, a little bemused.

‘I couldn’t afford the air fare to Poland, so these are just coach tickets, six weeks after your baby is due. There’s one for each of us, the baby will travel free.’

I thought that she should take her baby to Poland to meet his grandparents, all four of them, and her uncles and aunts and cousins. She has a cat’s cradle of relations for this baby to be supported by. Mum and Dad both being only children meant we had no web of relations to fall back on. Our family was pre-shrunk before we were born.

Kasia was just staring at the tickets, uncharacteristically quiet.

‘And I’ve got you support stockings, because my friend who’s a doctor says you must be careful not to get a thrombosis,
zakrzepica
,’ I said, translating the last word into Polish, which I’d looked up before. I couldn’t read her expression, and was worried I was imposing.

‘I don’t have to stay with your family. But I really don’t think you should go that far with a new baby on your own.’

She kissed me. I realised that, despite everything, this was the first time I’d seen her cry.

I have told Mr Wright about Mitch’s notes.

‘I thought that was another reason poor single girls were being chosen - they were less likely to be believed.’

The sunshine has made me feel sleepier rather than waking me up. I finish telling Mr Wright about Mitch’s notes.

‘I thought that was another reason poor single girls were being chosen - they were less likely to be believed.’

It’s now an effort to be coherent.

‘Then I gave Kasia tickets to Poland and she cried.’

My intellect is too unfocused now to decide what is relevant.

‘That night I realised, properly, how brave she’d been. I’d thought her naive and immature, but she’s actually really courageous and I should have seen that when she stood up for me with Mitch, knowing that she’d be hit for it.’

The bruises on her face and the welts on her arms were clear enough badges of courage. But so too was her smiling and dancing in the face of whatever was thrown at her. Like you, she has the gift of finding happiness in small things. She pans life for gold and finds it daily.

And so what if, like you, she loses things? It’s no more a sign of immaturity than my knowledge of where my possessions are is a sign of my adulthood. And imagine acquiring a new language and only learning the words to describe a wonderful world, refusing to know the words for a bleak one and in doing so linguistically shaping the world that you inhabit. I don’t think that’s naive, but fantastically optimistic.

The next morning I knew that I had to tell her what was going on. Who was I to think that after what happened to you, I could look after another person?

‘I was going to tell her, but she was already on her mobile phoning half of Poland to tell them about bringing the baby to see them. And then I got another email from Professor Rosen, asking to meet me. Kasia was still chatting to her family when I left the flat.’