Sister: A Novel (34 page)

For a moment the wine has boosted me a little, I can feel it warming my body.

‘William went to the bathroom, and looked in the cupboard. He found a bottle of pills with a hospital label on them. It was the PCP. It had been there all the time. He said many drugs are illegal on the street but are legally prescribed by doctors for therapeutic reasons.’

‘Did the label give the name of the prescribing doctor?’

‘No, but he said the police could easily track it down to Dr Nichols through the hospital pharmacy records. I felt so stupid. I’d thought that an illegal drug would be hidden, not openly on show. It had been there all the time.’

I’m sorry; I’m starting to repeat myself. My mind is losing focus.

‘And then . . . ?’ he asks.

But we’re nearly at the end, so I summon what remains of my mental energy and continue.

‘We left the flat together. William had left his bike chained to the railings on the other side of the road, but it had been stolen, though they’d left the chain. He took that with us, and joked that we could report the theft of his bike at the same time.

We decided to walk through Hyde Park to the police station, rather than take the ugly road route. At the gates of the park there was a flower stall. William suggested we lay flowers where you’d died and went to buy some.

As he spoke to the stall-holder, I texted Kasia two words: ‘
odcisk palca
’ - and knew she’d understand that I was finally putting on my own fingerprint of love.

William turned to me, holding two bunches of daffodils.

‘You told me they were Tess’s favourite flower. Because of the yellow in a daffodil saving children’s sight.’

I was pleased and surprised that he had remembered.

He put his arm around me and as we walked into the park together I thought I heard you teasing me, and I admitted to you that I was a big fat hypocrite. The truth is, I knew that the affair wouldn’t last, that he’d stay married. But I also knew that I wouldn’t be broken by it. I wasn’t proud of myself but I did feel liberated from a person I no longer was or wanted to be. And as we walked together I felt small green shoots of hope and decided I would allow them to grow. Because now I had found out what had happened to you I could look forwards and dare to imagine a future without you. I remembered being here almost two months before, when I sat in the snow and wept for you amongst the lifeless, leafless trees. But now there were ball games and laughter and picnics and bright new foliage. It was the same place but the landscape was entirely changed.

We reached the toilet building and I took the cellophane off the daffodils, wanting them to look home-picked. As I laid them at the door a memory - or lack of one - tugged its way through, unbidden.

‘But I never told you that she liked daffodils, or the reason.’

‘Of course you did. That’s why I chose them.’

‘No. I talked about it with Amias. And Mum. Not you.’

I had actually told him very little about you, or me for that matter.

‘Tess must have told you herself.’

Carrying his bunch of daffodils for you, he came towards me. ‘Bee—’

‘Stop calling me that.’ I backed away from him.

He came closer then pushed me hard inside.

‘He shut the door behind us and put a knife against my throat.’

I break off, shaking from the adrenaline. Yes, his call to DI Haines had been faked. He probably got the idea from a daytime TV soap, they’re on the whole time in the wards - I remember that from Leo. Maybe it was sheer desperation. And maybe I was too distracted to notice anything very much. Mr Wright is considerate enough not to point out my ludicrous gullibility.

The teenagers have abandoned their loud game of soft-ball for raucous music. The office workers picnicking have been replaced by mothers with pre-school children; their high barely formed voices quickly turning from shrieks of happiness into tears and back again, a mercurial quicksilver sound. And I want the children to be louder, the laughter more raucous, the music turned up full volume. And I want the park to be crowded with barely a place to sit. And I want the sunshine to be blinding.

He closed the door of the toilets building and used the bicycle chain to fasten it shut. There had never been a bicycle, had there? Light seeped through the filthy cracked windows and was turned dirty by them, casting the gloom of a nightmare. The sounds of the park outside - children laughing and crying, music from a CD player - were muffled by the damp bricks. Yes, it’s uncanny how similar that day was to today in the park with Mr Wright, but maybe the sounds of a park remain the same, day to day, give or take. And in that cold, cruel building I also wanted the children to be louder, the laughter more raucous, the music turned up to full volume. Maybe because if I could hear them then there was a chance they could hear my screams; but no, it couldn’t have been that because I knew if I screamed he would silence me with a knife. So it must have been simply that I wanted the comfort of hearing life as I died.

‘You killed her, didn’t you?’ I asked.

If I’d been sensible maybe I should have given him a let-out, made out that I thought he had pushed me in there for some weird sort of sadistic sex, because once I’d accused him was he ever going to let me go? But he was never going to. Whatever I did or said. I had wild thoughts racing through my head about how you’re meant to make friends with your kidnapper. (Where on earth did that nugget of information come from? And why did anyone think the general population would need to know such a thing?) Remarkably, I did, but I couldn’t make friends with him because he’d been my lover and there was nowhere for us to go.

‘I’m not responsible for Tess’s death.’

For a moment I thought that he wasn’t; that I’d read him all wrong; that everything would play out the way I’d been so sure of, with us going to the police and Dr Nichols being arrested. But self-deception isn’t possible with a knife and a chain on the other side of the equation.

‘I didn’t want it to happen. I didn’t
plan
it. I’m a doctor, for God’s sake. I wasn’t meant to kill anyone. Have you any idea what it feels like? It’s a living hell.’

‘So stop now with me. Please.’

He was silent. Fear pricked my skin into a hundred thousand goosebumps, a hundred thousand tiny hairs standing to upright attention as they offered their useless protection.

‘You were her doctor?’

I had to keep him talking - not because I thought anyone was on their way to rescue me, but because a little longer to live, even in this building with this man, was precious.

And because I needed to know.

‘Yes. I looked after her all through her pregnancy.’

You’d never mentioned his name, just said ‘the doctor’, and I hadn’t asked, too busy multitasking with something else.

‘We had a good rapport, liked each other. I was always kind to her.’

‘You delivered Xavier?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

I thought of the masked man in your nightmarish paintings, dark with menace in the shadows.

‘She was relieved to see me in the park that day,’ William continued. ‘Smiled at me. I—’

I interrupted. ‘But she was terrified of you.’

‘The man who delivered the baby, not me.’

‘But she must have known it was you, surely? Even with a mask, she must have recognised your voice at least. If you’d looked after her for all her pregnancy, surely . . .’

Still he was silent. I hadn’t realised that it was possible to be more appalled by him.

‘You didn’t speak to her. While she was in labour. When she gave birth. Even when her baby was dead. You didn’t speak to her.’

‘I came back and comforted her, twenty minutes or so later. I’ve told you. I was always kind to her.’

So he’d taken off the mask, switching personas back into the caring man you thought he was; who I’d thought he was.

‘I suggested I phoned someone for her,’ he continued. ‘And she gave me your number.’

You thought I knew. All that time, you thought I knew.

Mr Wright looks at me with concern. ‘You look pale.’

‘Yes.’

I feel pale, inside and out. I think of that expression ‘paling into insignificance’ and think how well it fits me, a pale person in a bright world that turns me invisible.