The Sister (6 page)

Rain, driven on demonic winds, lashed horizontally - millions of thin, watery nails unleashed, wave upon wave, like sheets that seemed to undulate in all directions as they rode the currents. Dark skies subdued the light, making everything leaden and drab.

The soft red of the car stood out as it wound its way down the lane, the driver slowly easing in and out of the unavoidable water-filled potholes. Huge splats of machine-gun bullet rain drummed against the windows, producing a secondary mist that cut visibility, so that Ryan perched as far forward on his seat as the wheel allowed, his nose only inches from the inside of the screen. He wiped a swathe of condensation clear with his hand.
As soon as I have enough money,
he told himself;
I'm getting a car with a decent blower.
The wipers of the old Ford couldn't wipe quickly enough to keep up with the rain. The dampness raised a sweet, stale odour from the upholstery inside.

Beyond the misty veil, the farmhouse was barely visible. Set back from the road, he saw it only at the last moment. Pulling quickly into the gateless gap in the stone wall between the pillars, he parked as close to the front door as he could.

Ryan switched the engine off and braced himself ready to jump out. One - two – three, he flung the door flew open and dashed out straight into a puddle, cursing as the freezing water swept into his shoe, and soaked his sock. This was the Somme, a war zone masquerading as a driveway with water filled, muddy craters everywhere.

He grabbed his bag from the back seat of the car and head down against the rain, zigzagged between craters to the front door. A woman watched his approach through a porthole she'd wiped clear through the mist on the glass. As soon as he lifted the knocker, the door opened, and he swept inside, stamping and scraping on the mat to dry the rain from his shoes.

"Mrs Flynn?" he enquired.

Possessing the heavy, blunt features and ruddy complexion of someone who had spent a lifetime working outdoors, she looked from his bag to his face and said, "Where's Doctor Robert?"

"He's, um … indisposed, so they sent me instead. Sorry, I'm Dr Ryan." He extended his hand. She ignored it.

"What's happened?" she said, eyes narrowing.

"I think he's had an accident, and that's all I know."

She looked at him suspiciously and turned away, removing first her coat, then the scarf covering her head, to reveal a tangle of surprisingly snow-white hair, distinctly at odds with her age.

He took the opportunity to ask some questions. "What seems to be the matter with her?"

"She was outside yesterday - you remember how dull it was - when she came back in, she looked as if she'd suffered the most terrible sunburn, so she did, all blistered and all."

Ryan frowned as he discounted sunlight from the list of possibilities. "Has this ever happened before?"

"When she was thirteen, by all accounts, something similar happened one Sunday morning, at
Mass."

"How old is she now?"

"She's fifteen."

"Uh-huh, let's take a look at her then."

She led him down three steps from the hallway. The flag-paved floors did little to make the house feel warm. Ryan shivered; the dampness had seeped into his bones.

They stopped outside the last door down on the left. She knocked and entered without waiting for a reply, ushering him in behind her.

"Vera, the doctor's here." She did not turn away from the window. Ryan looked around the room; it was a dirty white and sparsely furnished. No two sticks of furniture matched. A small mirror hung over a pine chest of drawers, a rickety looking chair in front of it. Over by the wall furthest from the window, was a child's bed. The blanket covering it was green, and the sheet from underneath it folded down over the top to form a collar. A single pillow was propped upright against the wall; the sag in the mattress gave away how much use it had seen over the years.

The other side of the room, opposite where Vera sat, was a table with a collection of paintings on it. He moved closer to inspect them. The girl had talent and a vivid imagination. The top painting was an aerial landscape view. She must have recreated it from a photograph, or remembered looking down on it from an aeroplane. The centrepiece drew his eye deep into the painting. A black hole of nothingness stood out stark against the greenery of the tree canopy surrounding it; bottomless and empty like the well of a dark soul, it stared up at him. Pointing to the painting, Ryan remarked, "Very imaginative."

"Not imagination at all, people have died there," Vera said without turning around. Unsure what to say, Ryan looked over to the easel next to the table. On it, a half painted canvas depicted stormy skies. Crows or ravens rode the thermals above misty mountain crags and in the foreground, at the foot of the cliffs; two black horses pulled a funeral carriage; one dragged a man behind. A procession of faceless people followed. Ryan switched his view from the painting to the window and beyond. The room was too cold for condensation to form on the glass. Dressed only in a thin nightgown, if she felt the cold, she showed no sign of it. Her eyes seemed fixed on the grey cliffs in the near distance. Taking a step back, away from the window, he'd almost staggered as he recognised the scene.
It was the backdrop to her painting.

Her hair was the palest shade of ginger, and it spilled down over her shoulders. The way she sat hunched made her backbone stick out through the fabric of her nightdress; her skin was as fine and white as porcelain. He'd not expected to see such delicate beauty after seeing her mother.

"Vera?" Ryan spoke softly.

She turned to look at the young doctor, the expression on her face serious, her eyes green and feline, fixed on him.

"Doctor Robert won't be coming will he," she said.

"No, Vera something happened, he—"

"Died in his sleep last night," Vera looked from him to . "And she's my aunt,
not
my mother."

Mrs Flynn's piggy eyes were as wide and round as they could go. Her hand covered her mouth, stifling a gasp.

"How could you have known about Dr Robert, Vera?" Ryan said, also taken aback.

Without answering, she moved over to the painting. Her hands worked with incredible speed. They watched transfixed as she mixed colours and painted the outlines of three additional characters. She left them unfinished, but clearly recognisable as a man and woman, carrying a pinkish baby.

The significance of the earlier work troubled him, and a feeling of apprehension passed through him as it became clearer. He wondered if he should ask about the addition of the new figures.

Vera raised her eyes from the painting and stared over the top of the canvas at him.

She smiled with all the self-assurance of a grown woman.

Embarrassed, Ryan quickly ushered Vera away from the window to the bed, where he could more easily examine her. She refused to move from her chair, and no amount of coercion could persuade her otherwise, so he conducted his examination right where she was, by the light of the window.

He checked her eyes, ears and throat, pausing between to make notes. "Say aah . . ."

Mrs Flynn, having provided a running commentary of Vera's symptoms throughout, now demanded his diagnosis.

He held his hand up for her to wait while he finished note taking. Conversation and writing at the same time wasn't good for him. Some people could do it. He could not.

Even without talking, he made enough mistakes, so he always drafted in pencil. It made it easier to correct if the need arose. Scrawled out corrections looked so unprofessional; he'd sooner rub them out and then start again. He clicked a further millimetre of lead out into the nib, and examined it, before continuing.

"Dr Robert would've had the answer by now… What do
you
think it is, Dr Ryan?"

"Give me a minute, please."

Although he was a doctor of medicine, he longed to qualify as a psychiatrist. He had a flair for it, an affinity with people and a clear understanding of how their minds worked. To put bread on the table, however, as soon as he’d qualified as a doctor he’d had to take a job. Often, while making his medical diagnosis, he would include a psychological evaluation, which he would keep to himself, but this time his analysis was for her aunt. Despite making an allowance for her anxiety, he marked her down as an impatient woman.

She was asking him questions again. "I know you must have
some
idea of what's going on with her. What is it in heavens name?"

He knew she wouldn't drop it until he gave her something, so he effectively summarised what she'd already told him. "Mm-m, she looks anaemic. From the diet you told me she has, it's unlikely that's what she's suffering from. Her complexion is naturally pale, a well-known characteristic of her hair type. You said she can't go out on sunny days without blistering and yet she blistered up with sunburn when the weather was dull like this yesterday - if I have that right?"

"That is what I told you."

Where had all the blisters gone
? Ryan frowned. "She has no melanin in her skin - was she always like this?" The pigmentation of her eyes and hair were normal. If he didn't know better, he might have thought she was suffering from a type of albinism. It puzzled him. She was as pale as alabaster, even in the grey of the dull day; she was almost pure white.

She continued to gaze out of the window. Her eyes were almond shaped, her face elfin. She didn't look hot; she had no difficulty breathing; her pulse was normal. He decided to check it again and took her hand in his, turning it over, so the back of it lay against his palm. It was surprisingly soft, yielding and warm; his thoughts turned inexplicably to images of post-sexual spooning.

Ryan shook his head involuntarily to get the image out; with his other hand, he spread her fingers and inspected her palm. Opened fully, it was remarkably unlined, completely unblemished. His intention was to take her pulse, but he waylaid himself into examining the structure of her hand. They were not the hands of a girl that worked physically at all. Her fingers were long and slim; there was a slight callous near the tip of her middle finger, and he already knew it wasn't from writing. He guessed she must do a lot of painting.

Ryan felt for her pulse, frowning as he manoeuvred his finger around the inside of her wrist, he found no trace, feeling only the throb of his own heart in his fingertip.

He became aware of her turning away from the window; her eyes had changed appearance, no longer feline, they were now wide-open sea green and had settled on him. For the second time she smiled as a woman and then her pulse began strongly, it mingled and beat in accord with his. Ryan suddenly felt self-conscious under her gaze and looked away to break contact.

She spoke for the first time since she'd mentioned Dr Robert. "Talk to me, B. Ryan, I don't bite."

Ryan found himself taken aback for the second time that morning. How could she know his first name began with a B? Her eyes led him to the bag; the nameplate on it said B Ryan.
So that was how she did it!
He smiled in recognition of the simple fact. She could be no more than fifteen, but she had the knowing smile of a woman. He looked away.

"Vera, are you allergic to anything you know of that you might have come into contact with in the last few days, yesterday perhaps?"

She didn't respond; instead, fiddling with something she held in her free hand.

He caught a glimpse of a shiny black object between her fingers. The quizzical look on his face, prompted her to tuck it away behind her back.

Although he was curious, he decided not to ask about it.

If he had, she would have told him it was just a stone that she'd found two days before on the beach.

"I'd like to get you in for a blood test. The hospital will contact you with an appointment."

"She needs something doing - and now!" Mrs Flynn exclaimed, louder than she'd intended. She covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes rounder than ever with embarrassment.

Ryan turned to look at her. "What am I missing here, ?"

She didn't reply.

He looked from one to the other for a clue, and noticed that she shot her niece a sharp look. Vera glanced almost imperceptibly at the bed. He eyed the hollow caused by sagging springs.

"Have you been sleeping well?"

Her aunt chimed in and answered for her, small round eyes rolling anticlockwise towards the ceiling. "That one hardly sleeps at all for nights on end. I'm telling you. You can hear her walking about, creaking open doors like a noisy ghost all night long. She isn't asleep, and she isn't awake either. When she
does
sleep, you can't wake her up at all!"

Vera gazed steadily at Ryan; he pretended not to notice, but the heat under his collar gave him away. His discomfort made her smile.

"Vera, when did you last get a good night's sleep?"

She made brief eye contact, and then looked over to her aunt. "Last night, the night before . . ."

"Since when?" Mrs Flynn scoffed.

"Since last night, and the night before!"