Sister Page 9

  I want to warn you that what’s coming will be painful. I took the photo out of the cardboard casing and handed it to Mum. “It’s a photo of Tess’s baby.”

  Mum wouldn’t take the picture from me; she didn’t even look at it. “But it was dead.”

  I’m sorry.

  “The baby was a boy.”

  “Why have a picture? It’s macabre.”

  Todd tried to come to the rescue. “I think they now let people have photos when their babies die as part of the grieving process.” Mum gave Todd one of her looks that she normally reserves only for family. He shrugged as if to distance himself from such an outlandish and distasteful notion.

  I carried on, alone. “Tess would want her baby buried with her.”

  Mum’s voice was suddenly loud in the flat. “No. I won’t have it.”

  “It’s what she’d want.”

  “She’d want everyone to know about her illegitimate baby? That’s what she’d want? To have her shame made public?”

  “She would never have found him shameful.”

  “Well she should have.”

  It was Mum on autopilot: forty years of being infected with middle England’s prejudices.

  “Do you want to stick an A on her coffin for good measure?” I asked.

  Todd butted in. “Darling, that’s uncalled for.”

  I stood up. “I’m going out for a walk.”

  “In the snow?”

  The words were more critical than concerned. It was Todd who said it, but it could just as easily have been Mum. I’d never spent time with both of them together before and was only just realizing their similarities. I wondered if that was the real reason I was going to marry him; maybe familiarity, even negative familiarity, breeds feelings of security rather than contempt. I looked at Todd, was he coming?

  “I’ll stay here with your mother then.”

  I’d always thought that whatever worst-case scenario happened in my life, I’d have Todd to cling to. But now I realized why no one could be my safety rope. I’d been falling since you were found—plummeting—too fast and too far for anyone to break my fall. And what I needed was someone who would risk joining me now seven miles down in the dark.

  Mr. Wright must see my puffy face as I walk in. “Are you all right to carry on?”

  “Absolutely fine.” My voice sounds brisk. He senses that this is the style that I want and continues, “Did you ask DS Finborough for a copy of the postmortem?”

  “Not then, no. I accepted DS Finborough’s word that nothing else had been found in the postmortem apart from the cuts to her arms.”

  “And then you went to the park?”

  “Yes. On my own.”

  I’m not sure why I added that. My feeling of being let down by Todd must still survive, even now, in all its irrelevancy.

  I glance at the clock, almost one.

  “Would it be okay if we break for lunch?” I ask. I’m meeting Mum at ten past in a restaurant round the corner.

  “Of course.”

  I said I’d tell you the story as I found out myself—no jumping forward—but it’s not fair on you or Mum to keep back what she feels now. And as I set the rules, I’m allowed to curve them a little now and then.

  I arrive at the restaurant a few minutes early and through a window see Mum already sitting at a table. She no longer has her “hair done” and without the scaffolding of a perm it hangs straight and limp around her face.

  When she sees me, her taut face relaxes. She hugs me in the middle of the restaurant, only mildly concerned that she is holding up a waiter en route to the kitchen. She strokes my hair (now longer) away from my face. I know, not Mum at all. But grief has pressed out of her all that we thought of as Mumish, leaving exposed someone who felt deeply familiar, connected to the rustle of a dressing gown in the dark and a feeling of warm arms before I could talk.

  I order a half bottle of Rioja and Mum looks at me with concern. “Are you sure you should be drinking?”

  “It’s only half a bottle, Mum. Between two of us.”

  “But even a little alcohol can be a depressive. I read about it somewhere.”

  There’s a moment of silence and then we both laugh, almost a real laugh, because being depressed would be so welcome compared with the pain of bereavement.

  “It must be hard going through everything, having to remember it all,” she says.

  “It’s not so bad, actually. The CPS solicitor, Mr. Wright, is very kind.”

  “Where have you got to?”

  “The park. Just after the postmortem result.”

  She moves her hand to cover mine, so that we hold hands as lovers do, openly on the tablecloth. “I should have stopped you from going. It was freezing.” Her warm hand over mine makes tears start behind my eyes. Fortunately, Mum and I travel everywhere now with at least two packets of tissues in pockets and handbags, and little plastic bags to put the sodden ones into. I also carry Vaseline and lip salve and the futile-hopeful Rescue Remedy for when tears overwhelm me somewhere inappropriate like the motorway or the supermarket. There’s a whole range of handbag accessories that go with grief.

  “Todd should have gone with you,” she says, and her criticism of Todd is somehow an affirmation of me.

  I wipe my nose with a handkerchief she gave me last week, a little-girl cotton one with embroidered flowers. She says that cotton stings less than a tissue; besides, it’s a little more eco and I know you’d appreciate that.

  She squeezes my hand. “You deserve to be loved. Properly loved.”

  From anyone other than Mum it would be a cliché, but as Mum has never said any of this stuff before it feels newly minted.

  “You too,” I reply.

  “I’m not all that sure that I’m worth having.”

  You must find this conversation strange in its directness. I have got used to it but you won’t have yet. There were always specters at our family feasts, taboo subjects that no one dared acknowledge, that our conversations tiptoed around, going into cul-de-sacs of not talking to one another at all. Well, now we strip these unwanted guests bare, Mum and I: Betrayal, Loneliness, Loss, Rage. We talk them into invisibility so that they’re no longer sitting between us.

  There’s a question I’ve never asked her, partly because I’m pretty sure I know the answer and because—deliberately, I think—we’d never created the opportunity.

  “Why did you call me by my second name and not my first?” I ask. I presume that she and Dad, especially Dad, thought Arabella, a beautiful romantic name, inapplicable to me from the very beginning, so they opted instead for starchy Beatrice. But I’d like the detail.

  “A few weeks before you were born we’d been to the National Theatre to see Much Ado About Nothing,” Mum replies. She must see my surprise because she adds, “Your father and I used to do things like that; before children came along, we’d go to London for the evening and get the last train home. Beatrice is the heroine. She’s so plucky. And outspoken. Her own person. Even as a baby, it suited you. Your father said Arabella was too wishy-washy for you.”

  Mum’s answer is so unexpected, and I am a little stunned, actually. I wonder whether, had I known the reason for my name as a child, I’d have tried to live up to it. Instead of being a failed Arabella, I might have become a Shakespearean plucky Beatrice. But although I’d like to, I can’t linger on this. I asked the question only as a lead up to the real one.

  You’re upset that she could believe you committed suicide—after Leo—and knowing the suffering it would cause. I tried to tell you, as I reported it, that she was grabbing at a safety rail, that it was a self-protection reflex, but you need to hear it from her.

  “Why did you think Tess had committed suicide?” I ask.

  If she’s surprised by the question, she doesn’t show it, not hesitating for a moment in her reply. “Because I’d rather feel guilty for the rest of my life than for her to have felt a second’s fear.”

  Her tears fall onto the white dam
ask tablecloth, but she doesn’t mind the waiter’s stare, not caring anymore about “form” and socially correct behavior. She’s the mother in the rustling dressing gown sitting at the end of our beds smelling of face cream in the dark. The glimpse I had as she first shed her old Mumness is now fully exposed.

  I never knew so much love could exist for someone until I saw Mum grieving for you. With Leo, I was away at boarding school and didn’t witness it. I find her grief both shocking and beautiful. And it makes me afraid of being a mother, of risking what she feels now—what you must have felt for Xavier.

  There’s a short silence, a hangover from a previous time of silences, but then Mum talks into it. “You know I don’t mind much about the trial. Not at all if I’m being totally honest.” She looks at me, checking for a reaction, but I say nothing. I’ve heard her say this before in myriad ways. She doesn’t care about justice or revenge, just you.

  “She’s been in the headlines for days,” Mum announces with pride. (I think I already told you that she’s proud of all the media attention?) She thinks you deserve to be on everybody’s front page and topping the bill on the news, not because of your story but because everyone should know all about you. They should be told about your kindness, your warmth, your talent, your beauty. For Mum it’s not “Stop the clocks” but “Run the presses!” “Turn on the TV,” “Look at my wonderful daughter!”

  “Beatrice?”

  My vision is blurring. I can just hear Mum’s voice. “Are you all right…? Poppet…?”

  The anxiety in her voice jolts me back into full consciousness. I see the worry on her face and hate to be the cause of it, but the waiter is still clearing the next table, so it can’t have been for long.

  “I’m fine. Shouldn’t have had wine, that’s all; it makes me woozy at lunchtime.”

  Outside the restaurant I promise to come and see her at the weekend and reassure her that I’ll phone her this evening, as I do every evening. In the bright spring sunshine we hug good-bye and I watch her walk away. Among the shining hair and brisk walk of office workers returning from lunch breaks, Mum’s nonreflective gray hair stands out for its dullness, her walk uncertain. She seems weighted down by her grief, physically stooping as if not strong enough to bear it. As I watch her among the crowd, she reminds me of a tiny dinghy in an enormous sea, impossibly still afloat.

  There’s a limit to how much I can ask her in one wallop. But you want to know if Xavier is buried with you. Of course he is, Tess. Of course he is. In your arms.

  7

  I arrive for the afternoon session with Mr. Wright a few minutes late. My head still feels strange, not quite in focus. I ask Mrs. Crush Secretary for a strong coffee. I need to tell your story with sharp reflexes, a memory with neurons firing, not half asleep. I want to say what I have to and go home and phone Mum to make sure she’s okay.

  Mr. Wright reminds me where we’d got to.

  “Then you went to Hyde Park?”

  I left Mum and Todd, walking hurriedly up your icy basement steps, pulling on my coat. I’d thought that my gloves were in my pocket, but only one remained. It was mid-afternoon and the pavements were almost deserted; it was too cold to be out for no reason. I walked hurriedly toward Hyde Park, as if there was a deadline to keep, as if I was late. When I got to the Lancaster Gate entrance I stopped. What was I doing here? Was this just a sulk that had needed to find a focus? “I’m not in a temper! I’m going to find my tea set!” I remember my six-year-old outrage as I ran up the stairs. There was a real purpose this time, even if it had been prompted by wanting to get away from Mum and Todd. I needed to see where your life had ended.

  I went through the open wrought-iron gates. The cold and the snow were so like the day you were found that I felt time pulling me back through the previous six days to that afternoon. I started walking toward the derelict toilets building, pushing my gloveless hand deep into the pocket of my coat. I saw young children building a snowman with energetic earnestness, a mother watching and stamping her feet to keep warm. She called to them to finish now. The children and their snowman were the only things to be different; perhaps that was why I focused on them, or maybe it was their ignorance and innocence of what had happened here that meant I wanted to watch them.

  I walked on toward the place you were found, my gloveless hand stinging with cold. I could feel the packed snow beneath the thin soles of my shoes. They were meant not for a snowy park but for a New York lunch party in a different life.

  I reached the derelict toilets building, totally unprepared for the bouquets. There were hundreds of them. We’re not talking a Princess Diana ocean of floral grief, but masses, nonetheless. Some were half buried in snow—they must have been there for a few days—others were newer, still pristine in their bouquet cellophane. There were teddy bears too, and for a moment I was perplexed before realizing they were for Xavier. There was a police cordon around the small building, making a neat parcel of the scene of your death with a yellow and black plastic ribbon. I thought it odd that the police should make their presence felt here so long after you’d needed their help. The ribbon and flowers were the only colors in the whiteout park.

  I checked that there was no one around, then climbed over the yellow and black ribbon. I didn’t think it strange then that there was no police officer. PC Vernon has since told me that a police officer always has to be present at a crime scene. They have to stand by that cordon, come what may, in all weather. She says she gets desperate for the loo. It’s this, she’s told me, that will end her career as a policewoman rather than being too empathetic. Yes, I’m procrastinating.

  I went inside. I don’t need to describe to you what it looked like. Whatever state you were in, you’d have noticed your surroundings in detail. Your eyes are an artist’s eyes and I wish that the last place you’d seen hadn’t been stained and vile and ugly. I went into a cubicle and saw bloodstains on the concrete floor and splatters of blood on the peeling walls. I vomited into a basin, before realizing it wasn’t attached to any drain. I knew that no one would willingly choose to go into that place. No one would choose to die there.

  I tried not to think of your being there for five nights, all alone. I tried to cling to my Chagall image of your leaving your body, but I couldn’t be sure of the time frame. Did you leave your body, as I so fervently hoped, the moment you died? Or maybe it was later, when you were found, when your body was seen by someone other than your murderer. Or was it in the morgue when the police sergeant pulled back the blanket and I identified you—did grief release you?

  I walked out of the foul-smelling, vile building and breathed in the cold till it hurt my lungs, grateful for the white iced air. The bouquets made sense to me now. Decent people were trying to fight evil with flowers, the good fighting under the pennants of bouquets. I remembered the road to Dunblane lined with soft toys. I had not understood before why anyone would think a family whose child had been shot would want a teddy. But now I did; against the sound of gunshots, a thousand compassionate soft toys muffled a little their reverberating horror. “Mankind isn’t like this,” the offerings say, “we are not like this. The world isn’t only this way.”

  I started reading the cards. Some of them were illegible, soaked with snow, the ink melting into the sodden paper. I recognized Kasia’s name—she’d left a teddy with “Xavier” in large childish writing, the dot of the i a heart, crosses to show kisses, circles for hugs. The snob in me flinched at her bad taste, but I was also touched and felt guilty for my snobbishness. I resolved to look up her phone number when I got home and thank her for her thoughtfulness.

  I gathered up the legible cards to take away with me—no one else would want to read them but Mum and me. As I put them into my pockets, I saw a middle-aged man with a Labrador a little distance away, his dog on a tight leash. He was carrying a bunch of chrysanthemums. I remembered him from the afternoon you were found, watching the police activity; the dog was straining to get away then too. He was hesitating, mayb
e waiting for me to go before he laid his flowers. I went up to him. He was wearing a tweed hat and a Barbour jacket, a country squire who should be out on his estate not in a London park.

  “Were you a friend of Tess’s?” I asked.

  “No. I didn’t even know her name till it was on the television,” he replied. “We just used to wave, that’s all. When you pass someone quite frequently, you start to form some kind of connection. Just a small one of course, more like recognition.” He blew his nose. “I’ve really no right to be upset, absurd I know. How about you, did you know her?”

  “Yes.”

  No matter what DS Finborough said, I knew you. The Country Squire hesitated, unsure of the etiquette of keeping up a conversation by floral tributes. “That policeman’s gone then? He said the cordon will be going down soon, now that it’s not a crime scene.”

  Of course it wasn’t a crime scene, not when the police had decided you’d committed suicide. The Country Squire seemed to be hoping for a reaction; he prodded a little further.

  “Well you knew her, so you probably know what’s going on better than I do.”

  Perhaps he was enjoying having a chat about this. The sensation of tears pricking isn’t unpleasant. Terror and tragedy at enough removes are titillating, exciting even, to have a little connection to grief and tragedy that isn’t yours. He could tell people, and no doubt did, that he was involved a little in all this, a bit player in the drama.

  “I am her sister.”

  Yes, I used the present tense. You being dead didn’t stop me being your sister; our relationship didn’t go into the past—otherwise I wouldn’t be grieving now, present tense. The squire looked appalled. I think he hoped I was at a decent emotional remove too.