A Sister’s Gift (31 page)

‘I…’I think fast, pushing down my mortification that other people too might be speculating about what went on. ‘I don’t know what to think. You say she betrayed me with him?’

‘I’m certain of it. If she wanted to get pregnant for you there are more civilised ways of going about it,’ he says knowingly. ‘Which wouldn’t have needed any contact between them.’

‘How,’ I say carefully, ‘are you so certain? She could have been taking a shower and not realised he was in that bedroom and…’

‘No!’ He looks affronted. ‘I’m not that stupid. She had her
arms round him, Hollie. I saw them at the window together. And – I’m sorry to say so – but she had that look on her face when they eventually came out that said it all for me. She had the look on her of a woman who’s just got what she wanted, if you see what I mean. The cat that got the cream.’

I wince. That might be just a little too near to the truth for my liking. ‘You just said she’d been crying?’ I protest.

‘That too. It was odd. Maybe she felt guilty after all? Either way, Hollie, putting together what I saw and what you’ve just confirmed to me, she’s betrayed you, face it. Just like she did to me.’

‘If what you’re telling me is true, Duncan…’

‘I swear on my life that it is.’

‘Then we are both injured parties,’ I say slowly, turning my face to him so he can clearly see my eyes. I’m not faking the pain, either. If Scarlett really is a traitor that’s something I’m going to have to deal with later. For now, I’m just holding onto the thought that -that maybe Duncan’s exaggerating everything out of all proportion. Making out he saw and knows more than he really does, just to get me on his side so he can get his revenge. Let’s face it, if I can’t even trust my own sister, why should I trust him either?

‘What are you suggesting we do about it?’

‘I want you to back me up,’ he says eagerly. ‘Do you remember anything about her behaviour that summer before she sent the papers off to be assessed?’

‘I remember that she was desperate to get the job, to go to Brazil. I remember that she was convinced she hadn’t done anywhere near enough the amount of work she needed to do to get it.’

‘She’d done the work all right,’ he comments. ‘But experiments don’t always run smoothly. Things didn’t go according to plan. The key thing is,’ his eyes narrow, ‘I recall her telling me that she’d asked you to post off the assignment in the end because she ran out of time, is that true?’

I nod. He pauses and pulls a scruffy-looking manuscript out of his bag, and hands it to me. ‘Did you ever look at it? Could you say if this is what she asked you to post in the end?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because,’ he squirms impatiently, ‘the ungrateful little minx – after all the work and effort I put in to help her out – rang me up and told me that the assignment she’d put in, in the end, was her own. She’d felt guilty, she said. She’d not been able to go ahead with our plan. I think it was her way of jettisoning me from her life, now I look at it. She didn’t want to keep up her end of the bargain, so she pretended that my end never happened. I don’t believe her for one minute though – do you?’

‘What do you want from me?’ I ask now. I glance at the document he’s just planted in my hands.

‘Is this the document she asked you post off for her, Hollie? Do you recognise it?’

‘“Medicinal uses of Orchidacea throughout South East Asia”,’ I read out, feeling my face grow hot. ‘Yes.’ I say at last, faintly. ‘This is the one she gave me to post. I recognise the title, yes.’

‘Bingo!’ He punches his fist in the air, making me wince. ‘Then we’ve got her. If you’re prepared to testify to that, and that she spent a load of time redrawing the graphics in her own hand from my originals, I think we’ve got a pretty solid case. She’ll lose her job, which is no less than she deserves, agreed?’

I hand the document back to him, and my hands feel greasy just from having touched it. He wants me to help him cast the net around Scarlett that will bring her to the justice he feels she deserves. He thinks I have every reason to do that; that I’m on his side.

‘I thought you were going to let the universe do the work?’ I remind him. ‘Let karma work its way back to her all by itself? Why have we got to do anything about it?’

He laughs. ‘I talk like that sometimes, Hollie. When I’ve taken
a little – you know,
something
, to help with the pain of life. Forget I said it. Hey, it’s laudable that you hesitate before jumping in to get your own back – especially after what I’ve just told you. But I’m not asking you to do anything that’ll bring bad karma down on yourself, you understand. If that’s what you’re worried about?’ he says solicitously. ‘No – you’ll be exposing a wrongdoing, that’s all…’

‘Why don’t
you
expose it?’

He pulls a pained expression. ‘Because I – to my eternal shame, and blinded by my love for her – was involved myself, wasn’t I? I can’t afford to be implicated, Hollie. I need you to do it.’

Perhaps if he thinks I’m going to be the one to expose her, then he’ll back off? Leave me to it. Better if he thinks that.

‘You told me last time we spoke, that you’d written my sister a note – five little words – in that envelope you sent out to her in November. The red balloon, remember?’ I look at him curiously now. ‘What were they?’

‘I wrote: “I know what you did”. Hey,’ he shifts gear suddenly, ‘I just said I was probably tripping out when I told you all that, OK? Forget about that. She’s never going to get that message now, anyway, is she?’

‘You’re not stoned
now
, though, are you? But you came here hoping you’d still get something out of that bargain you two struck up. You knew she’d been seeing Richard, yet you still hoped she’d be true to her word to you…’I remind him.

‘I’m a fool, aren’t I?’ He looks directly into my eyes. ‘And you’ve been a fool too. Perhaps we can both stop being her fools now. Do I have your agreement?’

‘Fine.’ I stand up, affecting an aggrieved air. ‘You want me to contact PlanetLove, saying I’ve been asked to send them evidence, testify that the document she asked me to send them wasn’t one she in fact produced herself? She’ll lose her job, Duncan.’

‘Which is no more than she deserves, I’m sure you’ll agree?’
He follows me to the front door. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then?’ He turns at last and shakes my hand. ‘I’ll await the outcome with interest.’

Yeah. I shut the door on him at last, and my legs are shaking, my palms all sweaty. You await it.

Tried to ring u last nite
, I text Gui,
but no ansr
. He isn’t answering now, either. I click off the phone in disgust. One minute he’s all over me like a rash and the next thing he goes quiet for days. Why? He doesn’t know what I got up to with Rich on Bluebell Hill so there’s no reason for him to go silent on me. I even rang up his PA at Chiquitin-Almeira last night, I was that desperate. She sounded rather surprised. I felt a bit stupid, saying, ‘It’s his girlfriend ringing.’ Is that even what I am any more? Maybe I’ve left it all too late.

I push down the waistband of my jeans, feeling irritable, rubbing at the red weal where they’ve been digging into my flesh. I keep telling myself it’s all Hollie’s home-cooking. I’m not wearing those elasticated-waist ones Hollie wanted to buy me. Not yet. It’s too soon to be getting fat. I don’t even want to be pregnant.

My phone rings now. I look at it and see that Emoto’s sent me a sweet pic of him and José in the forest. They’ve found another orchid-rich zone, apparently. The photo’s pretty dark so I can’t make out what species there are surrounding them but he’s written a message:
Me and José in Aladdin’s cave. Wish you were here to see it
.

You don’t know how much I wish it, too, Emoto. Only last week he rung me saying he’d heard rumours flying around that PlanetLove were investigating me for something. How in the
world
that’s
got out when they won’t even tell me what I’m supposed to have done…

Anyway, he said he heard someone had put in fraud allegations against me. He sounded worried. He hinted that I really could do with being back there to defend myself, look into it all properly. I feel so…completely helpless here, that’s the problem. I can’t get hold of anyone at PlanetLove head office at Berkeley Square, no matter what I do.

I can’t get hold of anyone that I really want to, can I? Rich has been away for – what, four, five weeks now? They’re still keeping up the pretence that his absence is work-related but if Hollie really believes that then she’s even more naïve than I’ve taken her to be. She surely must see that everything has changed? This place drives me potty.
She
drives me potty. I tried to do what I could to help others and what have I ended up with? Richard’s ignoring me, Gui’s ignoring me, my whole career is about to go down the pan due to some mysterious allegations that I’m not in Brazil to defend myself against…Oh, it’s enough to make me see why our mum would have wanted to run away from everything.
I
want to run away.

If Rich doesn’t come back sometime soon, maybe I will, too.

I turn back to the house, my arms laden with bathroom towels I’ve just rescued from the sudden April squall. The deep purple tulips Christine brought me back from Holland last year stand in a line like bare green spikes, all their petals blown to the ground too soon. This isn’t the spring I was dreaming of.

Maybe this time next year my washing line will be full of Babygros? It’s what I wanted but everything feels so wrong, so out-of-place. The cottage feels so empty and lonely, even though Scarlett’s here. But Richard still isn’t.

The bottom gate’s been left off the latch. That won’t be my sister’s doing, she’s always particular about closing the gate behind her. Besides, she’s not exactly out and about much at the moment. But that gate has certainly been left open, which means somebody’s come in ahead of me.

Could it be Rich? My heart soars with hope for a moment. He’s been in Lincolnshire for weeks now, and – true to his word – he has not come back down to our cottage. With Scarlett as sick as a dog I’ve not been able to get up to him either and I’ve been desperate to see him. Heaven knows what he’s told his parents, they’ll be wondering why on earth he’s stayed away for so long.

Unless he’s told them the truth.

I run back up the garden path, the cold breeze fluttering a shower of cherry blossom at my back like confetti at a wet wedding.
If it is Richard, he never called to say he was coming. Could it be a spur-of-the-moment thing? Perhaps he’s realised how much he’s missed me?

Just inside the hallway I spy Scarlett’s bedroom door ajar at the top of the stairs and I stop. Maybe the visitor is for her, and not for me? Whoever it is, she’s sounding rather pleased with herself, I can hear her throaty chuckle from here.

‘About time you turned up again,’ she’s saying, ‘seeing as I’ve been so sick and all. I was beginning to think you didn’t care. Do you want to see my tummy?’

I freeze. Who the heck has she got in there with her?

‘Your hands are cold!’ she shrieks after a while. ‘You need to warm them up a bit…Hey, that tickles!’

‘Sorry, my love.’

I drop the towels in the hallway and creep up the stairs, trying to spread my weight evenly so as not to make them creak.

‘So, have you been a good girl? Like we discussed on the phone?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Scarlett sounds uninterested suddenly. ‘Vitamins. Water. Fresh vegetables – those I can keep down – and gentle exercise.’ I wanted to do all that, I think, suddenly disconsolate. I wanted to do all those things to grow a healthy baby, I was looking forward to it, but for her it’s just a huge inconvenience…

‘Excellent. Roll up your sleeve for me, there’s a poppet. I want to check your blood pressure.’

Oh. The midwife. I skip the last few steps and pop my head round her door.

‘Hi, Jane.’ I give them both a cheesy smile. ‘Didn’t know we were expecting you today.’

‘Thought I’d pop in, seeing as she wasn’t too bright last week, were you, my love?’ Jane straightens, then pumps up the blood pressure band around Scarlett’s arm. ‘That’s all excellent. Now. D’you want to pop up onto these scales for me, please?’

Scarlett climbs onto them obediently and the midwife gives a small tut-tut sound. ‘Not keeping enough down, are you, really?
Still, the baby’ll take what it needs – it’s you that’s going to go downhill if you can’t manage food. I’m going to ask you to wee in a bottle for me in a minute. Do you think you can manage that?’

‘Anything for you.’

‘You’re lucky to have such good support, here.’ Jane cocks her head, indicating me. ‘My next lady has two kids under two, she’s every bit as sick as you but she doesn’t get to lounge around all day.’ She’s teasing gently, making a sweeping gesture that takes in the numerous drinks bottles, banana peels and magazines surrounding the bed. ‘And here’s you, being waited upon hand and foot like a princess. But this is one thing you’re going to have to do for yourself though, lovey.’

Scarlett smiles, takes the little plastic bottle proffered her and stalks off to the bathroom.

‘I hope the dad’s helping out too and not just leaving it all to auntie?’ Jane glances up at me enquiringly once my sister’s gone. I watch her rolling up the blood-pressure machine, winding up the wires and folding them all neatly back into her bag. I want to ask her so many questions but it doesn’t feel like my place to do so.

‘Yes,’ I say faintly. I fold my arms, turning my head at the sound of the back door shutting. Is that the wind? My arms were full of towels, I can’t remember – did I leave it open?

‘She’s quite young, isn’t she? I take it this one
was
a planned pregnancy?’ Jane turns to me now, curious rather than judgemental.

‘She’s not as young as she looks. She’s twenty-four.’

‘Still….’ she flicks through her notes ‘…twenty-four is still young to be going it alone, isn’t it? At the end of the day, it always helps a first-time mummy if the dad’s on board with it, that’s all.’ She looks up as Scarlett reappears with her sample bottle.