A Sister’s Gift (41 page)

‘Well, you still
are
in with a chance, aren’t you?’ I frown. ‘It’s not in the bag yet.’ And it’s not as if I’m getting out of this mess as lightly as he thinks I am. I’m pregnant for God’s sake! I’m going to have to take some herbs to terminate this child and…I didn’t want to have to do that. I wanted to keep it for Hollie. I know she’s mad at me and she hates me and she’ll never forgive what I did, but I didn’t want to have to do this to her.

‘It’s not as if you
need
to work any more is it?’ Emoto puts in unexpectedly. ‘You’re going to be pretty much set up for life with that boyfriend of yours…’

‘Emoto.’ I straighten up now and put a hand on his arm. I wish Emoto would stop being so mean to me. God, how I wish I could just
tell
him. But I can’t. There’s been this reserve between us from the beginning, because we’ve always been rivals as well as co-workers, all because of this bloody award. ‘You’ve been sulking ever since you picked me up from the coach station. I’m sorry if you didn’t want me back, but I’m here because I still care about helping the tribe, even if you don’t believe that.’

He falls silent now, and I know there’s still something eating away at him, my old friend and rival. Of course there is. Eve told me when she first picked me up, didn’t she? They’d all have preferred to keep
him
on – I was only chosen because of my links with Guillermo and it’s hardly any wonder if Emoto’s feeling hard done by.

‘It’s my intention to help you too, you know. I want to help. If I have any influence on the way things work out here I’ll use it for everyone’s good…’

‘I know.’ He hangs his head. ‘I apologise for sounding bitter. I shouldn’t. It’s partly my fault. I just thought all along…’ He holds up the tent flap and looks at me frankly. ‘I always took you to be just a pretty face. I thought you were like so many of the other UK students that have come and gone, here just to
have a bit of fun. Then I was here in Eve’s tent the other day, collecting my things and I saw your paper, Scarlett. The one that’s up for the Klausmann.’ He gestures into the little white tent and I see a pile of my things on the metal table now. I duck inside to take a better look and he follows me.

‘These are all the things we saved for you from the fire.’ He pushes his smooth hands through his short black hair, looking uncomfortable as he remembers, no doubt, that I lost all my seeds…’And some of the things that Eve had in her keeping -like this.’ He picks up a folder of papers and places it into my hands. I’ve never seen it before. ‘I read your work, Scarlett, and it’s damn good.’

‘Oh.’ I feel a glow of pleasure at his words. ‘Everyone keeps telling me so and yet I never thought…’

‘No, seriously, you shouldn’t have talked yourself down like that. I thought I was in with a chance of winning until I saw yours. As it is…’

I don’t ask him, because I can see he’s still upset. I sit down on the chair and open up the folder, leafing through it while, unbidden, Emoto goes to fetch the rest of my stuff from the car. There must be two theses in here – maybe Emoto’s is in here too – because this is much thicker than the one I submitted and…anyway, it’s all about Mycorrhizal fungi. No wonder everyone keeps getting my work mixed up with this one if they’re both in the same folder.

What the…?

I turn the folder round, my breath suddenly coming in short gasps as a thought occurs to me. I read the name on the front: ‘Scarlett L. Hudson’. It doesn’t say anybody else’s name, just mine. I turn to the title page: ‘Observations on Myccorhizal Biodiversity by Scarlett Hudson.’ And the date, two summers ago. But I never typed that page. It isn’t mine.
I never typed that!

What the fuck?

I glance up at the tent flaps but Emoto is still out at the car.
Just as well because I know my face has just gone the colour of beetroot. If he saw me right now, looking like this, he’d guess the truth! This isn’t my thesis. This isn’t the thesis I gave to Hollie to post off for me two summers ago.

I know whose it is, though.

How the hell could Hol have got the two of them mixed up? How
could
she? She’d never have done it on purpose, surely? She wouldn’t have understood what she was doing – Hollie couldn’t tell fungus from fudge, she wouldn’t have had a clue. Oh, how could she have made such a stupid mistake? And – if it
is
a mistake – then who typed up the front page with my name on it? Crap. First of all I had the ‘allegations’ that miserable git Duncan tried to pin on me and now this. Does Hollie even know what she’s done?

If anyone ever found out, does she realise the deep shit I’d be in? My name would be mud in ethno-botany circles. I’d be finished. I push the thesis back into the folder and shove it out of sight so I don’t have to think about it any more. There’s too much at stake for me to go back on this now.

I am in real trouble now. I didn’t cheat, but this sure makes it look as if I did, and if Gui finds that out then I’m done for. He can’t abide liars, he’s always saying. That’s part of the reason he loves me so much. Because he thinks I can’t tell a lie!

I am royally screwed. Unless of course there is some way to keep it quiet. Nobody has realised the mistake up till now, have they? All I have to do is make sure that nobody ever finds out what Hollie has done.

Never, ever.

How am I going to start this letter?

I stand up on Scarlett’s little bed in the bare-walled beige room that she left in such a hurry and I reach up for the last time to close the darned window. There’s a stiff breeze blowing off the Medway today. I can see the sun sparkling on it in little silver patches here and there and the sight makes me pause in mid-reach. It’s not such a bad view, really. We’ve had some good times here by this river. We’ve never sailed on one of those real sailing boats but we sent plenty of paper boats spinning down the river in our time.

Funny how Scarlett only remembered how I’d stopped her from chasing after them that night after Flo’s birthday party. She didn’t recall I was holding her back for her own safety, she was only a diddy thing. If she’d have jumped in and tried to swim after them she’d have got swept away, no question about it. So I’d pinioned her arms to her sides and held onto her for dear life so she couldn’t jump in.

I thought her heart would break. I remember us standing there for the best part of half an hour while I tried to drum it into her head that the little paper boats were gone. For good. And I have never forgotten the look on her determined little face when she turned to me and declared, ‘I will get them back, Hollie. When I’m bigger I’ll get on a boat myself and follow them all the way out to sea and I’ll search and
search till I find them and you won’t be able to stop me, no one will.’

I feel a lump in my throat now. Maybe that was the first time I realised that one day the tide would come that would take my Lettie away from me.

My eyes flicker over the static barge and its crane and the bags of sand it’s still off-loading to shore up the piers. They’ll be done in a few weeks, they tell me. After all my worrying and fretting, it’s all going to be sorted and the bridge isn’t going to fall down after all. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, as Flo used to say – and I must be a hell of a lot stronger than I used to be, I reckon.

Strong enough maybe to look towards the site of the Blue Jazz café, the spot where I fell into the water all those years ago? All these years we’ve lived right opposite it, and in all this time I’ve never once looked at it. That’s why I like the window closed. I raise my eyes very slowly, very tentatively, to the place where my downfall took place. And then I do a double take.

It’s gone!

The Blue Jazz café has been pulled down and in its place is nothing but a small empty field. Is
this
what Scarlett was trying to get me to look at, that evening when I sent her packing? This place that has haunted my nightmares for so many years till eventually I blocked out my dreams altogether…It’s gone. All gone.

I watch as some strange-looking birds circle round and round before landing on the fence by the water. Some very rare Chatham albatrosses maybe? I manage a small smile, feeling a strange sense of relief flooding through me. Dear old Mr Huang would know. He lives on the other side of the river. His house would be that one with the blue door. And then I remember the sign- ‘Closing down sale, returning to China for family reasons’. He’s leaving and I still have so much unfinished business – will I ever get to learn to swim after all?

Anyway. I shake my head to get rid of these thoughts, trying to focus on what I came in here to do. I come down off the bed and pick up the writing pad again. How
am
I going to start this? What shall I say to the PlanetLove people when I write the letter that Duncan was so keen for me to write? It won’t be easy. I flick open the folder which I’ve kept stashed away on top of Scarlett’s wardrobe for the past two years. Inside is the envelope which she asked me to post for her; her thesis on Orchidacea. She was honest enough to decide against using Duncan’s work and instead submit her own. I’m no botanist but I’ve learned a fair bit just from reading Mum’s old papers when I was a kid. And Scarlett was being foolhardy if she thought her own work would cut it. Even I could see that it wouldn’t. So I sent off our mother’s thesis in its place.

Mum’s magnum opus on Mycorrhizal biodiversity that she slaved away so many years for – devoted her life to and, partly, stayed away from us, for. It never got published or ever saw the light of day because she died before she could do anything with it. I don’t regret what I did – and why would I? Why waste it? Her work got to be of some earthly use in the end. Scarlett got accepted for the Amazon job that she so desperately wanted and Mum actually got to be useful to one of her girls.

Well, now she’s going to be useful to me too. I need to just get on and write this letter.

I crawl out of the tent and straighten my aching back. I am frozen to the bone and every part of me hurts. It’s been raining for days now, pelting down steadily on the canvas outside but this morning at last – at last! – the downpour has stopped. High up above the canopy there are patches of bright blue sky visible from the ground. The day is going to be hot. I’ve been confined to base camp since I got back but I’m finally going to be able to get moving.

‘Hey.’ I look up blearily as Emoto comes off the jeep radio and joins me outside Eve’s tent. ‘Looks like today we’ll finally be able to make a move out of here, get on with some work.’

‘I’m afraid not, Scarlett.’ I watch as he pulls off his thigh-length wellies. They’re covered to mid-calf in mud. ‘The forest floor isn’t just muddy and mired – it’s impassable. For the time being, people like you and me have to stay put.’

‘For Pete’s sake!’
I groan. ‘I need to find the tribe…’

I stand outside the tent for a while and squint up at the sky. If it could get hot quick enough, maybe everything would dry out and then we could make a move? That noise I’ve been hearing in the distance is louder now that I’m standing outside. It sounds like…like the noise I’ve heard the loggers make with their electric saws. I frown at Emoto, indicating with my head towards the direction it’s coming from and he stops in the middle of pulling off his boots. Are the loggers here? Even in all this mud?

‘Get back inside,’ he says thickly.

‘Emoto, I’ve been stuck in there for three whole days. I’m not going to miss out on the chance to get on with what I must do just because those bastards are logging illegally. If they can move about in this mire then so can we. They have no business being here, anyway. We have to do something to stop them…’Strange, but the noise is already twice as loud as it sounded a moment ago. And it seems to be coming from everywhere all at once.

‘There is nothing we’re going to be able to do that’ll stop this lot. And you can’t go out looking for the tribe in
your
condition.’

He knows?
I look at him, shocked. ‘When did you find out?’ I ask faintly.

‘I overheard Eve tell Defoe all about it. You’re expecting Almeira’s baby, aren’t you? Oh, don’t worry,’ he adds as my face colours. ‘I didn’t spread it about. I imagined you might prefer to keep it quiet for now…’

‘Thank you,’ I manage.

‘But the truth is, you don’t
need
to do any of this any more. You don’t need to put yourself through these harsh conditions. If this is all about finding some seed samples to replace what you lost, I’ll give you some of mine.’

‘What makes you think I
want
yours?’ I challenge. ‘Even in my condition. I don’t. I don’t need your pity, Emoto. I’ll find my own samples. Don’t think you can prevent me.’

‘Not right now you won’t.
In,’
he growls, advancing as if he’s about to push me into the tent.

I turn to him and stand my ground. ‘You’ve been surly and sulking ever since I got here, Emoto, and I’ve just about had enough of it. You aren’t going to tell me what to do any more so you’d better…Ow!’ I yelp as he pushes me forcibly back into the tent. The ground is so uneven I miss my footing and it’s only because he reaches out to catch me that I don’t hit the floor.

‘What the…?’ Alarmed, I back off, while he fumbles with
the tent zips, sealing us in hermetically. I look at Emoto shakily, rubbing my sore wrists where he grabbed hold of me to stop my fall. The noise outside has grown exponentially louder in a matter of seconds. The bright white light that was hitting the tent’s exterior has gone, the sky has clouded over again, and now the tent canvas is being battered again but this time by -by
hailstones?
Huge hailstones by the sounds of it. ‘Mosquitos,’ he informs me.

‘They…it
can’t
be.’ They couldn’t be so big, there couldn’t be so many of them. The black bodies continue to pelt thickly against the outside of Eve’s tent for a few minutes. Oh God, now I feel sick. I sidle up to Emoto and push my fingers into his, my anger melting away into fear.

‘If there’s one thing I hate about this country it’s the insects,’ I say in answer to his surprised look at this sudden gesture of intimacy. ‘I love everything else but the huge-winged, creeping, crawling, sticky, black, segmented…I can’t stand them. They won’t be able to get in here, will they?’