Sister: A Novel (5 page)

The doorbell woke me.

Tuesday

I arrive at the CPS office where spring has officially arrived. The faint scent of freshly mown grass from the park wafts in with each turn of the revolving door; the receptionists on the front desk are in summer dresses with brown faces and limbs that must have been self-tanned last night. Despite the warm weather I am in thick clothes, overdressed and pale, a winter leftover.

As I go towards Mr Wright’s office, I want to confide in him about my imagined stalker of yesterday. I just need to hear, again, that he is locked away in prison and after the trial will stay there for life. But when I go in, the spring sunshine floods the room, the electric light glares down, and in their brightness my ghost of fear left over from yesterday is blanched into nothing.

Mr Wright turns on the tape recorder and we begin.

‘I’d like to start today with Tess’s pregnancy,’ he says and I feel subtly reprimanded. Yesterday he asked me to start when I first ‘realised something was wrong’ and I began with Mum’s phone call during our lunch party. But I know now that wasn’t the real beginning. And I also know that if I had taken more time to be with you, if I had been less preoccupied with myself and listened harder, I might have realised something was very wrong months earlier.

‘Tess became pregnant six weeks into her affair with Emilio Codi,’ I say, editing out all the emotion that went with that piece of news.

‘How did she feel about that?’ he asks.

‘She said she’d discovered that her body was a miracle.’

I think back to our phone call.

‘Almost seven billion miracles walking around on this earth, Bee, and we don’t even believe in them.’

‘Did she tell Emilio Codi?’ asks Mr Wright.

‘Yes.’

‘How did he react?’

‘He wanted her to have the pregnancy terminated. Tess told him the baby wasn’t a train.’

Mr Wright smiles and quickly tries to hide it, but I like him for the smile.

‘When she wouldn’t, he told her she’d have to leave the college before the pregnancy started to show.’

‘And did she?’

‘Yes. Emilio told the authorities she’d been offered a sabbatical somewhere. I think he even came up with an actual college.’

‘So who knew about it?’

‘Her close friends, including other art students. But Tess asked them not to tell the college.’

I just couldn’t understand why you protected Emilio. He hadn’t earned that from you. He’d done nothing to deserve it.

‘Did he offer Tess any help?’ asks Mr Wright.

‘No. He accused her of tricking him into pregnancy and said that he wouldn’t be pressurised into helping her or the baby in any way.’

‘Had she “tricked” him?’ asks Mr Wright.

I’m surprised at the amount of detail he wants from me, but then remember that he wants me to tell him everything and let him decide later what is relevant.

‘No. The pregnancy wasn’t intentional.’

I remember the rest of our phone call. I was in my office overseeing a new corporate identity for a restaurant chain, multitasking with my job as older sister.

‘But how can it possibly be an accident, Tess?’

The design team had chosen Bernard MT condensed typeface, which looked old-fashioned rather than the retro look I’d briefed.

‘Accident sounds a little negative, Bee. Surprise is better.’

‘OK, how can you get a “surprise” when there’s a Boots in every high street selling condoms?’

You laughed affectionately, teasing me as I chastised you. ‘Some people just get carried away in the moment.’

I felt the implied criticism. ‘But what are you going to do?’

‘Get larger and larger and then have a baby.’

You sounded so childish; you were acting so childishly, how could you possibly become a mother?

‘It’s happy news, don’t be cross.’

‘Did she ever consider an abortion?’ Mr Wright asks.

‘No.’

‘You were brought up as Catholics?’

‘Yes, but that wasn’t why she wouldn’t have an abortion. The only Catholic sacrament Tess ever believed in is the sacrament of the present moment.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t know . . .’

I know that it’s of no use to the trial, but I’d like him to know more about you than hard-edged facts in lever-arch files.

‘It means living in the here and now,’ I explain. ‘Experiencing the present without worrying about the future or cluttering it with the past.’

I’ve never bought that sacrament; it’s too irresponsible, too hedonistic. It was probably tacked on by the Greeks; Dionysus gatecrashing Catholicism and making sure they at least had a party.

There’s something else I want him to know. ‘Even at the beginning, when the baby was little more than a collection of cells, she loved him. That’s why she thought her body was a miracle. That’s why she would never have had an abortion.’

He nods, and gives your love for your baby a decently respectful pause.

‘When was the baby diagnosed with cystic fibrosis?’ he asks.

I am glad he called him a baby not a foetus. You and your baby are starting to become more human to him now.

‘At twelve weeks,’ I reply. ‘Because of our family history of CF she had a genetic screen.’

‘It’s me.’ I could tell that at the other end of the phone you were struggling not to cry. ‘He’s a boy.’ I knew what was coming, ‘He has cystic fibrosis.’ You sounded so young. I didn’t know what to say to you. You and I knew too much about CF for me to offer platitudes. ‘He’s going to go through all of that, Bee, just like Leo.’

‘So that was in August?’ asks Mr Wright.

‘Yes. The tenth. Four weeks later she phoned to tell me that she’d been offered a new genetic therapy for her baby.’

‘What did she know about it?’ asks Mr Wright.

‘She said that the baby would be injected with a healthy gene to replace the cystic fibrosis gene. And it would be done while he was still in the womb. As he developed and grew the new gene would continue to replace the faulty cystic fibrosis gene.’

‘What was your reaction?’

‘I was frightened of the risks she’d be taking. Firstly with the vector and—’

Mr Wright interrupts. ‘Vector? I’m sorry I don’t . . .’

‘It’s the way a new gene gets into the body. A taxi if you like. Viruses are often used as vectors because they are good at infecting cells in the body and so they carry in the new gene at the same time.’

‘You’re quite an expert.’

‘In our family we’re all amateur experts in the genetics field, because of Leo.’

‘But people have died in these gene therapy trials, Tess. All their organs failing.’

‘Just let me finish, please? They’re not using a
virus
as a vector. That’s the brilliant thing about it. Someone’s managed to make an
artificial chromosome
to get the gene into the baby’s cells. So there’s no risk to the baby. It’s incredible, isn’t it?’

It was incredible. But it didn’t stop me from worrying. I remember the rest of our phone call. I was wearing my full older-sister uniform.

‘OK, so there won’t be a problem with the vector. But what about the modified gene itself? What if it doesn’t just cure the CF but does something else that hasn’t been predicted?’

‘Could you please stop worrying?’

‘It might have some appalling side-effect. It might mess up something else in the body that isn’t even known about.’

‘Bee—’

‘OK, so it might seem like a small risk—’

You interrupted, elbowing me off my soapbox. ‘Without this therapy, he has cystic fibrosis. A big fat one-hundred-per-cent definite on that. So a small risk is something I have to take.’

‘You said they’re going to inject it into your tummy?’

I could hear the smile in your voice. ‘How else will it get into the baby?’

‘So this gene therapy could well affect you too.’

You sighed. It was your ‘please get off my back’ sigh, the sigh of a younger sister to an older one.

‘I’m your sister. I have a right to be concerned about you.’