Sister: A Novel (6 page)

‘And I’m my baby’s mother.’

Your response took me aback.

‘I’ll write to you, Bee.’

You hung up.

‘Did she often write to you?’ asks Mr Wright.

I wonder if he’s interested or if there’s a point to the question.

‘Yes. Usually when she knew I’d disapprove of something. Sometimes when she just needed to sort out her thoughts and wanted me as a silent sounding board.’

I’m not sure if you know this, but I’ve always enjoyed your one-way conversations. Although they often exasperate me, it’s also liberating to be freed from my role as critic.

‘The police gave me a copy of her letter,’ says Mr Wright.

I’m sorry. I had to hand all your letters to the police.

He smiles. ‘The human angels letter.’

I’m glad that he’s highlighted what mattered to you, not what’s important for his investigation. And I don’t need the letter to remember that part of it:

‘All these people, people I don’t know, didn’t even know about, have been working hour after hour, day after day, for years and years to find a cure. To start with the research was funded by charitable donations. There really are angels, human angels in white lab coats and tweed skirts organising fun runs and cake sales and shaking buckets so that one day, someone they’ve never even met, has her baby cured.’

‘Was it her letter that allayed your fears about the therapy?’ asks Mr Wright.

‘No. The day before I got it, the gene therapy trial hit the US press. Gene-Med’s genetic cure for cystic fibrosis was all over the papers and wall-to-wall on TV. But there were just endless pictures of cured babies and very little science. Even the broadsheets used the words “miracle baby” far more than “genetic cure”.’

Mr Wright nods. ‘Yes. It was the same here.’

‘But it was also all over the net, which meant I could research it thoroughly. I found out that the trial had met all the statutory checks, more than the statutory checks, actually. Twenty babies in the UK had so far been born free of CF and perfectly healthy. The mothers had suffered no ill effects. Pregnant women in America who had foetuses with cystic fibrosis were begging for the treatment. I realised how lucky Tess was to be offered it.’

‘What did you know about Gene-Med?’

‘That they were well established and had been doing genetic research for years. And that they had paid Professor Rosen for his chromosome and then employed him to continue his research.’

Allowing your ladies in tweed skirts to stop shaking buckets.

‘I’d also watched half a dozen or so TV interviews with Professor Rosen, the man who’d invented the new cure.’

I know it shouldn’t have made a difference but it was Professor Rosen who changed my mind about the therapy, or at least opened it. I remember the first time I saw him on TV.

The morning TV presenter purred her question at him. ‘So how does it feel, Professor Rosen, to be the “man behind the miracle”, as some people are dubbing you?’

Opposite her Professor Rosen looked absurdly clichéd with his wire glasses and narrow shoulders and furrowed brow, a white coat no doubt hanging up somewhere off camera. ‘It’s hardly a miracle. It’s taken decades of research and—’

She interrupted. ‘Really.’

It was a full stop but he misinterpreted her and took it as an invitation to carry on. ‘The CF gene is on chromosome seven. It makes a protein called cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator, CFTR for short.’

She smoothed her tight pencil skirt over her streamlined legs, smiling at him. ‘If we could have the simple version, Professor Rosen.’

‘This is the simple version. I created an artificial microchromosome—’

‘I really don’t think out viewers,’ she said, waving her hands as if this was beyond mortal understanding. I was irritated by her and was glad when Professor Rosen was too.

‘Your viewers are blessed with brains are they not? My artificial chromosome can safely transport a new healthy gene into the cells with no risks.’

I thought that someone probably had had to coach him in how to present his science in Noddy language. It was as if Professor Rosen himself was dismayed by it and could do it no longer. ‘The human artificial chromosome can not only introduce but stably maintain therapeutic genes. Synthetic centromeres were—’

She hurriedly interrupted him. ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to skip our science lesson today, Professor, because I’ve got someone who wants to say a special thank you.’

She turned to a large TV screen, which had a live feed from a hospital. A teary-eyed mother and proud new father, cuddling their healthy newborn, thanked Professor Rosen for curing their beautiful baby boy. Professor Rosen clearly found it distasteful and was embarrassed by it. He wasn’t revelling in his success and I liked him for it.

‘So you trusted Professor Rosen?’ asks Mr Wright, without volunteering his own impression, but he must have seen him on TV during the media saturation of the story.

‘Yes. In all the TV interviews I watched of him he came across as a committed scientist, with no media savvy. He seemed modest, embarrassed by praise, and clearly not enjoying his moment of TV fame.’

I don’t tell Mr Wright this, but he also reminded me of Mr Normans (did you have him for maths?), a kindly man but one who had no truck with the silliness of adolescent girls and used to bark out equations like firing rounds. Lack of media savvy, wire-rimmed glasses and a resemblance to an old teacher weren’t logical reasons to finally accept the trial was safe, but the personal nudge I’d needed to overcome my reservations.

‘Did Tess describe what happened when she was given the therapy?’ asks Mr Wright.

‘Not in any detail, no. She just said that she’d had the injection and now she’d have to wait.’

You phoned me in the middle of the night, forgetting or not caring about the time difference. Todd woke up and took the call. Annoyed, he passed the phone to me, mouthing, ‘It’s four thirty in the morning for chrissakes.’

‘It’s worked, Bee. He’s cured.’

I cried; sobbing, big-wet-tears crying. I had been so worried, not about your baby, but about what it would be like for you looking after and loving a child with CF. Todd thought something terrible had happened.

‘That’s bloody wonderful.’

I don’t know what surprised him more, the fact I was crying over something wonderful, or that I swore.

‘I’d like to call him Xavier. If Mum doesn’t mind.’

I remembered Leo being so proud of his second name; how he’d wished it were what he was called.

‘Leo would think that really cool,’ I said, and thought how sad it is that someone dies when they’re still young enough to say ‘really cool’.

‘Yeah, he would, wouldn’t he?’

Mr Wright’s middle-aged secretary interrupts with mineral water and I am suddenly overwhelmed by thirst. I drink my flimsy paper cupful straight down and she looks a little disapproving. As she takes the empty cup I notice that the inside of her hands are stained orange. Last night she must have done a self-tan. I find it moving that this large heavy-set woman has tried to make herself spring pretty. I smile at her but she doesn’t see. She’s looking at Mr Wright. I see in that look that she’s in love with him, that it was for him she made her arms and face go brown last night, that the dress she’s wearing was bought with him in mind.

Mr Wright interrupts my mental gossip. ‘So as far as you were concerned there weren’t any problems with the baby or the pregnancy?’

‘I thought everything was fine. My only worry was how she would cope as a single mother. At the time it seemed like a big worry.’

Miss Crush Secretary leaves, barely noticed by Mr Wright who’s looking across the table at me. I glance at his hand, on her behalf: it’s bare of a wedding ring. Yes, my mind is doodling again, reluctant to move on. You know what’s coming. I’m sorry.

3

For a moment the doorbell ringing was part of my colour red dream. Then I ran to the door, certain it was you. DS Finborough knew he was the wrong person. He had the grace to look both embarrassed and sympathetic. And he knew my next emotion. ‘It’s all right, Beatrice. We haven’t found her.’

He came into your sitting room. Behind him was WPC Vernon.

‘Emilio Codi saw the reconstruction,’ he said, sitting down on your sofa. ‘Tess has already had the baby.’

But you would have told me. ‘There must be a mistake.’

‘St Anne’s Hospital has confirmed that Tess gave birth there last Tuesday and discharged herself the same day.’ He waited a moment, his manner compassionate as he lobbed the next hand grenade. ‘Her baby was stillborn.’

I used to think ‘stillborn’ sounded peaceful. Still waters. Be still my beating heart. Still small voice of calm. Now I think it’s desperate in its lack of life; a cruel euphemism packing nails around the fact it’s trying to cloak. But then I didn’t even think about your baby. I’m sorry. All I could think about was that this had happened a week ago and I hadn’t heard from you.

‘We spoke to the psychiatry department at St Anne’s,’ DS Finborough continued. ‘Tess was automatically referred because of the death of her baby. A Dr Nichols is looking after her. I spoke to him at home and he told me that Tess is suffering from post-natal depression.’

Facts of exploding shrapnel were ripping our relationship apart. You didn’t tell me when your baby died. You were depressed but you hadn’t turned to me. I knew every painting you were working on, every friend, even the book you were reading and the name of your cat. (Pudding, I’d remembered it the next day.) I knew the minutiae of your life. But I didn’t know the big stuff. I didn’t know you.

So the devil had finally offered me a deal after all. Accept that I wasn’t close to you and, in return, you had not been abducted. You had not been murdered. You were still alive. I grabbed the deal.

‘We’re obviously still concerned about her welfare,’ said DS Finborough. ‘But there’s no reason to think anybody else is involved.’

I briefly paused, for formality’s sake, to check the small print of the deal. ‘What about the nuisance phone calls?’

‘Dr Nichols thinks Tess most probably overreacted because of her fragile emotional state.’

‘And her broken window? There was glass on the floor of her bedroom when I arrived.’

‘We investigated that when she was first reported missing. Five cars in the road had their windscreens smashed by a hooligan on Tuesday night. A brick must have also gone through Tess’s window.’

Relief washed the tension from my body making space for overwhelming tiredness.

After they’d left I went to see Amias. ‘You knew her baby had died, didn’t you?’ I asked him. ‘That’s why you said I may as well give away all her baby things.’

He looked at me, distressed. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you knew that too.’

I didn’t want to go down that track, not yet.

‘Why didn’t you tell the police anything about the baby?’

‘She’s not married.’ He saw the lack of comprehension on my face. ‘I was worried that they’d think she was loose. That they wouldn’t bother looking for her.’

Maybe he had a point, though not exactly as he meant. Once the police knew you were suffering from post-natal depression the search for you stopped being urgent. But at the time this fact hardly registered.

‘Tess told me her baby had been cured?’ I asked.

‘Yes, of cystic fibrosis. But there was something else they didn’t know about. His kidneys, I think.’

I drove to Mum’s to tell her the good news. Yes, good news, because you were alive. I didn’t think about your baby, I’m sorry. As I said, a devil’s deal.

And a false one. As I drove, I thought I’d been a fool to have been so easily conned. I’d wanted so much to accept the deal that I’d blinkered myself from the truth. I’ve known you since you were born. I was with you when Dad left. When Leo died. I know the big stuff
.
You would have told me about your baby. And you would have told me if you were going away. So something - someone - must have prevented you.

Mum felt the same relief as I had. I felt cruel as I punctured it. ‘I don’t think they’re right, Mum. She wouldn’t just take off somewhere, not without telling me.’

But Mum was holding the good news tightly and wasn’t going to let me take it away from her without a fight. ‘Darling, you’ve never had a baby. You can’t begin to imagine what she must be feeling. And the baby blues are bad enough without all of the rest of it.’ Mum’s always been deft with a euphemism. ‘I’m not saying I’m glad her baby died,’ Mum continued. ‘But at least she has a second chance. Not many men are prepared to take on another man’s child.’ Finding a bright future for you, Mum-style.

‘I really don’t think she’s gone missing voluntarily.’

But Mum didn’t want to listen to me. ‘She’ll have another baby one day in far happier circumstances.’ But her voice wavered as she tried to put you into a safe and secure future.

‘Mum—’

She interrupted me, refusing to listen. ‘You knew that she was pregnant, didn’t you?’

Now, instead of projecting you into the future, Mum was going backwards into the past. Anywhere but what was happening to you now.

‘Did you think it was
all right
for her to be a single mother?’

‘You managed on your own. You showed us it’s possible.’

I’d meant it to be kind, but it infuriated her further.

‘There’s no comparison between Tess’s behaviour and mine. None. I was married before I was pregnant. And my husband may have left the marriage, but that was never my choice.’

I’d never heard her call him ‘my husband’ before, have you? He’s always been ‘your father’.

‘And I have some concept of shame,’ continued Mum. ‘It wouldn’t hurt Tess to learn a little about it.’

As I said, anger can take the chill from terror, at least for a while.

It started blizzarding as I drove from Little Hadston back to London, transplanting the M11 into a violently shaken snow globe. Millions of flakes were falling frenziedly towards the ground, hitting the windscreen, too many and too fast for the wipers to clear them. Signs on the motorway flashed up warnings of dangerous driving conditions and issued slower speed limits, keeping motorists safe. An ambulance sped past, siren blaring.

‘It’s not a
din, Bee.’

‘OK
,
racket
then.’

‘A siren is the sound of the twenty-first-century cavalry on its way.’

You’d just started art college and were full of thoughts no-one-but-you-had-ever-had-before. And you had that other annoying student trait of thinking non-students incapable of understanding.

‘I mean a cavalry of a fire engine, or a police car or an ambulance racing to the rescue.’

‘
I’d got the point first time, thanks, Tess.’

‘But you thought it too silly to comment on?’

‘Yup.’

You giggled. ‘Seriously though, to me a siren’s the sound of a society taking care of its citizens.’

The ambulance had gone from sight now, the siren no longer audible. Was there any cavalry for you? I stopped myself thinking like this. I couldn’t let myself wonder what was happening to you. But my body felt cold and frightened and alone.

The roads near your flat hadn’t been gritted and were treacherously icy. I skidded when I parked, almost knocking over a motorbike by your flat. A man in his early twenties was sitting at the bottom of the steps, holding an absurdly large bouquet, snowflakes melting as they landed on the cellophane wrapping. I recognised him from your description - Simon the MP’s son. You’re right; his pierced lips do make his childish face seem tortured. His biker clothes were soaked and his fingers were white with cold. Despite the freezing air, I could smell aftershave. I remembered you telling me about his clumsy advances and your response. You must be one of very few people who actually deliver the promised consolation prize of being friends.

I told him you were missing and he hugged the bouquet to his chest, crushing the flowers inside. His Eton-educated voice was quiet. ‘How long?’

‘Last Thursday.’

I thought his face went white. ‘I was with her on Thursday.’

‘Where?’

‘Hyde Park. We were together till around four.’

That was two hours after you were seen in the post office. He must have been the last person to see you.

‘She’d phoned me that morning, asked to meet me,’ continued Simon. ‘She suggested the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens. We’d meet there for a coffee, see how things went.’

His accent had changed to North London. I wondered which accent was genuine.

‘Afterwards I asked her if I could walk her home,’ continued Simon. ‘But she turned me down.’ His voice was filled with self-pity. ‘Since then I haven’t phoned her, haven’t been to see her. And yes, that’s not supportive of me, but I wanted her to know what the cold-shoulder treatment felt like.’

His ego must be monstrous to believe his hurt feelings could matter to you after your baby had died, or to me now that you were missing.

‘Whereabouts did you leave her?’ I asked.

‘She left me, OK? I walked with her across Hyde Park. Then she left. I didn’t leave her anywhere.’

I was sure he was lying. The North London accent was the fake.

‘Where?’

He didn’t reply.

I yelled my question at him again. ‘
Where
?!’

‘By the lido.’

I’d never yelled at someone before.

I phoned DS Finborough and left an urgent message for him. Simon was in your bathroom, warming his numb white hands under the hot tap. Later your bathroom would smell of his aftershave and I would be angry with him for masking the smell of your soap and shampoo.

‘What did the police say?’ he asked when he came in.

‘They said they will check it out.’

‘How American of them.’

Only you are allowed to tease me like that. What the policeman had actually said was, ‘I’ll look into it straight away.’

‘So they’re going to search Hyde Park?’ Simon asked.

But I was trying not to think about what the policeman had meant by ‘looking into it’. I’d replaced his English euphemism with an American euphemism, bubble-wrapping the sharp reality of what his words contained.

‘And they’ll ring us?’ he asked.

I am your sister. DS Finborough would ring me.

‘DS Finborough will let me know if there’s anything, yes,’ I replied.

Simon sprawled on your sofa, his snow-caked boots marking your Indian throw. But I needed to ask him some questions so I hid my annoyance.

‘The police think she has post-natal depression. How did she seem to you?’

He didn’t answer for a few moments and I wondered if he was trying to remember or constructing a lie. ‘She was desperate,’ he said. ‘She had to take these special pills, to stop her breast milk. She told me that was one of the worst things, still making all this food for her baby and not being able to give it to him.’

The death of your baby started to penetrate, a little way. I’m sorry that it was taking so long. My only defence is that there wasn’t space for your baby in my worry for you.

Something was niggling me about Simon. I pinned it down, ‘You said
was
.’

He looked taken aback.

‘You said she
was
desperate?’

For a moment I thought he looked cornered, then he recovered his composure. His voice was back to fake North London. ‘I meant when I saw her on Thursday afternoon she was desperate. How am I meant to know how she’s doing now?’

His face no longer looked childish to me but cruel; the piercings not marks of an adolescent rebellion but of an enjoyed masochism. I had another question to ask him.

‘Tess told me the baby had been cured?’

‘Yeah, it wasn’t anything to do with the cystic fibrosis.’

‘Was it because he was three weeks early?’

‘No. She told me it was something that would have killed him even if he’d been born at the right time. Something to do with his kidneys.’

I steeled myself. ‘Do you know why she didn’t tell me when her baby died?’

‘I thought she had.’ There was something triumphant in his look. ‘Did you know I was going to be godfather?’

He left with bad grace after my polite hints had turned uncharacteristically into an outright demand.

I waited two and a half hours for DS Finborough to phone me back, and then I phoned the police station. A policewoman told me DS Finborough was unavailable. I decided to go to Hyde Park. I was hoping that DS Finborough would be nowhere to be seen; I was hoping that he was unavailable because he was now investigating a more urgent case, yours having been relegated to a missing person who’d turn up in her own good time. I was hoping that I was wrong and he was right; that you had just taken off somewhere after the death of your baby. I locked the door and put your key under the flowerpot with the pink cyclamen in case you came home while I was out.

As I neared Hyde Park a police car, siren wailing, overtook. The sound panicked me. I drove faster. When I got to the Lancaster Gate entrance the police car, which had overtaken me, was joining others already parked, their sirens electronic howls.

I went into the park, soft snow falling around me. I wish I’d waited a little longer and had an hour or so more of my life first. To most people that would sound selfish, but you’ve lived with grief or, more accurately, a part of you has died with grief so you, I know, will understand.

A distance into the park I could see police, a dozen of them or more. Police vehicles were coming towards them, driving into the park itself. Onlookers were starting to come towards the site of the activity - reality TV unboxed.

So many footprints and tyre tracks in the snow.

I walked slowly towards them. My mind was oddly calm, noticing at a remove that my heart was beating irregularly against my ribs, that I was short of breath, that I was shivering violently. Somehow my mind kept its distance, not yet a part of my body’s reaction.