Sister

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 insides of her hands are stained orange. Last night she must have done a self-tan. I find it moving that this large heavyset 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’d 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 color-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 PC 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. Dr. Nichols is looking after her. I spoke to him at home and he told me that Tess is suffering from postpartum 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 windshields 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?”