Sister

“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 postpartum 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 backward 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 behavior 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.

A blizzard started as I drove from Little Hadston back to London, transplanting the M11 into a violently shaken snow globe. Millions of flakes were falling frenziedly toward the ground, hitting the windshield, 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.”

“Okay, 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 nonstudents incapable of understanding.

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

“I got the point the 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.