Sister

Hi Bee, I asked him about her, before any of this started, and he told me that they married in haste and are at leisure together but not repenting. They enjoy each other’s company but the physical relationship between them stopped years ago. Neither of them is jealous of the other. Happy now?

T XXXXFrom: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone To: tesshemming@hotmail.co.uk

Dearest T, How convenient for him. I imagine she’s also

fortysomething, and because nature’s far crueler to women than men,

what other choice is she left with? Not happy.

lol Bee

P.S. Why are you using Coreyshand as a typeface for e-mails? It’s not easy to read.From: tesshemming@hotmail.co.uk To: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

Dearest Bee,

You walk down your straight-and-narrow moral tightrope, not even teetering, while I fall off at the first small wobble. But I do believe him. There’s no reason why anyone should get hurt.

T XXXX

PS I thought it was a friendly kind of typeface.

PPS Did you know lol means laughing out loud?From: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone To: tesshemming@hotmail.co.uk

Dear Tess, You’re surely not that naive? Wise up.

Lol Bee

(From me it means lots of love)From: tesshemming@hotmail.co.uk To: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

“Wise up”? You’ll be telling me next to seek closure. You need to leave the states and come home. Have a nice day, hon,

T. X

I had imagined a fortysomething woman whose looks had unfairly faded while her husband’s had not. I had imagined parity at twenty-five but a marriage of unequals fifteen years later. But the woman in the hall was no more than thirty. She has unnervingly pale-blue eyes.

“Emilio? What’s going on?”

Her voice was cut-glass aristocratic—the house must be hers. I didn’t look at her, directing my question at Emilio. “Where were you last Thursday, the twenty-third of January, the day my sister was murdered?”

Emilio turned to his wife. “One of my students, Tess Hemming. She was on the local news last night, remember?”

Where was I when the news was on? Still in the morgue with you? Putting Mum to bed? Emilio put his arm around his wife, his voice measured. “This is Tess’s older sister. She’s going through a terribly traumatic time and is … lashing out.” He was explaining me away. Explaining you away.

“For God’s sake, Tess was your lover. And you know me because I interrupted you getting your paintings out of her flat last night.”

His wife stared at him, her face suddenly looked fragile. He tightened his arm around her.

“Tess had a crush on me. That’s all. It was just a fantasy. The fantasy got out of control. I wanted to make sure there was nothing in her flat that she’d fabricated about me.”

I knew what you wanted me to say. “Was the baby a fantasy too?”

His arm was still around his wife, who was still and mute. “There is no baby.”

I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for this next bit too.

“Mummy?”

A little girl was coming down the stairs. His wife took the child’s hand. “Bedtime, sweetie.”

I asked you once if he had children, and you sounded astonished I’d even asked the question. “Of course he doesn’t, Bee.” It was an “Of course he doesn’t because if he did I wouldn’t be having sex with him, what do you take me for?” Your moral tightrope might be a lot wider than mine, but that’s your boundary and you wouldn’t have crossed it. Not after Dad. So that was what he’d been trying to hide at home.

Emilio slammed the door shut in my face—this time my strength was no match for his. I heard him pulling the chain across. “Leave me and my family alone.” I was left on the doorstep shouting through the door. Somehow I’d become the obsessed madwoman on the doorstep, while he was part of a persecuted little family besieged in their beautiful period home. I know, the previous day I had used lines from a TV cop show, now I was going Hollywood. But real life, at least my real life, hadn’t given me any kind of model for what was happening.