Sister

I waited in their front garden. It grew dark and icily cold. In this stranger’s snowy garden, with nothing familiar around me, I had Christmas carols playing silently in my head. You always liked the jolly ones: “Ding Dong! Merrily on High,” “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” singing about parties and presents and having a good time. I’ve always gone for the quiet, reflective ones: “Silent Night,” “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” This time it wasIn the bleak midwinter,Frosty wind made moan,Earth stood hard as iron,Water like a stone.

I’d never realized that it was also a song for the bereaved.

Emilio’s wife came out of the house, interrupting my silent solo. A security light switched on illuminating her path toward me. I imagined she was coming to appease the madwoman in the garden before I started boiling up the bunnies.

“We weren’t introduced earlier. I’m Cynthia.”

Maybe sangfroid is in the genes of the aristocracy. I found myself responding to this strange formal politeness, holding out my hand to take hers. “Beatrice Hemming.”

She squeezed my hand, rather than shook it. Her politeness was something warmer. “I’m so sorry about your sister. I have a younger sister too.” Her sympathy seemed genuine. “Last night,” she continued, “just after the news, he said he’d left his laptop at the college. It’s an expensive one, important for his work, and he’s a convincing liar. But I’d seen it in his study before dinner. I thought he was going off for sex.” She was talking quickly, as if she needed to get this over and done with. “I’d known about it, you see, just hadn’t confronted him with it. And I’d thought it had stopped. Months ago. But it serves me right. I know that. I did the same to his first wife. I’d never properly realized before what she must have gone through.”

I didn’t reply, but found myself warming to her in this most unlikely of situations. The security light from the house flipped off, and we were in almost darkness together. It felt strangely intimate.

“What happened to their baby?” she asked. I’d never thought of him as anything other than your baby before. “He died,” I said, and in the darkness I thought her eyes had tears in them. I wondered if they were for your baby or for her failed marriage.

“How old was he?” she asked.

“He died while he was being born, so I don’t think he gets an age.”

It adds to the stillness in stillborn. I saw her hand move unconsciously to her tummy. I hadn’t noticed until then that it was a little distended, maybe five months pregnant. She brusquely wiped her tears away. “This probably isn’t what you want to hear, but Emilio was working from home last Thursday; he usually does that one day a week. I was with him all day and then we went to a drinks party. Emilio’s weak, with no moral fiber to speak of, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone. Physically, at least.”

She turned to go, but I had a bomb to drop on her life first.

“Tess’s baby had cystic fibrosis. It means Emilio must be a carrier.”

I might as well have punched her. “But our little girl—she’s fine.”

You and I have grown up with genetics, as other children grow up knowing about their dad’s football team. This wasn’t a great time for a crash course, but I tried.

“The CF gene is recessive. That means that even if you and Emilio both carry it, you both also carry a healthy gene. So your baby would have a twenty-five-percent chance of having CF.”

“And if I’m not a carrier of the CF gene?”

“Then there’s no way your baby can have it. Both parents have to carry it.”

She nodded, still reeling.

“It’s probably best to get checked out.”

“Yes.”

I wanted to steady the shakiness in her voice. “Even in the worst-case scenario, there’s a new therapy now.”

I felt her warmth in the snowy garden. “You’re very generous to be concerned.”

Emilio came out onto the doorstep and called her name. She didn’t move or acknowledge him in any way, looking intently at me. “I hope they find the person who killed your sister.”

She turned and walked slowly back to the house, triggering the security light. In its glare I could see Emilio putting an arm around her, but she shrugged him off, hugging her arms tightly around herself. He caught sight of me watching, then turned away.

I waited in the wintry darkness till the lights in the house were switched off.

6

As I drove back to your flat along precariously icy roads, Todd phoned to say he was getting a flight to Heathrow, landing in the morning, and the thought of him made the road feel a little more secure somehow.

The next morning, standing at the arrivals barrier, I didn’t recognize him when he walked through, my eyes still scanning for someone else—an idealized Todd? You? When I did see him, he seemed slighter than I remembered him, a little smaller. The first thing I asked was whether a letter from you had arrived, but there was nothing.