Sister

She smiled at me and gave me a quick hug, which I was taken aback by but liked. “Yes, I do. Reconstructions are too much of a palaver if there isn’t a good chance of jogging someone’s memory. And now we know that Tess is pregnant, it’s more likely that someone will have noticed her. Right, then, let’s get your clothes sorted out, shall we?”

I found out later that although forty, PC Vernon had been a police officer for only a few months. Her policing style reflected the warm and capable mother in her.

“We’ve fetched some clothes from her flat,” she continued. “Do you know what kind of thing she might have been wearing?”

“A dress. She’d got to the point where nothing else would fit over the bump and she couldn’t afford maternity clothes. Luckily most of her clothes are baggy and shapeless.”

“Comfortable, Bee.”

PC Vernon unzipped a suitcase. She had neatly folded each tatty old garment and wrapped them in tissue paper. I was touched by the care that she had shown. I still am.

I chose the least scruffy dress: your purple voluminous vintage one with the embroidery on the hem.

“She got this in a sale five years ago,” I said.

“A good make lasts, doesn’t it?”

We could have been in a Selfridges’ changing room.

“Yes, it does.”

“Always worth it if you can.”

I was grateful to PC Vernon for her ability to make small talk, a verbal bridge between two people in the most unlikely of situations.

“Let’s go with that one then,” she said, and tactfully turned away while I took off my uncomfortable tailored suit.

“So do you look like Tess?” she asked.

“No, not anymore.”

“You used to?”

Again I appreciated her small talk, but suspected it would get bigger.

“Superficially I did.”

“Oh?”

“My mother always tried to dress us the same.”

Despite the difference in age, we’d be in kilts and Fair Isle sweaters, or striped cotton dresses depending on the season. Nothing fussy or frilly, remember? Nothing nylon.

“And we had our hair the same too.”

“A decent trim,” Mum would command and our hair would fall to the floor.

“People said Tess would look just like me when she was older. But they were being kind.”

I was startled that I had said that out loud. It wasn’t a path I had gone down with anyone else before, but it’s well worn with my footsteps. I’ve always known that you would grow up to be far more beautiful than me. I’ve never told you that, have I?

“That must have been hard on her,” said PC Vernon. I hesitated before correcting her, and by then she had moved on. “Is her hair the same color as yours?”

“No.”

“Not fair the way some people get to stay blonde.”

“Actually, this isn’t natural.”

“You’d never guess.”

This time there was a point bedded down in the small talk that spiked through. “Probably best if you wear a wig then.”

I flinched, but tried to hide it. “Yes.”

As she got out a box of wigs, I put your dress over my head and felt the much-washed soft cotton slip down over my body. Then suddenly you were hugging me. A fraction of a moment later I realized it was just the smell of you, a smell I hadn’t noticed before: a mix of your shampoo and your soap and something else that has no label. I must have only smelled you like that when we hugged. I drew in my breath, unprepared for the emotional vertigo of your being close and not there.

“Are you okay?”

“It smells of her.”

PC Vernon’s maternal face showed her compassion. “Smell is a really powerful sense. Doctors use it to try to wake up people in a coma. Apparently, newly cut grass is a favorite evocative smell.”

She wanted me to know that I wasn’t overreacting. She was sympathetic and intuitive and I was grateful that she was there with me.

The wig box had every type of hair, and I presumed wigs were used not only for reconstructions of missing people but also for the victims of violent crimes. They made me think of a collection of scalps, and I felt nauseated as I rummaged through them. PC Vernon noticed.

“Here, let me try. What’s Tess’s hair like?”

“Long. She hardly ever cuts it, so it’s ragged round the edges. And it’s very shiny.”

“And the color?”

PMS 167, I thought immediately, but other people don’t know the colors of the world by their Pantone Matching System numbers, so instead I replied, “Caramel.” And actually, your hair has always made me think of caramel. The inside of a Rolo, to be precise, liquidly gleaming. PC Vernon found a wig that was reasonably similar and nylon shiny. I forced myself to put it on over my own neatly cut hair, my fingers recoiling. I thought we were finished. But PC Vernon was a perfectionist. “Does she wear makeup?” she asked.

“No.”

“Would you mind taking yours off?”