A Sister’s Gift (28 page)

‘Scarlett.’ Richard takes in a deep breath, turning now to look at me and choosing his words very carefully. ‘You love me. Of course you do. But not that way. You think that because I’ve been such a fixture in your life since a young age – I’ve been married to Hol for ten years, haven’t I? And no matter what you
think
you might feel for me now, I belong to her. And a woman like you…’ his eyes flicker involuntarily downwards for a fraction of a second, taking in my breasts ‘…someone as smart, beautiful and compassionate as you are, you’ll have no trouble finding a man of your own, believe me. You have a boyfriend out there in Brazil, don’t you? Hollie said that she thought you might do…’

Why does he bring that up now, pushing me away with it? And why does he have to bring my sister’s name into every sentence he speaks? Hollie said that she thought…Who gives a bloody damn what Hollie said or thought anyway?

‘Yes, there is someone,’ I say slowly. ‘I could have him if I wanted to. His name is Guillermo. He’s the one person in all this time I’ve thought that maybe – just maybe – I might be able to make a go of it with. He says he loves me.’ I lower my eyes. ‘I think maybe he does too. He’s not just one of those guys who wants to get your knickers off, anyway.’

‘And do you love him?’ Richard asks softly.

I clench my fists under the bed covers. Right now I only want
you
.

‘Christ, I even went to the Amazon because of you…’ I get out.

‘You worked so hard to get that job, Lettie. I haven’t forgotten how desperately you wanted it. And we were so proud when you got it. That was something you really wanted,’ he reminds me. ‘You didn’t go there because of me.’

‘I went there because of you,’ I repeat through gritted teeth. ‘I wanted that job so badly because it was the furthest place I could think of to take myself away from you. Because…every day I had to stay living under this roof, watching the cosy little unit that is you and Hollie…it was driving me insane. Because I thought, if I don’t get away from here, I’m scared I might end up trying to seduce you…’ I stop, registering the shock that’s sinking into his face at my words now.

‘Don’t say such things, Scarlett. None of that can be true…’

‘It
is
true though. I’ve loved you for years. Why do you think I’ve never found any other man? Why d’you think I haven’t taken things any further with Gui? He even asked me to marry him. But you know what’s held me back? You. The thought of you.’

‘Me?’ His voice changes now. Am I imagining it or has his face grown darker? ‘You’ve really wanted me for all these years?’

‘You’re the only one who’s ever chased the loneliness away,’ I tell him simply. ‘You know that loneliness you feel when you wake up in the middle of the night and it’s all dark and quiet and it feels like there’s nobody else left in the world? All I ever have to do is think of you and that feeling goes away. Because I know that you’re there. You exist. It’s what’s kept me going all this time, Rich. And having to hide it from you has been the worst hell imaginable…’

His brows are furrowed, his lips parting as if…as if he’s angry?

‘So you say you love me? And your sister – she knows this?’

‘Of course not!’ My voice is hoarse. ‘She’d never have
suggested we two should be together like this if she had even the first idea…’

‘So you had your own reasons for agreeing with her suggestion, did you, Scarlett? You wanted to use me – just like your sister does, in point of fact. Only you want me for sex, and she wants me for a baby?’

I shake my head in horror. It isn’t like that. It’s never been like that.

‘I could have had
sex
with pretty much any man I’ve ever met, that isn’t the reason why I wanted to be with you, Rich. And don’t look at me like that. Just because I’m not the sweet and innocent young woman you’ve always thought me to be. I’m a grown woman for heaven’s sake!’

Why is he looking at me like this? As if he wants to slap me.

‘What is the reason, then?’ He turns round and climbs back into the bed with me, his breath coming hard and short. ‘Is it because you’re a woman as heartless and single-minded as your sister? Is that why? Is it because when you set your mind on something you want then you have to have it, no matter who else will get hurt by that, and no matter what it costs?’ He’s straddling me now and I can feel him, pressing up close against me, challenging me to deny it. I look up at him in shock. ‘Is that the reason, Scarlett?’

‘Hollie isn’t heartless, Richard. She loves you,’ I defend her, despite myself. ‘That’s why she’s doing this, because she loves you. More than all the world.’

He gives me a long hard look before he answers. ‘Not more than all the world, Scarlett. There’s something else she wants more, isn’t there? And you? What about you?’

I cannot answer him. My throat has closed up and my voice has deserted me entirely.

‘Well?’ he demands. ‘Are you sure you want this? Just say the word. Say the word and I’ll go.’

I’ve wanted this, haven’t I? I’ve wanted it for such a very long
time. I close my eyes, nodding my answer because I am here and he is here with me and I know if I don’t take my chance now it will never come again…

‘Well, then,’ he says, and his voice is hurt, distant, and he does not sound like the Richard I know at all. ‘One chance to make Hollie’s baby and one chance for you. I hope you both get what you want.’

I close my eyes, a sob catching in my throat because he sounds so cold and his hands are so quickly cupping my breasts, no sweet words to precede the act, his knees pushing aside my legs far too roughly. I thought he would be gentle. I always imagined he would be sweet and slow and deliberate just like he is in every other area of life.

‘Richard, you can’t…just…’I gasp, raising my head from the pillow as his mouth comes down on mine, full of desire, full of need, just like I always wanted him to be – except there is no love. How could he be like this, Richard, who was always so gentle and loving? I turn my face away from his at last, and it’s wet with tears as he makes to enter me because there is no victory in this. Roughly, too roughly and in too much of a hurry, he is taking his pleasure. Is this what he thought I was urging him to do? Treat me like a whore with no consideration for my feelings at all? I hear the deep animal cries coming from his throat as he thrusts, but his eyes are closed, he does not see me.

I need him to see me.

But he does not. He doesn’t care who it is. At this moment it’s just an act of sex for him and that is not what I wanted, it’s never what I wanted from him and I can’t make it be something that it is not. So I just lie there and let him do it because maybe it’s my sister and me who have turned him into this – her with her desperate need and me with mine. Maybe this is what we have done between us.
Heartless and single-minded
, he called us. The words keep echoing in my head like some terrible mantra that won’t go away but…

He is right, I know it.

Immediately afterwards he gets up and goes to the bathroom. I hear the tap running for a while and the splashing of water as if he wants to make sure he has washed every bit of me off him.

‘Rich?’ Oh, God, what have I said, what have I done? This feels so wrong. I can feel my heart thudding wildly. All of a sudden I feel scared and guilty. As if I have just taken everything that is good and centered and steady at the core of my life and smashed it to smithereens…

Eventually he comes and sits back down on the bed again to get dressed. ‘Richard?’ I say softly, stroking his back gently. I want him to say that it’s all right. That he forgives me. I can’t bear for him to be so angry with me. I’m not letting myself even think about what I’ve just done to my sister…

‘Will you stay? Please stay.’ I pat the duvet but he shakes his head.

‘I won’t stay, Scarlett. And you shouldn’t either. Go back to Brazil, back to Guillermo.’

Go back to Brazil? I prop myself up onto my elbows, staring at him wordlessly. Now we’ve done it he can’t wait to get rid of me quickly enough. Is it because of what we’ve just done or because of what I confessed to him – that I love him, that I’ve always loved him? The momentary triumph I felt was short-lived, tinged already with so much regret because he was right. Everything’s changed. Now he will never love me or even see me the same way again.

‘What about the baby?’ I whisper.

‘This was never about the baby for you, was it, Scarlett? Why ask me now?’ He picks up his shoes and heads for the door. ‘I’ve done my bit. Whatever happens next, you sort it out with your sister. I’m leaving now. Do you want me to call you a cab back to the house? Don’t worry, I won’t be going back there till you’ve left. You needn’t worry about me being there.’

‘You want me to go back to Brazil?’ I call out to him. ‘Do you?’

‘You should go back to Guillermo.’ Rich’s voice breaks now, the hard glint of anger that has sustained him through the act is subsiding and I catch a glimpse of something – I do not know if it is regret, sadness, or compassion – in his eyes. ‘By the sounds of it he loves you. And that means he can offer you something that I never can.’

I see I owe you an apology after all
.

I run my finger along the top of the picture of Helen beside my own wedding photo on the wall and my pinkie gathers up the line of dust. For what? For ever imagining it might be easy for you to not follow your heart. For wanting you to stay here with us, no matter what it cost you.

Oh, I know I’ve always toed the line; I’ve said I understood why it was you felt so compelled to go off travelling, leaving us with Flo. But I didn’t, not really. Richard saw that. I’ve never understood it deep inside. How could you just leave us? How could you have let something be so important in your life that it mattered more than us, your own children, your two little girls?

I vowed I’d be different to you. I’d be the loyal one, the one who cared enough to stay behind to sacrifice it all for love and now…Oh, but now, I trace the face which looks so much like that of an old-fashioned movie star, so very like my sister’s – now I see I’ve not turned out so different from you after all…

The legacy you left has caught up with me. Who and what I am. Where I come from. Because I too have followed my dream – my desire – so obsessively that I’ve blocked out all the people in my life who truly love me. I’ve alienated Richard, who’s driven back up to Lincolnshire with Chrissie this morning and who’s
warned me not to expect him back here for a while. It’s work, he says, but I know it’s more than that.

I’ve alienated my sister; for all her follies and her faults she loves me too, I know that, but she’s hardly been able to make eye contact with me ever since…since I drove them to be together.

So you see – even without your presence, the guiding hand of your influence has extended to both your girls. We’ve turned out to be true daughters of your blood after all.

And too late, I know that if the chance came round again to do the same again, I would not take it…

Fuck it, I hate this. I’m stuck here now till God knows when and I feel as if I can’t breathe.

I hate this place. I wish I had never come back. Ruffles ambles in and lies disconsolately down on top of a pile of clothes. He knows that something’s up.

How did we ever come to this?

When I pull down the map of the five continents that has spanned my bedroom wall for the best part of a decade, the water-stains and the thin ragged crack that it covered are still there. In one movement I squash the whole world up in my arms. The ubiquitous photos in their frames on the wall beside my dressing table already came down last night. All those pictures of us: of Flo in her pinny, who died so selfishly just when I needed her the most; of my mum, Helen – the intrepid explorer. I drop her photo into the black bin liner along with the others. As for that picture of me and Rich, well, I don’t even want to
see
him any more, ever again. I don’t want to see him and I don’t want to have his baby.

Enough damage has been done. When I stand up on the bed, a feeling of pure nausea shoots through my belly, reminding me that my hormones are already going haywire. There are things I want to get on with but I’m as giddy as a ship that’s set out on a stormy sea and it’s as much as I can do to stay afloat just now – never mind steer course. Still, I can do this if I take it slowly.
I am going to take every thing and every reminder and every part of me away from this place. Because once I make it out of here this time, I’m leaving for good.

One by one, I pull off all the little curtain hooks that connect the chintzy curtains to the pole and I throw both of the drapes onto the floor. I open up the dusty window and let the cheerless morning light into the room. It is cold and grey; I long for the endless blue skies at Manaus, the warm rain bucketing through the trees, the sweet scent of the white moonflowers outside the mission buildings, the never-ceasing racket of a thousand birds. It is too quiet here.

I can hear my sister creeping about like a mouse, moving from room to room outside, dusting and gathering up bits and pieces as she goes. She’s been like this for the past two weeks, ever since Bluebell Hill. She told me last night that she’d be in with a test kit this morning and I played along with her. I’m not supposed to know officially, am I? But it all feels so very wearying and meaningless now. Everything here does. Be careful what you wish for, Duncan was always fond of saying when we went out together. I thought he was just being cautionary and boring, just because he never wanted to do anything exciting at all. But maybe he was right. All the magic has gone, somehow. I got what I wanted and it turns out it wasn’t what I wanted at all.

I jump down off the bed and stuff the curtains into the black bin bag. The whole room is now varying shades of faded cream and dirty white and used-up beige. Was it really me that brought all the colour to this place?

Once the sickness passes I could fly back to Brazil on a tourist pass, I suppose. Once Tunga sorts me out, I could hang around the edges of everybody else’s work while that new woman decides if she wants me to stay. Except – I can barely walk two paces at the moment without wanting to throw up. And who knows how long this is going to go on for? I tie up the edges of the bin bag, pulling the knot as tightly as possible. The way things are, I’m
stuck here with Hollie, a prisoner of my own body. What if this sickness lasts the whole nine months, dear God, and I never get to escape at all? How will I bear it? How did I ever imagine I’d be able to?