A Sister’s Gift (42 page)

‘They shouldn’t be able to,’ he assures me, but I can see the sweat forming on his brow. ‘Let’s sit down, it’s going to be a while before this passes. You know, the insects were the one thing that nearly put me off coming on this whole trip.’ He smiles shakily.

‘You hate them too?’ I never knew. ‘Sorry about before, I just…’

‘Don’t worry about it, Scarlett. The minute after I heard them I knew what was coming. We’ve had several of these swarms since you’ve been away. If you’re out in it when they arrive…’

‘Yeah. I can imagine. At least there won’t be any of these waiting for you when you go back to Tokyo, eh? That’s one advantage to leaving Brazil.’ Despite steeling myself to try and stop, I’m trembling pretty hard. I just can’t help it and he must think I’m such a wuss. The swarm is still passing overhead. The noise coming from outside is almost deafening. Somehow we’re
now both sitting bunched up together on the groundsheet and he’s got his arm comfortably around my shoulders…

‘You’ll have that job at Tokyo Uni to go back to, I guess?’ I say to distract us, shouting above the sound of millions of insect wings. He always seemed dead keen on the lectureship idea but now he shakes his head despondently.

‘I won’t…I won’t be getting an offer for that job, Scarlett. It was always contingent on my doing well in this post. I think they expected me to get the award. That’s why they were mooting it, but…look, forget it.’ He taps my arm consolingly. ‘Just before that mozzie storm arrived I heard some good news over the car radio…’

‘What d’you mean you won’t be getting that job?’ I question. ‘I thought you’d already been offered it? What’ll you do if you don’t teach?’

He shrugs, trying to brush off how much it matters to him but I can see how very much it does. He looks at me silently. The electric drill noise outside is beginning to fade as rapidly as it came.

‘I am not going to win the Klausmann, so I will not be offered the post,’ he says simply. ‘Perhaps I can work in my brother’s electrical shop till I sort out something else.’

‘In an electrical shop?’ My eyes widen at the thought. ‘That would be a complete waste of everything you know. Besides, you’re the cleverer of the two of us. We both know that. You might still win it.’

‘Perhaps it was you who was the cleverer one, though?’ He looks at me sidelong and unlinks our arms. He reaches for a towel to wipe his face with.

‘How so?’

‘Getting in with Almeira. That was your smartest move, no?’

‘I never…I never wanted to go with Gui for that reason, Emoto. I was cool towards him for ages precisely because I didn’t want to use him.’

‘It’s all worked out in your favour though, hasn’t it? Everything. Even though you didn’t plan it this way. There is no move that you can make that will mean you lose.’

‘That’s what you think.’

‘Ha! Scarlett, I bow to my superior opponent. You. You will get the man and you will command his riches and you will have his baby and you will win the award. Simple as that.’

I look askance at him. One minute ago we were hanging onto each other for dear life and now he sounds so…so bitter and envious and…jealous?

‘You think…you think my life’s like a candy-coated version of some movie-star’s, don’t you? You think I don’t have to make difficult decisions ever? You think I don’t suffer at all? That I never do anything out of truly charitable reasons and not self-interest?’ I let out a long breath and he remains silent. ‘This isn’t Gui’s baby, Emoto.’

He looks at me disbelievingly.

‘It isn’t. It’s my brother-in-law’s child. It isn’t what you think.’ I say quickly in answer to his shocked look. ‘My sister asked me to be her surrogate. But things turned ugly. She chucked me out of the house.’

‘It really isn’t his?’

‘No. And now I have to…terminate this pregnancy before Gui ever finds out or else he won’t want to help us out here at all, will he? I need to find the tribe, Emoto. I need Tunga to give me some herbs to end this pregnancy.’

‘Shit.’
He turns the towel round to find a clean spot and uses it now to gingerly wipe away the sweat that’s formed on my forehead. I’d take the towel from him myself but my limbs are still like lead, immobilised with fear. Those horrible insects, are they gone yet? I get a quick flash of Hol, awoken by me in the early hours one winter night to remove a huge spider from my bedroom, and doing so kindly and without making a fuss because she knew how terrified I’d been. I haven’t always been so compassionate about her fears, have I?

And Emoto probably thinks I’m a heartless, grabbing bitch. Now I’ve told him about the child too, and what I have to do with it. I put my face down, covering it with my hands, because it is all too much.

‘I’m so sorry. It looks as if I’ve misjudged you, after all.’ Emoto has put his hand back on my shoulder. ‘And if you really need to see Tunga that badly, then you’ll be even more pleased to hear what I just learned on the radio a few minutes ago. Barry’s found Tunga. They’re making their way back.
They
can do it.’ He shakes his head as I raise my eyes to his, answering my unspoken question. ‘We couldn’t. The river’s about to break its banks. I was out looking at the bridge this morning. It’s on its last legs. Without the right kind of vehicle, there’s no way we can go anywhere. They should be with us sometime in the next twenty-four hours, however.’

I stare at him. Tunga is coming here? He’s coming here and that’ll mean I’ll get the herbs to make my way clear with Gui again. It’s what I wanted…no, it’s what I
needed
to happen.

But why do I feel so strange now? I glance at Emoto.

I’ve got the feeling very deep inside that something has changed and I don’t know what.

I don’t stand there this time as I have done so many times before, looking at the light shimmering off the surface, bouncing off the ceiling in its eerie way. Rich squeezes my hand – I am so glad he offered to come with me – and I go straight to the metal steps that lead down into the shallow end. I can do this. I am going to do this.

As the water hits my ankles, then my calves, then my thighs, I draw in a shocked breath, but this time it is not fear causing the trembling in my limbs, it is only the cold. I brace myself. I look up at Mr Huang who is waiting patiently by the poolside. Rich is beside him, holding the towel. The rest of the pool is silent and empty, just as they’d said it would be at this time of day; the sole lifeguard sitting at the other end has her head down, probably texting.

I’m feeling strangely calm after my acupuncture session. Mr Huang told me: ‘It will help steady your nerves, Miss Hollie, but the rest is up to you.’ Rich nods encouragingly in my direction and I take the next step down the rung and into the pool. The water snakes around my hips but it feels strangely peaceful. There are little blue underwater lights making the whole place brighter and I do not feel in the slightest bit afraid. I’m not sure why or how this can be, unless it’s the acupuncture, but it feels like a marvellous release to be here in the pool, and to not be afraid.

I take a few steps further in and the water comes up to my
chest. The weight of it feels quite heavy against me now. I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with it. No, if truth be told, I don’t like the feel of it at all, but I’ve come this far.

‘We’re right here with you, Hol.’ Rich calls to me from the side. He wanted to come in too but I preferred to do it this way. It’s enough for me that he’s here. He feels a long way behind me now. I’m still striding out, my legs moving in big slow water-retarded arcs, like an astronaut making strides on the moon, and the water has risen above my chest and up to my shoulders and my arms are moving out to the sides now, steadying and balancing. I close my mouth so as to not accidentally gulp down any pool water. I close my eyes and pretend I’m just like any kid who’s plunged headlong into the pool for the very first time. I’ve seen them all do it, and they don’t feel any fear, they just
go for it
.

Like Scarlett. Just like Scarlett’s always done everything she ever wanted to do. How strangely heavy this water feels, dragging against my back and chest now, swaying me first one way and then the other so that I feel the need to constantly readjust my position. Behind my closed lids I can see my sister clear as daylight in her little pink costume. I’m sitting on the side and watching her with Tim, and he’s cupping his hands to his mouth and is yelling, ‘You can do it, Scarlett, go for it, girl!’ and her, simpering and preening and pretend-swimming and not imagining for one minute that she’d go down, laughing and splashing and somehow unimaginably buoyant, floating. How little must she have been then. Maybe five?

‘You OK, Hol?’ That’s Rich again, I can hear him but he’s so far away now on the other side of the great watery expanse. All that pool water lapping against the sides dissolves his words away into echoes and the lights above us suddenly dim right down.

‘Just ten more minutes till closing time,’ the girl from her high chair at the deep end warns us.

Ten minutes to face a lifetime’s worth of resistance. I turn to
look back at Rich and my old Chinese friend. I wave at them both and Rich shoots me a little smile. Mr Huang looks confident. ‘Stay here where feet can touch bottom, please,’ he reminds me. He goes and sits back down again but his face remains watchful.

Ten minutes.

I know full well why Scarlett wanted me to do this. God, how might her life have turned out differently if I
had
drowned that day outside the Blue Jazz café? She might have ended up with Richard after all. Except…if he were not mine, would she ever have even wanted him? I feel a surge of anger flash through my chest now, firing up my intent. I can still stand where I am here. My feet are firm against the smooth pool bottom. I pull in a breath and then, for one long cold and unimaginably dark moment, I plunge my whole head beneath the water.

Oh, but I didn’t know the panic was still there, waiting so quietly beneath the surface to erupt. My carefully saved breath comes spluttering out all at once, leaving my lungs empty, filled immediately with pain instead of air. Suddenly my feet, scrabbling and slipping against the pool bottom which is as greased glass, can find no safe place on which to stand. I can’t get my head back up. I can’t breathe.

A pain shoots through my pelvis now, an old, familiar pain. That blade running through my innards again. I imagine the pool growing dark with freshly-spurting blood from my sides where that boy Aaron plunged the knife in. The wounds he inflicted were the cause of multiple infections. That I am unable to have children of my own has come about directly of a result of my being at the Blue Jazz café that night.

And I was there because of her.

There is no air, there is no air. My lungs will explode any moment now with the weight. Where is Rich who was watching me so closely? Where is Mr Huang? Where is the girl who warned us about ‘ten minutes till closing’?

Ten minutes is long enough for someone to rob you of every chance of the life you’ve always dreamed of. It was long enough, all those years ago, for me to get between my tearful, drunken fourteen-year-old sister and her out-of-his-head boyfriend when I found them fighting that night. They were arguing outside the nightclub along Strood Esplanade, him brandishing that knife that he ‘never meant to use’. He backed us both right to the edge of the water, slicing the air with that blade. He backed us up so tight against the wall that in the end there was nothing for it but for me to turn to her and scream at her to make her own escape…

And now – did I just pass out? I’m lying here on the wet poolside leaning over onto one side coughing up pool water and Rich is sitting there dripping beside me, rubbing my hands. Did he just pull me out of that pool? I have no recollection of that.

‘How could I sink in this amount of water?’ I cough. ‘I could reach the bottom with my feet for God’s sake! What am I made of, lead?’

‘Your heart is heavy,’ Mr Huang murmurs.

‘She jumped, Mr Huang.’ I look at him intently, wanting him to understand. ‘My sister jumped down into the river and she swam away. Because she could, don’t you see?’ I was the one who stayed behind to deal with the blows dealt out in frustration and anger that had been meant for her.

‘Her boyfriend stabbed me instead of her. I stood between them and let her get away and that’s when he stabbed me – here…’ I point to all the old wounds that Mr Huang once spent months trying to help me heal.

‘Are you saying that lad who attacked you soon after we started going out – that was Scarlett’s
boyfriend?’
Understanding is dawning slowly on Richard’s pale face. ‘You were out picking her up?’

I’ve never told him. We’d only just started dating when it happened. He became a regular visitor at the hospital when I was
first admitted, it made us all the closer, but I hadn’t wanted to tell him the full story.

‘I never told you at the time because…how would it have looked, what kind of family would you have thought you were getting involved with?’ I put in now. ‘Then afterwards, there never seemed any point in dragging it all up again.’

‘So that’s why it had to be her,’ he marvels now. ‘Did
he
know who you were when he attacked you?’

‘Aaron only knew I was getting in his way. Who I was didn’t matter at that moment.’

‘You sacrificed yourself,’ Mr Huang puts in now. ‘Because you love her.’

Rich and Mr Huang help me to my feet now.

‘I
loved
her,’ I correct him. Past tense. ‘More than all the world, I did. That’s why I went out looking for her that night when she didn’t come home. There wasn’t anyone else to do it, was there?’

‘So long?’ Mr Huang looks sad. ‘A heavy burden to carry, yes? This is why you sink. It is clear now, ha. And sister?’ He shuffles alongside me, looking perplexed. ‘Same sister she carry your baby for you, yes?’

He understands now, I can see it in his eyes: why I needed her to be the one who would put it all right for me. He glances at Rich and I know he’s remembering what I told him.

‘She has betrayed me, Mr Huang. In the worst possible way that she could. All I feel for her now is…’I’m suddenly shivering, but whether through shock or cold or anger I cannot tell. ‘Hatred, to tell you the truth. I hate her, Mr Huang. I hate her because she made me lose my fertility. I hate her because she tried to steal away my husband.’ I glance at Rich and I can’t help but see he looks remorseful. ‘And I hate her because for all I know she’s still carrying our child and I will never, ever get to see it. Are those good enough reasons for a person to feel that way?’ I catch the sudden look that passes between him and Rich.
The lifeguard has long since departed to gather a load of forms that she feels I need to fill in.