A Sister’s Gift (43 page)

‘That is another heavy burden, hatred,’ Mr Huang observes. ‘Difficult to swim in pool with so much weight about your shoulders.’

I lift my hands to my face because now the memory of Aaron’s eyes, boring into mine, won’t go away.

‘All these years,’ I stutter, ‘ten years – I haven’t been able to recall what he looked like.’ Aaron’s been a dark shadow that destroyed my life. Something I locked away. Now here he is, his face as fresh and living in my memory as if it happened moments ago. ‘I thought he was really going to hurt her! I thought, when I saw him waving that knife about…and I couldn’t let him do that. I wanted to keep her safe, that’s why I stepped in front of her…’ For such a very long time it has all been a blur, the sequence of events, who moved first, who said what. There was shouting and she was crying and then he pulled his knife out. ‘We were backed up against the wall, you see. I told her to jump, to get away. That’s all I could think of, that I had to help her to get away.’ She was just a child after all. My little sister.

I gulp, because it’s all coming back. Aaron’s eyes; a kaleidoscope of emotions unfolds before me – frustration, scorn, anger. ‘Get out of here, you stupid bitch, this is nothing to do with you.’

‘He didn’t want to hurt you perhaps?’ Mr Huang suggests. I didn’t realise I had spoken the words out loud, but I must have. ‘You weren’t involved.’

‘My God, I thought I would lose her! I thought Aaron was going to kill her. How could I let that happen? If I lost her, how could I ever live with myself again?’

She was my beautiful Lettie, turning into an adolescent pain in the neck, maybe, but still my Lettie. For a moment that night, I got a flash of what my life might have been like if I had to live
the rest of it without her. It hadn’t been something I’d been prepared to risk.

‘I knew in that moment, it was either her or me,’ I tell them both now. ‘I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.’

Scarlett hesitated so long on the wall, she hadn’t wanted to leave me. In the end I threatened to push her over. I knew she’d be OK. She’d be able to get away.

‘You chose her safety over your own,’ he affirms.

‘I am not a violent person, Mr Huang, but in that moment -if I’d had to turn that knife back on him in order to save her, I would have done.’ Rich places the soft white towel he’s been holding around my shoulders now. I pull up the end of it to dry my face, to dab at the chlorine that’s stinging my eyes.

He never meant to do it, Aaron said afterwards, he was stoned, didn’t know what he was doing.

‘He did time in prison for it, I know.’ I look up at my two supporters now, my throat aching. ‘But I have done so much more time than he has, haven’t I? The legacy of what he did that night is going to last me a lifetime. He’s still here, still in my head, in the wounds he inflicted; he’s never going to go away.’ Rich puts his arms around my shoulders. For a split second I see Aaron’s face in the darkness again, shocked and stunned at his own actions before I fell back, into the water.

‘But maybe,’ Mr Huang says softly, ‘this man remind you of how much you love sister too?’

I stare at my old friend, open-mouthed. ‘That…that’s not true! Nothing he did has had any good come out of it, Mr Huang. I don’t accept that, not at all. I don’t know why he’s come back into my head right now, but I’m going to push him out again, that’s for sure.’

Then it hits me.

The energy blocks
, is this what he has been on about all this time? I’d blocked out Aaron. Now he is back.

‘But surely – he remind you of how much it hurts to lose her,’
Mr Huang points out and I frown furiously at him for doing so. I look down at the puddle of cold water at my feet and I’m still shivering but I can’t help the feeling that maybe he’s right? Aaron
has
reminded me of how desperate I was not to lose her. And now I’ve gone and sent her away forever, all by myself.

It’s strange, but for some reason I just don’t feel so angry any more. I want to. I feel I ought to, but I can’t. The fury that I’ve felt towards her for so many days now has just gone. I still feel sad at the way things have turned out between us but I can’t feel
angry
any longer.

I wonder if…if I will be able to go in, now. If I will be able to start to learn to swim? Because the blackness that was the memory of Aaron isn’t waiting in the water any more. I can feel it.

The girl who’s gone off to find the ‘incident forms’ hasn’t come back yet. Rich is still here though, his eyes looking sadder but calmer than I’ve seen them for a long while. At least now he understands.

And the pool is open, calm as a pond on a summer’s morning, still waiting for me.

‘So you got the herbs?’ Emoto’s voice is rendered both muffled and echoey by the heavy mist lying over the swollen riverbank this morning. He’s come up behind me and is looking over my shoulder at the little herb pouches I’ve been contemplating for the last two hours.

‘Yep. These are the herbs Tunga gave me last night,’ I confirm. The powders that are going to make me a free woman again; free to do what I can to help what remains of Tunga’s people. The powders – I shiver – that are going to put an end to Hollie’s baby.

But I have a commitment to others here too. Tunga only came back because Barry told him I had returned. The rest of the tribe were due to follow, arriving here by dawn. They’ve come because they still believe I can help save their land.

‘I’ve got to mix these powders together and take them all in one go dissolved in water.’ We both glance at my little tin cup which I’ve perched on the rock beside me. It’s got about two inches of rainwater in it at the moment and more is collecting every second.

‘Just waiting for the cup to fill up, eh?’ Emoto smiles kindly. ‘Waiting till my cup runneth over…’ I can’t quite bring my eyes to smile back at him. He knows what’s at stake here. I don’t want to do this.

‘Barry has warned he expects the river to burst its banks some
time today.’ Emoto stands up suddenly. Shielding his eyes from the rain, he uses the vantage point of the rock to peer a little further down the river to the ramshackle bridge. ‘I don’t want to rush you, but…he reckons there’s a high chance the bridge is going to be swept away too. We have to get the jeep over before it won’t take the weight any more. He sent me to tell you.’

‘We’re leaving?’ I look up at him, feeling a stab of desperation. I’ve been sitting on this rock for so long waiting to…just bring myself to the point where I was ready to do it. I thought I’d made my decision. Why can’t I just
do
it?

‘Yes, we’re leaving.’

‘I can’t…I can’t go yet, Emoto. I’m not ready.’

‘Scarlett.’ He sits down beside me on the rock. His Kangol anorak is pouring with water, his face is dripping wet. ‘Look.’ He takes my chin and guides my gaze back in the direction of the hissing and bubbling river, swollen to enormous and angry proportions by the rain. Barry is right. It is going to break its banks. A few metres down we can hear the creak and distress of the wooden bridge, groaning with the weight of water rushing past it.

‘It reminds me of home,’ I say softly. ‘Was it ever as bad as this?’

‘No,’ I laugh, despite myself. ‘But it reminds me of when I used to sit on the coal bunker and watch the river for hours as it hurtled by.’ Something…wild would get into me then. The feeling that I was like the water, that I owed my allegiance to no one and no place. ‘I’d get a feeling of such power, watching it. The feeling that I could never be tied down to anything, that nobody could ever hold me back. Have you ever felt like that?’ I glance up at him, but his face is inscrutable.

‘This child could hold you back,’ he reminds me and I catch my breath at his words.

‘I’ve got to…’ I open up the palm-leaf pouches slowly, ‘mix these two up together.’ Emoto makes no move to help me.
The rain runs down his flat forehead, drips off the bridge of his nose. He just sits there in silence, watching me.

‘Do you think I’m doing the right thing, Emoto?’ I shoot him a sidelong glance as I tip the first pouch of herbs into the cup. ‘Or do you think that it’s wrong to take a life? I used to think so. The funny thing is – this baby I’m carrying – it would inconvenience my life in every way imaginable; it would ruin any hope of help from Gui, any chance of a life with him. And yet, deep in my heart, I still don’t want to do this…’

Emoto doesn’t say a word.

‘She hates me, you know. My sister. She hates me with a vengeance, now. She should, too. I’ve ruined her life, really. I dangled all her hopes in front of her like carrots and then threw them away. I’ve betrayed her at every turn. Even now, doing this. It’s all for a good cause, but it’s the greatest betrayal of all…’

I pick up the little tin cup and swirl it around, waiting for the powders to dissolve. I’ve hardly got enough water in the cup. It’s ridiculous; the sky is full of water; the river is full of water; my heart is full of tears; and yet there is hardly any water in this cup!

‘What do
you
want, Scarlett?’

What do I want?

What does it matter any more, what I want? I can have it all anyway, now, can’t I? I will. Any dress. Any car. Any home. The love and devotion of a good man. The protection of a powerful family. What else is there? I look at him dully.

‘What do you
want?’
Emoto repeats. He kneels down beside me and takes the cup from me, placing it back on the rock. He takes my hands. ‘Is it the Klausmann? What you offered me? The validation of your peers and profession?’

I shake my head. ‘No. Not any more. I did want that. But not any more.’ What
do
I want? ‘There’s something I thought – I almost had, once. But it slipped through my fingers.’ I turn my face skywards and let the cool rain patter down onto my skin.
It runs into my eyes and down my neck and trickles down under my T-shirt…

‘Love
, Emoto. Once, I thought I knew what it was to truly, deeply, love someone. Have you ever been in love?’

Emoto smiles but does not reply.

‘That feeling that – you’re so filled up with the other person that at that moment you’d do anything,
give
anything, to be with them?’

‘Do you feel that way about Guillermo Almeira?’ He shoots me a sideways look.

I pause. I thought I might love Gui; that maybe I could come to love Gui. This past week we’ve spent together has been so good in many ways and yet…The truth is, if I live the rest of my life out with him it would be a compromise, nothing else.

I shake my head. ‘Even if I don’t really know what love is, Emoto, I know what it’s not.’ The realisation of that fills me with a sadness so huge I can’t even look at my friend any more.

And then – out of the blue, something extraordinary happens.

‘Oh!’ Even through the tears that are streaming down my face, I laugh, I can’t help myself, I look up at Emoto, beaming.

That
can’t be what I just thought it was, can it?

Emoto is leaning over me suddenly, his hand on my shoulder in concern. ‘I’m OK, honest, I’m OK!’ How can I tell him? How can I actually
say
this?

‘I
think
I just felt the baby move.’ Is this what it feels like? ‘It feels like a little butterfly fluttering. Like someone’s suddenly arrived.’ The one I’ve been waiting for all my life.

‘You felt it?’

‘Yes!’ I take his hand and shamelessly place it low down on my belly. He looks surprised, but I can’t help myself.

‘Here. That’s it. I’m sure it is! Oh, blimey – there it goes again, OMG!’

‘I feel it, Scarlett,’ he laughs. ‘You’re looking a bit shell-shocked though. It must be a very strange sensation. What does it feel like?’

‘It feels – just like that feeling I just told you about a moment ago,’ I tell him thickly.

‘Like
love?’
His eyebrows go up in surprise. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Like love, yes, but love
isn’t
what I thought it was, Emoto! It’s something else,’ I gush. I never knew it till this moment. ‘It
isn’t
the feeling that you’d do anything to have that person, or to be with that person…’

‘No?’

‘No. It isn’t about possession at all. It’s about what you’d be prepared to sacrifice for them. It’s about what you’d be prepared to give. That’s what love is.’

‘And – what are you prepared to give?’

I watch as he picks up my little tin cup with Tunga’s herbs in it and offers it to me. I shake my head a fraction and he turns and throws the whole contents out into the sizzling river. And then, just to make sure, he sweeps the palm leaves off the rock too. We both watch, laughing as the leaves bob and sway for a few moments before hurtling out of sight beneath the creaking bridge.

I didn’t anticipate this. I didn’t know it could ever be as wonderful as this.

‘Hey, look…’Emoto’s voice darkens suddenly. He turns his head from the river to look at me and I can see the disappointment in his eyes. ‘Your boyfriend’s here. He’s come for you early, Scarlett. He must have heard about the danger from the floods…’