Sister: A Novel (3 page)

He issued instructions to junior policemen. There was a discussion about the camera crew and of who would play you. I didn’t want a stranger imitating you so I offered to do it. As we left the room, DS Finborough turned to me. ‘Mr Codi is a great deal older than your sister?’

Fifteen years older and your tutor. He should have been a father figure, not a lover. Yes, I know I’ve told you that before, many times, building to a critical mass which forced you to tell me in so many words to butt out, only you would have used the English equivalent and told me to stop putting my nose in. DS Finborough was still waiting for my reply.

‘You asked me if I am close to her, not if I understand her.’

Now, I think I do, but not then.

DS Finborough told me more about the reconstruction.

‘A lady working at the post office on Exhibition Road remembers Tess buying a card and also air-mail stamps, some time before two p.m. She didn’t say Tess was pregnant, but I suppose there was a counter between them so she wouldn’t have seen.’

I saw Mum coming along the corridor towards us as DS Finborough continued.

‘Tess posted the card from the same post office some time before two fifteen.’

Mum’s voice snapped with exhausted patience. ‘The card was my birthday card. She hasn’t been to see me for months. Hardly ever phones. But sends me a card as if that makes it all right.’

A couple of weeks before, I’d reminded you that it was her birthday coming up, hadn’t I?

Before we go on, as I want to be honest in the telling of this story, I have to admit that you were right about Todd. He didn’t hear my song. Because I’d never once sung to him. Or to anyone else for that matter. Perhaps I am like one of those birds that can only imitate car alarms.

Mr Wright gets up to close a Venetian blind against the bright spring sunshine.

‘And later that day you did the reconstruction?’ he asks.

‘Yes.’

Mr Wright has the reconstruction on tape and doesn’t need additional details of my extraordinary game of dress-up, but I know you do. You’d love to know what kind of you I made. I didn’t do badly, actually. I’ll tell you about it without hindsight’s glaring clarity.

A middle-aged woman police officer, WPC Vernon, took me to a room to change. She was pink-cheeked and healthy, as if she’d just come in from milking cows rather than policing London streets. I felt conscious of my pallor, the red-eye flight taking its toll.

‘Do you think it’ll do any good?’ I asked.

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, WPC Vernon had only been a policewoman for 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.’

WPC 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 Whistles 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 WPC 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 any more.’

‘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 WPC Vernon. I hesitated before correcting her, and by then she had moved on, ‘Is her hair the same colour 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 realised 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 smelt you like that when we hugged. I drew in my breath, unprepared for the emotional vertigo of you being close and not there.

‘Are you OK?’

‘It smells of her.’

WPC 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 favourite 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 they 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 nauseous as I rummaged through them. WPC 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 colour?’

Pantone number PMS 167, I thought immediately, but other people don’t know the colours of the world by their pantone 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. WPC 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 WPC Vernon was a perfectionist. ‘Does she wear make-up?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Would you mind taking yours off?’

Did I hesitate? ‘Of course not,’ I replied. But I did mind. Even when I woke up, I would have pink lip and cheek stain applied from the previous night. At the small institutional sink, with dirty coffee cups balanced on the rim, I washed off my make-up. I turned and caught sight of you. I was stabbed by love. Moments later I saw that it was just my own reflection caught in a full-length mirror. I went closer and saw myself, scruffy and exhausted. I needed make-up, properly cut clothes and a decent haircut. You don’t need any of those to look beautiful.

‘I’m afraid we’ll have to improvise the bump,’ said WPC Vernon. As she handed me a cushion I voiced a question that had been itching at the back of my mind, ‘Do you know why Tess’s landlord didn’t tell you she was pregnant when he reported her missing?’

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. You could ask Detective Sergeant Finborough.’

I stuffed a second cushion under the dress and tried to plump them into a convincing-looking bump. For a moment the whole thing turned into an absurd farce and I laughed. WPC Vernon laughed too, spontaneously, and I saw that a smile was her natural expression. It must be a facial effort for her to be genuinely serious and sympathetic so much of the time.

Mum came in. ‘I’ve got you some food, darling,’ she said. ‘You need to eat properly.’ I turned to see her holding a bag full of food and her mothering touched me. But as she looked at me, her face turned rigid. Poor Mum. The farce I found blackly comic had turned cruel.

‘But you have to tell her. It’ll just get worse the longer you leave it.’

‘I saw a tea towel the other day with that printed on it. Underneath was “never put off till tomorrow what you can do today”.’

‘Tess . . .’ (Or did I just give an eloquent older-sister sigh?)

You laughed, warmly teasing me. ‘Do you still have knickers with days of the week embroidered on them?’

‘You’re changing the subject. And I was given those when I was nine.’

‘Did you really wear them on the right day?’

‘She’s going to be so hurt if you don’t tell her.’

I looked back at Mum acknowledging and answering her question without a word being spoken. Yes, you were pregnant; yes, you hadn’t told her and yes, now the whole world, at least the TV-watching world, would know about it.

‘Who’s the father?’

I didn’t reply; one shock at a time.

‘That’s why she hasn’t been to see me for months, isn’t it? Too ashamed.’

It was a statement rather than a question. I tried to appease her but she brushed my words aside, using her hands in a rare physical gesture. ‘I see he’s going to marry her at least.’

She was looking at my engagement ring, which I hadn’t thought to take off. ‘It’s mine, Mum.’ I was absurdly hurt that she hadn’t noticed it before. I took the large solitaire diamond off my finger and gave it to her. She zipped it into her handbag without even looking at it.

‘Does he have any intention of marrying her, Beatrice?’

Maybe I should have been kind and told her that Emilio Codi was already married. It would have fuelled her anger with you and kept icy terror away a while longer.

‘Let’s find her first, Mum, before worrying about her future.’

2

The police film unit was set up near South Kensington tube station. I - the star of this little film - was given my instructions by a young policeman in a cap, rather than a helmet. The trendy director-policeman said ‘OK, go.’ And I began to walk away from the post office and along Exhibition Road.

You’ve never needed the confidence boost of high heels so I had reluctantly traded mine for your flat ballet pumps. They were too large for me and I’d stuffed the toes with tissues. Remember doing that with Mum’s shoes? Her high heels used to clatter excitingly, the sound of being grown up. Your soft ballet shoes moved silently, discreetly, their soft indoor leather sinking into ice-cracked puddles and soaking up the sharply cold water. Outside the Natural History Museum there was a long fractious queue of impatient children and harassed parents. The children watched the police and the camera crew, the parents watched me. I was free entertainment until they could get in to see the animatronic
Tyrannosaurus rex
and the great white whale. But I didn’t care. I was just hoping that one of them had been there the previous Thursday and had noticed you leaving the post office. And then what? What would they have noticed then? I wondered how anything sinister could have happened with so many witnesses.

It started to sleet again, the iced water hammering down onto the pavement. A policeman told me to keep going; although it was snowing the day you disappeared sleet was near enough. I glanced at the queue outside the Natural History Museum. The buggies and prams had sprouted plastic carapaces. Hoods and umbrellas were covering the parents. The sleet forced them into myopia. No one was looking at me. No one would have been watching you. No one would have noticed anything.

The sleet soaked the wig of long hair and ran in a rivulet down my back. Beneath my open jacket your fine cotton dress, heavy with icy water, clung to my body. Every curve showed. You would have found this funny, a police reconstruction turning into a soft porn movie. A car slowed as it passed me. The middle-aged male driver, warm and dry, looked at me through the windscreen. I wondered if someone had stopped and offered you a lift, was that what happened? But I couldn’t allow myself to think about what had happened to you. Wondering would lead me into a maze of horrific scenarios where I would lose my mind and I had to stay sane, or I would be of no help to you.

Back at the police station, Mum met me in the changing room. I was soaked through, shivering uncontrollably from cold and exhaustion. I hadn’t slept for over twenty-four hours. I started to take off your dress. ‘Did you know that smell is made up of minute fragments that have broken away?’ I asked her. ‘We learned about it at school once.’ Mum, uninterested, shook her head. But as I’d walked in the sleet I’d remembered and realised that the smell of your dress was because tiny particles of you were trapped in the fine cotton fibres. It hadn’t been irrational to think you close to me after all. OK, yes, in a macabre sort of way.

I handed Mum your dress and started putting on my designer suit.

‘Did you have to make her look so shabby?’ she asked.

‘It’s what she looks like, Mum. It’s no good if nobody recognises her.’

Mum used to neaten us up whenever our photo was taken. Even during other children’s birthday parties she’d do a quick wipe of a chocolaty mouth, a painful tug with a handbag-sized brush over our hair as soon as she spotted a camera. Even then she told you how much better you would look if ‘you made an effort like Beatrice’. But I was shamefully glad, because if you did ‘make an effort’ the glaring difference between us would be clear for everyone to see, and because Mum’s criticism of you was a backhanded compliment to me - and her compliments were always sparse on the ground.

Mum handed me back my engagement ring and I slipped it on. I found the weight of it around my finger comforting, as if Todd was holding my hand.

WPC Vernon came in, her skin damp with sleet and her pink cheeks even pinker.

‘Thank you, Beatrice. You did a fantastic job.’ I felt oddly flattered. ‘It’s going to be broadcast tonight on the local London news,’ she continued. ‘DS Finborough will let you know immediately if there’s any information.’

I was worried a friend of Dad’s would see it on TV and phone him. WPC Vernon, emotionally astute, suggested the police in France told Dad you were missing ‘face to face’, as if that was better than us phoning and I accepted her offer.

Mr Wright loosens his polyester tie; the first spring sunshine taking centrally heated offices unawares. But I’m grateful for the warmth.

‘Did you speak any more to DS Finborough that day?’ he asks.

‘Just to confirm the number he could reach me on.’

‘What time did you leave the police station?’

‘Six thirty. Mum had left an hour earlier.’

No one at the police station had realised that Mum can’t drive, let alone owns a car. WPC Vernon apologised to me, saying that she’d have driven her home herself if she’d known. Looking back on it, I think WPC Vernon had the compassion to see the fragile person under the shell of navy pleated skirt and middle-class outrage.

The police station doors swung shut behind me. The dark, ice-hardened air slapped my face. Headlights and streetlights were disorientating, the crowded pavement intimidating. For a moment, amongst the crowd, I saw you. I’ve since found out it’s common for people separated from someone they love to keep seeing that loved one amongst strangers; something to do with recognition units in our brain being too heated and too easily triggered. This cruel trick of the mind lasted only a few moments, but was long enough to feel with physical force how much I needed you.

I parked by the top of the steps to your flat. Alongside its tall pristine neighbours your building looked a poor relative that hadn’t been able to afford a new coat of white paint for years. Carrying the case of your clothes, I went down the steep icy steps to the basement. An orange street lamp gave barely enough light to see by. How did you manage not to break an ankle in the last three years?

I pressed your doorbell, my fingers numb with cold. For a few seconds I actually hoped that you might answer. Then I started looking under your flowerpots. I knew you hid your front door key under one of the pots and had told me the name of the occupying plant, but I couldn’t remember it. You and Mum have always been the gardeners. Besides I was too focused on lecturing you on your lack of security. How could anyone leave their front door key under a flowerpot
right by their door
? And in London. It was
ridiculously irresponsible
.
Just inviting burglars right on in
.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ asked a voice above me. I looked up to see your landlord. The last time I’d seen him he was a storybook grandpa - stick a white beard on him and he’d be a regular Father Christmas. Now, his mouth was drawn into a hard scowl, he was unshaven, his eyes glared with the ferocity of a younger man.

‘I’m Beatrice Hemming, Tess’s sister. We met once before.’

His mouth softened, his eyes become old. ‘Amias Thornton. I’m sorry. Memory not what it was.’

He carefully came down the slippery basement steps. ‘Tess stopped hiding her spare key under the pink cyclamen. Gave it to me.’ He unzipped the coin compartment of his wallet and took out a key. You had completely ignored my lecture in the past, so what had made you suddenly so security conscious?

‘I let the police in two days ago,’ continued Amias. ‘So they could look for some clue. Is there any news?’ He was near to tears.

‘I’m afraid not, no.’

My mobile phone rang. Both of us started, I answered it hurriedly. He watched me, so hopeful.

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, darling.’ Todd’s voice.

I shook my head at Amias.

‘No one’s seen her and she’s been getting weird calls,’ I said, startled by the judder in my own voice. ‘There’s going to be a police reconstruction on TV this evening. I had to pretend to be her.’

‘But you look nothing like her,’ Todd replied. I found his pragmatism comforting. He was more interested in the casting decision than the film itself. He obviously thought the reconstruction an absurd overreaction.

‘I can look like her. Kind of.’

Amias was carefully going back up the steps towards his own front door.

‘Is there a letter from her? The police say she bought airmail stamps just before she went missing.’

‘No, there was nothing in the mail.’

But a letter might not have had time to reach New York.

‘Can I call you back? I want to keep this phone free in case she tries to ring.’

‘OK, if that’s what you’d prefer.’ He sounded annoyed and I was glad you still irritated him. He clearly thought you’d turn up safe and sound and he’d be first in line to lecture you.

I unlocked the door to your flat and went in. I’d only been to your flat, what, two or three times before, and I’d never actually stayed. We were all relieved, I think, that there wasn’t room for Todd and me so the only option was a hotel. I’d never appreciated how badly fitting your windows are. Squalls of sleet-cold air were coming through the gaps. Your walls were impregnated with damp, moist and cold to touch. Your ecofriendly light bulbs took ages to throw off any decent light. I turned your central heating up to maximum, but only the top two inches of the radiators gave off any heat. Do you simply not notice such things or are you just more stoical than me?

I saw that your phone was disconnected. Was that why your phone had been engaged when I’d tried to ring you over the last few days? But surely you wouldn’t have left it unplugged all that time. I tried to cool my prickling anxiety - you often disconnect the phone when you’re painting or listening to music, resenting its hectoring demand for undeserved attention; so the last time you were here you must have just forgotten to plug it in again.

I started putting your suitcase of clothes away in your wardrobe, welcoming my customary surge of irritation.

‘But why on earth can’t you put your wardrobe in the bedroom, where it’s designed to go? It looks ridiculous in here.’

My first visit, wondering why on earth your tiny sitting room was full of a large wardrobe.

‘I’ve made my bedroom into a studio,’ you replied, laughing before you’d finished your sentence. ‘Studio’ was such a grand name for your tiny basement bedroom.

One of the things I love about you is that you find yourself ridiculous faster than anyone else and laugh at yourself first. You’re the only person I know who finds their own absurdities genuinely funny. Unfortunately it’s not a family trait.

As I hung up your clothes I saw a drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe and pulled it out. Inside were your baby things. Everything in your flat was just so shabby. Your clothes were from charity shops, your furniture from skips, and these baby clothes were brand new and expensive. I took out a pale-blue cashmere baby blanket and tiny hat; so soft my hands felt coarse. They were beautiful. It was like finding an Eames chair in a bus stop. You couldn’t possibly have afforded them, so who’d given you the money? I thought Emilio Codi tried to force you to have an abortion. What was going on, Tess?

The doorbell rang and I ran to answer it. I had ‘Tess’ in my mouth, almost out, as I opened the door. A young woman was on the doorstep. I swallowed ‘Tess’. Some words have a taste. I realised I was shaking from the adrenaline rush.

She was over six months pregnant but despite the cold her Lycra top was cropped showing her distended belly and pierced tummy button. I found her overt pregnancy as cheap as her yellow hair colour.

‘Is Tess here?’ she asked.

‘Are you a friend of hers?’

‘Yes. Friend. I am Kasia.’

I remembered you telling me about Kasia, your Polish friend, but your description didn’t tally with the reality on the doorstep. You’d been flattering to the point of distortion, lending her a gloss that she simply didn’t have. Standing there in her absurd miniskirt, her legs textured by goosebumps and the raised veins of pregnancy, I thought her far from a ‘Donatello drawing’.