The Good Sister

by Gillian McAllister

  Looking across at Becky, I try to think the best. She’s not an alcoholic. It didn’t make her late. She is just a normal woman who, like many women, might occasionally have alcohol on her breath in the late afternoon. I remember that lunchtime cocktail occasion. Becky had been looking forward to it, and look what it has become: a shameful outing, paraded in a courtroom in support of a murder conviction.

  But then . . . she had a cocktail, looked after my child, and forgot her own. She’d driven, too. Had she been over the limit? Why couldn’t she just abstain? If she didn’t have a problem?

  I shake my head, trying to get rid of the overanalysis.

  I picked Xander up from school myself, once, years ago. He must have been six or seven. I thought I was early, but he was still waiting for me, with a teacher—he was a conscientious sort of child, would always make sure he was where he said he would be—leaning against the lamppost outside the school. His hair had grown and lightened—it was late spring—and his limbs had lengthened and, as I pulled over and looked at him, I was struck by a thought: I was pushing thirty years old, childless, but somewhere in the future, my children existed, as yet unknown to me. What would they look like? A loping, dark-haired, soulful child like Xander? A petite girl? I couldn’t imagine them, yet they already existed, somewhere in the future of my life. I felt the knowledge, the certainty that they were out there, and almost missed them, my children. Xander got into the car a few seconds later. We were going to the cinema.

  “Pick ’n’ Mix?” he said hopefully.

  “Oh, yes,” I said.

  “The best thing about Pick ’n’ Mix is there’s so much choice,” he said gleefully. His enthusiasm was infectious, that childlike joy.

  Would my future son say things that would make me smile just like that? Xander smelled of earthy, crisp summer air as he reached behind me to stash his backpack on the seat, and I breathed in deeply. Afterward, we went to Becky’s and played some computer game up in his room. I couldn’t work out the puzzles to move us from room to room, but he could. We laughed about that, together.

  I swallow hard now, in the courtroom, a mother, but childless once again, Layla’s potential having evaporated into nothing. Tears prick my eyes. Not for Layla, and not for Xander, but for Becky. Her parenting put on the stand up there. What would my own look like?

  “Why did you sometimes sob when Layla cried?” they would ask me. “And what led you to leave your child alone with Becky on so many occasions? Why did you prioritize other people’s children over her?”

  I wouldn’t be able to answer that, now.

  “It was a mistake,” I would say. “It was a mistake because I believed they needed me more than she did. And it was a mistake because I believed that Layla would be safe.”

  “I thought forgetting a child five times was a bit beyond disorganization,” Carol answers now, darting a look at Becky. “I suppose—I thought that she had a child and perhaps didn’t prioritize him.”

  “Neglect,” Ellen says, her voice suddenly louder in the courtroom. “Was there any other evidence of this, would you say?”

  Other evidence. They were clever.

  “Bits and bobs. Xander was subdued sometimes. She was evasive. Ignored letters. Once, he cried when I shouted at him.”

  I sit back in the public gallery. The chairs are hard and uncomfortable.

  “I didn’t get the impression he was hugely supervised at home. He played a lot of computer games. Adult ones, I thought.”

  I had heard Becky shouting, once, through an open window as I raised a fist to knock on her door.

  “Give that back,” she said, as I stood outside. “I can’t bloody deal with you anymore.” Her voice rose higher and higher in its pitch. “Xander.”

  I stepped back. I’d been calling in when I was working long hours from home setting up Stop Gap. I’d been breaking up my day, on the way back from Sainsbury’s. It was probably normal, I reasoned. A parent, during the Easter holidays, shouting at her then eight-year-old. I didn’t knock on the door, but I didn’t judge her, either. I thought hardly anything of it, until later, when I wanted to shout similarly at Layla. I got it then. Now, I’m not so sure.

  The two Beckies, innocent and guilty, stand before me, and I avoid the gaze of each one of them.

  “Nothing further,” Ellen says.

  Harriet stands up for the defense. I’m getting into the rhythm of it now, the rhythm of the trial investigating my daughter’s death. The prosecution witness tells the story.

  Then the defense obliterates it. In a few days, it’ll switch, like a football team moving en masse toward the other end of the pitch to try for a goal after halftime. And with each moment that passes, we are closer to knowing.

  “So the defendant didn’t turn up at school a handful of times,” Harriet says. She studies her nails, then looks directly at Carol. “Five times in . . . six months?”

  “A little less. Roughly once a month.”

  “How many other parents have done this?”

  “Many do it once or twice,” Carol says. Her head doesn’t move, but her eyes flick toward Becky.

  Becky has more makeup on today. Her eyes look wide and dramatic, her cheeks pretty and pink, just like when she got married.

  I can still picture her wedding day. She’d changed into a black jumpsuit after the ceremony. “Why would I wear a stiff dress all day when I can wear something actually nice?” she had said. Marc was sitting alone at the edge of the room, eating two slices of cake off a napkin. Becky came from the dance floor and went over to him, dancing moves from Thriller in front of him. Marc’s face was creased with laughter. He waved her away, but continued to watch her dance, his eyes on her body.

  “Many. I see,” Harriet says now.

  “Yes.”

  “And being forgetful is hardly neglect,” Harriet says. “By your own admission, many parents have done it. Especially those going through marital issues, separations . . . working freelance, as the defendant was.”

  “Yes. But it’s indicative, isn’t it? Five times in as many months.”

  Harriet swallows and reaches to adjust her wig. “I don’t think it’s for you to comment on whether the defendant did or did not care about her child,” she says icily. “Your evidence is that she was late to collect her child several times. She had a lot going on on these occasions. A separation—and then looking after a newborn. We’ve all become forgetful at busy times in our lives—haven’t we? When our minds are overloaded—”

  “Is there a question here?” Ellen interjects, beginning to rise to her feet.

  “Is your only evidence the forgetting?”

  “Well—Xander, her child, also occasionally seemed a bit—I don’t know. A bit meek and frightened, I suppose, which can indicate an overbearing parent . . . at home.”

  A memory pops into my head. They come from nowhere, these days. Sometimes I find myself waiting for them, frightened of my own thoughts—what I might find in the back rooms of my mind. Becky and I were at her house, years ago, when Xander was only little, and would still sleep like a frog in his cot, his legs all tucked up. A car had sounded outside. One, two, three beeps of the horn. A pause, and then the same again. Xander was napping. It was a warm day, and the windows were open. On the tenth toot of the horn, Becky held a hand up to stop me speaking, stood up, and wrenched open her front door. “Can you shut the fuck up?” she yelled.

  I had flinched. Xander had woken up—roused from sleep by his mother’s voice, not the car horn. Afterward, she sat back down like nothing had happened. Volatile. That’s how she was. “A loose cannon, is Becky!” Dad used to say.

  “Are some children not more reserved—more timid—than others?”

  “Yes, they are, that’s true.”

  “With no reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “So your only evidence, actually,
is that the defendant was somewhat forgetful. Isn’t it?” Harriet says now.

  “Yes. I suppose so.”

  “The mother, Martha, wasn’t able to care for Layla, despite being on maternity leave. She needed Becky’s help. Becky was trying to spin the plates that day she forgot Xander, but she dropped one. That’s all. Did you have any other evidence?”

  I am winded in the public gallery. People shift around me, embarrassed, or perhaps that’s just my imagination. Wasn’t able to care for Layla. Is that the truth? Surely not. Our private arrangement—our botch job, our shambolic solution to an impossible situation—has the beam of the spotlight on it, now, in court. Our private life, made public.

  Scott reaches to take my hand again. “The mother. Always the mother,” he sighed a few weeks ago as he read about me in the newspaper. My eyes dampen now with the injustice of it.

  “No other evidence,” Carol says.

  “How sure were you that the defendant had alcohol on her breath?”

  “Very sure.”

  “Is this the first time you have smelled alcohol on a parent’s breath?”

  “No.”

  “Would it concern you—usually?”

  Carol pauses, looking at the floor, then up again. “Not on its own. Not when it was just once.”

  “Had you ever smelled alcohol on the defendant’s breath before?”

  “No.”

  I swallow. Poor Becky. I can’t help but sympathize with her. All of her flaws, all of her ill-judged decisions, things she has done privately—a cheeky cocktail in the afternoon, just once—discussed in open court for all to see. And to judge. Harriet adds, “Why did you issue the final warning?” Carol pauses, seeming to think for a moment.

  “Well—our handbook advises to issue a final warning before arranging a home visit if we . . . if we ever suspect any sort of neglect.”

  “So not out of personal concern?”

  “Well, the handbook—”

  “Were you personally concerned for Xander? Did you think he was being neglected?”

  “To tell you the truth,” Carol says after a few seconds, “I’ve always had a bad feeling about Becky.”

  “We’re talking facts, not feelings,” Harriet says icily, but her cheeks redden, and she backs out of the questioning. “Nothing further.”

  Harriet turns around in her seat and tries to catch Becky’s eye. Becky’s body stiffens, but she doesn’t look at Harriet. After a few moments, Harriet turns back to her papers, tapping her pen softly against them. Her angular eyebrows are drawn together. I see her shoulders rise as she inhales, and then sink as she breathes out: a long, sad exhalation. It could just be the toil of the job, the seemingly endless prosecution case, each witness raining pejorative facts down like gunfire. But as I stare at her rising and falling shoulders, I think it might be something else.

  She is worried. Either because she thinks the prosecution’s case is too strong, and her innocent client might get sent to prison.

  Or because she is persuaded by their case. Forgetting Xander. Xander being withdrawn. Carol’s clear expertise, and her feeling about Becky. The alcohol. They all add up to more than the sum of their parts.

  They add up to guilt. That’s how it seems. She thinks her client is guilty.

  10

  Becky

  Evening, Friday, September 29

  I am holding a bag of bean sprouts so large that one of Martha’s neighbors stares at me. “What?” I want to say. “They were 89p for almost a kilogram. A total bargain, even if we bin almost all of them.”

  It’s eight o’clock at night when I knock on her door. She opens it and Layla is curled up in the crook of her arm.

  “How’s my niece?” I say. “She’s not crying.”

  “It’s a miracle. How’s the Dalmatian chair?” Martha says drily.

  “Used and abused. I expect they’ve finished with it already. It’s probably in some dumpster.”

  “All your hard work,” Martha says, her forehead wrinkling as she steps aside to let me in. There are three Masai masks on the wall from when she and Scott went to East Africa, which I always eyeball as I walk in. I expect Martha thinks they look eclectic and cool, but the reality is they are absolutely fucking terrifying—guests always pause slightly, staring at them, like: Oh, right, Jesus. Perhaps she will let me make it over, one day. Her flat is such a nice space.

  “How’s the sleep going?” I say.

  “Badly. She doesn’t,” Martha says over her shoulder.

  I followed the Gina Ford method with Xander, but I know better than to say so—Martha would call the attachment parenting police. It bloody worked, though. He was sleeping through the night within a few months, and has never really stopped, not even when he had chicken pox and spent a furious week trying to sneak away from me so he could scratch. Even now, he sleeps for twelve hours a night, often emerging in the afternoons on Saturdays after more than fifteen hours. Marc and I—though we should be having barbed, separated sorts of conversations—still marvel at it. Still going after 14.5 hours . . . I will sometimes text. He will send a gif back of a sloth, which always makes me laugh, even though he sends the same one each time.

  “I’m starving,” I say, walking into the kitchen and pulling out one of Martha’s bright-orange kitchen chairs. I put the bean sprouts on the table. “For stir-fry,” I add.

  Martha nods distractedly. She has the sort of tired/happy look of a marathon runner, or a person who’s just submitted a PhD. Worthy and happy and worn-out. New motherhood. At the time, I was desperate to regain my life, to separate the ties between me and my baby limpet, to get back to wine bars and hobbies, but now I find myself remembering it with nostalgia. Xander had been born with a head of tangled black hair. Even now, if I see a baby with a head of dark hair, my innards twist. God, that second baby. How we wished for it to come, and it never did.

  Xander was born at three o’clock in the morning exactly. Marc was there, but nobody else. I was just nineteen. Jesus, I don’t recognize her now, the teenager who went ahead with that pregnancy. But it felt correct. Meeting Marc, even getting pregnant. From the outside, in the distant past, I would have abhorred teenage Becky getting pregnant by a carpet fitter and dropping out of university. I would have curled my lip in distaste. But from the inside, it was . . . I can’t describe it. But it was different. It was Marc’s eyes crinkling at the corners as I made drinks without boiling the kettle, presented him with a cold cup of tea. “Lovely, Samuel,” he said. “Have you been concentrating?”

  What did I love? His nickname for me—Samuel—and how he never, ever called me Rebecca or Becky, like I was reborn when I met him. The way he brushed my hair back from my forehead, repeatedly, when we were watching television, after I said I liked it one time. And—yeah—the innocence of him, too. He led a simple life; he enjoyed plain things. He liked crap films and curries every Friday night and drinking a can of Coke on a Saturday morning. He seemed to enjoy his lowbrow life, and I, subsumed into it, did, too. Life, before, had been about adventures across London. Barcelona for a bachelorette party. Marc made it simpler: watching twelve episodes of Friends in one day at the weekend. Ordering a Domino’s pizza for lunch. Life was smaller, but richer, with him.

  Labor had been full of pain, but Marc ensured it was also full of laughter, and I could not wish for anything more for Xander, for his life to have begun with happiness.

  “He looks like an ape,” I had said, holding him and looking at that shock of wild, dark hair, soft as candyfloss.

  “Like mother, like son.” Marc grinned, and we dissolved into laughter again.

  I make tea first. Martha’s with no sugar—perfect Martha—mine with three. Martha picks up the steaming mug and sips. She closes her eyes.

  “Are you asleep?” I say.

  “I’m dreaming of a takeout naan bread . . .” she says, opening h
er eyes and looking at me.

  It is one of our things; we are incapable of attending each other’s houses without ordering takeout. We vowed, last week, to stop—“Layla will be full of tikka masala and she’s only four weeks old!”—and we said we’d buy vegetables and cook together. “It might even be good fun,” I had said.

  “No,” I say now. “We said we wouldn’t . . . I bought the bean sprouts.”

  Martha looks at them. “That is a lot of bean sprouts.” There is something mildly condescending in her tone.

  As though I have even bought bean sprouts incorrectly. She would have bought them from a farmers’ market, no doubt.

  “I know. But sod it. Let’s do takeout. We deserve it,” I say.

  We order an Indian and it arrives in under half an hour. I peel away the crimped metal edges of the carton and remove the cardboard lid. The curry steams out. It is more beautiful than the finest art in the world. “Why do I like crap things?” I say, dipping a finger in. “Cigarettes and curry. Booze.”

  Martha likes running and carrot sticks. She will turn down chocolate biscuits. She willingly drinks sparkling water in bars, even though it tastes like balls—to me, anyway.

  “You enjoy the finer things in life,” Martha says. She passes Layla to me, and the baby settles into my arms as though they are Martha’s.

  “Oh—yeah—tobacco and curry.”

  “I meant your artistic flair, of course,” she says. “Your interiors.”

  Martha’s phone rings, and she disappears off to answer it, so I dish up one-handed, which takes forever. “Even getting takeout is too much effort, sometimes, isn’t it?” I say to Layla.

  Martha’s flat is big, so I can’t overhear her call. I put the plates on the table and hoist Layla up over my shoulder and wander around. Martha, fastidiously organized of mind, does not know how to organize a house. It’s full of stuff that’s been placed in strange locations: a floor lamp halfway along the hallway, jutting out; two pictures of Layla, framed already but different sizes, right next to each other, no space between them on the wall. I pass the Masai masks as I wander. “They are going to give you nightmares,” I say to Layla, and show them to her, but her eyes are closed. “We should replace them with an old driftwood coat hook, shouldn’t we? That would go so nicely in this space.”