My Perfect Sister

by Penny Batchelor

  It says: ‘Back off and go home’.

  There’s no one outside, not even a dog walker, when I open the front door to see who posted it through the letterbox. The rain is keeping people inside. In the distance I hear an engine running. Could the person who delivered the letter have gotten away by car? Or is he or she hiding somewhere along the street? Is this Robert Smith’s doing, whether he delivered it himself or delegated his dirty work? I don’t have time to run down the road to see if there’s anyone there.

  Sickness turns to defiance. I’m not going to back off and I don’t have another home to go to anyway. Whoever wrote the letter doesn’t know me well enough to realise that. I hastily put it back in the envelope and then stuff it in the chemo bag under a magazine just before Mother, aided by Aunty Lena, walks through into the hall. No one other than DI Glass needs to know about this.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I say, plastering a cheery smile on my face. I open the umbrella in the house to escort Mother outside.

  It’s only when we’re both in the car that I remember that it’s bad luck.

  19

  At the hospital, when Mother is mid-treatment, I make my excuses and once again head to the WRVS café. There’s a table free in the corner where, amongst the hustle and bustle, I won’t be overheard. Clasping my fingers around the obligatory polystyrene coffee cup I call DI Glass and confide in him about this morning’s threatening letter. He’s seen the morning newspaper and is fuming. Nor does he have positive news from this interview with Toby Smith. It’s a difficult conversation that leaves me feeling no better. Neither he nor the caffeine stop my headache pounding.

  ‘We didn’t get much information out of Smith,’ he tells me, ‘other than he claims Gemma’s disappearance had nothing to do with him. We’ll of course double check his alibi, but with the passage of time memories fade, CCTV is lost, if it was ever there in the first place, and it becomes trickier to corroborate evidence.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  ‘He’s a slippery character and definitely has a history of violence but it’s our job to rely on facts and as yet there are no witnesses or other information to prove he’s lying. But if he was involved with Gemma’s disappearance there’s no incentive for him to tell us. A confession that leads to a successful conviction would significantly lengthen his prison term and his lawyer is still trying to appeal Smith’s original attempted murder sentence.’

  ‘Is that it then?’ I’ve finished the coffee and am picking apart the cup, crushing it into little white polystyrene balls that roll across the table.

  ‘No, as I said we have his alibi to check out. But I won’t lie to you, Annie. Without any further leads there’s nothing else for us to go on.’

  I move my handbag from the aisle so a young mum can park her pushchair adjacent to the next table. She is pulling smiley faces at her giggling bundle.

  ‘What about the photo I told you about of Gemma and three friends in the park? I still don’t know who the girl with her is. Can you track her down and see if she knows something? Did I tell you I called Mike Braithwaite, the other boy in the picture, and he wouldn’t talk to me? Can you try? You’re the police, he’d have to answer your questions.’

  ‘Not necessarily, particularly if he’s not under caution or arrest, but yes, it’s another avenue to investigate. As for the photo, why don’t I pop round and take a copy? I can look through the case files from the time and see if we can identify her.’

  ‘I’ll post it to you,’ I say hurriedly. ‘Mother is having cancer treatment and isn’t very strong. She doesn’t want to get involved unless there are any concrete leads. I’d like to keep the police away from the house if possible so as not to upset her.’ Father’s dying words flashback to me in my head: ‘Look after her when I’m gone’. He’s got what he wanted. I’m in too deep now to walk away from it all.

  ‘It’s quicker for me to meet you in person to see the photo and take the letter you received. It may have fingerprints on it and we need to keep it as evidence. The police take harassment very seriously.’

  ‘Who do you think might have sent it?’ I ask.

  ‘I can’t say without having forensics look at it. Smith’s brother or another of his family or friends, however, could be in the frame. That newspaper article this morning was a low trick. Our press team will decide whether to make an official complaint to the Editor.’

  ‘I’ll try and drop them off at the station later. I’m in hospital at the moment for Mother’s chemotherapy. She usually goes to bed at home afterwards and I should be able to leave her for half an hour.’

  ‘Try not to contaminate the letter. Wear gloves and put it in a plastic bag such as a freezer bag. We’ll need to take your fingerprints as well to rule them out.’

  ‘I will do.’ Priti would love all this skulduggery. I must call her later.

  I walk back to oncology having bought water, chocolate bars for energy, two cheap women’s magazines that assume all the fairer sex are interested in is reality TV and bikini bodies, and another polystyrene cup three quarters full of brown liquid that I suspect contravenes the Trading Standards definition of tea.

  As well as Mother, three other people are hooked up to IVs, one of which, an older woman whom I recognise from a previous visit, has newly arrived. A brightly-coloured crochet granny square blanket envelops her slender frame; her head is covered 1940s-style with a floral headscarf tied at the front in a knot. I nod at her and she smiles at me then turns back to the book she is reading: a fat tome with enough pages to keep her going through more than one chemo session. Mel isn’t there.

  The other two patients, or ‘service users’ I now know from my induction is the correct term, have nodded off, their heads leaning to one side of their bodies resting in the top wing of the chair. Next to one is a tired-looking gentleman of late middle age, holding what I assume is his wife’s hand whilst trying to complete a newspaper crossword in his lap with his other.

  A few empty chairs away is my mother, where I left her, seated under a mass-produced watercolour of a bowl of fruit that is secured to the wall as if it were as precious as the ‘Mona Lisa’ in the Louvre. Her knees are covered with the lavender fleecy blanket from the sofa at home that I’d packed earlier in the chemo goody bag.

  The powerful medication enters her veins via the intravenous port secured in her left lower arm by white tape. I wonder whether it causes pain or discomfort – Mother’s eyes are half-closed. I’m not squeamish looking at needles or injections but don’t like to have them myself.

  I sit on the black plastic chair next to her. ‘I’m back,’ I say. ‘I’ve got magazines and drinks – do you want the water or the tea?’

  She turns to me drowsily. ‘Whichever you don’t want, dear.’

  ‘OK, half each then. Tell me if you want something passing. How is it?’

  ‘Same as last time.’

  ‘Not much fun then?’

  ‘Not pleasant but bearable if it’s what it takes to keep me alive.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ What else can I say to that? Nothing.

  The clock on the wall ticks the seconds away. Una walks briskly around the ward to check the IVs. I haven’t had a chance to chat to her today or tell her the good news about my induction. I hope she’ll have a quick break before I leave.

  To pass the time and distract my thoughts from my pounding head and the unfruitful conversation with DI Glass, I read a magazine story about a daytime TV presenter having a social media row with another daytime TV presenter about looking fat on screen. That’s another ten minutes of my life I’ve wasted.

  Mother hasn’t moved in her chair. I break the silence. ‘I forgot to tell you, the other day at the café I got talking to a woman who is having treatment for breast cancer. She was buying some lunch for her young son. Apparently if you have breast cancer there’s a special centre in the hospital you can go to that has free coffee, not from a vending machine but proper filter stuff. And there’s a big bowl of complimentary fru
it. I bet it’s nicer than this room. The woman told me it runs yoga and meditation classes as well. She’s going to a session there on Friday where they show you how to put make-up on and can try on different wigs.’ Mother doesn’t need a wig as she still has some hair. She had it cut pixie short to disguise the thin patches.

  ‘Really?’ Mother opens her eyes.

  ‘Yes. How come breast cancer patients get that and kidney ones don’t? That’s discrimination.’ I’m gabbling, I realise, filling in the silence.

  ‘Yoga? Can you imagine me doing the lotus position?’

  I look at Mother’s face and see a twinkle in her eye, which prompts an involuntary snort to escape from my mouth. ‘Ommm,’ I reply, shutting my eyes and holding my thumb and forefingers together in a circle to mimic a meditation pose.

  Mother laughs weakly, then coughs and adds, ‘Make-up? Do I want to look like I’m going to a tarts and vicars party?’ She seems to have forgotten the neutral-coloured lipstick and blusher she put on this morning.

  ‘Mother!’ I’m stunned – she said the word tart! That’s on the level of the F word coming from her. ‘You could get a curly perm wig, like your hair was in the old 1980s photos…’

  ‘Stop it, Annie.’ She’s still laughing and wincing at the same time due to the physical pain the act of laughing inflicts on her feeble body. ‘That hairstyle was fashionable then. Top of the range home perm – Elaine used to do it for me.’

  ‘It showed,’ I jest.

  ‘I have two words for you, Annie Towcester. Pink. Hair. Fourteen you were when you did it. Pink, I tell you.’

  ‘Hmm – it seemed like a good idea at the time.’ I was surprised that she remembered my pink hair dye foray. She was right, it was dreadful, but I’d never have admitted it at the time. My terribly-bleached fuchsia hair split off when I brushed it. Mother barely said a word when she saw. Father, however, rang up Aunty Lena straight away and she turned up the next day with a packet of brown home hair dye and a pair of rubber gloves.

  A tired-looking middle-aged woman pushing a trolley offers Mother a drink that looks no better than those from the vending machine downstairs. She’s dressed in the same uniform I was given at my induction. Maybe I’ll be doing her job soon. I’ve yet to receive a call about when my first shift will be.

  One of the sleeping patients awakes with a cry of pain. I catch Mother’s eye. ‘Seriously, does it hurt? I can ask Una to give you something extra if it does.’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you.’ Is she really OK or is she being a martyr?

  Another pause before Mother says, ‘This isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, Annie. Cancer is horrible and I wish I hadn’t got it, but it’s not the worst.’

  I think of the conversation at the kitchen table this morning and the framed picture in the lounge of Gemma on her final birthday, blowing out her cake candles. We’re back to her again.

  ‘Is the worst not knowing what happened to Gemma? What was in the shoebox in your wardrobe?’ There, I’ve said it. Mother’s physically attached to a drip. She can’t run away and avoid the question I’ve been longing to ask.

  Mother looks down at her lap. She exhales a breath of defeat. ‘The shoebox. Its contents are private but I suppose I ought to tell you since you saw it. Your father and I kept too many secrets from you when you were a child. We thought we were protecting you, but…’

  She pauses before continuing. I find I’m holding my breath in anticipation. ‘You know I spent a long time in bed when you were a child and I took pills. Too many. I’ve had clinical depression for a long time, both before Gemma… before she… and afterwards. After you left I saw a psychologist regularly for years. She encouraged me to keep a diary of my thoughts and feelings in a notebook, to write them down and acknowledge them rather than pretend they weren’t there. I wrote letters too, to Gemma. I know I wasn’t a good mother to either of you. The letters, well, I wrote down everything I would say to her if she were here. The things I didn’t say when she was. They’re in the shoebox.’

  ‘All that sleeping, locking yourself away in your room, you were clinically depressed all that time? I knew you weren’t well but when you spent all that time in your bedroom I thought you just didn’t want to be with Father and me. Could the doctors not help?’ I ask whilst I have the golden opportunity.

  ‘Not then. Nowadays what with the pills and the GP support I can manage it, I know when it’s coming and I know what to do.’ She picks up the women’s magazine on the side table and flicks the pages. ‘If you believe magazines like this it seems that everybody today is depressed. It’s a fashionable thing to be now. It wasn’t then. It’s the worst thing you can imagine, the bottomless pit of despair and you don’t know why, there’s no reason…’

  I sit up straight and press on. ‘And Gemma’s death made it worse, did it? I barely remember you before then.’

  Mother wraps her hands around her lap blanket, fidgeting. She lowers her tone. ‘We don’t know she is dead, Annie. The depression started long before Gemma went. People didn’t talk about it in those days. I was so ashamed, I think your father was too.’

  ‘When then, when did it start? How?’ I place my hand on top of her left one to acknowledge this isn’t an easy subject for her to discuss, even though my mind is full of confusion. No one ever told me when I was a child that Mother was depressed. Not well, yes, but never why. Was it that she just couldn’t help being the mother she was, rather than that she chose to be withdrawn and never there for me?

  ‘When I gave birth to Gemma. I’d had an easy pregnancy, barely any morning sickness. I bloomed. I loved being pregnant. I felt so beautiful, as if by becoming a mother I had a purpose.’ The corners of her lips turn upwards in remembrance.

  ‘We’d wanted to start a family young. Gemma’s birth was easy compared to some of the stories I heard from other women. A six-hour labour, no stitches. But when they passed her to me, when I looked at her…’ Mother clutches her mouth with her free hand. ‘When I looked at her I felt nothing. I’d expected to fall instantly in love but there was none there. The nurses kept telling me to try and feed her, to hold her, but I was so tired and only wanted them to look after her so I could sleep and not hear her crying. Just take her away, I said, let me rest. When we took her home I tried so hard, your father did all he could to help, Gemma smiled for him, but for me, she just cried and messed her nappy. I pretended to others that I was a besotted mother then felt dreadful that I wasn’t. I lied through my teeth.’

  I clutch her hand a little harder.

  ‘Then one day, when Gemma was about three months old, I was hanging washing out in the garden. Back in those days it was normal to leave the baby outside in the pram to get fresh air. But she just wouldn’t stop crying. I tried everything, a bottle, picking her up, walking her round, everything, but she wouldn’t settle. Then I put her back in the pram and thought how easy it would be to cover her face with the blanket and make her be quiet. I was so shocked to have those thoughts, I walked straight out of the back gate, leaving the pram in the garden, and kept walking.’

  ‘Oh my God, what happened?’ This is the longest conversation about the past I think I’ve ever had with my mother. Did I ever know her at all?

  ‘Karen next door heard Gemma crying. She couldn’t find me so she pushed the pram to your father’s garage to get help. He knew something wasn’t right, that I wasn’t right, but didn’t want the authorities involved. He asked Karen to babysit Gemma at her house whilst he tried to find me.’

  ‘And where were you?’

  ‘It’s hazy. I was at the park, he said he found me staring down at the lake. I told him I’d gone to feed the ducks, but I hadn’t. I was thinking how long it would take to die if I waded into the water, whether it would be pain-free and over quickly. If I was dead I couldn’t harm my baby. But there were lots of people around and I didn’t have the guts to do it. And then he came and took me home.’

  I really don’t know what to say. She had w
anted, if only for a moment, to kill Gemma? Is this the chemo drugs talking? Or is her recollection of events true?

  ‘The next day your father took me to the doctor’s. The medication – back then it was as bad as what it was supposed to cure. Post-natal depression, what the doctor said I had, was shameful. I had to live with the knowledge and regret of what I nearly did. The pills blocked it out, but they blocked everything else out as well. What do they call them these days, those monsters on television? Zombies? I felt like a zombie, so tired, every emotion sucked out, and such shame at being a failure as a mother. It took over a year before I loved my daughter, before I could truly feel a bond and when I did, oh how I loved her and how I hated myself for the way I’d been, all that time I’d lost. But she wasn’t an easy child, you know, the rows, the arguments… Gemma was clever, cleverer than me, and she knew how to play on it.’

  She pauses and takes a few deep breaths to regain her strength.

  ‘And then years later you came along. This cancer, it has really got me thinking. I’m so sorry, Annie. You were a surprise. When I found out I was pregnant with you I was terrified. What if it was all going to happen again? What if I couldn’t love you? But when you were born I felt it straight away. Motherly love. I’d do anything to protect you. Your beautiful face, the little tufts of ginger hair on top of your head. This time, I thought, this time it would be different. I’d be everything to you that I hadn’t been to Gemma at the start.’

  This is all so much to take in. Have I been wrong all my life? Mother did want me, she did love me? My heart clenches and doesn’t know whether to beat or bleed.

  ‘Then a month later it started again. The bleakness, the inability to get out of bed, the hatred of myself and other mothers who laughed and smiled with their children whereas I felt incapable of even going outside the house. I told your father, he took me to the doctor’s again. More pills, more hospital visits, your father ran the house when he was back from work. He never said it but he made sure I was rarely alone with you as a baby, made sure that I never had the chance to leave you in your pram and walk away. There was Gemma, Elaine, his parents when they were alive, always someone around to do things, so I stopped trying. I wasn’t a good mother to you, Annie. But I did love you, I didn’t tell you, but I did. I thought you were better off without me.’