My Perfect Sister

by Penny Batchelor

  Mother yawns and decides to go for a lie down. I’ve been so busy bagging things up I hadn’t heard my phone ring. The phone’s screen says I’ve missed a call. It’s the hospital offering me my first shift that evening to cover for sickness absence. I phone them back and enthusiastically accept. I’ll prepare Mother’s dinner before I leave and she should be alright getting to bed on her own. She can call Aunty Lena if there are any problems.

  My phone then informs me there’s another message for me to listen to. It’s DI Glass. ‘Annie?’ he says. ‘Please call me back. I think I know who your girl in the photo is.’

  Thursday 4th May 1989. 11.30 a.m.

  When Diana climbed into the flower-scented bubbles, some escaped over the side of the tub, wetting the bathmat and leaving a foamy patch on the peach bathroom carpet. She’d woken only a few minutes earlier and still felt groggy; she was unbalanced on her feet walking up the stairs to the bathroom and found it hard to piece together her thoughts and remember what she had to do for the rest of the day.

  She bent her knees and pushed her bottom nearer to the taps, enabling her to recline into the water until her knees stuck out and her face and hair were totally submerged under the bubbles.

  How easy it would be to stay down there and never come up. Good mothers didn’t do that. Good mothers didn’t think about leaving their children without their parent. Good mothers didn’t have a bath in the daytime when they should be cooking, cleaning, working and getting ready for the children to arrive home from school. Good mothers didn’t slap their children or be shunned by them.

  Her heart started to pound in need of oxygen. She waited as long as she physically could, dancing with the possibility of death, until involuntarily she sat straight up and gulped a lung full of air, followed by a coughing fit. Above the water she soon felt chilly. She turned on the hot tap but it ran cold for the hot water in the tank was all used up. She’d have to switch the immersion on to heat up more, but that would involve climbing out and by the time she got back the rest of the bath water would have cooled down too much anyway.

  Stay or go? Even that was too hard a decision to make. Her thoughts slowed to the pace of an arthritic tortoise as she stared at the tap, mesmerised by the rhythmic sound of the drip from the end. Diana didn’t know for how long she sat there, her skin puckering up and developing goosebumps whilst she shivered with her arms wrapped round her pointed-up knees.

  The doorbell rang. It shook her back to the present, back to the memory of her eldest shouting that she hated her. Diana got out of the bath and slipped on the iron surface. She reached out to grab on to the wash basin to block her fall but whilst doing so banged her knee on the bath. That’d cause another bruise. The bell rang again. She wrapped her fluffy dressing gown around her and crept into her bedroom where the curtains were still shut. Peeking out of a small gap in them to the front garden below she saw a postman with a parcel in his hand. She couldn’t answer the door, especially not to him. He delivered to the whole street and the neighbouring ones. He’ll have picked up on the gossip about her, the shut curtains in the daytime and the criticism from other housewives. That woman at 22 Greville Road, she’s mad she is, you don’t want to go there. She neglects her children.

  Diana took a sharp step to the right, away from the curtain gap and turned her back to the window. Her breaths were quick and shallow. Just wait. Be patient. He’ll go soon. The doorbell did not ring again. She heard the letterbox bang – he must have put a missed delivery form through the door. She could relax now. What was it she had to do? That’s it, get dressed.

  She rubbed herself dry with the dressing gown then slipped it off her shoulders and let it drop down onto the flowery carpet. The back of the wardrobe door had a full-length mirror on it. Diana opened it and looked at herself naked, seeing the existing bruises where she’d fallen or knocked herself, her slim waist and the light protruding of her ribs giving away the fact that she regularly skipped meals through lack of appetite or will to physically go downstairs and participate in the act of cooking. Hurriedly, she shut the wardrobe door, disgusted at the sight of herself, and reached for the underwear and dress she had cast off earlier. She had to face the day, although all she wanted was to reach for the pills again and for her mind to go blank for as long as possible.

  21

  I call DI Glass back right away. He says that he’s combed through the old case files and found a photograph of pupils in Gemma’s year with their names written on the back. The frizzy-haired girl is on there. Her name is Fiona Glenton, although, he reminds me, she could have changed her surname since then. DI Glass mentions that his DCI has put him on the case of a pensioner who was attacked by an intruder in her own home yesterday. I get the feeling that he’s now too busy to chase up Fiona Glenton.

  Immediately I call Gareth only to hear his voicemail message. I tell him about my shift tonight and the discovery of the girl in the photo’s name. I also text Priti – I’m too busy getting things sorted for my first shift to have a long chat – with the news about Fiona Glenton. Perhaps Fiona knows something or maybe she’s as in the dark as the rest of us. Whichever it is, I want to know. She might be able to shed a light on Gemma’s relationship with Mike and Toby.

  I’m so busy working my shift that by the time it’s over I’m exhausted with tired limbs and aching feet from being on my feet all the time. Now I understand why nurses wear sensible shoes. Even though it did involve some bedpan sluicing, I enjoyed every minute of it and am keen to return. The staff nurse who supervised me on the ward gave me good feedback for my first shift.

  It’s still dark when I return home in the morning on the early bus. The streetlights are on and about every second house is showing some signs of activity, whether it be open curtains or a yellow glow shining through a window. Some leaves have fallen overnight. I kick them out of the way as I walk down the street. To my relief, Reg’s house is still battened down for the night and there’s nothing on the mat by the letterbox in Mother’s house. The house is quiet – she must still be asleep. I leave some bread out by the toaster for her, place the butter, jam, a plate and knife on the kitchen table then head straight upstairs to crash out.

  I awake about midday to a knock on the door and Mother bringing a flask full of tea. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t carry a mug up the stairs without spilling your tea, so I brought up a flask and an empty mug in a bag instead,’ she explains. After placing the bag on the bedside table, she opens the curtains, letting the daylight stream in. My eyes take a while to adjust. I wipe some sleepy dust away from the corners and sit up, yawning the morning in.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘A pleasure. I’ve been dying to hear how your shift went,’ Mother says. She seems unusually perky today. It might be a sign that the treatment is working. There’s some colour back in her cheeks and she seems less lethargic. She’s even wearing lipstick.

  ‘Really well. I loved it, except I didn’t realise how physically tiring being on the go all the time can be. I’m used to sitting at a desk at work and making phone calls.’ I twist the top off the flask, pour some of the steaming brown liquid into the mug, then take a welcome sip.

  ‘I’m glad. Do you want to go to the library later on and look at decorating books?’

  ‘Yes, if you’d like to.’

  ‘Good. I’ll leave you to it and let you get up and get dressed. Your phone is flashing by the way.’

  As she leaves, I pick up my phone that’s sitting beside the flask on the bedside table. The screen says that I have a text message. My first thought is that it’s Aunty Lena telling me there’s been another story about Toby Smith in the newspaper. Thankfully it isn’t. The message is from Priti.

  Got her! See the link on Fiona Glenton, now Fiona King! Hope the shift was amazing. Call me! Mwah x

  I click on the link in the message and it brings up a web page from a luxury hotel. The page is PR blurb about the wedding services they offer and includes a case study of the ceremony and meal for the
big day of one Tom King and Fiona Glenton. In it the new Mr and Mrs King gush about how the hotel staff catered to their every need and made their special day perfect (I hope they got paid for saying that). There’s a stereotypical picture of them on the day posing, gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes in the hotel’s grounds. She’s wearing white not black, heels instead of DMs, her hair is in a stylish up do scattered with pearls and the Dalmatians have long gone, but it I can tell that Fiona King née Glenton is the girl in Gemma’s photo.

  I know I won’t be able to speak to Gareth until after his work tonight. He’s behind on his OU coursework and is spending a few evenings catching up. I miss him. It’s a disconcerting feeling – it’s unlike me to get close to someone so quickly, particularly after everything went spectacularly wrong with Shaun. Or am I over-analysing?

  At the library, Mother chooses three interior design books and asks to stop off at the local DIY store on the way home to pick up a paint colour chart. She’s really serious about the Gemma’s room renovation prospect. Before heading home, we visit a café for a slice of cake each to celebrate my new job and I get a call offering me some more shifts at the hospital. I gladly accept the ones I can that fit around Mother’s treatment.

  Finally, at home after dinner, in the privacy of my room, I have a chance to call Gareth. He sounds pleased to hear from me, although I suspect that may be partly due to the fact that my call has given him a good excuse for a break from the intricacies of tort law. I remember him picking Ian’s brains about it at the party and me finding the talk so boring that I left them to it. When I tell Gareth that I now have a name for the girl in the photo, Fiona King, he logs on to his Facebook account whilst I’m on the line to see if he can find her in the closed group for people who attended his school.

  I can hear him tapping the keys on his laptop down the line and swearing when the screen freezes. Eventually, after rebooting, he enters the closed group and tells me he’s looking through the names.

  ‘There she is – Fiona King!’ he says excitedly.

  ‘She’s there, are there any personal details about her? Anything we can use to track her down?’ I say, wishing I had a computer of my own. My pay-as-you-go smartphone really doesn’t cut the mustard. The temptation is killing me.

  ‘There’s lots of stuff on her profile page about holidays and training for a fun run…’

  ‘Anything else?’ I’m now pacing around the room.

  ‘A night out at a restaurant and pictures of her drinking cocktails with friends.’

  I curb the urge to tell him to look properly. ‘Nothing about where she lives or works?’

  ‘No, nothing, hang on, wait a minute. She’s tagged in a picture of a work fundraising day.’

  ‘Where is it? Where does she work?’

  ‘I’m not sure, they’re all wearing fancy dress. The picture must have been taken last Christmas. I think Fiona is dressed as an elf.’

  I hold the line very impatiently.

  ‘It’s a car dealership! There’s a sign I can make out at the back of the photo. Cars for You. I’ll search for it online. Give me a second… nearly there… got it. Cars for You used car dealership and service centre. It’s not that far away.’

  ‘Is her name on the website? Does she still work there?’ I ask, hoping Fiona hasn’t moved jobs in the last nine months.

  ‘We’re in luck. She’s still there. The website lists her as the PA to the MD.’

  I let out a celebratory whoop. Gareth laughs down the line. Now I have to think of the best way to approach her. After Mike’s reaction when I rang him, I think that face to face with Fiona may be the best option. Gareth suggests he can drive me to the car dealership in a few days’ time when he can leave work early and I’m not on shift. He thinks that him taking me would be safer than my being alone in case there’s a problem, that he’ll wait in his car for me whilst I talk to her and then the two of us can make an evening of it afterwards. We agree on a time for him to pick me up. I don’t tell him but I wonder whether I can persuade Aunty Lena to invite Mother to stay at hers that night. I’ll make sure I’m wearing my best underwear, best meaning one of the few pairs of knickers I own that haven’t got holes in or have gone grey in the wash.

  I go downstairs thinking that I’ll pop over and see Aunty Lena now and also watch the TV quiz with Den that I’d promised to when the phone rings again. The number is withheld but feeling that it might be important I answer.

  ‘Annie?’ the woman’s voice said. I recognise the slight accent but can’t quite place it.

  ‘Yes? Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Una from the hospital. I hope you don’t mind me calling you in the evening. Mrs Towcester has put your number down as her next of kin contact on her patient form.’

  ‘Is everything OK? Mother is here watching TV.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you rather than your mother herself. It’s distressing news I’m afraid and I thought it would be best coming from you. Her friend Mel passed away this afternoon.’

  ‘I thought she’d not been at the chemo sessions for a while, I assumed she’d finished her treatment.’

  ‘No, she took a turn for the worse, was admitted a couple of nights ago and died today. I’m so sorry.’

  I sit down on the stairs, flummoxed. ‘What do I say, how do I break it to her?’

  ‘Tell her the truth and that Mel was well looked after in hospital and didn’t suffer. If your mother has any more questions I’d be happy to answer them when she’s next at the hospital for her chemo.’

  I briefly consider accidentally forgetting to pass on the news, instead walking out of the door over to Aunty Lena’s and following that up with a trip to the pub. Or I could get in the car, drive away and never come back. How do nurses and doctors deal with death every day? Yet if I put it off I know it will only get harder to say something. I tuck my hair behind my ears, clear my throat, steel myself then walk into the lounge to break the sad news.

  There are tears, tissues and lots of hot, sweet tea that I brew to feel like I’m doing something useful. The cynical side of me thinks that Mother only knew Mel for a month or so, it’s not like she was family or her best friend or anything. I’m aware, however, of the unmentioned subtext.

  If Mel can die so suddenly, then so can Mother.

  22

  I leave Mother napping after telling her the bad news. She cries for her friend and the emotional energy she uses up with her tears wears her out. Neither of us broach the possibility of the same thing happening to her. It’s like the rogue fly I shoo out of the window before closing it firmly shut.

  Round at Aunty Lena’s, the daft television quiz Den is addicted to gives me the welcome opportunity to switch most of my brain off and only concentrate on American states beginning with the letter ‘D’. Aunty Lena is out shopping and Den seems delighted to have different company. The house smells the same as it always did back in the day, a warming vanilla scent, which must be the air freshener or cleaning products Aunty Lena uses but to me smells like a cocoon of safety. Den is sitting in his favourite faded, flowery chair with his legs resting on a footstool and together we spend a pleasant half hour shouting out our answers at the TV.

  When one team have won that episode’s trophy and are told to come back tomorrow to try and retain their title, Den asks, ‘How’s your mum doing? Have they strung that Toby Smith fella up yet and put his head on a spike outside Leeds Town Hall?’ He’s only half joking.

  ‘No, that sort of thing went out of fashion about 500 years ago, Den.’

  ‘Well then it’s about time it came back in fashion for this lot. Lots of things have come around again. Like vinyl and gin.’

  I smile. ‘I doubt hanging, drawing and quartering will join them. Anyway, there’s no evidence to suggest Toby had anything to do with Gemma going missing and if he was guilty it wouldn’t be in his favour to admit to it. Not whilst he’s trying to get off an attempted murder charge. I think his solicitor would tell him that it’s n
ot a good idea to confess to another one.’

  I go and boil the kettle and bring another two cups of coffee into the lounge. There’s something I’ve been wondering whether to ask Den and decide whilst I’ve got the opportunity to give it a go. I take a deep breath.

  ‘Den, Mother told me she had a difficult time, mentally you know, when Gemma and I were born. Did you know that? I knew she was ill but never realised that severe depression was why she was the way she was – never there, always sleeping.’

  Why am I nervous about his answer? Could Mother not have told me the truth in hospital? Surely she couldn’t have made all that up?

  ‘Aye, she did have it bad, Annie,’ he replied, before taking another slurp of his drink. ‘The word depression was never said but we all knew she wasn’t well in the head. It just wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted people to know back then. Your dad wanted to keep it in the family. Didn’t want any gossiping. Thought that he as the head of the family should be able to look after his wife himself.’

  That made sense. I remember Father as a rather quiet, private man.

  ‘But she did go to the doctor?’

  ‘Yes, but all he gave her was pills. More and more of the things and it seemed the more she took the less she did, around the house, you two kiddies… your mum’s a lovely woman but back then it was hard on your dad trying to keep his job, look after Diana and you two girls as well.’

  I hadn’t thought about it being hard on Father. All I’d thought about was it being hard on myself.

  Den carries on. He’s on a roll. ‘You know, sometimes I thought our Elaine got too involved, that if she backed off a bit then your mum would have to do more things with you. But I don’t think your dad totally trusted your mum to come up trumps. That’s why he paid Elaine to pick you up from school and such like.’