‘Have it. It suits you.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want it?’
‘I’m sure. If you don’t take it it’ll only go to the charity shop.’
Priti puts the scarf into her handbag. ‘Thanks! Do you want me to make a start on those boxes?’ She points to the shoeboxes at the bottom of the wardrobe. ‘You know shoes are my speciality.’
‘Stilettos not comfy pull-ons!’ I joke, then busy myself folding the clothes into piles and the correct bin bags for their next destination. How strange it is to sort through someone else’s possessions. I remember Mum and I doing the same thing with Gemma’s clothes. Some day somebody will do it with mine.
Priti pulls out boots, espadrilles and sandals from the boxes. I smile as I see her examining the kitten heels I borrowed for the HCA interview six years ago. ‘Nearly killed my feet walking in those!’ They go in the charity shop pile whilst the old trainers go straight in the bin.
My back is turned to Priti when she says, ‘This box hasn’t got shoes in, Annie.’ I turn round to see the box Mum had stopped me from seeing when I tried on her clothes for the interview. ‘Oh, that’s Mum’s private stuff. Diaries and letters her counsellor told her to write about Gemma.’ Whilst I’m very curious to read what they say I don’t act on that thought. Mum has a right to her privacy in death. She’d been adamant that she didn’t want me to read them.
‘What shall I do with them then?’
‘Tip them out in the bin bag for the rubbish please hon.’
I go back to my job of tying a knot in the full bin bags and labelling them with their contents. Behind me I hear a thump as Priti tips out the contents of the box. She sighs and I catch her hip click as she bends down.
‘What’s up?’ I ask.
‘One missed the rubbish bag. Hang on a minute, it’s a letter.’
‘It’s probably nothing important.’
I nip to the loo and then go to the kitchen for a glass of water. When I return to the bedroom, Priti’s ashen face looks serious and she’s clutching a couple of A4 pieces of paper in a tight fist.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.
‘Nothing. Just a load of old rubbish.’ She moves to rip the paper up but I grab her wrist to stop her, sensing something amiss. I can always tell when she’s avoiding telling me something. ‘What’s going on? Did you read it?’
Priti replies in a rather-too-bright voice, her pitch far higher than usual. ‘It really is nothing. Just forget it, Annie.’
‘Have you read my mother’s letter? What does it say?’ I snatch it from her.
‘Don’t read it,’ she begs, which of course makes me want to read it more.
I walk to the window, the acrid taste of adrenaline hitting my mouth. The letter is written in spidery writing, which I vaguely recognise, searching for a memory as to why. After five seconds it hits me. It’s Reg’s writing, the same as the letter to the police. My eyes skip to the top of the first page. I hold my breath as I read…
Diana, I know you never could or should forgive me for what I did. I am so sorry. Believe me I hate myself more than anyone else could. I cannot live with myself anymore. I deserve to die. Every second I’m awake I wish I’d made a different choice that day, called an ambulance or shouted for a neighbour. But you must believe me, Diana, I never meant to hurt Gemma. All I could think of was protecting Annie.
Thursday 4th May 1989. 4.16 p.m.
It was the thump Reg heard first, the onomatopoeic crump of a body hitting the floor. It sounded like something had fallen on one of the concrete paving slabs that meandered their way along the length of the otherwise grassy garden to the greenhouse at the end.
He’d been out in the garden having a smoke. Although he told Karen numerous times that he had given up, a sop to one of the many things about him she wanted to change, he still had a cigarette when she was out, relishing the fact he was sticking the proverbial two-finger salute up behind her back. They barely spoke any more when their son Scott, who was about to take his A level exams, wasn’t in the room. Karen’s disapproving looks said a thousand words on their own. They’d been happy enough when they set out on married life and he couldn’t pinpoint the moment, or even the year, when love turned to affection and then to a bubbling-under animosity. But it did, it oh so did.
Today Karen was meeting Scott after she left her building society cashier job for the day. The pair of them were then going to see Karen’s parents an hour’s bus ride away for a meal to celebrate her mother’s birthday, although it would have taken much less time if he’d have driven them in the car as Karen hadn’t passed her test. Some birthday for his mother-in-law, he thought, when she had to cook her own dinner. There was no way he was going to take the pair: his present to her was not showing up, pleading prior work commitments. At least the two women could talk about him in the kitchen whilst Scott went to the pub for a drink with his grandad. He thought Karen was never happier than when discussing his faults.
Reg arranged with his boss to work from home every now and then to do paperwork and cold-calling companies for business. Today he had two thoughtfully-arranged evening sales appointments to go to.
Karen worked too far away to nip home for lunch and always took a homemade sandwich in with her. The boring minutiae of a stale marriage. Finally he was going to leave. Tonight, after his meetings, he’d tell her. He’d move out. She could have the house. Diana was less likely to get together with him if he were still living next door – she was a stickler about scandal and what the neighbours thought. Yes, she’d turned him down again earlier but he wasn’t going to give up. Remembering that afternoon they’d spent together, reliving how she’d made him feel, that was all that had kept him going these past six years. It was those pills she took talking. They belonged together.
Karen would no doubt be relieved to be free of an out-of-date marriage without having to be the guilty party ending it. She would enjoy revelling in the attention of being left, her gripes and grumbles about her husband now proven ten times over. Scott was hoping to go to a polytechnic in Portsmouth to study engineering if he got his grades. His parents splitting up shouldn’t affect him too much, Reg would still make the effort to visit him and give him as much cash as he could for his course. The boy has brains – surely his parent’s divorce wouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. The days when divorce brought shame on a family had long gone.
He wanted to wake up with Diana, rescue her, save her from a doped-up marriage after years of downtrodden misery.
He would go round tonight to Diana and Frank’s to tell them he and Karen were splitting up. When Diana realises it’s really happening she might be more likely to come with him. He’ll have to look up B&Bs in the Yellow Pages, stay in one for a week or two until he can rent a flat. Somewhere good enough for a woman like Diana. It could be like when he and Karen were newlyweds, except with a different woman. He imagined cosy suppers, christening each room and a place full of laughter instead of permanent bone-chilling tension.
The thump tore him away from his thoughts. He’d been looking over the fence whilst he smoked and daydreamed. Minutes earlier he saw Annie was playing in the garden. Apart from the sound of Kylie Minogue singing ‘Hand on Your Heart’ on the radio a few doors down, hers was the only activity he could hear in the back gardens. Seeing her, the girl born nearly nine months after the afternoon Diana and he had made love, made him wonder and fantasise again about whether she was his daughter. He had never summoned the courage to ask and Diana never said but, holding the baby when he and Karen had visited with a bottle of wine to wet the newborn’s head, he had wondered, he had somehow felt a connection. He’d looked at Annie and saw his father’s eyes and his own stubborn resolve in the way she held her head. Plus, his mother had been a ginger, and neither Diana nor Frank were. They say it can skip a generation in the family.
Before the thump, he’d heard the familiar squeak of next door’s back gate opening and some heavier footsteps. As he took his last dr
ag then crushed the cigarette butt underfoot, he heard Annie say, ‘Oh! It’s you.’
‘What are you up to, ratbag?’ Their voices were quiet.
‘Playing. I’m floating in the sea. Come and play, I’ll be the fish, you be the dolphin.’
‘No.’
‘Please…’
‘No, I’ve got revision to do.’
‘Why do you never want to play with me?’
‘I’ve not got time. I’ve got revision to do.’ Gemma’s voice was cut off by a few quick lighter footsteps.
Reg took more notice of the squabble, ready to tell the girls to play nicely.
Annie ran over to Gemma and pushed her in the stomach, catching her unawares, before turning on her heel and running into the house through the back door.
One thump then silence. Reg looked over the fence again, saw Gemma lying contorted on the floor, her unbleeding head touching the edge of a concrete slab. Her fingers twitched and she let out a groan, as if she were trying to work out how to push herself upright.
Reg looked round anxiously for help but the back gardens surrounding him were softly quiet save the chirrup of a bird and the flaps of its wings. He should call an ambulance, but what if Gemma needed resuscitating? It could take too long to go into the house and ring from the landline. Decision made, he dashed out of his back gate and into the Towcester’s, then tried to shake Gemma to rouse her from unconsciousness. If he were watching this on a television screen he would be yelling at himself to shout for help, unable to suspend his disbelief in his failure to do so. Yet what his inner instinct told him to do was check her pulse and her breath – the former faint, the latter non-existent. What came to him was a memory of learning CPR in the Scouts on a terrifying wax doll, concerned that his first kiss would be from rubber lips that had already been passed round the troupe.
She must have suffered a head injury when her skull hit the concrete. The pavement slabs were uneven: he hadn’t seen fully but Gemma must have tripped over one when she tried to keep her balance. He rolled her on to her back, opened her airway, blew into it, then placed his two downward-facing clasping palms on her chest and pushed hard. Too hard. A human bust felt much different from the faint memories of the long-ago Resusci Anne. He felt cracks under his fingers and – was it two or three? – ribs give way. A faint groan escaped from Gemma’s lips, and then nothing. Her eyelids didn’t flicker. She stared at him glassily. There was no pulse nor breath. She was dead.
He panicked and looked round over the fences. There was no one there. Nobody else saw him or Annie. If he called the police now would they believe a five-year-old pushed Gemma? And if they did, what would happen to her? Her life would forever be marked. But also his fingerprints were all over Gemma’s body. He’d broken her ribs. They’d say he hurt her, not tried to resuscitate her. He’d go to prison. If Diana knew he was involved there’d never be a chance of getting together with her. Reg couldn’t think straight. It was as if his brain shut down and his body took over on autopilot. He found himself getting an old roll of carpet out of his shed, ducking down as he pulled it through to the Towcester’s garden so as not to be seen over the fence.
Five minutes later, the garden was deserted, apart from a lone butterfly skitting amongst the buddleias.
Questions for Book Clubs
At the beginning of the novel, how justified do you think Annie is to hold a grudge?
Mental health is a key theme. How does Diana’s experience in the 1980s compare with the present day?
How does Annie’s character change throughout the novel, and why?
To what extent do you think Annie’s financial circumstances contribute to her choices?
Gemma and Annie had different experiences of school. Are school days the best years of your life?
What could Diana and Frank have done to be better parents?
What was your impression of Gareth? Should Annie have forgiven him for his teenage actions?
Why does Priti tell Annie not to read the letter?
How culpable do you think Reg is?
Does Annie hold any responsibility for what happened to Gemma?
Acknowledgements
Firstly thanks must go to my husband, Chris, for his love and support and my parents, David and Beryl Batchelor, for raising me to aim high.
Thanks to my tutor, Tom Bromley, from the Faber Academy – I first began working on this novel when I took their six-month online writing a novel course – and my fellow students for their encouragement and feedback, particularly Paula Winzar, Carlos Enrique Meza and Sara Schneider.
Early readers Victoria Steyn and Denise Burrows gave invaluable feedback on the plot and Richard Greenslade helped with brainstorming ideas. Thanks also go to Catherine Stewart who suggested questions for book club group discussions, editor Laura Gerrard and cover designer Emily Courdelle.
You wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands if it wasn’t for the enthusiastic backing of Clare Christian’s lovely RedDoor Press team and their belief in my story. I’m delighted to be one of their authors.
About the Author
Penny Batchelor is an alumna of the Faber Academy online ‘Writing a Novel’ course. She lives in Warwickshire with her husband. My Perfect Sister is her first novel and she is currently writing a second.
Web: www.pennybatchelor.co.uk
Facebook: @pennyauthor
Twitter: @penny_author
My Perfect Sister Page 21