‘I just think that you should let that property go, Mrs Jackson. It’s not worth the risk. But of course, if you were to come here, I would gladly meet with you and try to help you find the missing pieces of your jigsaw, so to speak.’
‘Are you suggesting I come to Horton, Miss Endicott?’
‘Well, yes, of course I’d be delighted to meet you again. Any time you are able to stop by. Thank you for returning my call, my dear.’
‘Wait, Miss Endicott, don’t go yet.’ But she has already hung up. I dial her number again, but she doesn’t answer. It doesn’t even go to voicemail.
31
I think about starting the engine, driving straight up there. Whatever it is she has to tell me is important enough that she has to cover it up on the phone, secrets that perhaps she doesn’t want overheard. But I see Antonio waving from the window, and decide there are other things that demand my attention first.
I step from the rain and into the house, the hallway dark, humid. I can hear the tinkle of a spoon in a teacup, the shuffling of a liar’s feet across the tiles of the kitchen. I think about his plans to open a restaurant and wonder if he told me he had the loan or if he had only applied for it. I wish I had read the letter from the bank when he’d given it to me. Forrester certainly didn’t seem convinced that it had been approved. I try to focus on anything I know as fact as I close the door behind me. Trouble is, the only facts I know just seem to make things worse.
Antonio is a liar.
He’s going to be questioned.
He hasn’t been in Italy.
He was with Elle.
I walk through to the living room, stand next to the couch where we made love, the spot where I harboured desperate hopes that life was going to get better. The same place we have snuggled, watched movies, dropped popcorn. The room still smells like our hot bodies, the smell of sex on the furniture. I hear him coming towards me, cup of tea in hand, and so I sit down, my clothes still drenched. Rainwater drips to my shoulders, runs through my hair and across my scalp, falling like tears down my cheeks. I see his raincoat, the one I paid for, draped over the back of an old leather chair. Why would he have bought that to go to Italy in the summer? There’s another fact for you. I’m gullible and stupid.
I think about what I am going to say, playing out at least five different scenarios in my head. But when he arrives in front of me, all of my caution, careful questioning and plans to get him to trip himself up fall apart. I blurt everything out.
‘You weren’t in Italy,’ I say before he has even set my cup down. He stares at it for just a little too long, looking for answers that he never expected he would need to find.
‘What do you mean? I went to Italy,’ he replies. But he hasn’t looked at me yet. He is avoiding eye contact. Eventually he manages a quick glance. His nose twitches, mouth pulls up slightly at the side. I know immediately he is lying.
‘You are lying,’ I say, unblinking, unflinching. ‘I know where you were.’
He smiles, laughs, as if it is a case of, OK, caught me. I am almost waiting for him to raise his hands, as if I am holding a tiny concealed gun like a James Bond villain. ‘You don’t know where I was,’ he says, pantomime fashion. He picks up the raincoat and reaches into the inside pocket, bringing out a small red box.
There are not many things he could have produced to stop me in my tracks, but this is one of them. I see the familiar smirk he gets on his face when he feels pleased with himself, when he knows he has shocked me or done something to make me happy. Under normal circumstances he is satisfied by both results in equal measure. The first night we slept together he did things with his tongue that made my body shake. It’s that face I see now, the same one that loomed over me after I came, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘What is that?’ I ask.
He doesn’t say anything, but the smug grin fades to one of hope. Pitiful hope. He opens the box and drops to one knee, and inside I see a tiny diamond set on a beautiful mount. It’s the kind of diamond that says, I don’t really have enough to offer you, but I am making my best effort. My best and final offer.
‘I want us to be married. Now that the thing with your family is over, we can move on. Be our own family with a big wedding in Italia.’ I become even more nervous now that he has started substituting Italian for English, because he only does that when he is really excited, or really angry. He isn’t angry. He actually means this.
‘Just exactly how did you conclude that the thing with my family is over?’ He is still crouching on one knee, holding the box up to my face. I can see from the way his smile has disappeared – even the pitifully hopeful one has slipped – that this is not going how he pictured it.
‘Your parents have passed, and your sister has finally disappeared from your life. You have what you always wanted. Now you can move on.’
‘My sister hasn’t disappeared from my life. She has disappeared completely.’ But he is undeterred and edges towards me, still down on one knee. I push the box away from my face. But I am shocked because it seems that even Antonio never realised that it was all a big game; me running, hoping secretly that they were on my tail. Doesn’t he understand why I went there? In my astonishment he manages to wriggle the tiny ring on to my finger. He takes my lack of resistance as a good sign and kisses my cheek.
‘It looks good,’ he says, a tear forming in the corner of his eye.
‘No, Antonio,’ I say shaking my hand out from his. ‘I didn’t agree to marry you.’ I try to pull the ring off, but my fingers are swollen and the ring is too small. It is stuck. ‘Where did you get this idea from? That everything was over, settled? It is so far from over.’ I make another attempt to pull the ring off, and when I fail, my hands drop to my sides as if I have given up. ‘I know where you were, and you were not in Italy buying this tiny thing. You were in Horton, with my sister. And don’t pretend that you weren’t. I have seen the pictures with my own eyes. Why did you lie to me? How did you find her?’
He stands up and moves over to the other couch. He sits down and tosses the box on to the table, just forcefully enough that it rattles towards me, landing open-mouthed and empty. He runs his hands up through his hair, then pulls at his T-shirt like he wants to rip it off. Now he is angry.
‘I didn’t find her. She found me. You called me from her phone, and that’s how she got my number. She wanted to get to know me.’
I think back to my phone when I found it on the driveway, the broken screen, the precise way in which it was smashed. As if on purpose, perhaps with a stiletto. When did she have time? I don’t know when she slipped outside and did it, but I know it was Elle. Just one simple move was all it took to cut me off, then bide her time, snare his number. ‘How many times did you speak to her?’
‘Seven, maybe eight while you were there. She called me in the evenings, asking about you. Asking about our life together. I thought I was helping.’
‘Helping?’ I hang my head in my hands, thinking of all the effort I went to in order to keep them apart. ‘What did you tell her?’
‘Just simple things at first. Things that sisters would want to know. What kind of house you lived in. How many hours you went to work. How many on-call shifts you had to do. She wanted to learn about your life. She asked where we went on holiday, about my family, about Italia.’
So now I know how she seduced him into talking. He loves rattling on about his overextended family with eight grandmothers and a gazillion aunts. Oh yes, nice, kind, poor misunderstood Elle and her simple interests. I can hear him now, sighing about how fucked up I must be to have cut her out.
‘You said at first,’ I say as he reaches across the table and recovers the box, perhaps embarrassed by its presence. He closes it and sets it down next to him on the cushion. ‘What about after that? How did it stop being simple?’
‘Her questions became more personal.’ He makes an effort to close the gap, inching towards me. Something holds him back. ‘But she didn’t seem cr
azy like you said she was. She was kind, friendly, told me she was worried about you.’ I avoid breaking eye contact in the hope that it is my cold, ice-hard stare that is keeping him from standing up and reaching out to touch me. ‘Then she told me that you weren’t coping well. That you were behaving strangely.’ A tear breaks free and he brushes it away. ‘I was worried about you.’
‘Of course I was behaving strangely,’ I shout. ‘How else would I behave while I was there with her? Have you forgotten everything I ever told you about her?’
‘But that’s the problem, Rini. You never told me anything.’ His head drops to the back of the couch, and I can see that this isn’t the first time he has realised what a stupid idea it was to meet her. I know the look, the feeling of being weighed down by something Elle has said or done. It sticks with you like an albatross lashed to your leg. The feeling of joy she brings with her when she first makes contact is short-lived. But by then she has got you, already got her claws stuck in your flesh, dragging you down beneath the waves that she, no doubt, has created.
‘I only told her a few personal things,’ he says as he braves his way towards me. ‘I wanted to help. Like the fact you always wanted to know who you looked like, what foods you liked as a baby, what your childhood room was like.’ Maybe all the time we were together it was just one long script she was working from, filling in the gaps as Antonio presented them. Same with the butterflies on the wall, her fluttering fingers against my skin, the insects she drew on my casts. A theatrical seduction to win me over. Another mind trick that I soaked up, believed, made real.
‘You’re so stupid,’ I say, shaking my head, wiping away my own tears. I don’t feel good about crying, but there is no covering it up. Not this time. ‘She only wanted to know those things so she could use them against me. Anything she knows about my life has potential to her. It is something she can manipulate to get to me. And she did. She used those things to soften me to putty. So she could mould me, lure me into her world.’ How easily I fell into her plan. Just one drink. A last goodbye. She used that night to isolate me from the only thing left that I was connected to. Antonio. Without him she knew I was alone. Without him I would need her. Without him I would be hers and for once in our sorry lives I would start chasing her.
‘No. She was trying to get close to you.’
‘God, Antonio, don’t you get it? Do you know what this looks like? That I organised the whole thing. That I wanted my family dead so that I could inherit the house. The money. That this is a crime for inheritance.’
‘But that’s ridiculous. Is that what DC Forrester said?’
‘She didn’t say it, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t thinking it. And yes, it’s ridiculous, but that doesn’t stop her believing it. You know what isn’t so ridiculous, though? The fact that everything I have done makes me look guilty. I don’t have a relationship with my family, but as soon as my mother dies I am straight there. My father changes his will and then commits suicide with Valium, which nobody but me has access to.’ He has started stroking my leg, and I don’t stop him. It helps. Soothes me. ‘But you know what is even better?’ I say, pushing his hand away as I remember the facts. ‘They think you were in on it.’ He stands up, straight as a lamp post. ‘They have pictures of you, Antonio. You lied to me. You weren’t in Italy. You were the last person to see her.’
‘They think I have something to do with her disappearance?’
‘Yes. That we both do, maybe. They probably think I put you up to it. Why did you go there? Why did you meet her?’
He crashes back down on the other sofa, his T-shirt parting from his trousers, exposing his olive stomach. He looks so good, and yet I can feel him slipping away from me. I know there are more lies beneath the surface. Scratch at it for a bit and they will all come bubbling out, like the tiniest prick on a septic wound, opened up and spilling pus.
‘She told me that you hadn’t handled your father’s death very well. She suggested I go there, that we could talk about how best to help you. She told me she had seen you like this before, many times. That she always knew how to help, but that she wanted me involved. Oh, Irini. Why didn’t you tell me she was sick?’ He sits up, reaches forward. There is a pile of magazines on the table between us and he fiddles at the edges, straightening them up. ‘I was desperate. It was that or we were finished. I didn’t want to lose you.’
‘They have pictures of you in a bar. Nobody has seen her since.’
He punches the couch in frustration. ‘But that’s impossible. I left her at the hotel and there were—’ He stops mid-sentence.
‘You were at a hotel together? Antonio, did you…’ I say, but I leave my question to fade to nothing because the answer is written all over his face. ‘Oh my God,’ I whimper as more tears start to flow. ‘You had sex with her, didn’t you?’
‘It wasn’t like that. No. NO! It wasn’t like that.’ I jump up from the couch to get away from him because I can already see what it was like: her nuzzling up to him, looking for a hero. Him stepping up. How good it must have felt for him to know what to do for once, how to make things right. He must have thought it was all so fucking easy in comparison to me. Just a brief kiss, then another, and before you know it her hand is down his trousers looking for the on/off switch to his brain. I pull desperately at the ring, his stupid, pathetic, guilt-carved ring that was supposed to help make up for what he did. I run to the kitchen, grab the soap and squirt it all over my finger, pulling and twisting. ‘Rini, no,’ he begs, following me. ‘It’s not what you think. Please,’ he says as he grabs my shoulders, spins me round. Water splashes over us, mixing with my tears. ‘I didn’t sleep with her. I didn’t.’
‘But something happened, didn’t it? Something happened that you don’t want to tell me about. Did you kiss her? Did she kiss you?’
‘I didn’t want it. She tried. She wanted to have sex with me, but I stopped it. I told her no.’ He is snatching at my hand, trying to stop me from pulling off the ring, as if by forcing me to wear it we can forget everything that has happened and the future will happen just as he wishes it to.
‘And where were you when you told her no? You weren’t at the bar, were you?’ He can’t look at me. He is gripping me, clinging to what he knows will be his only chance to save us. ‘You were at a hotel. You were going to do it and you changed your mind. I’m right, aren’t I?’
He lets go and flops down in one of the plastic kitchen chairs, green liquid all over his hands. He drops his head into his slick palms, the soapy, apple-fresh fingers sliding into his hair.
‘I was at a hotel with her. She kept talking about you and telling me things, stories from the past, and I felt so close to you. She knew all these things, like what colour your baby clothes were, what milkshake you drank, the kids who bullied you because of the way you walked.’ I wrap a protective hand around my hip, as if it has been offended. I hear Bison in my head, the voice of Robert Kneel, the grunting of his buddies, the snorting and whinnying as I get close. ‘It was like all the things I ever wanted to know about you were right there on offer. I had the answers. It was like she was you, and I got confused.’
‘You expect me to believe you thought it was me? That you got confused?’ At that moment the ring slips from my finger. I slam it down on the table.
‘She kissed me, and I let her. You look alike, you know. Not superficially, but you do. You have the same Cupid’s bow,’ he says as he raises a finger to his lips, traces the triangle beneath his nose. ‘And your ear lobe. It curls at the back the same way.’ When I can’t bring myself to look at him, he drops his head. ‘But then she told me that I was better off with her. That I should stay with her. Do all the things I wanted but that you wouldn’t do. Like kids. That she would give me what you wouldn’t. That she would marry me, and you never would. I figured you must have told her about not wanting kids, because I hadn’t mentioned anything that personal.’
‘I never told her about not wanting kids.’
‘Wel
l, she knew. She knows you better than you think.’ He grabs a towel, wipes the soap from his hands. ‘I got up to leave. She started shouting, screaming at me that I was just like all the rest. That she would ruin me to make me pay. That she would make you leave me. She started telling lies about how you had been fucking around. But I left. I left straight away.’
I try to stop myself crying, but I can’t. I shake when I cry, so I wrap my arms around my chest and try to stem the movement. Part of it is guilt, knowing that she told him the truth and he didn’t believe her. Some of it is anger. But mainly it is sadness. Something else coming to an end. ‘She had a lot to say considering you left straight away,’ I stutter. ‘To manage to say all that as you stormed out would have been quite something.’ He hangs his head in shame and I know I am on to something. ‘Did you have to get dressed? Is that why she had all that time? All those threats and accusations thrown out while you had your fucking trousers around your ankles?’
He picks up the ring and fingers it for a while, knowing that hope, and that last chance, has been lost. He slips it in his pocket. He must have envisioned tonight so differently. He looks up at me, tears streaming down his soapy face, and nods his head.
Fact. Antonio is a liar.
32
‘You have one hour,’ I say as I walk away, straight up the stairs with big, false-confident strides. I want to get away from him, because I am sure that with the slightest effort he could break me. With only a little bit of pleading I would beg him to stay. I might have treated him badly, cut him out over the years, but when it comes to being alone, I would do anything to avoid it.
‘Rini, please. I won’t just go. Not before you talk to me.’
He has said this a few times. From my barricade in the bathroom I can hear him shuffling about in the hallway. When it goes quiet, I press my ear up to the door, listening out for a hint that he is still there. When I hear the floorboards creak, or hear his body move against the door, I flinch back, pleased that he hasn’t gone and yet too proud to ask him to stay. If I had a girlfriend to call for help, that friend who drops everything when you need her, maybe I wouldn’t feel so alone. Maybe if she were to suggest I kick him to the kerb, or once a cheater, always a cheater, I would nod my head with dignity and never speak to him again. But I don’t have that friend. And besides, that’s not who I really think Antonio is. I think the same has happened to him that happened to me. He got caught up in Elle’s promises and in her world. Got lost somewhere between fantasy and reality, and is now struggling to find his way back.
If You Knew My Sister Page 23