If You Knew My Sister

by Michelle Adams

  ‘Yes, I heard you. Harringford.’ The name is obviously still fresh in people’s minds. ‘You look just like her.’

  I pull my jumper cuffs down over my hands, turn my face away.

  ‘I came to see Miss Endicott,’ I say, not altogether kindly. I take a seat on the nearest undersized chair, stare at the children’s self-portraits that still adorn the walls. The receptionist stands to make her way to Miss Endicott’s office, but stops halfway. The schoolmistress heard me arrive and is already on her way out.

  ‘You’d better come through,’ she says as she beckons to me.

  Her office is large, oversized like her calves. She takes me by the arm to guide me into the nearest grown-up seat, avoiding the row of child-sized chairs, pastel colours lined up along the wall like a row of chewy sweets. Above them there is an ABC chart, letters made out of curly snakes, flowers and beach equipment. She leaves the door to swing closed, giving it an extra push to ensure it is shut before heading to a nearby side table with complex wooden legs. She pours me a coffee from a warmer without asking me if I would like one.

  ‘You look like you could do with it,’ she says with a smile as she sets it down on the desk. She assumes position in the chair opposite me, folds and then unfolds her arms. After a moment of discomfort she stands up, drags a spare visitor’s chair next to mine and pulls a bottle of Scotch from a small cupboard under the desk. She pours a measure into her own coffee and then leans over and drops a splash into mine. She smiles, but there is no happiness on her face. ‘You look like you could do with that too. Hair of the dog.’ She lights a cigarette and offers me one. I take it, but then set it down on the desk. Feels wrong to smoke in here.

  ‘Miss Endicott, let’s not pretend like we did the first time I was here. You know who I am, and you told me that you had something important to tell me. What is it?’

  ‘I seem to remember the only one doing any pretending was you, Mrs Jackson.’ She drags on the cigarette, lets a little of the smoke go, gulps the rest down. I reach for mine and light it. ‘But let’s put that behind us. You look like you have been awake all night. And I can’t tell you that the smell of alcohol on your breath is altogether subtle.’ I pull my lips in tight, trying to stifle the smell. I realise I haven’t cleaned my teeth since I was sick, and then I ate the cheesy crackers. I gulp at the coffee, hoping to disguise the reek. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go home and get some rest? We can meet later.’

  ‘I’m not sure where you think home is, Miss Endicott, but it certainly isn’t nearby. I have driven for seven hours to get here. I’m looking for answers. And my sister.’ I rub at my hip and she watches my every move. ‘The police have arrested my boyfriend in connection with Elle’s disappearance. They think she might have been harmed, but I know my boyfriend didn’t hurt her. In fact, I doubt anybody did.’ She drags again on the cigarette, and in spite of my breath, I move in closer. ‘I need to try to understand what is going on.’

  ‘Irini, your sister is a very troubled young lady. I have known her since she was small, and she was always the same. I’m sorry for the mysterious message, but as soon as I saw you here at the school, I knew you were the daughter they gave away.’

  ‘And yet you didn’t say anything,’ I point out, looking as sad as I might have done on the very day I was handed over. ‘You let me pretend to be Mrs Jackson.’ In this moment I feel pretty stupid. Having pretended to be somebody else, even though I have years of practice at it, feels so degrading.

  ‘What was the point of saying anything?’ She concentrates on straightening out a pleat in her fine cotton-weave skirt. ‘The fact that I knew who you were didn’t change anything. You were still the Harringford child that was given away, and your mother was still dead.’ Perhaps abashed at the harshness with which she stated the most painful facts of my life, she adds, ‘I figured it would only make you uncomfortable.’ She wasn’t wrong, and I am grateful. A brief smile flashes across my face.

  ‘Why tell me now?’

  ‘Because now things have changed. I heard you inherited the house. Elle won’t let that lie, you know that. Let her have it, and be grateful they gave you away when they did.’

  Let her have it? Be grateful? Being grateful for what happened to me didn’t even cross my mind until a couple of weeks ago, and only then because I saw how dysfunctional my family really was. Miss Endicott is an outsider, a bit player. Somebody who sat in the back row at my mother’s funeral. But to make such a statement she must be privy to something, and I have to know what it is.

  I take a sip of the coffee. ‘Do you know why they gave me away?’

  ‘Of course, my dear.’ She almost chuckles at first, but when she realises that she is the only one laughing, she turns to me, her face serious and puzzled. ‘Do you not?’

  ‘No. I have been looking for answers all my life.’ I guzzle down the tepid coffee. I am certain there is a definitive answer coming my way, like the last scene in Murder, She Wrote when the cast comes together and the solution to the crime is announced. Yet Miss Endicott’s thought processes appear stymied by my ignorance, and she is stumbling for words.

  ‘Well, it was…’ she begins, but falls short of a full sentence. She breathes hard, tries to focus. ‘It was in many ways a simple decision on their part. Your sister was a difficult child, both at home and at school. She was very troubled, spent some time in psychiatric care. Everybody knew that. Horton is a small place. But when the time came for her to return home, they realised they couldn’t raise both you and your sister. They tried, but it was obvious that it wouldn’t work. Elle needed a special sort of care.’

  ‘Yes, I know about that, although the police seem to think she has no history of mental health problems. There is nothing on record.’

  ‘Of course there isn’t, dear. There was quite a stigma back then. It was a private hospital and the records remained confidential.’ She looks away, bashful. ‘Things were different in those days.’

  ‘I think it was a place called Fair Fields,’ I say. ‘The large building you can see from almost anywhere in the village. But that still doesn’t really explain why they gave me away.’

  She offers me another splash of whisky, but I refuse. ‘You’re right, that is where Elle spent some time. As a young teacher I offered to lead a couple of classes over there. Just occasionally, mind, and it was never what one might call official.’

  ‘You taught her?’

  ‘Once or twice. A long time ago.’ She adds a couple of measures to her own cup, but doesn’t go on to top it up with coffee. ‘You were a victim of circumstance, Irini. Your parents agonised while you were at home with them, waiting for your sister to return. She was institutionalised for over a year, might have been two. They knew you couldn’t stay together. They had to make a decision.’ She returns to her skirt, finds another offending fold out of line.

  ‘But still, why me? If she was crazy and I was good, why not send her away?’

  ‘Because nobody would take her. Your mother was distraught.’ She drains the coffee cup. ‘She loved you dearly, both of you, in whatever way it was that Elle could be loved. They were trying to protect you, hoping that they could at least give you a stable life in a stable family. They couldn’t just leave Elle to fend for herself. They feared for her.’

  She looks away, pours herself another shot of whisky and knocks it straight back. I wonder how she will ever manage to teach with so much liquor on board.

  ‘I shouldn’t say this, Irini, but your sister was a deeply unlovable child. She was spiteful. Vile to other children, her hatred towards them obvious. I saw it during the teaching sessions. The way she would look at them.’ She closes her eyes, picturing the memory, then opens them and looks down at my hip. ‘Do you know what she did to her dog? Trampled it to death. Trampled it, I tell you! You just ask Joyce. She was the one to find her with it, bloody up to the elbows and knees with a butter knife in her hand. A butter knife!’ Her voice becomes a fluster and she takes a moment to calm dow
n. She is scared of Elle too. ‘Imagine a thirteen-year-old child that could do such a thing. Folk feared her. She seemed capable of things we as adults couldn’t comprehend.’

  I could imagine it all right. And something else I was beginning to understand was that Elle and I were not all that different. I too was a deeply unlovable child. Ask Margot Wolfe. It’s the second time I feel gratitude towards my parents for giving me away. If I’d stayed with Elle, God knows what I would have become.

  ‘What things?’ I ask. She stares at me for a while, contemplating whether or not I can stand to hear it. She needs encouraging, coaxing to spill the beans. ‘Miss Endicott, with all due respect, there is no reason to hold back now. I’m well aware of what my sister is like. Last time we were together she drugged me with Ecstasy. I know what she is capable of.’

  ‘Then there is no reason for me to embellish matters any further with opinions from the past. What you should know is that what happened broke your parents. They loved you dearly, and they tried to care for you the best they could. It was easier when Eleanor wasn’t there, but even so, her shadow hung over the household.’ As if on cue, a cloud casts us in shadow, and Miss Endicott shakes off a chill before swilling what is left in her cup down her throat. ‘When she returned home, they had no choice. They kept her because they knew nobody would take her. They couldn’t risk what might happen to you if you stayed. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. That’s how the saying goes.’

  ‘Are you telling me they saw my sister as an enemy? That’s absurd. She was a child.’

  Miss Endicott rises to her feet, sighs as if she was expecting more from me. She places her hands on the desk; four whiskies in and no doubt in need of some support. ‘Do you honestly think of her as just another adult? Do you not see what I see?’

  I think about what it is I see when I look at Elle, remember how I was so sure that she was responsible for our mother’s death. A woman who I am more convinced than ever loved me.

  ‘I thought she killed our mother.’

  ‘And if your dear mother hadn’t been suffering with cancer, we would all have thought the same thing. Elle knew it was your father who made the decision to keep her and send you away. She never forgot that, and never forgave your mother for feeling differently.’

  ‘But I got the impression that something happened to her. That they brought her home through guilt.’

  ‘Nonsense. Whatever stories Elle has told you, don’t believe them.’

  ‘It was Joyce that told me.’

  She shakes her head. ‘A busybody, plain and simple.’

  ‘You just told me to ask her about the dog.’

  ‘I said that she knew about the dog. Not that she knows about everything.’

  ‘Regardless, Elle loved me, I think. She always wanted to reach out for me.’ I stand up, move in close to Miss Endicott, place my hand on her arm. The touch shocks her, and she backs away. ‘That’s why I have to find her now. Help her. I shouldn’t have run away when my father died.’

  ‘No,’ she shouts, jumping forward. She knocks my coffee cup, the contents spilling on to a pile of papers that look like school reports. For a moment I think she is going to grab me, but at the last minute she stops herself. ‘Don’t look for her. Give up the house. Let them go, all of them. Leave it as it is. Don’t open up the past by searching for answers. You never know what you might find.’

  ‘Might open up old wounds?’ I ask sarcastically, and she looks again at my hip. She knows more about me than I do myself. But she is struck by a pallor, her face white as fresh snow, her eyes like two little piss holes.

  ‘What about old wounds?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Just something my father said.’ I set what is left of my coffee down, brush some drips from my knee. ‘But I have to find her, because the police have arrested my boyfriend. They found her blood in the house.’ Miss Endicott’s brow furrows, anxiety spreading as if perhaps she has underestimated the nature of Elle’s disappearance. ‘But Antonio is innocent. He didn’t hurt Elle.’

  ‘They found blood, though. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe she really is hurt.’ She backs away, one hand coming up to her lips. ‘Oh, I should never have said anything.’

  ‘She isn’t hurt, Miss Endicott. She is sick. Mentally unwell,’ I say, tapping my head. ‘Tell me about the old psychiatric place. Fair Fields. Maybe I can prove to the police that she has mental health issues so they understand they are reaching the wrong conclusions about my sister.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Fair Fields is just a shell. Nearly burnt down about fifteen years ago. A few patients died. There is nothing left inside. Not even the records.’ She must catch a look on my face, something that passes before I even realise. Like when I know Antonio is lying before he knows himself. When I know there is more to a story than I am being told. ‘Yes, there was talk about who was responsible. Everybody in the village was aware that Elle had a troubled history, and a few knew where she had spent time as a child. There was a lot of talk about the kind of things that went on in that place. The early eighties in psychiatric care was not a happy time, Irini. Many put Elle’s promiscuous ways down to experiences she may have suffered in the hospital. Of course, I never saw any evidence of that myself.’

  I think back to Elle’s interest in matches, the smell of her burning fingernails. ‘You think she burnt it down?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters only what you do. Do you love this boyfriend of yours, the one the police have arrested?’

  ‘What does that have to do with my sister?’ I ask, finding a fold in my own clothes that suddenly requires attention.

  ‘I mean is he important to you? Could you live without him?’ When I fail to answer, she makes assumptions. ‘Then forget him. He came up here, Irini. I saw them together. He got himself into this mess, and by all accounts he was none too well behaved.’ She sinks into her headmistress’s chair, folds her hands together, her fingers like a nest of gnarled snakes. I hear the wind picking up outside. ‘Your parents tried to keep Elle away from you for a reason, and I suggest you keep as much distance as possible. Don’t try to save this Antonio if to do so means having to find her.’

  35

  As I approach the house, creeping along the driveway in my car, I see the gates are closed, remnants of yellow police tape attached, flickering in the breeze. When they don’t open automatically, I stop the car, get out. I yank on the latch and push both gates open until they sit against a backdrop of conifer trees. I wait for somebody to stop me, but nobody does.

  I turn back to the car, and that’s when I remember. I don’t know if it’s the line of oak trees swaying at my side, or the muddy track bisected up the middle by a stretch of grass. It could be the sound of the gravel as it crunches underfoot where the driveway begins, or the soft chug of the engine as it ticks over. It is likely all of these things that transport me back to that moment when my mother placed me in Aunt Jemima’s car. This is where the exchange happened, right on my own doorstep. I can almost picture the car ahead. I look at the house and wonder if my mother said it had to be done here, how I would be calm close to home.

  I get back in the car and drive in, park outside the garages like Elle always did. I knock on the door to the apartment above, hoping that Frank or Joyce have been taped in like objects from a crime scene. Nobody answers. I slip around the side of the house, towards the kitchen. I find the door taped but unlocked. I push it open, duck inside. I am in.

  The only sound is the tick-tock of the old grandfather clock in the hallway. I listen for the sounds of my memory, my mother’s words of encouragement as I pull myself along on the kitchen floor. Nothing comes to mind, as if the whole place has died, memories included. I glance towards the stairs that lead to my bedroom, but I do not take them; instead I head into the house, towards the main corridor.

  I poke my head into the sitting room where the coffin once sat and see that everything appears just as it was: the settee pushed aside, the flora
l pillows scattered in clusters of three, freshly plumped ready for use. The pictures all remain in place, the heavy curtains half drawn, the pelmets hanging above, limp as droopy eyelids. I step backwards, head towards the study. The police have been here. Little Post-it notes adorn the telephone and bookshelves, and traces of fingerprint dust still coat the door handles. I look down, find I have a smear of it on my hand. On the far wall there is a picture frame that hangs like a door, revealing a safe behind it. Empty, the contents in Antonio’s car, I realise. I brush my hand against my leg, leave the study behind.

  I head up the stairs. On the banister there is a smudge of blood, a sticky yellow note positioned just to the side. I push on, arriving at my father’s bedroom. I consider going in, rooting through his things. Maybe I can find something of my mother’s, a dress that smells like her, a favourite piece of costume jewellery that wasn’t deemed fit for the safe. Maybe I’ll find a bundle of letters all for me, written over the years, that she never had the courage to send. But right now I’m not sure I’d have the courage to read them either, so I close the door behind me and continue along the corridor.

  I open two more rooms, both of which look undisturbed, before I arrive at the final door. I push it open, see the bed, a double, sheets all wrinkled and pulled. I see the splatters of blood, just a few tiny drops. They are not from a struggle or a fight. These are consensual wounds, the type a woman accepts with a smile. The type that come from the pain we say we like because we think it makes us more attractive to the man we are with. There are handcuffs hanging from the frame of the bed, traces of blood on the edge from where they have cut into skin. Red smears on the pillow, too.

  The room doesn’t fit the house, like French lingerie on a woman too idle to pretty herself up. Above the bed there is an image of Elle, a blown-up portrait, black and white, her face cast in complimentary shadows. She is tipping her head back, her naked arms gripped seductively around her chest. Reminds me of Madonna in the eighties. The room, too, that faux-glam eighties plastic, lots of pastel peach and cushions, strip lighting around mirrors. Like a time warp. Not how I imagined it.