My Sister's Bones

by Nuala Ellwood

  “Have you heard from Hannah?” I ask as Sally comes back with the drinks. I already know the answer but still I feel I need to ask. She hands me a glass of water, takes hers—a mug of something that smells suspiciously like wine—and sits down on the sofa opposite me. Her hands shake as she puts the mug to her lips and gulps the drink down.

  “There’s only one reason Hannah would get in touch or come back,” she says, cradling the mug in her hands. “And that would be to see Mum. Now Mum’s dead, Hannah may as well be too.”

  “But Hannah won’t know that Mum’s dead,” I tell her. “How could she?”

  “It’s the first thing she said to me when she rang that time,” Sally continues bitterly, ignoring me. “How’s Gran? Not ‘How are you? Sorry I worried you.’ No, the only person she was bothered about was her bloody gran.”

  “They were very close,” I say. “It’s understandable. She should know what’s happened. Mum would want her to know.”

  Sally shakes her head.

  “I wish you’d known the woman I knew,” she says. “We seem to have gone through life with different mothers. She made my life hell. Nothing I did was good enough. But then you were the one who passed all your exams and then became a famous reporter. You were the golden child in Mum’s eyes. Whereas me, all I was good for was having a kid and, according to her, I made a great big mess of that too.”

  “You’ve still got Paul,” I tell her. “He’s a good man.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” says Sally. “Me and Paul? We’re over. He’s never here these days. Can’t stand the sight of me.”

  Her self-pity is too much for me. “Can you blame him, Sally? It’s not easy living with an alcoholic. You, more than anyone, should know that. There are places that can help, you know?”

  “Oh, give me a break,” she says, standing up from the sofa suddenly. “You swan in here when I haven’t seen you in years and think you can start telling me what to do? We’re not kids anymore, Kate. I make my own decisions now.”

  She takes the mug and goes into the kitchen. I hear her pouring out another drink and my heart sinks.

  “What about Hannah?” I say as she comes back into the room. “If you tried to get back in touch, hold out an olive branch, then maybe you could sort things out.”

  “Ha,” she says, with a grin on her face that is so much like my father’s it makes me go cold. “You think Hannah gives a shit about me? That’s a joke. She couldn’t stand me. Said I’d ruined her life. The last thing I need is that girl coming back making trouble. All I want is to be left in peace.”

  “But she’s your daughter,” I say, taking a sip of water to calm myself. “Surely you want to know she’s okay?”

  “Oh, here you go again,” she cries, banging her fist on the arm of the sofa. “She’s fine. Off sunning herself on some bloody island. We know she’s okay because you did your big investigation, remember? Honestly, you’re such a nosy cow, Kate.”

  I sip my water again as we sit in silence. She’s right, I did look into things when Hannah left because, unlike Sally, I was concerned. Hannah could be a handful but she was still only sixteen and not particularly worldly wise. I needed to find out where she was, to put my mind at rest. Sally wouldn’t listen to me so I asked Paul to dig around, ask her friends if they knew where she’d gone. At first none of them would speak to us—like most teenagers they were afraid of landing her in it—but then one of them saw sense and gave us Hannah’s address. She was living in a squat in Brixton, so I told Paul that I would go and meet her, check that she was all right. When I arrived she looked rather disheveled and had put on quite a bit of weight, but she assured me she was happy, that she was living with friends, and that she needed space away from Sally. I couldn’t blame her for that. I gave her a hundred pounds and told her to keep in touch, but that was the last I heard from her. I went back to the squat a couple of times but they seemed to have moved on. Just as I was beginning to worry again I got a letter in the post from Hannah telling me she was off to Ibiza to work as a rep.

  “But still you couldn’t help putting the knife in, could you?”

  I look up at Sally. The drink is kicking in and bits of spittle flick from her lips.

  “Telling me it was my fault, that I drove her away with my drinking. You’re just like our bloody mother. Self-righteous hypocrites the pair of you.”

  She stands up suddenly and goes to the kitchen. Perhaps I should leave. I look at my watch; it’s coming up to five o’clock. Paul will be home soon.

  “Mum said it was all me,” she says as she comes back into the room, clutching a refill. “That I’d driven her darling granddaughter away; that I didn’t know how to be a mother. Ha, that’s a laugh. I told her I’d learned everything I know from her, a woman who let her kid drown. I told her that she was the disgrace and that I would never speak to her again for as long as she lived. And I didn’t.”

  “How could you? David’s death broke her,” I say, watching as Sally slumps back onto the sofa. “In her letter—”

  “What letter?”

  “The one from Mum,” I reply tentatively. “The solicitor gave me it.”

  “Oh, really? How nice,” she slurs. “And did they have a letter for me?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose if they haven’t given it to you, then no.” I take another sip of water, wishing that Mum could have just done the decent thing and left something for Sally—anything.

  “Well, why doesn’t that surprise me,” she says. “Christ, even in death she puts you first. The woman was unbelievable.”

  She pauses to take another gulp of her drink.

  “So what did she say in this letter then?”

  “She said she wanted to explain everything,” I say, my hands trembling. “About David’s death and the fact that it was her fault. But I don’t understand why it was just me she wanted to explain it to. Why not write a letter to both of us?”

  “Because you were her favorite,” says Sally, watching me over the rim of her mug. “And she wanted your sympathy. She didn’t care what I thought about her. I was the disappointment; the teenage mother. You were this bloody beacon of light; someone who could do no wrong. Everything she wasn’t. Christ, her precious Kate would never let a child die.”

  She stares at me so hard it’s like she knows.

  “Mum was a liar,” she says. “And I know that for a fact. She was also a rotten, neglectful mother.”

  As she takes another drink of wine I put my head in my hands. I can’t take much more of this.

  “Oh, sorry,” she says. “Am I upsetting you?”

  “It’s just unnecessary, Sally,” I say, looking up at her. “All this animosity and vitriol. Yes, Mum made a mistake, but my God she paid for it. She had years of Dad beating her up, night after night, and you just sat there saying nothing.”

  Sally leans abruptly forward on the sofa and shakes her head.

  “Why are you shaking your head?” I say. “It’s true. I was the one who stood up for her, who fought back, and what did you do? You just let it happen, you stayed silent, and that to me is unforgivable.”

  “You know what?” she says, her voice low and menacing. “You think you’re so perfect, this great fucking saint who runs into war zones and saves people. What a joke. You see, Kate, I know things about you. I know what you’re capable of.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She slumps back and closes her eyes.

  “Sally, tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “Get out of my house,” she mutters without opening her eyes.

  “But—”

  “Leave me alone. Do you hear me? Piss off.”

  “Okay,” I say as I stand up and make my way out of the room. “I give up. At least I can tell Paul that I tried.”

  I open the front door and stagger down the driveway holding my bag across my stomach like a shield. I can’t breathe. I need to get out of here, get far, far away from Sally and her poison. I
try to clear my head of her, try to think pleasant thoughts, but her voice is ringing in my ears, getting louder and louder until it feels like my head will explode and all I can hear are those words:

  Kate would never let a child die.

  13

  Later that afternoon

  I arrive home to a pile of mail lying on the doormat. I pick it up and flick through as I walk to the kitchen. Reader’s Digest; a letter from Cats Protection; a circular from a life insurance company offering a free silver pen to anyone who takes out a policy in the next ten days. That is it, the remnants of my mother’s life.

  As I walk into the kitchen I try not to think about Sally and the argument but I can’t shake off her bitter words. Deluded. That’s what she called me. Am I? I look down at the mail in my hand and think of my lucky pen and Chris telling me that he loved me. I believed in both of those things; I believed that a pen could keep me safe and that Chris and I were soul mates destined to be together forever. I held on to those beliefs and threw common sense out of the window because I didn’t want to face up to reality. Maybe Sally is right, I think to myself as I put the junk mail in the bin, maybe I am deluded.

  My head aches as I take off my coat and open the cupboard in search of painkillers. I can hear the old woman. Her screams are faint for now but I know they’ll get worse as the evening progresses. I need to do the deep-breathing exercises I read about, the ones that are supposed to help with anxiety, but I feel too tense. I just want to go to sleep before she can get any louder. But it’s still early, hours to go before I can take a sleeping pill. Instead I fill the kettle and swallow a couple of painkillers as I wait for it to boil. The pills stick in my throat so I run the cold water and put my head under the tap, taking a long glug. As I lift my head I’m aware of a presence, something moving outside the window. I look up and see a figure by the back fence. Someone is in the garden.

  Shaking the water from my hands, I run to the door and open it. My body goes cold. The door is unlocked. How can that be? I was sure I locked it when I left earlier—but then I was so distracted with losing my pen.

  But as I step outside all is quiet, eerily quiet; like the silence you get just before a bomb explodes. I walk gingerly down the path, peering through the weeds, my heart pounding.

  “Hello,” I call, making my way to the end of the garden where a pile of broken plant pots lay stacked against the far wall. “Who’s there?”

  But there is nothing. Whatever or whoever was there has gone. I stand on an old brick and peer over the wall. The back alley that cuts behind the houses is empty save for some abandoned wheelie bins a bit farther up.

  I jump down and as I make my way back to the house I toy with the idea of calling the police—but the sight was so fleeting they would have nothing to go on, no description. I’m not even sure whether it was male or female.

  No, best not to bother with the police, I think to myself, best to just get back inside and make sure everything is locked up. It was probably kids. But as I reach the back door my shoe catches on something. I look down and see a marble. It’s just like the ones Sally and I used to play with as kids. I remember I kept a huge stash of them in an old Bovril tin. I bend down to pick it up. It’s a nice one and the child in me marvels for a moment at the milky blue eye suspended in glass. As I stare at it my phone buzzes in my pocket.

  I take it out and see Paul’s name on the screen. It’s a text. Clicking on it, I read:

  Heard you’ve been to see the patient ☹ Thought you might be in need of a drink! I’ll be in The Ship on the seafront at 8 if you fancy joining me. And thanks for trying, Kate. I know your visit will have meant a lot to Sal even if she doesn’t show it. P x

  I take the marble and the phone inside, locking the door firmly behind me, and wonder whether I really want to join Paul for a drink. He’ll want to talk about Sally and there’s nothing more to say. But then I think of the long evening ahead of me in this wretched house and it suddenly seems like a good idea to get out. I put the marble in my bag and head upstairs to find something suitable to wear. I’ve had enough ghosts for one day. A glass of cold wine, a friendly face, and a few hours of ordinary life will do me good.

  PAUL IS SITTING at a low wooden table with his back to the room, his head bent as he drinks his pint of beer. I cross the warm, dimly lit bar and tap him lightly on the shoulder.

  “Hello,” he says, swiveling around on his stool. He stands up and places a dry kiss on my cheek. “What are you having?”

  “No, it’s okay,” I say. “This is my shout.”

  Paul smiles and returns to his seat, and as I walk to the bar to buy the drinks I can sense him watching me. He’ll be thinking about Sally, wondering what we talked about and he’ll be worrying. I know he will.

  He looks pensive when I return to the table with our drinks.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to down it in one,” I say as I sit down with a bottle of white wine. “Just always seems to work out cheaper if you buy a bottle rather than go glass by glass.”

  I pass him his pint of beer.

  “It’s fine, Kate,” he says, watching as I pour the wine. “You don’t have to explain yourself. Some of us can handle the booze, and others, mentioning no names, take it to excess. Anyway, cheers.”

  “Cheers.”

  Paul swallows some beer, then puts the glass down.

  “This is nice,” he says, rolling his sleeves up as he leans forward.

  “Yes,” I say, taking a sip of the wine. My legs feel all tingly. Probably the sea air earlier.

  As Paul lifts his glass again the light catches his arm. Angry red welts cover it, jagged, like someone has taken a knife to him. He notices me looking and quickly rolls his sleeve down. I decide not to ask him about them.

  “Strange to be back here,” I say, looking beyond him to the rest of the bar. “It hasn’t changed a bit.”

  The low ceiling and dark beams make me feel as if I’m sitting in a hermitage deep below the earth. The Ship is the oldest building in Herne Bay; it dates back to the Napoleonic wars when it offered sanctuary to sailors fleeing the French. I imagine them hiding amid the dark crevices, a temporary escape from their violent, grog-stained world. My father used to drink here. I think of him sitting at the bar every Sunday; his muscular arm, honed from hauling animal carcasses, curved around the pint glass while a few minutes away his wife and daughters played out an old ritual on the beach. This had been Dad’s hiding place, I think to myself, as the barmaid lights a thick wax candle behind us and places it in the window. His mausoleum.

  And then I see Ray. He’s standing in Dad’s spot, at the end of the bar, his back to the wall. He nods at me and raises his pint glass. I smile and wave my hand.

  Beside me, Paul is watching.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Oh, just an old friend of my dad’s.”

  Paul narrows his eyes. “Never seen him before,” he says. “Is he from round here?”

  “Yes, he’s a fisherman,” I say. “Been a regular in here for years.”

  Ray has turned his back on us and as I watch him chatting to the young barman I get a sharp pain in the pit of my stomach. Why couldn’t Dad just love me, I ask myself. Why did he hate me so much?

  “Do you want to talk about it?” says Paul, interrupting my thoughts. “The meeting with Sally? She was terribly agitated when I got back.”

  “There’s nothing to say,” I reply, glad of the diversion. “I tried to get her to talk about her drinking but she wasn’t interested. She’s just full of anger and bitterness. I don’t think I’m the right person to get through to her.”

  He sighs and I can tell he’s disappointed. I feel for him; I really do. Getting involved with this family was more than he bargained for: our grief and our addictions, our guilty secrets.

  “You know, when I met her she was great,” he says, turning to me and smiling. “Full of energy and up for a laugh. I loved how outgoing she was. It was good for me because I’ve always been
shy. She brought me out of myself.”

  “Yes, she was a force of nature,” I say, remembering Sally’s loud voice ringing through the house as she clattered in from school. “And so optimistic, always seeing the good in people, even my dad. Well, especially my dad.”

  Paul nods his head.

  “Yet she never talks about him,” he says. “Not once. Whenever I broach the subject she just clams up.”

  “They were very close,” I tell him. “And she was distraught when he died. That’s when she started going off the rails. It was only a few months after his death that she got pregnant.”

  “She’s had a lot to deal with,” he says with a heavy sigh. “Having a kid when you’re just a kid yourself is tough. She puts up this hard exterior but I can see through it. I know her more than anyone, I really do, and I can see that she’s damaged. My old mum used to say to me that when I was a nipper I was forever trying to fix things, make them better, and it was the same with women. I’ve always gone for the ones who need putting back together.”

  Someone drops a glass and the noise makes us both jump. Paul holds his hand to his chest, breathing hard. For once I don’t feel like the weak one.

  “It’s okay,” I say, putting my hand on his arm. “It was just a glass.”

  “I know,” he says, pulling his arm away and rubbing it. “I’m a bag of nerves at the moment. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” I say, taking a sip of wine. “I understand what you’re going through.”

  “Thanks, Kate,” he says. “Thanks for coming back. You know you’re all she has left now.”

  “She still has Hannah,” I say, putting the glass down. “And no matter what, she can’t give up on that girl. That’s why she has to get better, not for me or for you, but so she can reconcile with her daughter.”