My Sister's Bones

by Nuala Ellwood

  “Can you tell me what happened on the twenty-ninth of March?” she asks, without looking up. “I understand that was your last day in Aleppo?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It was.”

  “And there was an incident?”

  “Is that what you’d call it?” I reply, no longer able to keep the contempt from my voice.

  “What happened, Kate?”

  “Look,” I say firmly. “Why are you asking me about this? You know what happened. The fucking world knows what happened.”

  “I’d like you to tell me,” she says coolly, ignoring my outburst. “As I said, I need you to tell me everything so we can complete the assessment.”

  “Oh yes, the assessment,” I say drily. “Never mind that a young boy is in serious danger, let’s just carry on with our box ticking so you can make me out to be some sort of nutter.”

  “Kate, talking like that isn’t going to help anyone.”

  I look at the clock above her head. I’ve been here almost two days. Who knows what they’ll have done to him in this time.

  “Kate?”

  “Okay, Dr. Shaw,” I exclaim, admitting defeat. “Where would you like me to begin?”

  “How about the morning of the twenty-ninth?”

  My hands feel clammy as I clasp them together and try to gather my thoughts. There is no escape. I will have to talk about it, the event I have spent the last few weeks trying to erase from my mind. I lean forward in the chair and take a deep breath, then slowly start to speak.

  “Okay,” I begin, in as calm a voice as I can muster. “As Harry told you, we were staying in a basement below a grocery store along with a Syrian family.”

  “Khaled and Zaynah Safar?”

  “Yes,” I reply. “And their young son, Nidal.”

  I’m trembling. I can’t stop. I grip the sides of the chair with both my hands as I continue.

  “We’d been there a week,” I tell her. “It was utter devastation. In the few months since my last visit the city had been reduced to dust and rubble. Electricity and water were in short supply and there were mass food shortages. The streets were no-go areas. It was hell.”

  “What a terribly dangerous situation to be in,” says Shaw, her eyes widening.

  “Yes,” I reply. “But this is what ordinary people in Syria are dealing with every day. As a journalist it was my duty to witness it, to record it, and to let the world know what was happening.”

  “But in the light of your recent ill health perhaps you weren’t in the best mental state to be undertaking such a risky assignment?” suggests Shaw tentatively.

  “I’ve told you I was fine,” I say. “We can’t all wrap ourselves in cotton wool and hide behind fucking notebooks.”

  She says nothing, just flicks her pen between finger and thumb.

  My chest tightens and I rub it as I stand up and walk to the window.

  “You asked me to tell you about the last day,” I say, turning to look at Shaw, who, I notice, has now closed her notebook. “May I do that now?”

  “Yes, of course,” she says, watching me as I return to my seat. Is that a note of excitement I detect in her voice?

  “Thank you,” I say, keeping my voice calm as I sit down and try again.

  “My photographer Graham and I had spent the morning in downtown Aleppo interviewing a family whose house had been bombed overnight. Graham’s photographs were to lead that Sunday’s dispatch. I was in the middle of writing it up when I heard a banging in the corridor outside the room. I looked out and saw Nidal. He was kicking a football at the wall.”

  I close my eyes and there he is: a thin, wiry boy wearing an oversized Brazil football shirt. I blink the image away and continue.

  “I went to close the door, then I heard his father’s voice. They started arguing.”

  “What were they arguing about?”

  “Khaled was worried that Nidal was making too much noise,” I tell her. “He was concerned that he would attract the attention of the soldiers outside. He wanted him to come back into the room.”

  I close my eyes and see Khaled’s tired face and Nidal’s defiant one.

  “Go on, Kate.”

  I hold my hands in my lap, trying to control the shaking.

  “I came out of my room to see if everything was all right. Nidal saw me and started to cry. He said he just wanted to play football and be normal again. He said he was sick of being kept in a prison.”

  “And what did you say to him?”

  “I told him to calm down. I explained that his father was tired and that he should do as he said and leave the ball game for now.”

  I take a sip of water and look at the clock. My body starts to tingle all over and I realize it’s been over forty hours since I last had a sleeping pill. I scratch at my injured arm. Shaw notices and looks at it disapprovingly.

  “You told him to calm down,” she says. “And did he listen to you?”

  The itching becomes worse and I pull my sleeve up and scratch furiously at my mottled skin. I can smell the street dust on my clothes, in my hair, on my skin. I can hear him screaming. It’s unbearable but I have to go on; I have no choice.

  “No, he didn’t listen,” I say, tugging down my sleeve. “He started to yell and said that he hated his father, hated me, that we couldn’t keep him locked up like this. That he wanted to leave. Then his father lost his temper.”

  I hear Khaled’s voice, low and ominous as he grabbed his son’s collar: You think there is time for football if you are refugee, huh? If you are refugee you are treated like vermin, like shit. Is that what you want, boy, is it?

  “I don’t blame him,” I go on. “The poor man was scared and exhausted and Nidal just wouldn’t give up. Khaled went back into his room when he saw me. He thought Nidal would be safe with me. He trusted me.”

  He’s here again, right here in the room with me. His little face is wretched with fear and rage and disappointment. Shaw clears her throat and shuffles impatiently in her chair. I continue my recollection as Nidal watches me from the corner of the room.

  “It all just happened so fast,” I say, feeling his hot skin brush against my arm. “I tried. I really tried but he was in such a state and then he . . .”

  “Then he what?”

  The blood pounding through my head merges with the voices. Nidal’s. Khaled’s. Graham’s. They are so loud I can barely hear what she is saying.

  “Kate.”

  She leans forward in her chair and puts her hand on my arm. It’s a gentle, steadying gesture and it takes me by surprise.

  “Just take it slowly,” she says. “We have plenty of time.”

  I know that’s not true. I know that time is running out and I have to fight against the voices and tell her what happened.

  “He ran away,” I say, my voice a whisper. “He ran out of the basement and out into the street and he was so fast I couldn’t stop him. I just couldn’t stop him.”

  22

  Saturday, April 18, 2015

  Paul is waiting by the benches on Neptune’s Arm. He has dressed for the weather in a thick padded coat and hiking boots that wouldn’t look out of place on the front line. He has a bulky knapsack with him, I presume packed with provisions for the day.

  “I thought a picnic might be nice,” he says as he comes to greet me. “Out on the beach.”

  “It’s not really the weather for picnics, though, is it?” I say doubtfully, looking up at the gray clouds gathering overhead.

  “We should be okay,” he says, following my gaze. “There’s a sliver of blue sky over Reculver.”

  He points toward the far end of the shoreline where the towers are peeking out from the cliffs. I can’t see any blue sky. I have no idea how he can be so relentlessly optimistic.

  “Come on then, let’s go,” I say as we walk down the steps to the seafront.

  I still feel uneasy about last night. The noise. The blood. I’d stripped off my clothes and stood in the shower, searching every inch of my body
for a cut. But it was as if it had come from nowhere. And once it had all washed down the drain, how could I even be sure it had been there?

  I’m tempted to tell Paul my concerns. But I don’t want to worry him. He’s got enough on his plate at the moment with Sally. I pause to fasten my ancient parka. Its padding feels like a blanket as the sea air whips into my face.

  “God, it’s freezing,” I say as I hurry to catch up with Paul. “I’d forgotten how cold it gets by the sea.”

  “We’ll be fine once we get a stride on,” he says. “Soon we’ll warm up.”

  I quicken my step to keep up with him.

  “You sound like my mother,” I shout, my voice a thin reed fluttering in the searing wind.

  “You calling me an old woman?” He laughs as the wind almost blows his scarf away. “Cheeky mare.”

  Climbing up to the wide path that will take us toward the cliffs, we are met by a trail of bright pink mussel shells that crunch underfoot as we walk. I stop to pick one up and marvel at its fuchsia hue. Turning it over in my hands, I lay it in my palm; it looks like a tiny broken heart. I scrape the sand from its center and place it in my pocket. As we continue up the path I put my hands inside the warm folds of material and rub the coarse shell with my fingers. It is strangely comforting.

  Paul has gone striding ahead and I run to join him, the blood pumping vigorously through my body. The air is clean and I drink great gulps of it down into my lungs as I go, feeling myself opening up with every breath I take. Up ahead, I see Paul standing on a narrow wooden bridge that connects the path to the steps that lead to the clifftops.

  “I remember this bit,” I say as I catch up with him and we climb the steep steps into a narrow country lane fringed with bracken. “It always used to scare me.”

  “Why’s that?” asks Paul.

  He has fallen in behind me and I can hear the quick puffs of his shallow breath as he walks.

  “It’s just so enclosed,” I say. “It’s like, now, I can feel you behind me, but that’s fine because I know it’s you. But if I were here alone and felt someone walking behind it would spook me. There are too many curves, too many hiding places for people to jump out of.”

  “What, you mean people like Alexandra?” says Paul, putting on a silly voice. “Woo, woo.”

  “Stop it,” I say, without looking back, “or I’ll summon her. Then you’ll be sorry.”

  I am relieved when the path opens up into a wide stretch of meadow and we pick up our pace. Gorse bushes cluster among the grass, with tiny shimmering yellow flowers dotted across their stubby fingers like jewels. In the distance a cockerel crows and I stop to listen.

  “The farms,” says Paul, nodding his head to the east. “There are loads of them beyond the hedge.”

  I smile as I remember going to visit the farm with Mum. We got a guided tour from the farmer’s wife and ended up having our tea there. I think Mum had been to school with her. We left with a basketful of eggs and cheese and fresh milk. Mum was so happy that day; genuinely happy, not like the pretend smile she wore when we went to the beach.

  The low groan of a cow answers the cockerel’s call and as we walk on I think of my mother, the country girl who had spent her life trapped in suburbia. She deserved more than what she got.

  “There they are!” cries Paul.

  He puts his hand out and points toward the shoreline. “The towers. Aren’t they spectacular?”

  I look up and see the two towers of Reculver rising ominously out of the cliffs, the only remains of the Roman fort that had once guarded the bay from unwanted intruders.

  “The sisters,” I whisper as we start to walk again with the towers as our guide. “That’s what we used to call them. I’d forgotten how beautiful they are.”

  The wind pummels our faces as we walk toward the towers and I pull my hood up around my face to shield it from the biting cold. The site is heaving with day-trippers and we have to wriggle our way through groups of tourists and harassed parents who are guiding their small children away from the edge of the cliff. It is a lot busier than it was when I was a child. Back then the only attractions had been the towers and the beach below where the bouncing bomb had been tested in 1943. Now there is a visitor information center with a shop selling T-shirts and mugs and bottles of striped humbugs, and farther up the hill an ice cream van is doing a roaring trade from the queue of small children snaking its way around the path.

  Paul goes on ahead and climbs over the low wire fence heading for the side of the towers. The wind is fierce up here and I steady myself as we walk toward what would have been the main entrance of the fort. From this angle it doesn’t look like a ruin but a beautiful complete building, its V-shaped facade dwarfed by the towers on either side. An optical illusion that’s just as breathtaking now as it was when I first saw it. I see Paul’s head darting in and out of the stones and as I walk toward him the building appears to crumble, spilling its rubble behind it like entrails hanging from a slaughtered body.

  I step back to let a group of tourists pass. They are following a tall man in a black trilby hat and frock coat. He speaks in a loud theatrical voice as he leads them deeper inside the ruins.

  “It’s been said that these towers are one of the most active sites in Kent for paranormal activity,” he booms.

  The tourists follow him, open-mouthed, as he continues. “You must agree there is a deeply disturbing presence here.” He looks at them expectantly and they nod in unison. A woman in a purple vest takes a photograph but the guide puts out a gloved hand. “Perhaps later. We don’t want to disturb the inhabitants.”

  Paul jumps down from the rock he is standing on and comes to join me by the information board.

  “He’s talking about the children,” he whispers, leaning toward me, and I shiver at the coldness of his breath on my neck.

  “Oh, that old story,” I say, turning to face him. “Are they still trotting it out?”

  I remember the tales of the children who were supposedly buried alive in the foundations of the fort. The legend was that they had been offered up as a sacrifice to consecrate the building. On dark and stormy nights their screams could be heard in the grounds of the fort. It was the usual fodder designed to lure tourists to the site.

  “You have to admit there is an odd feeling here, though,” says Paul as we abandon the noticeboard and walk toward the cliff edge. “I certainly felt it as a kid. Once, I even thought I heard something.”

  “What did you hear?”

  I duck as a sand martin darts past my head.

  “Voices. Screams. I can hear them now. Can you?”

  I look at him. He is winding me up, surely? But his face is deadly serious.

  “The only screams I can hear are those of the parents who’ve just been charged a tenner for a couple of ice creams,” I say, laughing shakily. “I don’t believe in the supernatural, Paul, and I don’t believe that the Romans buried their children alive in these towers.”

  “Why not? They threw Christians to the lions.” Paul grimaces. “Can you imagine being buried alive?”

  “No, I can’t,” I say as a shiver flutters through me. “Hey, Paul, speaking of children, have you managed to ask the letting agent about the people at number 44 yet? About the boy?”

  “I haven’t had the chance, Kate,” he says. “Work’s been mental recently and to be honest . . .” He goes quiet and shakes his head.

  “What?” I ask him. “What were you about to say?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “It was nothing.”

  “Please,” I say. “Just tell me.”

  “Well, it’s just that . . . well, I understand,” he says. “I mean, it’s natural after all you’ve been through.”

  “What’s natural?”

  “Hearing things, seeing things,” he says, lowering his voice. “It’s the grief, isn’t it? I’ve read about it. It was a boy, wasn’t it, in Syria?”

  “I know what I saw, Paul,” I say, anger rising through me. “I
know it was real.”

  “Look, don’t get yourself upset,” he says, taking my hand. “I’ll talk to the letting agent as soon as I can, yeah? Put your mind at rest. Now, come on. How about we go down to the beach and have our picnic? I don’t know about you but I’m starving.”

  23

  We jostle through the tourists and make our way down the steps to the beach. And as my feet sink into the sand and the smell of the sea fills the air I hear her.

  Come on, girls, sandwiches!

  I follow her voice to a secluded spot where Paul stands unfolding a giant tartan beach rug.

  One more page, Mum, then I’ll be there.

  Paul opens his knapsack and brings out flasks of hot tea, sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil, and a round biscuit tin full of shortbread, my favorite.

  Don’t be scaring yourself silly now, love. Put the book away and come and have some cake.

  I sit down on the blanket, take a flask, and pour myself a cup of hot tea while Paul unwraps a sandwich.

  Now, let’s talk about nice things.

  I sip the tea and feel its goodness trickle down my throat, filling my body with wholesomeness. For once Paul is quiet, and I lie back on the rug.

  The sea air is making me sleepy and I close my eyes. I can hear the waves whispering in the distance and my mother’s soothing words.

  See, told you it would do you good.

  I have spent the last few days trying to locate my mother in that house when all along she has been here, deep among the ruins on Reculver beach.

  As the sound of the sea lulls me to sleep I see him. He is out on the street with his football, his back to me. I pound my fists on the window.

  “Look up, Nidal! For God’s sake look up.”

  But he is lost in his game and can’t hear me.

  “Look up, child. Please look up.”

  A man’s voice speaks over mine. Graham.

  “We have to tell his parents, Kate.”

  “No, wait. I can help him.”

  He runs toward the ball and kicks it high into the air. It hits the ground and bounces into the road with such force that a cloud of dust rises in the air. He goes to run after it but when he looks up his face contorts. He has seen them.