Sisters

by Michelle Frances

  The door opposite him suddenly opened. He looked over to see Baroni slide onto the back seat next to him.

  ‘Have you heard from her?’ she asked.

  He felt a twinge of irritation. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I would have told you.’ Wouldn’t I? He didn’t know, and decided to ignore her look of scepticism.

  ‘You made any calls?’

  ‘Again, no.’

  ‘OK. You need to ring her and pretend you know nothing about any of this. Tell her you’re on your way to Hernani but you just called the hotel to make sure she arrived safely and they said she never showed up. Ask her if she is OK and where she is right now. Sound like a loving husband. A concerned, loving husband.’

  He bit his lip to stop himself from saying something he’d later regret. How he hated her authoritarian tone.

  ‘You know that even if she had something to do with this, she’s vulnerable. She’s not a criminal.’ Even as the words left his mouth, he felt stupid.

  Baroni looked at him. ‘Oh, I think she’s very much a criminal. In fact, it seems she’s clocking up quite a list of misdemeanours: leaving the scene of an accident, damage to personal property, making off without payment, murder, and now . . .’ – she paused and he felt himself tense – ‘it seems they’ve driven off from a petrol station without paying too. This morning. Caught on CCTV,’ she added, in case he questioned it.

  Matteo felt her watching him.

  ‘So, are you going to call?’ she prompted. ‘Only, her sister might thank you for it, before she gets hurt too.’

  He glowered. ‘Her phone will be switched off.’

  ‘If it is, leave her a message. Tell her how much you want to see her, that you’re worried about her.’

  Matteo looked up the hill, saw Santini strutting about, champing at the bit to get involved.

  ‘Don’t shut me out, Matteo,’ said Baroni. She glanced up at Santini with a flicker of a frown. ‘It’s in your wife’s best interests.’

  Matteo took out his phone and dialled Abby’s number. As he suspected, it went straight to voicemail. He turned his back on Baroni.

  ‘Abby, it’s me. I know you didn’t make it to the hotel. What’s happened? I want to help. I’m here for you. Call me as soon as you can.’

  He hung up, just as a white zipped-up body bag was carried down the hill, right past the car window. He looked away.

  A phone rang. Matteo jumped, but it was Baroni’s.

  ‘Pronto.’

  She listened for a while and Matteo saw her face flicker with interest. She clocked him watching her and got out of the car so she could continue the call in private. Matteo frowned as she walked away, deep in conversation.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  They’d been driving for two hours and not seen one police car. A cautious sense of security began to creep its way into Ellie. Maybe the man hadn’t yet been discovered. Maybe the cashier in the petrol station hadn’t reported their theft. Or maybe he had but the police were too stretched to deal with it.

  The sun had strengthened and Abby had lowered the roof. Driving with the heat of the sun and the wind against her skin made Ellie feel incredibly alive. They were a part of the rising hills, the winding roads. She could reach out a hand as they brushed past trees. Kites wheeled overhead, searching for prey. The landscape was within them as they were in it. They went miles on empty roads, passing through tiny villages, avoiding the major highways and towns.

  ‘It’s beautiful, don’t you think?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘Um-hum.’

  ‘You go to many places with Matteo?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You don’t want to?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Abby. She shrugged. ‘He works.’

  ‘But the weekends?’

  ‘It’s not always easy to fit around his shifts. And when he’s on nights . . . well, he sleeps in the day.’

  Ellie looked at her sister. ‘You could go someplace on your own?’

  ‘It’s not the same, is it?’

  No, thought Ellie, it isn’t. ‘But don’t you get . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bored?’

  Abby gave a small laugh. ‘Bored? Course not!’

  ‘How do you fill your days?’

  ‘Plenty of things. There’s loads to do.’

  Ellie went to open her mouth.

  ‘And don’t ask me to list them all because I’m trying to drive.’

  Ellie recognized denial when she saw it but kept quiet.

  A tiny hamlet, barely marked on the map, suddenly became a small cluster of shops and houses. It was quiet, just a few locals going about their daily business.

  ‘Shall we stop?’ asked Abby. ‘I could really do with a coffee.’

  They pulled up on the edge of a small square dotted with orange trees. Their dark, waxy leaves gleamed in the sun, the fruit beginning to ripen. A stone basin sat atop a raised wall, above which was a gargoyle’s flattened face, water pouring from its open mouth.

  The girls left the car and made their way over, splashing water onto faces, necks and under armpits. Refreshed, they found themselves drawn to the shops, and joined a crowd of locals in a bakery. The queue inched forward incredibly slowly, each customer a regular and enjoying a full conversation with the staff. Ellie began to feel dizzy in the heat.

  ‘Do you mind if I just get a bit of fresh air?’ she asked Abby.

  She stepped out of the oven-heated shop and, seeing that the other side of the street was in shade, crossed over. She came face to face with a boutique and her eye was immediately caught by a dress in the window. It was elegantly simple, falling just to the knee with a deep V-neckline. But it was the colour that made it: a blue that equalled a cloudless August sky. Instinctively she glanced at the price tag, then winced. Three hundred euros. She gazed at it wistfully, knowing how it would look on her, knowing how much she already loved it.

  ‘That’s not bad, actually,’ said Abby, from behind her. ‘Flipping heck!’

  Ellie turned to see her sister staring goggle-eyed at the dress, or, more accurately, its price tag.

  ‘Here,’ said Abby, handing over a fresh coffee. ‘You weren’t seriously thinking of buying that, were you?’

  ‘Have you forgotten our little escapade at the petrol station?’ said Ellie. ‘I was going to dash into the shop, grab it and do a runner. Joke,’ she added, seeing Abby’s face.

  Abby appraised the dress, considering it properly. ‘It’s nice. But three hundred euros? Would you actually spend that much on one item of clothing?’

  ‘If it looked amazing, then yes.’

  ‘You’re nuts.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Welcome. It won’t cost anywhere near three hundred euros to manufacture.’

  ‘Course not.’

  ‘And that sort of money would keep you going for at least a couple of weeks of retirement.’

  ‘But I’m not retired,’ said Ellie tartly. ‘You’re taking all the magic out of it.’

  Abby looked at the dress again and pulled a face – part amusement, part puzzlement. ‘Magic?’

  Ellie grabbed her sister’s arm, led her up to the window. ‘Look at it. The design, the fabric. Look at how it’s going to swish around your legs. Look at that colour. Instant holiday. It’s not about the cost. It’s the fact that when you put it on you’ll feel as if nothing in the world can bring you down.’

  Abby nodded. ‘Wow. But not convinced. There’s always something in the world to bring you down.’

  Ellie went quiet. ‘Tell me about it,’ she said.

  ‘What’s up?’

  Ellie looked at her sister incredulously. ‘Are you serious? “What’s up?” What are we going to do, Abby? How are we going to get out of this? We are in so much shit, I don’t even know where to begin.’ She started laughing hysterically. ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘What’s up? What’s up?’

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Abby, ‘I get it.’ She indicated over to the square. ‘I was goin
g to see if Jamie had called back. I’ve left my phone in the car . . .’

  ‘I’ll just hang out here a bit,’ said Ellie, deflating. She took a sip of her coffee. ‘Until you’ve finished your call.’

  Abby went to retrieve her phone and, once she’d switched it on, saw she had a message. Heart thumping, she dialled into the mailbox. But it wasn’t Jamie, it was Matteo. As she listened to his voice, she felt herself well up. She swallowed down her emotion, now certain of two things. One, the police had found the body. It was in his voice, the way he sounded so careful, while trying not to be. The other thing she was certain of was that, despite his plea, she couldn’t call him back. She knew that on some level, the police were controlling what he said. This hit her like a punch to the gut and she got such a pang of loneliness she had to lean against the car, catch her breath.

  Abby didn’t want to keep the phone on too long, but there was one other thing she wanted to do before she switched it off. It felt very strange typing her name and the word ‘murder’ into the search engine. The news report came up and she recognized the man from the photo. Then she saw herself and Ellie staring out from the screen – that same photo from the restaurant. It had only been three days ago but it felt like an eternity.

  Hands shaking, she hurriedly turned the phone off. Abby felt sweat beading on her forehead. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, forced deep breaths to calm herself. She looked around the square for faces, someone who might be watching her, about to report her. But apart from an elderly lady pulling along a shopping trolley on wheels with a rustic loaf sticking out of the top, there was no one.

  They don’t know where you are, she told herself, then repeated it, her internal voice more stern the second time. And anyway, that man would’ve killed them. Surely that gave her some sort of defence?

  How long did she have? she wondered. Until the police caught up with her? Because no matter how much she might be able to explain all her actions away, she just didn’t want all this to stop.

  Not yet.

  Abby made her way back over to the shops but she couldn’t see Ellie. She must have gone for a wander somewhere. Abby didn’t mind. It would give her a bit longer to compose herself. She sat on the wall outside the boutique, the dress staring her in the face.

  After a couple of minutes, Abby got up. She opened the door of the shop and stepped inside. She stood there, feeling the air conditioning soothe her hot skin, smelling the sharp, welcoming tang of new clothes. She went up to the window and reached out a hand to touch the dress.

  ‘¿En qué puedo ayudarle? Can I help you?’

  Abby turned to see a dainty woman with stylish glasses smile at her.

  ‘This is a nice dress,’ said Abby.

  ‘Would you like to try it on?’

  Abby looked back at it. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you. But I would like to buy it.’ She felt an involuntary flutter of anxiety but fought it back.

  The sales lady was surprised but appraised her customer professionally. ‘I have your size here,’ she said, plucking one of the same dresses off a rail.

  ‘I need two,’ said Abby.

  ‘Two?’ The lady’s professional stance was slipping. This was unusual indeed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The same size?’

  Abby nodded. She stared, feeling slightly sick as the sales lady wrapped each dress in tissue paper and placed them in a paper bag.

  ‘That’ll be—’

  Abby thrust some cash at her. If she heard the amount said out loud, she wouldn’t be able to go through with it. Other than her properties, she’d never spent so much money in one go in her entire life.

  She saw Ellie returning from further down the street. ‘I got you a present,’ said Abby, then plunged her hand into the bag and pulled out one of the tissue parcels.

  Ellie frowned, then as she opened it her mouth dropped. ‘I don’t understand . . .’

  ‘Nothing in the world can bring us down,’ said Abby, pulling out the second dress. She almost laughed when she saw her sister’s expression, except she was still recovering from the purchase.

  ‘Oh my God, Abby,’ said Ellie, stunned. ‘Thank you.’ Abby smiled as her sister threw her arms around her.

  They put them on in the car. Two sisters in two blue dresses in a red Fiat 500, on the run through Spain.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  2002

  It was as bad as she’d expected. A scraped pass in English and maths and a C in geography. Everything else was a monumental fail. It was certainly a far cry from her sister’s ten A* and A grades a few years ago. Abby was at university now, doing a degree in economics at Manchester, where she was on track to receive a first. She came home only occasionally, preferring to spend her term breaks in Manchester, working in her local bar.

  Ellie tried not to mind about her grades. She stood amongst the crowd of students in the main hall, each of them clutching the piece of paper with their future written on it. Most of the teenagers were celebrating, eyes shining as they hugged each other, peering over at one another’s results. Ellie knew her mother was waiting for her to call to announce the news. Might as well get it over with. She left the main hall and found a quiet spot outside the front of the school. Her mum was working in the boutique but had promised to answer, even if she was with a customer.

  As Ellie relayed the sum of her total life’s work to her mother, she felt her bravado crumble. By the end, she was reduced to tears.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said her mother quickly, ‘life isn’t all about university. Look at that Richard Branson – he didn’t even finish school and he’s a billionaire.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, Mum,’ said Ellie, through her tears. ‘I’m just not very clever.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Susanna, but Ellie recognized a desperate consolation when she heard it. ‘You just had a difficult start in life, that’s all.’

  My illness. Her bloody illness. If she hadn’t been sick for all those years when she was younger, things would have been so different.

  After a year of helping out in her mother’s boutique, she decided to take a gap year off. She had longed to go travelling ever since she was small, inspired by all those years being holed up at home clutching a sick bucket. Her mother had a small amount of savings that she gifted to her and Ellie took off to Southeast Asia. She found she could make her money stretch a long way as the cost of living was so low and, because she was good-natured and pretty, other travellers were keen for her company. It was the first time Ellie had really experienced a carefree life. In Indonesia, while she was volunteering at a sea-life sanctuary, diving in the ocean to count and monitor species of tropical fish, it didn’t matter that she was an academic failure.

  Ellie loved what she did and worked hard, so they offered her a paid job. The salary was barely anything but Ellie didn’t care. While she was working with the other staff protecting the turtles at laying season, she forgot all about her disastrous childhood, the years of feeling like an outcast, of not fitting into school life, of longing for her older sister to take some notice of her.

  A year passed quickly and then, in one of her mother’s emails, Ellie heard that Abby had graduated with her predicted first-class honours and had landed a management trainee position with a prestigious shipping firm in London. For a moment Ellie got a pang of homesickness, although when she delved deeper inside herself, she knew it was more than that. Abby had a good job, one with prospects and the potential for dazzling rewards and status. As much as she loved working at the sanctuary, Ellie was under no illusion that it was a permanent fixture. Neither was she going to get rich working there.

  She managed to hang on for another year, then some of the funding dried up and she had to leave. She returned to the UK on a cold, wet November morning, aware that it would be as difficult to find a job as when she’d left with her pathetic GCSE grades. Nine utterly broke months later, after scores of rejections, she managed to get accepted onto a teaching assis
tant training programme – back at her old school which she’d left as a pupil only a few years before. The pay was laughable, but at least it was something. Ellie was deeply relieved and allowed herself a treat to celebrate. Something she’d never usually have, as it was so expensive – but this was a special occasion – she bought a bottle of Laurent-Perrier Rosé, feeling dangerous but deserving. She put it on her new credit card, telling herself she’d pay it off when she got her first pay packet in a month’s time. That evening, she and Susanna sat out in the late August sunshine, in the tiny garden in Redhill, and toasted her future.

  ‘To success!’ said Susanna, holding up her flute.

  Ellie smiled and touched her mum’s glass with her own.

  ‘I knew you’d make it,’ said Susanna proudly.

  ‘It’s not CEO of a multi-national corporation,’ said Ellie, but she couldn’t help feeling a little bit pleased with herself. It was a well-known fact that teaching assistants were paid a pittance, trainee ones even more so, but after all these months, she’d got herself a job. She finally had reason to feel a sense of achievement.

  Two days later, Ellie and Susanna received an email from Abby. She’d written to tell them she’d completed her trainee programme and had been offered a manager position within the company. Ellie tried hard to be pleased but later she secretly googled and found her sister’s job on the company website. Her eyes were immediately drawn to one thing and one thing only: the salary. It was over four times what Ellie had been offered in her new role. And it was only Abby’s first real position in the company!

  Ellie suddenly got a massive wake-up call. The chasm between herself and her sister was widening ever further – Abby was going to be a corporate superstar, commanding six-figure salaries and travelling all over the world for business. Ellie would be lucky if she was offered a proper teaching position. She tried her best not to mind, but it was impossible.

  Susanna was as supportive as ever. ‘You had a different start in life. That illness. You’ve done really well.’