Sister

by Rosamund Lupton

  “Emilio Codi knew it hadn’t stopped,” I said. “And he’s a tutor at the college. So why didn’t he get Simon expelled?”

  “Because Simon knew about Emilio Codi’s affair with Tess,” replied the Pretty Witch. “They probably each kept the other one quiet.”

  I couldn’t put off my question any longer.

  “Do you think either of them could have killed her?”

  The group was silent, but I sensed embarrassment and awkwardness more than shock. Even the Pretty Witch didn’t meet my eye.

  Finally Benjamin spoke up, to be kind to me I think. “Simon told us that she had postpartum psychosis. And because of the postpartum psychosis she committed suicide. He said that’s what the coroner’s verdict was and that the police are sure about it.”

  “We didn’t know whether he was telling the truth,” said the shy-faced boy. “But it was in the local paper too.”

  “Simon said you weren’t here at the time,” ventured Annette. “But he said that he saw her and she was…” She trailed off, but I could imagine what Simon had told them about your mental state.

  So the press and Simon had convinced them of your suicide. The girl they knew and had described to me would never have killed herself, but you’d been the victim of possession by the modern-day devil of puerperal psychosis, a devil that made a girl with joie de vivre hate life enough to end it. You had been killed by something that has a scientific name rather than a human face.

  “Yes. The police do believe she committed suicide,” I said. “Because they think she was suffering from puerperal psychosis. But I am certain that they are wrong.”

  I saw compassion on some faces as they looked at me, and its poorer cousin pity on others. And then it was “already past one-thirty” and “classes start in ten minutes” and they were leaving.

  I thought that Simon must have manipulated them against me before they’d even met me. He’d no doubt told them about the unstable older sister with her loopy theories, which explained why they had been more embarrassed than shocked when I’d asked them about murder, and their awkwardness toward me. But I didn’t blame them for wanting to believe Simon rather than me, for wanting to choose a non-murderous death for you.

  Benjamin and the Pretty Witch were the last to go. They asked me to come to the art show in a week’s time, were touchingly insistent, and I said I would. It would give me another opportunity to question Simon and Emilio.

  Alone in the café, I thought that Simon had not only lied to me about his “project,” he had even embellished it: “They’re for my final year portfolio…. My tutor thinks it’s the most original and exciting project of the year’s group.” I wondered what else were lies. Had you really spoken to him on the phone the day you died and arranged to meet? Or had he followed you that day, as he so often followed you, and everything else was a construct so I wouldn’t suspect him? He was clearly highly manipulative. Had there really been a man in the bushes that day, or had Simon invented him—or more cleverly, your paranoia, which had conjured him up—to take the focus off himself? How many times did he sit on your doorstep with a huge bouquet, hoping he’d be found and appear innocently waiting for you, even though you were dead?

  Thinking about Simon and Emilio, I wondered, as I still do now, if all very beautiful young women have men in their lives who appear sinister. If I had been found dead, there would be no one suspicious in my life, so the focus would have had to go outside my circle of friends and former fiancé. I don’t believe outstandingly beautiful and charismatic women create obsession in what would otherwise be normal men, but rather they attract the weirdos and the stalkers; flames in the darkness that these disturbing people inhabit, unwittingly drawing them closer until they extinguish the very flame they were drawn to.

  “And then you went back to the flat?” asks Mr. Wright.

  “Yes.”

  But I feel too tired to tell him about returning to the flat that day, to have to remember what I heard there. My words are slower, my body slumping.

  Mr. Wright looks at me, with concern. “Let’s end it there.”

  He offers to get me a taxi but I say that a walk will do me good.

  He accompanies me to the lift and I realize how much I appreciate his old-fashioned courtesy. I think Amias would have been a little like Mr. Wright as a young man. He smiles good-bye and I think that maybe the little sparkles of romance haven’t been doused after all. Romantic thoughts pep me up a little, more sweetly than caffeine, and I don’t think there’s any harm in entertaining them. So I shall think about Mr. Wright, allow myself that small luxury, and walk across St. James’s Park rather than be squashed in a crowded tube.

  The fresh spring air does make me feel better and inconsequential thoughts make me a little braver. When I reach the end of St. James’s Park, I wonder whether I should continue my walk across Hyde Park. Surely it’s about time that I found the courage to confront my demons and finally lay to rest my ghosts.

  Heart pumping faster, I go in through the Queen Elizabeth gates. But like its neighbor, Hyde Park too is a riot of color and noise and smells. I can’t find any demons at all in all this greenery, no whispering ghost amidst the ball games.

  I walk through the rose garden and then past the bandstand, which looks like a pop-up from a children’s storybook, with its pastel pink surround and sugar-white top held up by licorice sticks. Then I remember the bomb exploding into a crowd, the nails packed around it, the carnage, and I feel someone watching me.

  I feel his breath behind me, cold in the warm air. I walk quickly, not turning round. He tracks me, his breath coming faster, lifting the hairs on the nape of my neck. My muscles tense to a spasm. In the distance I can see the Lido with people. I run toward it, adrenaline and fear making my legs shake.

  I reach the Lido and sit down, legs still jittery and my chest hurting every time I take a breath. I watch children splashing in the paddling pool and two middle-aged executives paddling with their suit trousers rolled up. Only now do I dare turn around. I think I see a shadow, among the trees. I wait until the shadow is no more than the dappled shade of branches.

  I skirt round the copse of trees, making sure I keep close to people and noise. I reach the other side and see a stretch of bright-green new grass with polka-dot crocuses. A girl walks barefoot across it, her shoes in her hand, enjoying sun-warmed grass, and I think of you. I watch her till she’s at the end of the polka-dot grass and only then see the toilets building, a hard dark wound amidst the soft bright colors of spring.

  I hurry after the girl and reach the toilets building. She’s at the far side now, with a boy’s arm around her. Laughing together, they’re leaving the park. I leave too, my legs still a little wobbly, my breathing still labored. I try to make myself feel ridiculous. There is nothing to be scared of, Beatrice; it’s what comes of having an overly active imagination—your mind can play all sorts of tricks. Reassurances pilfered from a childhood world of certainty: there’s no monster in the wardrobe. But you and I know he’s real.

  17

  Tuesday

  At the CPS I squeeze into a lift. Bodies are unwillingly pressed against one another, sweat smelling of burned rubber. Surrounded by people, in the bright light of morning, I know that I will not say anything about the man in the park. Because Mr. Wright would just tell me, correctly, that he’s in prison, refused bail, and that after the trial he’ll be sentenced to life imprisonment, without parole. Rationally, I should know that he can never hurt me again. As the lift reaches the third floor I tell myself sternly that he is not here and never will be, that he is an absence, not a presence, and I must not allow him to become one, even in my imaginings.

  So this morning is one of new resolutions. I will not be intimidated by a specter of imagined evil. I will not allow him any power over my mind as he once had over my body. Instead, I will be reassured by Mr. Wright and Mrs. Crush Secretary and all the other people who surround me in this building. I know that my blackouts are still hap
pening, and more frequently, and that my body is getting weaker, but I will not give way to irrational terror nor to my physical frailty. Instead of imagining the frightening and the ugly, I will try to find the beautiful in everyday things, as you did. But most of all, I will think about what you went through—and know, again, that in comparison I have no right to indulge myself in a phantom menace and self-pity. I decide that today it will be me who is the coffee maker. It is nonsense to think that my arms are trembling. Look, I’ve managed to make two cups of coffee—and carry them into Mr. Wright’s office—no problem.

  Mr. Wright, a little surprised, thanks me for the coffee. He puts a new cassette into the recorder and we resume.

  “We’d got to your talking to Tess’s friends about Simon Greenly and Emilio Codi?” he asks.

  “Yes. Then I went back to our flat. Tess had an ancient answering machine that she’d got in a garage sale, I think. But she thought it was fine.”

  I’m skirting round the issue, but must get to the point.

  “When I came in, I saw a light flashing, indicating the tape was full.”

  Still my coat, I played the message, which was just something from a gas company, unimportant. I’d already listened to all the other messages, other people’s one-way conversations with you.

  I took off my coat and was about to rewind the tape when I saw it had an A side and a B side. I’d never listened to the B side, so I turned it over. Each message was preceded by a time and date in an electronic voice.

  The last message on the B side was on Tuesday, January twenty-first, at 8:20 p.m. Just a few hours after you’d had Xavier.

  The sound of a lullaby filled the room. Sweetly vicious.

  I try to sound brisk, and a little too loud, wanting my words to drown out the vocal memory in my head.

  “It was a professional recording, and I thought whoever had played it must have put the telephone receiver against a CD player.”

  Mr. Wright nods; he has already heard the recording, though unlike me, he probably doesn’t know it by heart.

  “I knew from Amias that she felt threatened by the calls,” I continue. “That she was afraid of whoever was doing this, so I knew he must have done it many times, but only one was recorded.”

  No wonder your phone was unplugged when I arrived at your flat. You couldn’t bear to listen to any more.

  “You phoned the police straightaway?” asks Mr. Wright.

  “Yes. I left a message on DS Finborough’s voice mail. I told him about Simon’s fake project and that I’d also discovered a reason why Emilio would have waited till after the baby was born to kill Tess. I said I thought there might be something wrong with the CF trial because the women were paid and Tess’s medical notes had gone missing, although I thought it unlikely there was a link. I said I thought the lullabies were the key to it. That if they could find out who had played her the lullabies, they’d find her killer. It wasn’t the most moderate or calm of messages. But I’d just listened to the lullaby. I didn’t feel moderate or calm.”

  After I’d left my message for DS Finborough, I went to St. Anne’s. My anger and upset were visceral, needing physical release. I went to the psychiatric department where Dr. Nichols was having an outpatient clinic. I found his name written on a card pinned to a door and pushed past a patient who was about to go in. Behind me, I heard the receptionist remonstrating but took no notice.

  Dr. Nichols looked at me, startled.

  “There was a lullaby on her answering machine,” I said. Then I started singing the lullaby, “Sleep, baby, sleep Your father tends the sheep Your mother shakes the dreamland tree And from it fall sweet dreams for thee Sleep, baby, sleep.”

  “Beatrice, please—”

  I interrupted. “She heard it the evening she got back from the hospital. Only a few hours after her baby had died. God knows how many more times he played her lullabies. The phone calls weren’t ‘auditory hallucinations.’ Someone was mentally torturing her.”

  Dr. Nichols, looking at me shocked, was silent.

  “She wasn’t mad but someone was trying to drive her mad or make everyone think she was mad.”

  His voice sounded shaken. “Poor girl, the lullabies must have been appalling for her. But are you sure they were intentionally cruel? Do you think they may have just been a terrible blunder by one of her friends who didn’t know her baby had died?”

  I thought how convenient that would be for him.

  “No, I don’t think that.”

  He turned away from me. He was wearing a white coat this time, but it was crumpled and a little stained, and he seemed even more scruffily hopeless.

  “Why didn’t you just listen to her? Ask her more?”

  “On the only occasion I met her, my clinic was overbooked as usual, with emergencies just added with no more time allocated, and I had to get through them, keep down waiting times.” I looked at him, but he didn’t meet my eye. “I should have taken longer with her. I’m sorry.”

  “You knew about the PCP?”

  “Yes. The police told me. But not until after our last meeting. I told them it would cause hallucinations, probably terrifying hallucinations. And it would be especially potent given Tess’s grief. The literature says that users frequently harm themselves. The lullabies must have been the final straw.”

  There was no dog in his NHS consulting room, but I could sense how much he wanted to reach out and stroke a reassuring silky ear.

  “It would account for why she changed that morning from when I saw her to being suicidal,” he continued. “She must have heard one of the lullabies, maybe taken some PCP too, and the combination—” He stopped as he saw the expression on my face. “You think I’m trying to make excuses for myself?”

  I was surprised by his first intuitive remark.

  “But there aren’t any excuses,” he continued. “She was clearly having visual hallucinations. And whether that was from psychosis or PCP isn’t the point. I missed it. Whatever the cause—psychosis or a drug—she was a danger to herself and I didn’t protect her as I should have done.”

  As in our first meeting, I heard shame seeping out of his words.

  I’d come to vent my rage but there seemed little point now. He seemed to be already punishing himself. And he wasn’t going to change his opinion. The door swung open and a receptionist with a male nurse bustled in and seemed surprised by the silence in the room.

  I closed the door behind me. There was nothing left to say to him.

  I walked hurriedly down a corridor, as if I could outpace the thoughts that were stalking me because now I had no purpose to distract me; I could only think about you listening to the lullaby.

  “Beatrice?”

  I’d virtually stumbled into Dr. Saunders. Only then did I realize that I was crying, my eyes streaming, nose running, a sodden handkerchief in my hand.

  “She was mentally tortured before she was murdered. She was framed for her own suicide.”

  Without asking questions, he gave me a hug. His arms around me felt strong but not safe. I’d always found physical intimacy unsettling, even with family, let alone a near stranger, so I was more anxious than reassured. But he seemed quite used to holding distressed women, totally at ease with it.

  “Can I ask you for coffee again?”

  I agreed, because I wanted to ask him about Dr. Nichols. I wanted to get proof that he was incompetent and that the police should rethink everything he’d told them. And partly too, because when I’d spilled out about your being mentally tortured, he’d taken it in his stride, not showing any sign of incredulity, and had joined Amias and Christina in the very small band of people who didn’t dismiss me out of hand.

  We sat at a table in the middle of the bustling café. He looked directly at me, giving me his full attention. I remembered our staring competitions.

  “Just look into the pupils, Bee, that’s the trick.”

  But I still couldn’t. Not when the eyes belonged to a beautiful man. Not even in the
se circumstances.

  “Dr. Saunders, do you—”

  He interrupted. “William, please. I’ve never been good at formalities. I blame my parents for sending me to a progressive school. The first time I ever put on a uniform was when I got a white coat for this job.” He smiled. “Also, I have a habit of volunteering more information than I was asked for. I interrupted—you wanted to ask me something?”

  “Yes, do you know Dr. Nichols?”

  “I used to. We were on a Senior House Officer rotation together many years ago and we’ve stayed friends, although I don’t see much of him nowadays. Can I ask why?”

  “He was Tess’s psychiatrist. I want to know if he’s incompetent.”

  “No is the short answer to that. Although you think otherwise?”

  He waited for me to answer, but I wanted to get information, not give it, and he seemed to understand that.

  “I know Hugo comes across as a little shambolic,” William continued. “Those tweedy clothes and that ancient dog of his, but he is good at his job. If something went wrong with your sister’s care, then it’s far more likely to be down to the pitiful state of mental health funding in the NHS rather than Hugo.”

  Again, he reminded me of you, looking at the best in people, and as so often with you, I must have looked skeptical.

  “He was a research fellow before becoming a hands-on doctor,” William continued. “The rising star of the university, apparently. Rumor had it that he was brilliant—destined for greatness and all of that.”

  I was taken aback by this description of Dr. Nichols; it didn’t tally with the man I’d met at all; nothing about Dr. Nichols had suggested this.

  William went to get milk from the counter and I wondered if Dr. Nichols had played me. Had the dog and the scruffy clothes at our first meeting been carefully constructed to present a certain image, which I had unwittingly bought? But why would he go to that much trouble? Be that deceitful? Manipulative? Used now to suspecting everyone I encountered, distrust felt familiar. But I couldn’t sustain my suspicion of him. He was just too decent and scruffily hopeless to be connected to violence. The rumor of his brilliance was surely wrong. In any case, he met you only after you had Xavier, and then only once, so unless he was a psychopath, what possible reason could he have for murdering you?