Sister

by Rosamund Lupton

  I saw a black cab, without a light on, and stuck out my hand, praying he would stop for me, which he did, chastising me for being on my own in the middle of the night. I spent money I no longer had on him driving me all the way home. He waited until I was safely inside the flat before driving off.

  Mr. Wright looks at me with concern, and I’m aware of how ill I feel. My mouth is as dry as parchment. I drain the glass of water his secretary has left for me. He asks if I’m okay to carry on, and I say yes because I find it reassuring to be with him and because I don’t want to be on my own in the flat. “Did you think about the man following Tess?” asks Mr. Wright.

  “Yes. But it was a sense of someone watching me, and a sound, I think, because something alerted me, but I didn’t actually see anyone.”

  He suggests we get a sandwich and go into the park for a working picnic. I think it’s because I’m becoming groggy and inarticulate, and he hopes that a spell outside will wake me up. He picks up the tape recorder. It never occurred to me that it might be portable.

  We get to St. James’s Park, which looks like that scene from Mary Poppins, all blossom and buds and blue sky with white meringue clouds. Office workers are splayed over the grass, turning the park into a beach without a sea. We walk side by side, closely, along a path looking for somewhere less crowded. His kind face is looking at mine, and I wonder if he can feel my warmth as I feel his.

  A woman with a double stroller comes toward us and we have to go single file. On my own for a few moments I feel a sudden sense of loss, as if the warmth has gone from the left-hand side of my body now that he isn’t there. It makes me think of lying on a cold concrete floor, on my left side, feeling the chill of it go into me, hearing my heart beat too fast, unable to move. I’m panicking, fast-forwarding the story, but then he’s beside me again and we get back in step and I’ll return to the correct sequence.

  We find a quiet spot and Mr. Wright spreads out a rug for us to sit on. I am touched that when he saw blue sky this morning, he thought ahead to a picnic in the park with me.

  He switches on the tape recorder. I pause a moment while a group of teenagers walks past, then I begin.

  “Kasia woke up when I got in, or maybe she’d been waiting up for me. I asked her if she could remember the doctor who’d given her the injection.”

  She pulled your dressing gown around herself.

  “I don’t know name,” she said. “Is there problem?”

  “Was he wearing a mask; is that why you don’t know?”

  “Yes, a mask. Something bad? Beata?”

  Her hand moved unconsciously to her bump. I just couldn’t frighten her.

  “Everything’s fine. Really.”

  But she’s too astute to be fobbed off so easily. “You said Tess baby not ill. Not have CF. When you came to flat. When you ask Mitch to get tested.”

  I hadn’t realized that she’d really understood. She’d probably been brooding about it ever since but hadn’t questioned me, presumably trusting me to tell her if there was something she needed to know.

  “Yes, that’s true. And I’m trying to find out more. But it’s nothing to do with you. You and your baby are going to be fine, right as rain.”

  She smiled at “right as rain,” an expression that she’d recently learned, a smile that seemed forced, on cue for me.

  I gave her a hug. “You really will be all right. Both of you. I promise.”

  I couldn’t help you and Xavier, but I would help her. No one was going to hurt her or her baby.

  A little way away the teenagers are playing a game of softball, and I wonder for a moment what the person who listens to these tapes will make of the background noises of the park, the laughter and chatter around us.

  “And the next day you got an e-mail from Professor Rosen?” Mr. Wright asks.

  “Yes. On Saturday morning at around ten-fifteen.” I was on my way to work a shift for “weekend brunch,” a new idea of Bettina’s. “I noticed it was sent from his personal e-mail,” I continue, “rather than the Chrom-Med one he’d used before.” Mr. Wright looks down at a copy of the e-mail.

  From: alfredrosen@mac.com

  To: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

  I have just come back from my American lecture tour to your message. As is my custom on these trips, I do not take my mobile with me. (My close family members have the number of the hotel should I need to be contacted urgently.) It is ludicrous to say that my trial is in any way dangerous to the babies. The whole point of my trial is that it’s a safe way of getting the healthy gene into the body. It is to effect a cure in the safest possible way.

  Alfred Rosen.

  From: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

  To: alfredrosen@mac.com

  Can you explain why the doctor at St. Anne’s wore a mask, both when he delivered the babies and when he gave the injections of the gene?

  From: alfredrosen@mac.com

  To: Beatrice Hemming’s iPhone

  Clearly medical staff wear appropriate protection when they deliver babies, but it is not my area of expertise so if you are concerned I suggest you ask someone in obstetrics. In terms of the injections, whoever it was must have completely missed the point of my chromosome. Unlike a virus, it carries no infection risk whatsoever. There is no need for such precautions. Perhaps they are just in the habit of being cautious? However, at your sister’s funeral I said I would answer your questions, so I will look into it. I very much doubt there will be anything to find.

  I didn’t know whether to trust him or not. I certainly didn’t know why he was helping me.

  Bettina’s brunch initiative was a success and by twelve the Coyote was packed. I saw William pushing his way through, trying to get my attention. He smiled at my evident astonishment.

  “Cressida, our senior midwife, told me you worked here; I hope that’s okay.”

  I remember I’d given her my contact details at the flat and the Coyote when she was looking for your notes.

  Bettina grinned at me and took over the drinks order I was doing, so that I could talk to William. I was perplexed that she wasn’t more surprised by a beautiful man’s coming to see me. I went down to the end of the bar and he followed me.

  “I couldn’t find out who gave Tess the injection, or the other women; their notes have seemingly just disappeared without trace. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have offered to do it.”

  But I’d already realized it would be impossible for him. If no one could find out who was with you when you gave birth to Xavier, an event covering at least a few hours, it would be impossible for him, without notes, to find out who gave you an injection, which presumably was quick and uneventful.

  “I knew I’d let you down,” continued William. “So I did a bit of asking around at the genetic clinic. Pulled in a few favors. I’ve got you these.”

  He handed me a packet of hospital notes as if giving me flowers. “Your shreds of proof, Bee.”

  I saw the notes were Mitch’s.

  “Mitch Flanagan is Kasia Lewski’s partner,” William said, and I realized how little I’d told him about my friendship with Kasia. “He isn’t a carrier of the cystic fibrosis gene.”

  So Mitch had got himself tested—and clearly hadn’t told Kasia the results. I presumed that like Emilio he had assumed—or chosen to assume—that he wasn’t the father of her baby. I imagined his relief at the result, his get-out clause, turning Kasia into the trollop who’d tricked him. I wondered if he could really believe that.

  From my silence and lack of excitement, William thought I hadn’t understood. “Both parents need to be carriers of the cystic fibrosis gene for their baby to have it. This dad doesn’t carry the CF gene, so there’s no way the baby could have had it. I don’t know what’s going on with the CF trial, but something’s clearly very wrong and these notes prove it.”

  Again he misinterpreted my silence. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you properly, supported you from the beginning. But you can take these to the police
, can’t you? Or would you like me to?”

  “It won’t do any good.”

  He looked at me, perplexed.

  “Kasia, his former partner, she’s the type of person people make mistakes about. The police will think that she was wrong about Mitch Flanagan being the father, or lied about it. Just like they did with my sister.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  But I did, because I myself had once been prejudiced against Kasia. I knew DI Haines would see her, as I once had, as a girl who most probably slept around, a girl who could easily be mistaken, or lie, about the father of her baby.

  William’s pager went off, a strange sound among the conversations and clinking drinks at the bar. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  I remembered he had only twenty minutes to get back to the hospital.

  “Will you make it?”

  “Absolutely. I brought the bike.”

  As he left, I saw Bettina grinning at me again. I returned her smile. Because despite the fact that his shreds of proof were worthless, I was buoyed up. For the first time, someone was on my side.

  Bettina sent me home early, as if giving me a present for my smile.

  When I got home, I found Kasia on her knees scrubbing the kitchen floor.

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  She looked up at me, face sweating. “They said it be good for baby; get in right position.” Your flat had quickly come to resemble hers, everything gleaming around the chips and the rust and the stains. “Anyway, I said I like cleaning.”

  She told me that when she was a child, her mother worked long shifts at a factory. After school, Kasia would scrub and polish so that when her mother got home the apartment would sparkle for her. It’s a gift, Kasia’s cleaning.

  I didn’t tell her that Mitch wasn’t a carrier of the CF gene. I hadn’t yet told her that Hattie’s baby had died. Last night I’d thought I was protecting her, but now I wondered if I was betraying her trust in me. I honestly didn’t know which was true.

  “Here,” I said, handing her tickets. “I have something for you.”

  She took the tickets from me, a little bemused.

  “I couldn’t afford the air fare to Poland, so these are just coach tickets, six weeks after your baby is due. There’s one for each of us, the baby will travel free.”

  I thought that she should take her baby to Poland to meet his grandparents, all four of them, and her uncles and aunts and cousins. She has a cat’s cradle of relations for this baby to be supported by. Mum and Dad both being only children meant we had no web of relations to fall back on. Our family was preshrunk before we were born.

  Kasia was just staring at the tickets, uncharacteristically quiet.

  “And I’ve got you support stockings, because my friend who’s a doctor says you must be careful not to get a thrombosis, zakrzepica,” I said, translating the last word into Polish, which I’d looked up before. I couldn’t read her expression and was worried I was imposing.

  “I don’t have to stay with your family. But I really don’t think you should go that far with a new baby on your own.”

  She kissed me. I realized that, despite everything, this was the first time I’d seen her cry.

  I have told Mr. Wright about Mitch’s notes.

  “I thought that was another reason poor single girls were being chosen—they were less likely to be believed.”

  The sunshine has made me feel sleepier rather than waking me up. I finish telling Mr. Wright about Mitch’s notes.

  It’s now an effort to be coherent.

  “Then I gave Kasia tickets to Poland, and she cried.”

  My intellect is too unfocused now to decide what is relevant.

  “That night I realized, properly, how brave she’d been. I’d thought her naive and immature, but she’s actually really courageous and I should have seen that when she stood up for me with Mitch, knowing that she’d be hit for it.”

  The bruises on her face and the welts on her arms were clear enough badges of courage. But so too was her smiling and dancing in the face of whatever was thrown at her. Like you, she has the gift of finding happiness in small things. She pans life for gold and finds it daily.

  And so what if, like you, she loses things? It’s no more a sign of immaturity than my knowledge of where my possessions are is a sign of my adulthood. And imagine acquiring a new language and only learning the words to describe a wonderful world, refusing to know the words for a bleak one and in doing so linguistically shaping the world that you inhabit. I don’t think that’s naive, but fantastically optimistic.

  The next morning I knew that I had to tell her what was going on. Who was I to think that after what happened to you, I could look after another person?

  “I was going to tell her, but she was already on her mobile phoning half of Poland to tell them about bringing the baby to see them. And then I got another e-mail from Professor Rosen, asking to meet me. Kasia was still chatting to her family when I left the flat.”

  I met Professor Rosen, at his suggestion, at the entrance to the Chrom-Med building, which was bustling despite it being Sunday. I was expecting him to escort me to his office, but instead he led me to his car. We got in and he locked the doors. The demonstrators were still there—a distance away—and I couldn’t hear their chants.

  Professor Rosen was trying to sound calm but there was a shake in his voice that he couldn’t control. “An active virus vector has been ordered under my cystic fibrosis trial number at St. Anne’s.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Either there’s been a monumental cock-up,” he said, and I thought that he never used words like cock-up, that this was as extreme as his language would get, “or a different gene is being tested out at St. Anne’s, one that needs an active virus vector, and my cystic fibrosis trial is being used as a cover.”

  “The cystic fibrosis trial has been hijacked?”

  “Maybe, yes. If you want to be melodramatic about it.”

  He was trying to belittle what was happening but couldn’t quite pull it off.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “My guess is that, if an illegal trial is happening, it is for genetic enhancement, which in the UK is illegal to test on humans.”

  “What kind of enhancement?”

  “I don’t know. Blue eyes, high IQ, big muscles. The list of absurdity goes on. But whatever gene it is, it needs an active virus vector to transport it.”

  He was talking as a scientist, in facts, but beneath the words his emotion was clear. He was livid.

  “Do you know who is giving the injection for the CF gene therapy at St. Anne’s?” I asked.

  “I don’t have access to that type of information. They keep us very much inside our own pigeonholes at Chrom-Med. It’s not like a university, no cross-pollination of ideas or information. So no, I don’t know the doctor’s name. But if I were him or her, I would administer the genetic treatment for cystic fibrosis to fetuses who genuinely had CF and at the same time test the illicit gene. But maybe whoever it is became careless, or there just weren’t enough patients.” He broke off and I saw the anger and hurt in him. “Someone is trying to make babies even more perfect in some way. But healthy is already perfect. Healthy is already perfect.” I saw that he was shaking.

  I wondered then if you’d found out about the hijacked trial—and the hijacker’s identity. Was that why you’d been murdered?

  “You must tell the police.”

  He shook his head, not meeting my eyes.

  “But you have to tell them.”

  “It’s still just conjecture.”

  “My sister and her baby are dead.”

  He stared through the windshield as if driving the car rather than hiding in it. “I need to get proof first that it’s a rogue trial that’s to blame. Once I have that proof, I can save my cystic fibrosis trial. Otherwise my trial will be stopped in all hospitals until they’ve found out what’s going on and that could
be months away, or years away. It may never be resumed.”

  “But the cystic fibrosis trial shouldn’t be affected at all. Surely—”

  He interrupted. “When the press get hold of this, with their level of subtlety and intelligence, it won’t be a maverick trial that’s to blame for babies dying—and God knows what else—it will be my cystic fibrosis trial.”

  “I don’t believe that’s true.”

  “Really? Most people are so poorly informed and poorly educated that they don’t see a difference between genetic enhancement and genetic therapy.”

  “But that’s absurd—”

  Again he interrupted. “Mobs of imbeciles have hounded pediatricians, even attacked them, because they think pediatrician is the same thing as pedophile, so yes, they will target the cystic fibrosis trial as wicked too because they won’t understand there’s a difference.”

  “So why did you investigate in the first place?” I asked. “If you’re going to do nothing with the findings?”

  “I investigated because I’d told you I’d answer your questions.” He looked at me, anger sparking in his face, furious with me for putting him in this position. “I thought there’d be nothing to find.”

  “So I’ll have to go to the police without your support?” I asked.

  He looked physically intensely uncomfortable, trying to smooth out the sharp creases of his pressed gray trouser legs, which wouldn’t lie flat.

  “The order of the virus vector could well be a mistake; computer glitches occur. Administrative errors happen worryingly frequently.”

  “And that’s what you’ll tell the police?”

  “It’s the most credible explanation. So yes, that’s what I’ll tell them.”

  “And I won’t be believed.”

  Silence hung between us like glass.

  I broke it. “What’s this really about, curing babies or your own reputation?”

  He unlocked the car doors, then turned to me. “If your brother were an unborn baby now, what would you have me do?”

  I did hesitate, but only for a moment. “I’d want you to go to the police and tell them the truth and then work like hell at saving your trial.”