Little Sister

by Isabel Ashdown

  She decides not to answer, to let Sammie sweat a bit more.

  Sammie fills the gap. “So, did you have any idea she was still alive?”

  Emily laughs. “You’re not a journalist these days, are you, Sammie?”

  “No, I’m not!” her friend shrieks. “I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry! Oh, God, Emily, I don’t know what to say to you! This is just about the most awful thing that’s ever happened to any of us, and I know we haven’t been in touch much over the years, but I just wanted to let you know I’m thinking of you. I just wanted to let you know I’m here!”

  “I know,” Emily says after a short pause, and momentarily she forgives Sammie her clumsiness, and she understands that this must be difficult conversation for anyone to have with a friend. “Sorry, Sammie. I’m just exhausted.”

  They talk now, relaxing a little, sticking to more pedestrian subjects such as Sammie’s new job and the latest gossip from Emily’s hometown. Emily asks after Sammie’s kids, and Sammie reminisces about the old days, when she used to spend most afternoons with Emily and Jess because her own parents were always out at work and Emily’s mum cooked the best Victoria sponge cake. They laugh about the time flashing police sirens lit up the street outside Sammie’s house because the neighbors had spotted “youths” climbing in through the bathroom window, not realizing it was Sammie and Emily, arriving home late from a party, drunk on alcopops and short of a house key.

  The exchange is drawing to a natural close, when Sammie asks, “Is Jess still staying with you?”

  Sammie knows the answer to this, Emily thinks, her reservations rising up again, because Jess said she spoke to her on the phone only last week. “Yes. She’s been a real help.”

  “That’s great,” Sammie says, but her voice is overly bright, and Emily isn’t fooled.

  “What is it, Sammie?” she asks impatiently.

  Sammie doesn’t answer immediately, but ums and ahhs a bit, until Emily tells her to spit it out or hang up. “OK,” she says with resignation. “I’m just going to come out with it—and you can choose to forget it or hate me or whatever—but if I don’t say something, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  What the hell is this? Emily’s stomach tenses and she wonders if she might be sick. “Yes?”

  “Has it occurred to you that Jess might have something to do with Daisy’s disappearance?”

  The silence hangs between them.

  “I mean, it’s just that everything was fine between you and James, and then Jess came back after all these years and moved straight in—which was a bit of a surprise—and then within a few weeks, well, you know, Daisy—”

  Emily lets her roll, lets her keep talking, jabbering away to fill the dreadful silences.

  “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, Ems—ever since I first heard about Daisy going missing—and it’s probably stupid, especially now that they think it’s James’s ex-wife—but even so, I just thought, well, maybe Jess contacted her—maybe Jess told her where James and Chloe were, out of”—and here she struggles to say the word—“out of spite or something. After everything that had happened between you two before. I know it’s years ago, but I just—”

  “Is this some kind of a joke, Sammie?” Emily’s patience has run out. “What do you mean, everything that happened before? Nothing happened! It was just kids’ stuff, teenage squabbles, nothing more! Stupidly, we took far too long before getting back in touch—but now we have, and Jess and I are just fine. Better than fine!”

  “But, Emily, at your mother’s funeral, I think I might have—” Sammie starts to say, but Emily has had enough of her madness, and she slams the receiver onto its cradle and returns to her bedroom.

  Sammie. What bloody nerve she’s got, phoning up like that, trying to come between her and Jess. Sammie Evans. She always was a shit-stirrer.

  13

  Avril

  I pick up a local newspaper and place it on the counter beside my basket of groceries.

  “Isn’t it awful about this missing baby?” I say to the shopkeeper.

  Her face falls into a slack study of sadness. “Oh! It’s a tragedy. I can’t stop thinking about it, it’s so terrible.” She speaks as she adds up my purchases, bagging them as she goes. “Nothing like this ever happens here, on the island. I mean, don’t get me wrong, all kinds of things happen here—just like everywhere else, I suppose—but this? A child missing? No, it’s just dreadful.”

  Another customer joins us at the till, a woman about my age, wearing a heavy Barbour jacket and mud-caked boots. “Trouble is, it makes you look at everyone with suspicion, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s what the police have told us to do—question everything, look out for anyone with a child, anyone you don’t know.” She nods toward the pram and smiles. “You must’ve had a few double takes, haven’t you? People checking you haven’t got the snatched baby there!”

  She’s joking, I know, and I laugh too, handing over a twenty-pound note and organizing my shopping in the basket beneath the pram. “I have!” I say, and then I incline my head, inviting her to look inside the pram, where Chloe lies fast asleep, dressed head to toe in navy blue. “But they soon forget their suspicions once they see he’s a little boy!”

  It’s genius, I know. The idea came to me yesterday as I paused outside the window of Mothercare on the high street, drawn as I was to the sweet little bobble hats and warm winter outfits. A boy! No one will question me with a baby boy!

  The two women take a good look at Chloe, smiling generously.

  “So, is he yours?” the Barbour woman asks. She’s obviously trying to assess my age.

  “Yes. Late baby—usual story—too busy with my career for years, and then it took a while for me to get pregnant. But he’s here now! Better late than never.” I can’t believe how normal I sound, how convincing, and I like this new life, this new normality.

  They nod approvingly. “Well, he’s a poppet,” the shopkeeper says. “Has he got a name?”

  I regret it the moment it leaves my lips, but, thank God, they don’t seem to make the connection. “James,” I say, and I turn away because I’m blushing, feeling caught out. “But we call him Jimmy. Jimmy.”

  “Lovely!” they say, together, and it’s the perfect time for me to leave, because they believe me, and we’re all smiling, and outside the winter sun is shining, and everything is good in the world.

  14

  Jess

  Someone pushed a copy of the Sun on Sunday through the letterbox first thing this morning, and Emily has gone wild. She’s screaming on the landing, waving the paper around, demanding that James and I explain ourselves. As I rush up the stairs, intending to calm her down, she starts banging on Chloe’s door, with James grabbing at her arm, trying to pull her away.

  “I suppose you knew all about it too!” she yells into Chloe’s room, and I push past Emily and snatch the paper from her hands in an attempt to pull her focus away from Chloe. She spins to face me, furious in the curtain-dark room. Behind her Chloe is sitting up in bed, pale, just woken, and utterly bemused.

  James stands in the doorway beyond Emily, and his sleep-creased face is asking me, What’s up, what’s happened now?

  “How could you do this to me again, Jess?” she shrieks, her hands on her face. “My God! I’m such an idiot! I trusted you.” She wrestles the newspaper back from my grasp, her chest heaving with the weight of her emotion, and shakes her head, as though remembering all the wrongs I’ve ever done her. And then she goes from enraged to exhausted in a breath, her shoulders slumping in defeat. “I trusted you.”

  James enters the room and sits on the edge of Chloe’s bed, reaching out to pat his daughter’s leg beneath the covers. Chloe hasn’t said a word, but I can tell that she thinks this is about Daisy, because she’s running her thumb along her upper teeth in the way that she does when she’s on edge, and her eyes are welling up with fresh tears.

  “Emily,” James says, gently, “we’re all in the dark here. Exactly what is Jess supp
osed to have done? Only last night you were texting her to say thank you, telling her you loved her.”

  The moment he says the words, his face shows he knows his mistake.

  “And how would you know what I texted to my sister last night, James? How could you possibly know that!” She screams this, spittle flying—and I swear she looks as insane as a person ever could—and she raises the newspaper and slams it against her husband’s chest. “Because you were with her all evening? Because you were secretly meeting my sister when you said you were at work? Because you were drinking and flirting and after that, what? Screwing? Whispering sweet nothings? Planning your happily-ever-after together?”

  James rolls his eyes in desperation, before turning them to the newspaper in his lap. Emily fixes her hard eyes on me, and I want to deny it, to put her straight, but the words won’t form in my mouth, and then, more than anything, I’m distracted by the look of horror on James’s face as he studies the front page of the tabloid.

  “I suppose you don’t remember a thing about it, Jess?” Emily says, calmer now, soft malice creeping in. “The usual excuse, is it? Sorry, officer, I didn’t see my niece being abducted because I fainted. Sorry, Emily, I don’t remember fucking your husband because I ‘had an episode.’”

  She’s goading me, urging me to react, and I really believe I won’t, until she says the words, sweet as can be: “Sorry, doctor, I don’t know how I got pregnant, because I was drunk.”

  I gasp, winded by her words, and I lunge at her, knocking her tiny frame to the bed as the rest of the room shrinks away, and there’s only me and her and the aching pain that courses between us. She’s pinned to the bed by her shoulders, the full weight of me holding her there, our identical eyes locked in combat, and I see hatred there, pure, unadulterated hatred, and I know in that moment that she’s never forgiven me. That she will never get over what happened with Simon O’Carroll.

  James’s grip eases me off her, and I see Chloe huddled up against her pillows, her face streaked with tears. I crawl over the tangle of bedsheets to pull her to my chest, desperate to protect her from yet more trauma. She’s a kid, just a kid, and this is all wrong. So wrong. I think back to that day when Emily invited me to stay and, excited, I’d said yes, and I had had so many lovely ideas leaping around inside my head, ideas about how it would all go, how my life would change once I’d moved in with my big sister. This is not how I saw it unfolding; this is not the new future I’d planned. Her words pain me so much that I want to blurt it all out—scream out all her secrets for the world to hear—but I mustn’t. I mustn’t.

  Emily is now sitting on the carpet, away from us, her thin fingers clasped around her knees. James sits on the other side of Chloe, his arm around her resting against the bare skin of mine. He holds the newspaper between us, and there we see the photograph that has sent Emily into a meltdown. It’s a side-column headline, telling readers to “turn to page five for the full story.” But the front page photo says it all: it’s me and James at Becca’s Café last night, smiling at each other over an intimate table for two, a bottle of wine between us, and his fingers reaching out to gently touch my face. To an observer, I can see—in that split-second snapshot—we look like a couple in love. His five o’clock shadow and half-smile appear more seductive than shattered; my wind-messed hair might easily be confused for bedroom dishevelment. But it’s not the photograph that has wreaked the worst of the damage here. It’s the headline, with all its nasty innuendo:

  MISSING DAISY’S DAD AND AUNT “COMFORT”

  EACH OTHER OVER WINE

  “It’s a lie,” James says to Chloe. “It’s been set up to look bad. But it’s not true.”

  Chloe turns to me, and I nod earnestly, wanting her to believe us, wanting her to know that I’m the same Jess that I’ve always been. That I am trustworthy and good.

  Chloe glances at Emily, whose head is now resting on her knees, and Chloe whispers, so that only James and I can hear, “I wouldn’t mind if it was. I wouldn’t blame you if it was true.”

  James sighs sadly, and I leave the room. This family needs time alone.

  * * *

  Trustworthy. It’s a word Emily used more than most as a child, as a young adult. Do we think so-and-so can be trusted, Jess? Are they loyal—are they honest—are they trustworthy? It’s not that she herself was exactly the model of good behavior when it came to these particular attributes, but she set a high bar when it came to anyone who entered her inner circle. She’d constantly test her friends, setting them difficult choices to make, choices that would illustrate how much they thought of her, how much they preferred her company over others, liked her the best. Who wants to sit next to me? she’d ask as we filed into morning assembly, favoring the first of her friends to leap at the chance. Don’t go into town with Sammie, Jane, come to the beach with me instead.

  Jess is much prettier than me, she announced one day over lunch in the school canteen. You’ve never heard a group of girls clamor so quickly to tell her she was wrong. It didn’t upset me in the least; I was used to it. I was no stranger to Emily’s loyalty traps, as she’d been laying them down for me for as long as I could remember. We shared a room in the years before we started at secondary school, often talking into the darkness long after lights out, long after Mum had popped her head around the backlit doorway to wish us good night, and God bless, and don’t-forget-to-say-your-prayers. We would lie in silence for a few minutes, both pretending to pray, though each knew the other was also just waiting to hear the distant click of the living room door that told us we couldn’t be overheard. Then, “Jess?” Emily would start. “Did you see Mrs. Green’s dirty fingernails today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Disgusting, weren’t they?”

  I liked Mrs. Green. “She told me she had to mend a bike puncture on the way to school this morning. It was oil. She said she couldn’t wash it out.”

  I could feel Emily’s mood stiffen across the room from me. She hated it when I disagreed with her in any way. “Who do you prefer, Mrs. Green or Mr. Hobbs?”

  “Mrs. Green.”

  “You think I’ll say you love Mr. Hobbs if you said him.”

  “I don’t!” My stomach knotted. Why did she always do this? She was right, I did prefer Mr. Hobbs, but only because he was kind, not because I loved him.

  “OK, then. If you had to push one of them off a cliff, which one would it be? And you can’t lie—imagine it like it’s really going to happen.”

  “Mrs. Green,” I reply, reluctantly.

  “Knew it,” she says, and I can feel her pleasure radiating silently into the room, in perfect opposition to my discomfort. “Who would you marry—Josh Brown or William Hope?”

  “Neither!”

  “You have to, Jess. You know the rules.”

  What rules, I thought? No one ever told me there were rules. “Josh Brown,” I whisper, my face hot.

  “Urghh,” she said, making a retching noise, judging me. “I’d rather die. Who would you rather go on holiday with, me or Sammie Evans?”

  This question told me I’d been spending too much time with Sammie. I would have to pull back a little, let Emily take center stage next time Sammie was around. “You, of course.” Could there be any other answer?

  Now came the pause that always filled me with dread, in which Emily would come up with a final question, something more troubling, a haunting scenario for me to carry off into sleep. “Jess? If you had to choose one of them to die—hanged like in the olden days—which would it be? Mum or Dad?”

  “No!” I hissed out into the emptiness. “No! You always do it—you always ask me a horrible one like this. I’m not answering.”

  “You have to,” she replied, her ten months of seniority sounding so much greater. “It’s the rules, Jess. Which one?” When I went silent on her, refusing to play, she whispered, “I don’t know why you’re being such a baby. I know which one I’d choose.” And she didn’t tell me, just shifted over in her bed so I could
hear from her breathing that she’d turned her back on me to go to sleep.

  I lay there for what felt like hours, turning it over and over in my head, the alternative images of my parents, swinging from the gallows as I tried not to choose one of them over the other. The thing was, I knew I wouldn’t sleep until the decision had been made, even if it was only ever inside my head.

  I don’t know why Emily took so much pleasure in testing me like that, because really, apart from that one time years later, I’d never given her reason to doubt my devotion at all.

  * * *

  “God, just look at it,” I say, standing beside James at the dining table, the newspaper spread out across its surface. “No wonder she thinks there’s something going on.”

  James glances back over his shoulder, but he needn’t worry, Emily is back in bed now, sleeping off the exhaustion of her earlier explosion. He looks back at the photograph of me and him in Becca’s restaurant. “It’s not a bad picture, all things considered,” he says, rolling his eyes toward me, trying to find some small sliver of humor in the situation. “I think I look quite handsome.”

  I shake my head, still not quite believing that I’m looking at a photograph of myself in the national press. An intimate picture of James reaching out to touch my face. “And what’s that face-touching all about? Do you think they’ve Photoshopped it?”