Blood Sisters: The #1 bestselling thriller from the author of My Husband's Wife

by Jane Corry

  Still in the driving seat, I ring the prison switchboard to explain I have to cancel my classes tomorrow as there’s been a family emergency.

  Then I start the engine. Blood thundering in my head.

  24

  January 2017

  Kitty

  ‘Kitty, would you like to come in now?’

  Something was wrong. Bossy Supervisor was actually addressing her – and not one of the carers. As if she could just get up and walk!

  ‘Johnny!’ cried out Kitty as she was wheeled in.

  To her relief, he lumbered up and gave her a big warm hug. There was an ‘ahh’ and a ‘Watch out for her poor arm’ from Johnny’s mother. Everyone else was frowning.

  ‘I missed you,’ she wept.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ said Johnny, tenderly wiping away her tears. Then he glared at the others in the room. ‘We want to have our baby. You have no right to stop us.’

  ‘Baby?’ babbled Kitty. Had she missed something here? ‘What baby?’

  ‘You’re pregnant!’ said Johnny, kneeling down next to her. ‘Isn’t that wonderful, Kitty? We’re going to have a child all of our own. A real baby.’

  Really? How did that happen?

  ‘Utterly ridiculous,’ sniffed a man in a suit standing next to Johnny’s mother. ‘She can’t even talk. How can she have a kid?’

  ‘Darling, have some compassion.’

  Then the door opened. Flabby Face was coming towards her. The man they said was her father.

  ‘No!’ Kitty squirmed in her chair. ‘I don’t want him here.’

  ‘Don’t get upset, Kitty. We’ll sort out this mess. I promise.’

  ‘Fuck off. Go away.’

  ‘Will someone stop my daughter from banging her head against the chair like that? And why hasn’t anyone brushed her hair? Just because she has to wear a helmet, doesn’t mean you can’t brush the rest of it.’

  Hair! For a minute, Kitty had a sudden vision of Flabby Face taking her to the hairdresser. She’d been small – her feet hadn’t touched the ground. There’d been a big mirror in front and Kitty had felt really grown up. ‘We’d like her fringe trimmed,’ he’d said.

  And then the memory went. Just like that.

  He’d seemed really nice then. But after that, he’d gone and … bugger. The flashback had vanished, along with the others, leaving fear and fury in its place. Now the memories had woven themselves into each other like loose stitches in Oh Tee classes. None of them made any sense.

  ‘Actually, I’d like to say something.’

  There was someone else in the room. A soft-voiced, tall woman who had come in behind flabby-face man. She was younger than him. Her blonde hair was very short. A bit like a pixie on children’s television. And what a beautiful skirt! Turquoise was Kitty’s very favourite colour along with pink. How she wanted to stroke it. When you couldn’t talk, touching and hearing and looking were super important. They told you a great deal about people. This new visitor had style. But she was also scared.

  Kitty could sniff that a mile off.

  Right now, this lovely woman was kneeling in front of her. Eyes locked.

  For some reason, a flash of a blonde plait flitted through Kitty’s mind. And a school satchel.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been before, Kitty. But I’m here now. And I’m going to sort it. I promise.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Kitty babbled.

  ‘Don’t you recognize me, Kitty?’ Those eyes were pleading. Terrified. ‘I’m Ali. Your sister. Well, half-sister to be exact.’

  25

  January 2017

  Alison

  I study Kitty carefully as I speak. How much can she understand?

  It’s been so long since I last visited. Years. I’ve almost made it a few times. Mum nearly persuaded me to come to some concert she was in, not so long ago. But I chickened out on the day. I felt awful. They’d already told Kitty to expect a ‘special visitor’, apparently. Shame on me. But they got round it, Mum said, by taking a picture of her for the local paper. ‘She liked that a lot.’

  Can this really be my beautiful, confident sister? The once-svelte figure is almost obese. Kitty looks more like a frumpy fifty-year-old in her grey home-knitted cardigan than a young woman of twenty-six. One of her hands is twisted and the other arm is in plaster. Her face, on the same side, still droops as badly as it had the last time I was here, one eye lower than the other. I glance away, briefly, shocked by my own revulsion.

  But I’m drawn to my sister’s hair. During my absence, it has grown back in another colour. Brown curls now peep out from under the helmet that helps to keep her skull intact. Of course, I was there, all those years ago, when her lovely blonde locks had been shaved off for surgery. Wasn’t that why I’d had mine cut short too? Not just to create a ‘new me’ but – as far as possible – to go through the same experience, just like relatives of chemo patients who have their heads shaved in empathy.

  I gulp, trying to take it all in. Dribble is coming out of her mouth as she babbles words which mean nothing to me. Pretty Kitty is almost unrecognizable.

  Yet I can see flashes of her predecessor. The way she holds my gaze as if challenging me. Those blue eyes which could worm their way into getting whatever she wanted.

  It’s my little sister. Or, to be more accurate, my half-sister, though my mother hated it when I called her that. The thing about sisters is that you’re meant to get on. Most parents expect it, even if you’re chalk and cheese. But Kitty and I? We never did.

  As I look into her eyes, it’s like looking into the past. I remember one day at the beach. Our mother had gone to the public loo. Keep an eye on your sister, Ali. A freak wave nearly carried her off while she was paddling in the rock pools. Somehow, I’d managed to dive through the crest and catch her by the neck of her swimsuit, dragging her on to the beach and safety. ‘Get off me,’ she’d screamed furiously, apparently oblivious to the fact that I had saved her life. When my mother returned, my sister claimed I’d ‘hurt her’. The sea was perfectly calm by then. There seemed little point in explaining what had really happened. It wasn’t that my mother was unfair: she loved me dearly. But, somehow, my sister always came out top.

  Until she didn’t. Brain damage, they said. Never the same again. Miracle that she survived.

  Yet, ironically, Kitty has now achieved something which I have deliberately denied myself. A baby. And a man who loves her. It shouldn’t be possible, but my throat swells with some of the old envy. How can my mother even think of an abortion? We’ll manage somehow. We have to, even though I’m deeply apprehensive.

  As for David – who no longer has a beard and has gone all jowly round his chin – I can’t even look at him.

  ‘It’s out of the question for them to have the baby,’ my stepfather is now saying.

  ‘Rubbish.’ I stand up straight. ‘I will help them.’

  I don’t mean to make the offer. It’s totally impractical. Yet I feel like it’s the least I can do. As I speak, I have a vision of seeing Father Christmas one year at our local shopping centre. Kitty had been in her pushchair. Scratchy. Irritable. At the beginning of our trip, I’d been allowed to push her. A special treat. But she’d kicked up a fuss because she wanted Mum to push her instead.

  ‘What do you want, little girl?’ Father Christmas had asked me.

  ‘A sister,’ I’d said. Mum had laughed nervously. ‘But you’ve got one already.’

  ‘I want a nice one who loves me.’

  ‘Kitty loves you, darling.’

  But I knew it wasn’t true.

  Sometimes over the years I’ve heard my students talking about their sisters. ‘She’s my best friend,’ they might say. Or, ‘I don’t know what I’d do without her.’

  It always made me want to cry. But now, after all this time, perhaps I have a chance to make things right.

  Because the accident was more than just an accident.

  I am responsible for Kitty’s injuries.

  I a
m the one with blood on my hands.

  I am the schoolgirl who killed Vanessa.

  My sister’s best friend.

  Squeaky-clean school shoes.

  Shoulder bags bobbing.

  Blonde plaits flapping.

  Three pairs of feet.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’

  She pushes me.

  I push her.

  The earth spins.

  A scream.

  ‘Don’t die. Don’t die.’

  A silence.

  And blood.

  A wave. A locket. A summer house.

  Simple memories?

  Or something that might rescue my mind from this hell-hole?

  Somehow I have to work this out or else I might go mad.

  Unless I am already.

  Part Two

  * * *

  2 March 2001

  My mother loves me more than anyone else.

  That’s what she said tonight after tucking me up in bed.

  Her face cream smelt of roses.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone else,’ she whispered. ‘It’s our secret.’

  I’m glad I don’t have a real sister. It makes me more important.

  It reminds me of this poem we read last term at school. One of the lines jumped out at me. It said ‘Blood is thicker than water’.

  I felt all sick when I read that.

  And then I scribbled it out with a black felt-tip.

  I got detention for ‘defacing a school text book’. But I didn’t care.

  It was worth it.

  26

  January 2017

  Alison

  Why am I here? I don’t even know myself. Perhaps because nowhere is safe any more. Home. Prison. Both are as terrifying as each other.

  I think of the lawyer’s letter in my bedside cupboard hidden in an old children’s painting book that had belonged to Kitty. Proof that I am well and truly in a danger zone for reasons I am too scared to share with anyone.

  The signing-in officer gives me my key and I walk past the huts towards Education. Normally, I keep my wits about me; constantly on the outlook for … who knows.

  But at this moment, all I can think about is Kitty’s face. Her clever blue eyes. She remembers. I’m certain of it.

  What am I going to do now? I’m still agonizing when I reach the Education Portakabin. There’s a new poster on the door with rough, hand-drawn letters in red crayon.

  ART STUDIO INSIDE. SECOND ON LEFT.

  ‘Like it, miss?’ It’s Kurt, hovering on the metal step. ‘I did it for you during the holiday. Where were you? Thought you was coming in.’

  ‘Flu,’ I say shortly.

  He gives me a wink. ‘Sure. I wouldn’t want to come in here myself if I was you.’

  ‘Actually, I really was ill.’

  His face turns sympathetic. ‘Are you OK now?’

  Perhaps, I tell myself, this should be my New Year resolution. To be more grateful to this man who is trying his best to assist me. Then again, that’s not going to help all the people I’ve hurt in the past.

  ‘Can’t make your class this morning, miss,’ he adds as we go inside.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  He follows me into the art room and begins to help me put out my wares. Sugar paper. Crayons. Safe materials.

  ‘Have to work on the muck trucks.’

  These are prison-speak for food trolleys.

  ‘Everyone’s sick. That flu gets everywhere.’ He winks again.

  Never mind, I tell myself. I can use any spare time to do some sketching of my own.

  ‘But you do have one student what I got you,’ adds Kurt. ‘His name’s Martin. Just arrived from another nick, he has. He’s OK, this one. Just done his LWV course.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  He speaks as if I should know. ‘Life without violence.’

  Is this meant to reassure me?

  As he speaks, there’s a knock at the main Education door. I unlock it.

  A tubby man faces me. He’s bald with an angry map of red and white scars all over his face and down to his neck. I try not to stare but I can feel my cheeks getting hot. Desperately, I concentrate on the round glasses that sit awkwardly on top of a misshapen nose. Inside, I am shocked. Repulsed, even.

  ‘Is this the art place?’

  There’s a hopeful tone in his rough voice which leaves the ‘t’ out of ‘art’. I’ve never given a class to just one person before. But it’s allowed, Angela told me at the beginning. It’s an open prison after all. These men are low risk.

  Low risk enough for someone to be stabbed in one of my classes.

  But right now I have a job to do. I must put my fears and that awful scene at Kitty’s home out of my mind. This new student in front of me is – I sense – really interested in art. I’m right. No sooner do I give Martin permission to sit down in the studio than he picks up the crayons. He handles them lovingly, as though he’s been starved of their company. I suggest that he colours in the outline I’ve given him of a parrot. It might sound odd but I’ve found that animals go down well in my classes. Grown men who have committed headline crimes appear to enjoy reverting to their childhoods. Maybe it makes them feel they have a clean slate, so to speak. My new student works, head bowed, over his sheet.

  It’s silent. Not a bad silence. A good one. Almost like the golden hour when I used to get up early to do some work before life interrupted. Since taking on my prison job, I haven’t been able to do this.

  I decide to start my own picture too, sketching the view outside the window. The other Portakabins. The fields behind. The birds that wheel in the sky overhead.

  ‘Want to look?’

  I’ve been so engrossed that I had almost forgotten my student was there.

  But he’s standing in front of me now. Holding out his picture. The parrot outline is really good. He’s taken great care with the individual feathers.

  ‘Have you done this kind of thing before?’ I ask.

  ‘Only in the last nick. But not when I was free. Never had time until I got banged up.’ He looks at me nervously. ‘Is my picture rubbish, then?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I say hastily. ‘It shows a great eye.’

  Eye. The very word makes me wince. A vision of Grandad’s bloody face jumps up before me. Hastily, I brush it away.

  ‘You’re not just saying it cos of my scars?’ His eyes are narrowing. ‘I get that from some officers. They’re sorry for me so they say things that aren’t true to make me feel good.’

  ‘No,’ I begin, but he interrupts.

  ‘Some bloke did it to me in the first nick I got sent to. Sugar and boiling water. You can’t get it off the skin.’

  I’m reminded of how Angela told me about this terrible practice when I first started the job. But now I have the results standing before me. It must have been agonizing. It’s certainly not pleasant to look at.

  Perhaps that’s why he speaks in a jokey kind of way – to hide his embarrassment.

  I don’t quite know what to say. ‘Let’s try some sketching now, shall we?’

  We start by copying a photograph I’ve brought in. It’s a daffodil. Most of my men just draw a circle with a line down for the stem. But this man has caught its bell-like shape perfectly. I can see in his face the same intensity I feel myself when drawing. Just like the expression in Kitty’s before the accident.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I say.

  That scarred face looks up at me. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I do.’

  For an instant, there’s a connection between us. The type a teacher experiences when discovering a student who’s a natural artist but whose talent has been boycotted for one reason or another. It’s like discovering a pearl after a series of empty shells.

  It’s almost enough to blank out everything else that’s going on. Kitty, the messages. I’M GOING TO GET YOU. The Christmas card. The nightmares I keep having about the accident. Vanessa dead on the road with blood oozing from her head. And, of co
urse, Clive. Or rather Lead Man.

  For some reason, even though everything else is terrible, I can’t stop thinking about him.

  The last time I felt this way was when I was eighteen. And look what happened then.

  27

  April 2001

  Ali

  In 2001 I was studying for my A levels. Or trying to. Kitty was a constant distraction. If she and Vanessa weren’t playing loud music in their bedroom, they were thundering up and down the stairs, squealing with excitement.

  ‘I need some peace,’ I’d tell Mum.

  But Kitty never listened to anyone. Apart from Vanessa. ‘Don’t you get bored, studying all the time?’ my sister’s friend would say with that knowing look on her face.

  Vanessa reminded me of a spoilt kitten: constantly preening itself. My sister wanted to be just like her. ‘Twins’, they called themselves. Just because their birthdays were four days apart.

  It wasn’t long after the Wrights moved into our road that Kitty spilt coffee all over my French essay.

  ‘You shouldn’t have left it on the kitchen table,’ she retorted.

  I’d only put it there for a second while coming down to get a glass of water.

  ‘You could at least say sorry.’

  ‘Why?’ Vanessa butted in, perched on a stool at the breakfast bar as if she was part of the family, which, in a way, she was. She and Kitty had met as babies and were always in and out of each other’s houses. ‘Like she said, it was your fault.’

  Then the two of them started rabbiting on about the new boy, Crispin Wright, who was apparently really good at art – my sister’s favourite subject. ‘He’s already got a picture accepted for the school exhibition,’ she cooed. You’d think from the way she spoke that he was a contemporary. In fact, he was in my year – not hers.

  ‘Crispin’s got this really floppy fringe that’s so cool,’ simpered Vanessa.

  ‘Yes, he has,’ echoed my sister.

  Didn’t they realize how serious this was? ‘My essay counts towards my final A-level mark,’ I yelled, grabbing a tea towel and trying to blot the pages.