My Sister

by Michelle Adams

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell us? It cuts Eleanor out, doesn’t it? I can’t imagine a better reason to be upset and feel vulnerable.’ There’s that word again, the word that reminds me how far they are from the truth. ‘After losing both her parents, she finds out that your father has cut her off financially. And we have just heard how she was financially secure because of your family. This is like a smack in the face, isn’t it, after everything that happened? Can you see this?’ she asks, pointing to a section with a pink Post-it note next to it. ‘Maybe you can’t because this is a copy, but there are wrinkles in the page. Watermarks. We had them analysed and found that they were tears, Dr Harringford. No doubt your sister’s. On the will made by your father, whom she adored, and with whom she had a good relationship. All backed up by a statement from Eleanor’s psychiatrist. Yet right after you turn up, he cuts her out. How do you explain that?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  She slides the statements back into the file and sips her cold coffee. Her tired, birdlike eyes stare at me as she sits back and folds her arms like a fat Texan sheriff. ‘Why did you change your flight home on the night before your father’s death?’

  ‘I didn’t change it. I missed it.’

  ‘You sure about that?’ She pulls out another sheet of paper and I feel myself flush, because even though I know that what I have said is the truth, I have a horrible feeling that she is about to prove me wrong. ‘We got this from the airline.’ It looks like a screenshot, topped with a logo declaring: Internal Air, a flight in the right direction! She pushes it my way. I see the words Manage My Booking. I read on and see that apparently I changed my flight to the following day. Did I do this? I don’t remember doing it, but there is a lot I don’t remember doing that night.

  ‘I didn’t do this,’ I say, not sounding certain. I bring my fingers up to my nose, sniff at the nicotine. ‘Elle must have changed it.’

  ‘You have to have the booking details in order to change the flight. Could she have had access to those?’

  I think about the bag sitting in my room with everything in it. She could have dug out the flight details. But she could also have got them from the study, where I left them during my mother’s wake. I got sloppy, forgot how to play the game. I look down at the page and scan the information. Time of amendment: 16.35.

  ‘Elle did this.’ I rub my fingers on the desk, scratch at my head. I’m falling apart, unravelling stitch by stitch. ‘She must have gained access to my things and made the changes. Online you can be anybody, you must know that. At this time we were together at the house.’

  ‘But you didn’t remain at the house all night, right? You were at a hotel with a man named Matthew.’ She slides an image taken from some grainy CCTV footage across the desk. There is no doubt it is me; my face attached to his, him holding me up as if I am about to slump to the ground. ‘You were seen kissing him in the foyer, and then, a little later on, you were caught on the third-floor landing doing other things that involved your mouth. I can prove that too if you would like?’ I bring my hand to my mouth, cover it as if I’m about to be sick. Perhaps trying to conceal the evidence. She holds up another photograph, turns it away from me so that I can’t see the image. ‘But I’d much rather you just admitted it. Save us both the embarrassment.’

  Elle has planned it perfectly. By screwing Matt, all I have done is reinforce my guilt, polish her innocence. I’ve played straight into her hands. I have to make out that it wasn’t important. ‘Admit what? That I screwed another guy when I was away from home. I wouldn’t be the first to do that. It doesn’t mean that I had anything to do with the will or my father rewriting it. It doesn’t prove that I was the one who changed my flight. I paid for another ticket the next day. Why would I have done that if I knew I had changed my flight?’ I try to sound defiant, but being caught out, hand in the cookie jar, never feels good.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t be the first. And to be quite honest, I don’t care who you fuck. What I do care about is this. Let’s assume that what you’ve told me is the truth. I’ll recap.’ She stands up, starts circling the room. ‘You have no feelings for your mother, yet you rush to fly up there when she dies. You say it was to support your sister, yet this is the same sister that you refused to have a relationship with for years before that. You spend the next few days bitching at her as she tries to spend time with you. You act like nothing important has happened, visiting the gym, going out for drinks. Then, after your father alters his will and subsequently commits suicide, you change your flight home and end up blowing a stranger in the corridor of a hotel.’

  ‘I didn’t change the flight,’ I shout. I slip down in the chair, seeing how badly this whole thing is playing out before me. She doesn’t pay me any attention. Instead she continues recounting the facts as she knows them.

  ‘Your father kills himself with a Valium overdose, something he doesn’t have a prescription for and for which we cannot find a box or bottle. Not even a shred of foil from a blister pack. And you know what, your sister with the psychiatrist, even she doesn’t have a prescription for it. But you’re a doctor. Anaesthetist, isn’t it?’

  I nod, and she leans in, the smell of coffee pungent on her breath. I am wondering if this was Elle’s plan all along, to screw me over right from the word go. Perhaps she’s been trying to wrap me up in trouble since the days with Margot Wolfe and Robert Kneel. Maybe she got our father to change the will just to set me up.

  ‘You have access to medication like that, I presume? I could look at the controlled drugs records at Queen’s, if you like. That’s where you work, isn’t it? Queen’s College Hospital?’ She doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘Then your sister disappears, something you seem to want to explain in terms of mental illness, yet other than seeing a shrink for a few months last year because she wasn’t handling the idea that she might not become a mother, there is no history of mental illness recorded in any of her hospital documents. And oh, surprise, surprise,’ she holds up her hands, ‘the missing sister is the only relative who could possibly contest the will. A will that was written days before your father died, leaving you, the daughter he kicked out when you were three years old, with everything. Something doesn’t add up, Dr Harringford. Explain it to me.’

  ‘Do you think I’ve hurt my sister?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. This is not an interview under caution. You are here voluntarily.’

  I am so frantic, I am barely listening, but I do just about hear the word voluntarily, which calms me a little. I could leave, in theory, and that helps. I need to change direction. ‘Joyce, the housekeeper, was there when I left. She can vouch for me that Elle was still alive. And she made it pretty clear that Elle was the one with the problems. She’ll be able to tell you. She knows everything that happened in that house. If you are accusing me of something, I want to know whether I need a lawyer.’

  ‘Do you think you need a lawyer?’ Forrester asks me, as if such a need would prove my guilt. She is just waiting for me to make the request.

  ‘No,’ I plead, lifting myself up. Before I know it, I am on my feet, and I hear the chair crash to the floor behind me. ‘But you are making out like I planned this whole thing. That I planned my parents’ deaths and then did away with my sister in an effort to get my hands on their money. But my mother died before I even saw her. Plus my father killed himself, and nobody knows what has happened to Elle.’

  ‘Somebody knows what happened to Elle. And you know how I know that? Because somebody always does.’ After a pause in which she shuffles her papers back and forth, putting them into an unnecessary order, she looks up at me, motions for me to relax. ‘But no, I don’t think you are involved in your sister’s disappearance. The team in Edinburgh have spoken to Joyce. She told them that you left straight away. Seems quite taken by you, in fact. Plus we have a definitive sighting of Eleanor after you left Horton.’ When I don’t sit down straight away, she motions again for me to relax. ‘I personally spoke to Joseph Witherrington, an
d he also seems to back you up on knowing nothing about the changes to the will. But this situation doesn’t make much sense to me, and I don’t think you are telling me the truth. You know more than you’re letting on. That makes me suspicious because that’s what I am trained to be. So start being straight with me so that I can be straight with you. Why did you go there?’

  I take a long breath in and reach for the chair. I pick it up and take a seat. I begin slowly, painfully, hate for this woman oozing out of me for making me admit the truth. ‘Because I wanted to see my mother. Dead or alive. I couldn’t remember her face and it was my last chance. Curiosity, I guess.’ DC Forrester seems to relax a little. ‘I wanted to know why I was given away. I have never known the truth.’

  This she seems to accept, tracing a finger along the edge of the file. ‘You look a lot like her, you know.’

  ‘Yes, that’s not the first time somebody has told me that.’

  She is softer now, leans across the table. ‘What am I missing, Dr Harringford? Tell me what is going on. Do you care about your sister?’

  I think about all the times Elle has done something randomly weird to which I once aspired. Done something outright crazy when I was older that pushed me away. I think of all the times I have cut her out and then felt miserable because she wasn’t around. I think of how I still have the prepaid phone, just in case she calls. I get it out and show Forrester, setting it down on the table.

  ‘I threw this away so she couldn’t contact me. I retrieved it from the bin because I changed my mind. I care about Elle, I want the best for her,’ I say, repeating my father’s words. ‘I just don’t know how to let her be my sister. These people who have been describing her, they don’t know her like I do. I know her differently. She isn’t normal, DC Forrester. When I went there, I wasn’t myself. I did and said things that aren’t like me.’

  ‘Like the man in the hotel?’

  I take a shot of air, desperately feeling like I need it. ‘I guess so. Do you know that she drugged me that night? You can ask Mr Guthrie, he heard her admit to it. I struggle to have Elle in my life and I push her away. I push everybody away. I guess it’s what I am trained to do.’ She eyes me in a way that suggests I watch my smart mouth, but she lets it go. I think in this moment that maybe she likes me a little bit more. ‘I want you to find her. I do. I don’t want anything from my family’s estate. It’s like it isn’t anything to do with me. I want to know she is OK, and then go back to avoiding her. I know that makes me sound like a bitch, but it’s how it has to be. I can’t live with her, but I—’

  ‘Can’t live without her either?’ Her tone is different. She has dropped the asshole cop routine. ‘You’re right, it does make you sound like a bitch. But that’s not a crime, and neither is fucking a stranger behind your partner’s back. Drugged or not.’ There is a sharp twang to that last note, just enough so that I understand she doesn’t quite trust me yet. ‘Now, tell me something else, now that you are being honest. What have you really been doing since you got back?’

  ‘Hiding out. Staying in. Watching TV.’ I think about leaving it out, but I consider that adding it in makes me look more pathetic, and right now, that is a good thing because I’m still concerned that she thinks I arranged this whole thing. ‘Getting drunk at home.’

  ‘With Antonio?’ she asks. I catch a sly glint in her eye and wonder how this woman ever solved a crime with such a poor poker face.

  ‘No,’ I say, because I know that somehow she already knows. ‘We argued when I got back. I think it was partly the guilt that I had cheated on him, and partly the fact that I felt like I had let Elle down.’ That is the truth. ‘Plus, the whole deal with the will, realising I had inherited everything, upset me. I didn’t want it. I wanted to move on, leave the past behind. We argued, he smashed a couple of wine glasses, left at some point during the night. Or the next morning. I don’t know. I woke up and he was gone.’

  ‘So it would be fair to say that your relationship is strained. That things aren’t going well.’

  ‘That would be fair.’

  ‘So where’d he go?’

  ‘Italy. He withdrew money from my account and left. Came back the night before you knocked on the door.’

  ‘For four days?’ I shrug, confirming the duration of his absence. ‘And he is planning to open a restaurant soon, right? He applied for a bank loan. A pretty sizeable one at that.’

  How does she know about that? ‘It’s a dream of his. He always wanted to open a bistro. Now he has the money I’m sure he will do it. He has some savings, I think.’ Most of which I assume has been siphoned off from me.

  ‘Hm, really,’ says Forrester. She pulls out another sheet of paper, thick, like the photographs from the CCTV footage. I can’t quite make out the details. She ponders it and then looks at me. ‘Will it be a joint venture?’

  ‘No. I didn’t even know about the bank loan. He organised it while I was away. We’d had another fight, and I think we both thought it was over.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that. I have to ask you, does Antonio Molinaro know your sister?’

  ‘No. They have never met.’

  She is silent for a moment, and then asks me, ‘You sure about that?’ She slides a grainy image across the plastic desk. I see Elle’s unmistakable blonde hair tucked neatly behind her ears. Even in greyscale she is stunning. Good bone structure. She is in a bar, clutching a drink. It’s the same bar where we went together in Hawick. Next to her is a man, a face I recognise. At first I think it’s Greg, the mind playing tricks on me. Showing me what I expect to see. But it is Antonio’s face huddled in close to her ear. ‘I got this through just before you arrived.’

  ‘When was this taken?’ I ask.

  ‘The day she went missing,’ says DC Forrester. She almost looks sad for me as she goes on, ‘Antonio, it seems, was the last person to see her before she disappeared.’

  30

  The last thing I ask before I leave the station is whether they are going to arrest Antonio. All DC Forrester says is that there’d be little point in me trying to warn him. It gives me the impression that maybe they are watching him already, or waiting for a vital piece of evidence before they strike. Maybe for me to implicate myself as an accomplice so they can finger us both. Whatever DC Forrester is planning, by the time I leave the police station, the air thick and muggy, all I can think about is how I am returning to a life that doesn’t mean what I thought it did. A life that’s over.

  Let’s start with the facts. Number one: Antonio is a liar. He hasn’t been in Italy. He has been with her. In a bar. And let’s not pretend that he wasn’t huddled in close enough to lick the sweat from her skin. He was nestled into her neck, whispering in her ear. It could have been the briefest of moments. It’s possible that DC Forrester printed off that specific snapshot to make him look bad, like a hot-off-the-press celebrity exposé. Maybe she thought it would introduce doubt, that I would feel betrayed, reveal a damning truth and solve her little mystery by confessing. After all, that’s why she got me there first, right? See if I’d give him up like a woman scorned, fire-angry, willing to ruin herself if she can take her cheating man down with her. That’s the problem with a photograph: it’s so momentary that your mind takes the luxury of filling in the hours before and after until you have got yourself a whole story. And in my story Antonio is a liar. He has been meeting with my sister. He hasn’t been to Italy. He’s going to be taken in for questioning. Antonio is a fucking liar.

  Another fact: my father left me the best part of the family inheritance. The money, save a small fund so that Elle doesn’t starve, and the house. All my mother’s jewellery, which, considering the fancy necklace I spotted on her stiff dead neck, is probably a sizeable collection. All the time I wanted something more from my family, and now I’ve got it. What a haul. Problem is, I don’t want it any more. I wish he hadn’t bothered.

  Because my final fact, the cherry on top, the real kicker of the story, is that I look like a liar. Every
thing that has happened, from me going there in the first place in a reckless attempt to uncover the truth, to my decision to leave right after my father’s death, makes me look like I planned this whole thing. DC Forrester has managed to interpret every action since the moment my mother died as an attempt to secure the family inheritance. Despite the fact that she told me she doesn’t think me responsible, I know that all she is waiting for is the evidence. Like I’m some kind of kingpin, able to manipulate lives and deaths from a distance and really cash in. Ker-ching! I hit the fucking jackpot.

  I sit in my car, look down at the prepaid phone, my only connection left to Elle. I pick it up, dial her number and listen as it begins ringing. DC Forrester is right about one thing. I really should have called her already. The voicemail picks it up and I start to leave a message.

  ‘Elle, hi. It’s me,’ I say, voice sweet, kind, like I am trying to coax a kitten down from a tree. The victim. I can play that role if it makes her show her face. ‘Everybody is really worried about you. The police are searching for you. I’m worried too. I need you to get in touch. I . . .’ I pause a bit while I think of what else to say. When the words don’t come, I hang up.

  I throw the phone back down on to the passenger seat and grab the wheel with both hands, tighten my grip. It has started to rain, and as I pull on to Brixton Road, I can feel the car slipping, the ground slick with late-summer drizzle and dust. The wipers bat left and right, and for the briefest of moments I can barely see a metre ahead of me as the rain buckets down. I pull over into the bus lane and reach for the phone. I punch the keys until I am dialling Elle’s number again, and when I hear the voicemail pick up I leave the message I really wanted to leave the first time.

  ‘Elle, where the fucking hell are you? It looks like I set this whole thing up. Don’t you dare disappear on me now.’ I slam the phone down on the seat and pull back on to the road, feeling better.