My Sister

by Michelle Adams

  ‘They found blood, though. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe she really is hurt.’ She backs away, one hand coming up to her lips. ‘Oh, I should never have said anything.’

  ‘She isn’t hurt, Miss Endicott. She is sick. Mentally unwell,’ I say, tapping my head. ‘Tell me about the old psychiatric place. Fair Fields. Maybe I can prove to the police that she has mental health issues so they understand they are reaching the wrong conclusions about my sister.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Fair Fields is just a shell. Nearly burnt down about fifteen years ago. A few patients died. There is nothing left inside. Not even the records.’ She must catch a look on my face, something that passes before I even realise. Like when I know Antonio is lying before he knows himself. When I know there is more to a story than I am being told. ‘Yes, there was talk about who was responsible. Everybody in the village was aware that Elle had a troubled history, and a few knew where she had spent time as a child. There was a lot of talk about the kind of things that went on in that place. The early eighties in psychiatric care was not a happy time, Irini. Many put Elle’s promiscuous ways down to experiences she may have suffered in the hospital. Of course, I never saw any evidence of that myself.’

  I think back to Elle’s interest in matches, the smell of her burning fingernails. ‘You think she burnt it down?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think. It matters only what you do. Do you love this boyfriend of yours, the one the police have arrested?’

  ‘What does that have to do with my sister?’ I ask, finding a fold in my own clothes that suddenly requires attention.

  ‘I mean is he important to you? Could you live without him?’ When I fail to answer, she makes assumptions. ‘Then forget him. He came up here, Irini. I saw them together. He got himself into this mess, and by all accounts he was none too well behaved.’ She sinks into her headmistress’s chair, folds her hands together, her fingers like a nest of gnarled snakes. I hear the wind picking up outside. ‘Your parents tried to keep Elle away from you for a reason, and I suggest you keep as much distance as possible. Don’t try to save this Antonio if to do so means having to find her.’

  35

  As I approach the house, creeping along the driveway in my car, I see the gates are closed, remnants of yellow police tape attached, flickering in the breeze. When they don’t open automatically, I stop the car, get out. I yank on the latch and push both gates open until they sit against a backdrop of conifer trees. I wait for somebody to stop me, but nobody does.

  I turn back to the car, and that’s when I remember. I don’t know if it’s the line of oak trees swaying at my side, or the muddy track bisected up the middle by a stretch of grass. It could be the sound of the gravel as it crunches underfoot where the driveway begins, or the soft chug of the engine as it ticks over. It is likely all of these things that transport me back to that moment when my mother placed me in Aunt Jemima’s car. This is where the exchange happened, right on my own doorstep. I can almost picture the car ahead. I look at the house and wonder if my mother said it had to be done here, how I would be calm close to home.

  I get back in the car and drive in, park outside the garages like Elle always did. I knock on the door to the apartment above, hoping that Frank or Joyce have been taped in like objects from a crime scene. Nobody answers. I slip around the side of the house, towards the kitchen. I find the door taped but unlocked. I push it open, duck inside. I am in.

  The only sound is the tick-tock of the old grandfather clock in the hallway. I listen for the sounds of my memory, my mother’s words of encouragement as I pull myself along on the kitchen floor. Nothing comes to mind, as if the whole place has died, memories included. I glance towards the stairs that lead to my bedroom, but I do not take them; instead I head into the house, towards the main corridor.

  I poke my head into the sitting room where the coffin once sat and see that everything appears just as it was: the settee pushed aside, the floral pillows scattered in clusters of three, freshly plumped ready for use. The pictures all remain in place, the heavy curtains half drawn, the pelmets hanging above, limp as droopy eyelids. I step backwards, head towards the study. The police have been here. Little Post-it notes adorn the telephone and bookshelves, and traces of fingerprint dust still coat the door handles. I look down, find I have a smear of it on my hand. On the far wall there is a picture frame that hangs like a door, revealing a safe behind it. Empty, the contents in Antonio’s car, I realise. I brush my hand against my leg, leave the study behind.

  I head up the stairs. On the banister there is a smudge of blood, a sticky yellow note positioned just to the side. I push on, arriving at my father’s bedroom. I consider going in, rooting through his things. Maybe I can find something of my mother’s, a dress that smells like her, a favourite piece of costume jewellery that wasn’t deemed fit for the safe. Maybe I’ll find a bundle of letters all for me, written over the years, that she never had the courage to send. But right now I’m not sure I’d have the courage to read them either, so I close the door behind me and continue along the corridor.

  I open two more rooms, both of which look undisturbed, before I arrive at the final door. I push it open, see the bed, a double, sheets all wrinkled and pulled. I see the splatters of blood, just a few tiny drops. They are not from a struggle or a fight. These are consensual wounds, the type a woman accepts with a smile. The type that come from the pain we say we like because we think it makes us more attractive to the man we are with. There are handcuffs hanging from the frame of the bed, traces of blood on the edge from where they have cut into skin. Red smears on the pillow, too.

  The room doesn’t fit the house, like French lingerie on a woman too idle to pretty herself up. Above the bed there is an image of Elle, a blown-up portrait, black and white, her face cast in complimentary shadows. She is tipping her head back, her naked arms gripped seductively around her chest. Reminds me of Madonna in the eighties. The room, too, that faux-glam eighties plastic, lots of pastel peach and cushions, strip lighting around mirrors. Like a time warp. Not how I imagined it.

  There is a CD player on a small cabinet just inside the door, and next to it a selection of CDs. I pick a few up and shuffle through them. Puccini’s Madam Butterfly. My mother’s favourite. I open the case but find it empty, so I turn the CD player on and press play. Soon enough, just as I expected, the room is filled with the anguished refrain of a female soprano. I listen, remembering the story: a mother who has to say goodbye to her child, a wish that he might remember her face. I think of the times my mother must have listened to this. Was she thinking of me, praying that I might remember her? What did Elle mean when she said that it was our mother’s favourite even before? Before what? Before we said goodbye?

  I leave the music on low, dodge the blood to sit on the edge of the bed. I lean backwards, rest my head back, my eyes to the ceiling. I smell him as if he is here. The scent of ginger mixed with cardamom, the spicy neckline that I have nuzzled into so many times. I know he was here, rubbing himself all over her and the sheets, leaving his scent. I reach up, flick on the lamp. The same black dust covers the bedside table, fingerprints picked up on the glass and the receiver of the beige plastic phone. Is this the telephone she used to speak to him, to entice him to visit? Is this where she called me from on so many occasions? There is a dish next to it overflowing with the little black twigs of fully burnt-out matches. I finger a handcuff hanging from the bed and look up at the portrait.

  ‘Where are you?’ I ask.

  I pull open her bedside table, looking for anything that might help me. Inside I find a few magazines, one of which is unsurprisingly called Elle. Main story? How to start over, and then a subheading: Everything you need to make a clean break. There is a selection of body creams, at least five hand creams, and a bottle of eye drops. A couple of bracelets. A box of matches nestled under an upturned jewellery box. Further back, a vibrator and a tube of lube.

  There are a couple of framed pictures, both of Elle. In on
e of them, from childhood, she is staring at the camera. No smile. I pull it out, try to prop it up, but the leg of the stand falls off. I pick up the frame and find the whole back casing is hanging loose. I pull at the edge and it comes away, revealing three more photographs inside. Polaroid pictures. It is her, naked, here in this bedroom. In one she is smiling at the camera. In another she is on all fours, a close-up taken from behind with the tip of a finger in the frame. In the third she is strapped into the handcuffs, her body writhing about while whoever is behind the lens looks on. I drop them back into the drawer, kind of sad, kind of embarrassed. She would do anything for anybody, just to be wanted. We are not so very different. But then I wonder if it was Antonio who took these pictures, and if it was, perhaps it would prove to the police that she was a willing participant. I look at the tip of the finger caught in the frame. Antonio’s? Maybe. I snatch them back up and stuff them in my jeans pocket.

  As I stand back up, I notice something on the floor. It is almost hidden by the bedside table, only a corner poking out. I crouch down, nibble at it with my fingertips, use my shoulder to push the bedside table back and free the card underneath. Anything hidden has the potential to be useful.

  When I wriggle it out from underneath the furniture, I realise that I recognise the blue lettering and the name. ‘Gregory Waterson, Investment Banker,’ I say aloud, remembering that I have Matt’s card. I slide it out from my jacket pocket, the edges dog-eared and dirty. I stand up and silence the music just as it is reaching its devastating climax. Without thinking, I take out my phone and dial the number.

  ‘Hello, Matthew Guthrie.’ He answers after only two rings. He sounds distracted, and noise fills the background.

  ‘Matt, it’s me, Irini.’ He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and I suddenly feel stupid for calling. Like maybe I missed the part where he was only being nice by giving me his card, and there was an unwritten rule that I wasn’t supposed to call. ‘We met a couple of weeks ago with my sister, Elle.’ The background noise quietens and I hear the click of a door.

  ‘Irini, I remember who you are. I just didn’t expect you to call. But I’m glad you did.’

  ‘Matt, there is a problem with my sister.’

  ‘Aye, I know.’ I hear the creak of a chair and the whistle of wheels as he sits down in it. ‘I saw it on the local news, and the police came to my house yesterday to speak to me.’

  ‘What did they want to know?’

  ‘About the night we spent together. About Elle drugging you.’ He lets out a heavy breath. ‘I thought they were going to arrest me on suspicion of rape. I think they thought I might have been in on it.’

  I fiddle the card over my fingers, tap it against the cupboard. ‘Have the police spoken to Greg?’

  ‘Aye. He’s devastated. He’s been trying to help, but he was away for the weekend with his fiancée. He hasn’t seen Elle since the hotel. Where are you? Are you calling from London?’

  ‘No. I’m calling from the family house. I drove up here.’ I should tell him about Antonio and his arrest, but although it is right there on the tip of my lying tongue, I can’t. ‘I just wanted to be close in case there were any developments.’

  ‘There are a lot of rumours going around, Irini. About your sister, about Greg. About your parents. Your father and Elle’s inheritance.’ I wish I could tell him everything I know, but I’m back to feeling like the liar, the one who is trying to keep two lives separate. ‘That’s the thing with small villages,’ he continues. ‘People talk.’ He pauses for a second, and when I don’t interrupt he says, ‘I’m so sorry for what your father did, Irini. It looks like you were best off out of it all.’

  ‘Maybe. It seems I was given away because of Elle’s mental state. You were right when you said that something happened to make them do it. It was Elle that happened. She came home from a mental hospital and I was the victim. As were my parents.’ I am surprised to think of them this way. Perhaps I could already accept the idea of my mother being a victim, the good wife going along with her husband’s plan. But perhaps my father was also trapped by his decision. By Elle. His hand forced to do something that not even he thought was right. I try to imagine how it must have felt to be them, to have a disabled daughter they loved, and another in psychiatric care. Knowing that when one came home, the other couldn’t be cared for. It was nothing to do with depression like Aunt Jemima said. I try to put myself in my mother’s shoes, easier than my father’s, and I can’t even do that. It is too big for the scope of my emotional maturity. ‘But whatever happened back then, it doesn’t matter. Right now, I have to find Elle.’

  ‘How are you planning to do that? As far as I understand it, there’s no trace of her anywhere.’ For the first time I wonder if I really have a plan, and I’m not sure that I do. So I focus on one thought: prove that Antonio isn’t to blame.

  ‘Didn’t you grow up nearby?’ I ask.

  ‘Hm,’ he says, sounding surprised. ‘You remember that? Aye, I did. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Do you know a place called Fair Fields? It was an old hospital.’

  He pauses for a moment, takes his time to think. ‘Everybody who grew up nearby knows it. Big old place not too far from Horton. You can see it from the village. It’s not a hospital any more. Part of it burned down in the early nineties and it was later closed.’

  ‘Only part of it?’ I look at the pile of burnt matches on the bedside locker, and then up to Elle’s smoky portrait. If only part of Fair Fields was damaged there might still be something useful to be found there. ‘Do you know if they moved the old records before it closed down? You see, the police believe that Elle has no history of mental health treatment. But they can’t find the records because it was all private care. If I can prove them wrong about that, then maybe they’ll see that they could be wrong about other things too. They are holding a man. They think he hurt her.’

  ‘Antonio? Your boyfriend?’

  I’m speechless for a moment, and swallow hard before I can carry on. ‘How do you know about him?’

  ‘Elle told me.’ I hear a knock in the background of the call, and the squeak of the chair as Matt stands. I listen as he tells whoever has arrived that he can’t speak right now, that he is taking an important call with a very important client. I get lost in thoughts of how easily I paved Elle’s way back into my life. If she had realised that all it took was a death, I’m sure she would have bumped our mother off years ago. ‘Sorry about that,’ he says, returning to the phone. ‘Elle told me about him.’

  I sigh. ‘Yes, she spoke to him on the phone while I was here. I guess I’m not surprised she told you after what happened between us.’

  ‘No, Irini. I mean she told me before you even came here. That her sister had a boyfriend called Antonio. That he was an Italian and that you lived together. I just assumed that you didn’t want me to know about him. I took it as a good sign.’

  He tries a light giggle to lighten the mood, but I cut him off. ‘Before I came here? But she didn’t know anything about Antonio before I came here.’

  ‘Well, she told me about him. Weeks, maybe even a month before. She told me that you were a doctor, that he was a chef who was opening his own restaurant, that you lived in London and that soon enough you’d be visiting.’

  ‘What? But that doesn’t make any sense. You told me—’ I begin, but I am distracted when I hear the latch of a door. I stand bolt upright. ‘Hang on. Did you just open a door?’ I whisper.

  ‘No, I’m sitting at my desk. Why?’

  I hear it again, a door hitting something, then another sound. Something smashes.

  ‘Rini, I heard that. What was that sound?’

  ‘Somebody’s here!’

  I creep down the stairs, past the faces of my ancestors, anxious to turn the dog-leg corner. My body is shaking, breaths firing in and out like a jackhammer. Matt is talking, but the phone is down at my side and his words are nothing more than a distant mumble. I feel the chill of the wind and hear the rustle o
f the conifer trees before I even see the open door. The grandfather clock ticks the seconds away. Then, as I approach the hallway, I see the police tape fluttering, the same way that Elle once fluttered her fingers over my leg like a butterfly flapping its wings.

  One of the Chinese urns is lying in pieces, particles of dust swirling in the air above it. The door is swinging on its hinges, knocking against the obelisk. I hear my name being called from the phone. I bring it up to my ear in a daze.

  ‘Irini, are you all right?’

  ‘Somebody was in the house.’ I run down the last steps, my hand brushing past the smudge of dried blood, sending the sticky note floating to the floor. By the time I make it to the door, there is nobody to be seen.

  ‘Get out of there. Don’t stay,’ Matt says.

  I reach into my pocket to pull out my keys and hobble out to the garages, my hip more painful than ever, the scars throbbing hot in my jeans. I jump inside my car, toss the phone to the passenger seat and stick the key in the ignition, then spin away, a cloud of gravel dust kicking up behind me. I swing out of the gate and take one last look in the mirror. When I see Elle standing in the dust storm, her hair slapping against her face, eyes dark and skin dirty, I slam on my brakes, skidding along the dirt track. I reach behind the passenger seat and swing myself around, looking left and right, but sure as I was that I saw her only a moment ago, now she is nowhere to be seen. I slump back into my seat, hit the central locking and floor the pedal.

  With the pictures that I am certain Antonio took in my back pocket, I drive away from the house and head for the hill that climbs out of the village. I can see the old hospital in the distance, the white boards glistening in the sunlight, mist rising from the ground like steam.