Sister: A Novel Part 27

'He was still a baby and he was crying,' said Mum. 'I kissed his face and his tears tasted salty. I told the GP, just a by-the-by comment, not thinking anything of it. Salty tears are a symptom of cystic fibrosis.'

Remember how even when we were children she hardly ever kissed us when we cried? But I remember a time when she did; before she tasted the salt in Leo's tears.

We were silent for a few moments and my eyes went from Leo's established grave back to your raw one, and I saw how the contrast visualised my state of mourning for each of you.

'I've decided on a headstone,' Mum said. 'I want an angel, one of those big stone ones with the enveloping wings.'

'I think she'd like an angel.'

'She'd find it ludicrously funny.'

We both half-smile, imagining your reaction to a stone angel.

'But I think Xavier would like it,' Mum said. 'I mean for a baby an angel's lovely, isn't it? Not too sentimental.'

'Not at all.'

She'd got sentimental, though, bringing a teddy each week, and replacing it when it gets wet and dirty. She was a little apologetic about it, but not very. The old Mum would have been horrified by the poor taste.

I remembered again our conversation when I told you that you must tell Mum you were pregnant including the ending that I had forgotten, deliberately, I think.

'Do you still have knickers with days of the week embroidered on them?' you asked.

'You're changing the subject. And I was given those when I was nine.'

'Did you really wear them on the right day?'

'She's going to be so hurt, if you don't tell her.'

Your voice became uncharacteristically serious. 'She'll say things she'll regret. And she'll never be able to un-say them.'

You were being kind. You were putting love before truth. But I hadn't seen that before, thinking you were just making up an excuse - 'Avoiding the issue.'

'I'll tell her when he's born, Bee. When she'll love him.'

You always knew she would.

Mum started to plant a Madame Carriere rose in a ceramic pot next to your grave. 'It's just temporary, till the angel arrives. It looks too bare without anything.' I filled a watering can so we could water it in and remembered you as a small child trundling after Mum with your mini-sized gardening tools, your fingers clutched around seeds that you'd collected from other plants, aquilegias I think, but I never really took much notice.

'She used to love gardening, didn't she?' I asked.

'From the time she was tiny,' said Mum. 'It wasn't till I was in my thirties that I started liking it.'

'So what started you off?'

I was just making conversation, a safe conversation, that I hoped Mum would find soothing. She's always liked talking about plants.

'When I planted something it became more and more beautiful, which at thirty-six was the opposite of what was happening to me,' Mum said, testing the soil around the rose with her bare fingers. I saw her nails were filled with earth. 'I shouldn't have minded losing my looks,' she continued. 'But I did then, before Leo died. I think I missed being treated with kindness, with leeway, because I was a pretty girl. The man who came to do our rewiring, a taxi driver once - were unnecessarily unpleasant; men who would normally have done a little extra job for free were aggressive, as if they could tell I had once been pretty, beautiful even, and they didn't want to know that prettiness fades and ages. It was as if they blamed me for it.'

I was a little taken aback by her, but only a little. Shooting from the hip as a style of conversation was getting almost familiar now. Mum wiped her face with her grimy fingers leaving a streak of dirt across her cheek. 'And then there was Tess growing up, so pretty, and unaware of how generous people were to her because of it.'

'She never played on it though.'

'She didn't need to. The world held its door open for her and she walked through smiling, thinking it would always be that way.'

'Were you jealous?'

Mum hesitated a moment, then shook her head. 'It wasn't jealousy, but looking at her made me see what I had become.' She breaks off. 'I'm a little drunk. I allow myself to get a little plastered actually, on Leo's birthday. The anniversary of his death, too. And now there'll be Tess and Xavier's anniversaries, won't there? I'll become a drunkard if I don't watch out.'

I held her hand tightly in mine.

'Tess always came down to be with me on his birthday,' she said.

When we said goodbye at the station, I suggested an outing together on the following Sunday, to the nursery at Petersham Meadows, that you used to love but couldn't afford. We agreed we'd choose a new plant that you'd like for your garden.

I got the train back to London. You'd never told me that you visited Mum on Leo's birthday. Presumably to spare me the guilt. I wondered how many other times you visited her, until the b.u.mp started to show. I already knew from the phone bill that I'd been cruelly neglectful of you, and I realised it applied to Mum too. It was you who was the caring daughter, not me, as I'd always self-righteously a.s.sumed.

I ran away, didn't I? My job in New York wasn't a 'career opportunity'; it was an opportunity to leave Mum and responsibility behind as I pursued an uncluttered life in another continent. No different to Dad. But you didn't leave. You may have needed me to remind you when birthdays were coming up, but you didn't run away.

I wondered why Dr Wong didn't show me my flaws. Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person that they really are. But that's unfair on her. I didn't ask the right questions about myself; I didn't question myself at all.

My phone ringing jolted me out of my self-a.n.a.lysis. It was Christina. She made small talk for a while, which I suspected was because she was putting off the reason for her phone call, and then came to the point.

'I don't think Xavier's death and this other baby's death can be linked, Hemms.'

'But they must be. Both Tess and Hattie were on the same trial at the same hospital-'

'Yes, but medically there isn't a connection. You can't get something that causes a heart condition serious enough to kill one baby, and kidney problems - most likely total renal failure - which kills another baby.'

I interrupted, feeling panicky. 'In genetics, one gene can code for completely different things, can't it? So maybe-'

Again she interrupted, or maybe it was the bad connection in the train. 'I checked with my professor, just in case I was missing something. I didn't tell him what this was about, just gave him a hypothetical scenario. And he said there's no way two such disparate and fatal conditions could have the same cause.'

I knew that she was dumbing down the scientific language so that I would understand it. And I knew in its more complex version, it would be exactly the same. The trial at St Anne's couldn't be responsible for both babies' deaths.

'But it's strange, isn't it, that two babies have died at St Anne's?' I asked.

'There's a perinatal mortality rate in every hospital and St Anne's delivers five thousand babies a year, so it's sad but unfortunately a blip that wouldn't be seen as remarkable.'

I tried to question her further, find some flaw, but she was silent. I felt jolted by the train, my physical discomfort mirroring my emotional state, and the discomfort also made me worry about Kasia. I'd been planning a trip for her, but that might be irresponsible, so I checked with Christina. Clearly glad to be able to help, she gave me an unnecessarily detailed reply.

I finish telling Mr Wright about my phone call with Christina. 'I thought that someone must have lied to the women about what their babies really died from. Neither baby had had a post-mortem.'

'You never thought you might be wrong?'

'No.'

He looks at me with admiration I think, but I should be truthful.

'I didn't have the energy to think I might be wrong,' I continue. 'I just couldn't face going back to the beginning and starting again.'

'So what did you do?' he asks and I feel tired as he asks the question, tired and daunted as I did then.

'I went back to see Hattie. I didn't think she'd have anything to say that would help, but I had to try something.'

I was grasping at straws, and I knew that, but I had to keep grasping. The only thing that might help was the ident.i.ty of the father of Hattie's baby, but I didn't hold out much hope.

When I rang on Hattie's doorbell a pretty woman in her thirties, who I guessed to be Georgina, answered the door, holding a child's book in one hand, lipstick in the other.

'You must be Beatrice, come in. I'm a little behind, promised Hattie I'd be out of here by eight at the latest.'

Hattie came into the hallway behind her. Georgina turned to her. 'Would you mind reading the children the cow story? I'll get Beatrice a drink.'

Hattie left us to go upstairs. I sensed that this had been engineered by Georgina, though she seemed genuinely friendly. 'Percy and the Cow is the shortest, start to finish in six minutes, including engine noises and animal sounds, so she should be down soon.' She opened a bottle of wine and handed me a gla.s.s. 'Don't upset her, will you? She's been through so much. Has hardly eaten since it happened. Try and . . . be kind to her.'

I nodded, liking her for her concern. A car hooted outside and Georgina called up the stairs before she left. 'There's an open Pinot Grigio, Hatts, so dig in.' Hattie called down her thanks. They seemed more like flatmates than a boss and a nanny both in their thirties.

Hattie came down from settling the children and we went into the sitting room. She sat on the sofa, tucking her legs under her, gla.s.s of wine in her hand, treating the place as home, rather than as a 'live-in' domestic helper.

'Georgina seems very nice . . . ?' I asked.

'Yes, she is. When I told her about the baby she offered to pay my airfare home and to give me two months' wages on top. They can't afford that, they both work full time and they can only just about manage my wages as it is.'

So Georgina wasn't the stereotypical Filipino-nanny employer, just as Hattie didn't live in the broom cupboard. I ran through my, by now, standard questions. Did she know if you were afraid of anyone? Did she know anyone who may have given you drugs? Any reason why you may have been killed (bracing myself for the look that I usually got at this point)? Hattie could give me no answers. Like your other friends she hadn't seen you after you'd had Xavier. I was now sc.r.a.ping the bottom of my barrel of questions, not really thinking that I'd get very far.

'Why didn't you tell anyone the name of your baby's father?'

She hesitated and I thought she looked ashamed.

'Who is he, Hattie?'

'My husband.'

She was silent, letting me have a stab at working it out. 'You took the job pregnant?'

'I thought no one would employ me if they knew. When it became clear I pretended that the baby was due later than it was. I'd rather Georgina thought I had loose s.e.xual morals than that I lied to her.' I must have looked bemused. 'She trusted me to be her friend.'

For a moment I felt excluded from threads of friends.h.i.+ps that bind women together and which I've never felt I needed, because I'd always had you.

'Did you tell Tess about your baby?' I asked.

'Yes. Hers wasn't due for another few weeks. She cried when I told her, on my behalf, and I was angry with her. She gave me emotions I didn't have.'

Did you realise that she was angry with you? She was the only person I'd spoken to who'd had any criticism of you; who you had misunderstood.

'The truth is, I was relieved,' she said. Her tone was one of challenge, daring me to be shocked.

'I understand that,' I replied. 'You have other children at home that you need to look after. A baby would mean losing your job, however understanding your employers are, and you wouldn't be able to send money home to them.' I looked at her and saw I was still off-track. 'Or couldn't you bear to leave another child behind while you came to the UK to work?' She met my eye, a tacit confirmation.

Why could I understand Hattie when you could not? Because I understand shame, and you've never experienced it. Hattie stood up. 'Is there anything else you'd like to know?' She wanted me gone.

'Yes, do you know who gave you the injection? The one with the gene?'

'No.'

'What about the doctor who delivered your baby?'

'It was a caesarean.'

'But surely you still saw him or her?'

'No. He wore a mask. When I had the injection. When I had the operation. All the time in a mask. In the Philippines there's nothing like that. No one's bothered that much about hygiene, but over here . . .'

As she spoke I saw those four nightmarish canva.s.ses you painted, the woman screaming and the masked figure over her. They weren't a record of a drug-induced hallucination but what actually happened to you.

'Do you have your hospital notes, Hattie?'

'No.'

'They got lost?'

She seemed surprised that I would know.

I drain my cup of coffee and don't know if it's the caffeine hit or the memory of those paintings that makes a shudder run through me, spilling some of the coffee on the table. Mr Wright looks at me, with concern. 'Shall we end it there?' he asks.

'Yes, if that's OK.'

We go out into reception together. Mr Wright sees the bunch of daffodils on his secretary's desk and stops. I see her tensing. He turns to me, eyes reddening.

'I really like what Tess told you about the gene for yellow in a daffodil saving children's sight.'

'Me too.'

Detective Sergeant Finborough is waiting for me in Carluccio's near the CPS building. He phoned me yesterday and asked if we could meet. I'm not sure if it's allowed but I agreed. I know he won't be here for his own sake, no pleas to buff up the truth of what happened so he reflects better in it.

I go up to him and we hesitate a moment, as if we may kiss on the cheek as friends rather than as - what? What are we to one another? He was the person who told me it was you they'd found; you in the toilets building. He was the man who'd taken my hand and looked me in the eye and destroyed who I was up until that moment. Our relations.h.i.+p isn't c.o.c.ktail-style pecking on the cheek but nor is it simply that of policeman to relative of a victim. I take his hand and hold it as he once held mine; this time it's my hand that's the warmer.

'I wanted to say sorry, Beatrice.'

I am about to reply when a waitress pushes between us, tray held aloft, a pencil stuck businesslike into her ponytail. I think that we should be somewhere like a church - a quiet, serious place - where the big things are talked about in whispers not shouted above the clatter of crockery and chit-chat.

We sit down at a table and I think we both find it awkwardly intimate. I break the silence. 'How is WPC Vernon?'

'She's been promoted,' he replies. 'She's working for the domestic violence unit now.'

'Good for her.'

He smiles at me and, ice broken now, he takes the plunge into a deeper conversation. 'You were right all along. I should have listened to you and believed you.'