Sister: A Novel Part 33

'If you were still alive?'

'I wasn't sure how many pills I'd swallowed, or how much sedative had dissolved in my saliva, if it was enough to kill me.'

I try to just focus on Mr Wright's hand holding mine.

'He left. Minutes later, my pager went off. He'd turned off my phone but he didn't know about the pager. I tried to persuade myself that Kasia was paging me for something trivial. After all, her baby wasn't due for another three weeks.'

Yes, like you.

Mr Wright strokes my fingers, and the gentleness of it makes me want to cry.

'And then?' he asks.

'He'd taken the torch with him. I'd never been in such total darkness.'

I was alone in the black. Pitch black. Pitch that is made from tar.

The blackness smelled rotten, putrid with fear. It smothered my face going into my mouth and nose, and I was drowning and I thought of you on holiday in Skye, coming out of the sea, spluttering and pink-cheeked - 'I'm OK! Just seawater going up the wrong way!' - and I took a breath. The blackness choked my lungs.

I saw the darkness move - a monstrous, living thing, filling the building and out into the night beyond, no skin of sky to contain it. I felt it dragging me with it into a void of infinite fear - away from light, life, love, hope.

I thought of Mum in her rustling silk dressing gown, smelling of face cream, coming towards our beds, but the memory of her was padlocked into childhood and couldn't lighten the darkness.

I wait for Mr Wright to prompt me further. But there is no further to go. We have finally arrived at the end.

It's finished now.

I try to move my hands but they are bound tightly together with a tie. The fingers of my right hand are tightly clasped around my left. I wonder if it's because I am right-handed that my right hand has taken the role of comforter.

I am alone in the pitch black, lying on a concrete floor.

My mouth is as dry as parchment. The harsh cold concrete has seeped into my body numbing me through to the bone.

I begin a letter to you, my beloved younger sister. I pretend it's Sunday evening, my most safe time, and that I'm surrounded by press all wanting to tell our story.

Dearest Tess, I'd do anything to be with you, right now, right this moment, so I could hold your hand, look at your face, listen to your voice. How can touching and seeing and hearing - all those sensory receptors and optic nerves and vibrating eardrums - be subst.i.tuted by a letter? But we've managed to use words as go-betweens before, haven't we?

I think back to boarding school and the first letter you ever sent me, the one with invisible ink and that ever since kindness has smelled of lemons.

And as I think of you and talk to you I can breathe again.

23.

Hours must have pa.s.sed so he will surely be back soon. I don't know how much sedative I swallowed, but all through this night I have felt a torpor of exhaustion sucking the warmth from my body and the clarity from my brain. I think I have slipped in and out of consciousness, in total darkness how could I tell? But if so, in my unnatural forced sleep I was still talking to you and maybe that was when my imaginings became peculiarly vivid.

Now I feel wide awake, all senses tense, buzzing and jittery; it must be adrenaline - a fight or flight hormone that's powerful enough to restart a heart after a cardiac arrest; so powerful enough to startle me into consciousness.

I try to move, but my body is still too doped and numb and the bindings too tight. The darkness feels almost solid now - not velvety like storybooks, not smooth and soft, but with spikes of fear and if you prodded it you'd find hard jagged evil crouching behind it. I can hear something inches away from my face as I lie on the concrete, a mouse? An insect? I have lost sense of auditory perspective. My cheek feels sore, it must be pressed into a little unevenness in the concrete.

What if it isn't adrenaline that's keeping me awake, but I am properly conscious now? Perhaps I swallowed less sedative than I feared - or have somehow come through the other side of the overdose and survived it.

But it makes no difference. Even if my body isn't fatally drugged, I am tied up and gagged and William will be back. And then he'll discover that I'm alive. And he'll use the knife.

So, before he returns I need to make things clear to you. Everything happened as I told you, beginning with Mum's phone call telling me you'd gone missing, to the moment William left me here to die. But my ending will be the same as yours, here in this building, untold. I didn't have the courage to face that, or maybe I just love life too much to let it go so quietly. I couldn't fantasise a happy ever after but I did imagine an ending that was just. And I made it as real as I could, my safe fantasy future, all details in place.

I worry that you've been waiting for DS Finborough to save me, but I think you felt a judder in the story when I told you about our lunch in Carluccio's. It was only a comforting rug of a daydream to lie on instead of cold concrete, and it wasn't admirable or courageous of me, but I know you understand.

And I think you'd already guessed, a little while ago, that there was no Mr Wright. I invented a lawyer not only so I could play my part in a just ending - a trial and guilty verdict - but because he would make me keep to verifiable facts and a strict chronology. I needed someone who would help me understand what happened and why - and who would stop me going mad. I'm not sure why being sane as I die is so important to me, just that it is, overwhelmingly. I do know that without him, my letter to you would have been a stream-of-consciousness scream, raging despair, and I would have drowned in it.

I made him kind and endlessly patient as I told him our story; and bereaved so he would understand. Maybe I'm more Catholic than I realised and also made him my confessor but one who, even when he knew everything about me, may in some fantasy future have loved me. And during the long hours he became more real to me than the darkness around me; more than just a figment of a desperate imagination; acquiring his own personality and whims which I had to go along with; because he didn't always do my bidding or serve the purpose I asked of him. Instead of helping me paint a pointillist painting of what happened, I made a mirror and saw myself properly for the first time.

And around him I put a secretary with a crush and painted fingernails and daffodils and a coffee machine and inconsequential details which braided together made a rope of normality - because as I fell over the precipice of terror and my body became incontinent and retched and shook with fear, I needed to grab hold of something.

And I made his office overly bright, the electric light permanently on, and it was always warm.

My pager sounds. I try to shut my ears to it, but with my hands tied behind my back it's impossible. It has sounded all through the night, every twenty minutes or so I think, although I can't be certain how long I was fully conscious. I find it unbearable that I can't help her.

I hear the sound of trees outside, leaves rustling, boughs creaking; I never knew trees made so much noise. But no footsteps, yet.

Why isn't he back? It must be because Kasia is having her baby and he's been with her all this time, and is still with her now. But I will end up mad if I think this so instead I try to persuade myself that there could be any number of reasons why William was called to the hospital. He's a doctor; he gets bleeped all the time. His hospital delivers five thousand babies a year. It's for someone else that he's been called away.

And maybe DS Finborough investigated that 'query' he had about your death, as he said he would, and has arrested William and even now is on his way to find me. It isn't just wishful thinking; he is a diligent policeman and a decent man.

Or perhaps Professor Rosen has decided to do the right thing in the present and risked his mark on the future. Maybe he chanced his CF trial and academic glory and went to the police. He does want to do something for good, to cure, and his ambitions - fame, glory, even money - are so human against William's hubristic l.u.s.t for unadulterated power. And he did come to your funeral and he did try to find out what was happening even if, initially, he did nothing with his findings. So I choose to believe that Professor Rosen is, at his core, a good man as much as he is a vainglorious one. I choose to think the best of him.

So maybe one of these two men have set in motion the wheels that have led to William's arrest and my rescue. And if I strain hard enough can I hear a siren on the very edge of the night's stillness?

I hear the trees' leafy whispers and timber groans, and know that there are no sirens for me.

But I will allow myself a final daydream and hope. That Kasia isn't in labour after all. Instead, she returned home as usual for her English lesson, pages of optimistic vocabulary learned and ready to tell me. William doesn't know that she's living with me now; nor that after you died, my conversion to being thoughtful was done absolutely properly. So when I wasn't there and she couldn't reach me on my mobile or pager she knew something was very wrong. My castle in the sky looks selfish, but I have to tell her that her baby needs help to breathe. So I imagine that she went to the police and demanded that they search for me. She stood up for me once before, even though she knew she'd be hit for it, so she'd square up to DI Haines.

My pager goes again and my fantasy splinters into razor-edged shards.

I can hear birds. For a moment I think it must be the dawn chorus and morning already. But it's still dark so the birds must have got it wrong. Or more probably I'm imagining them, some drug-induced kind of bird tinnitus. I remember the sequence Amias told me: blackbirds-robins- wrens-tawny owls-chaffinches-warblers then song thrushes. I remember you telling me about urban birds losing their ability to sing to each other and linking that to me and Todd, and I hope that I put that in my letter to you. Did I tell you I researched more about birdsong? I found out that when a bird sings it doesn't matter if it's dark or there's thick vegetation because birdsong can penetrate through or around objects and even over great distances can always be heard.

I know I can never fly like you, Tess. The first time I tried it, or thought I was, I have ended up here, tied up, lying on a concrete floor. So if that was flying, I crash-landed pretty spectacularly. But, astonis.h.i.+ngly, I'm not broken. I'm not destroyed. Terrified witless, shaking, retching with fear, yes. But no longer insecure. Because during my search for how you died I somehow found myself to be a different person. And if by a miracle I was freed and my fantasy played out, with William arrested and Kasia and her baby on a coach to Poland with me next to them, then that mountain I've been clinging on to would tilt right over until it was lying flat on the ground and I wouldn't need footholds and safety ropes because I'd be walking, running, dancing even. Living my life. And it wouldn't be my grief for you that toppled the mountain, but love.

I think I can hear my name being called, high and light, a girl's voice. I must be imagining it, an auditory hallucination born of thinking about you.

Did you know that there's a dawn chorus far out in s.p.a.ce? It's made by high-energy electrons getting caught in the Earth's radiation belts then falling to Earth as radio waves that sound like birds singing. Do you think that is what seventeenth-century poets heard and called the music of the spheres? Can you hear it now where you are?

I can hear my name again, on the periphery of the birdsong, barely audibly legible.

I think the darkness is turning to dark grey.

The birds are still singing, more clearly now.

I hear men's voices, a group of them, shouting out my name. I think they must be imagined too. But if they aren't, then I must call back to them. But the gag is still tight around my mouth, and even if it wasn't my mouth is incapable of making a sound. To start with I tried to spit out any saliva, fearful that sedative would have dissolved in it, but then my mouth became salt dry and in my imagination Mr Wright's secretary brought me endless cups of water.

'Beata!'

Her voice is clear amongst the men's as she screams out my name. Kasia. Unmistakable and real. She isn't having her baby. William isn't with her. I want to laugh out loud with relief. Unable to laugh through the gag I feel tears, warm on my cold cheeks.

William must have been right when he said the police think me capable of suicide and so would have taken Kasia reporting me missing seriously. Maybe, as he also predicted, they guessed that this would be the place I'd choose. Or was it just the two words 'odcisk palca' that I texted to Kasia, which brought them all here?

I can just make out a stain on the concrete. It really is getting lighter. It must be dawn.

'Beata!' Her voice is much closer now.

The pager sounds again. I don't need to call back, because I realise it's become a homing beacon and they'll follow the sound to me. So Kasia has been paging me all through the night, not because she needed me with her while she had her baby, but because she's been worried about me. It is the final fragment of the mirror. Because all this time it's really been her looking after me, hasn't it? She came to the flat that night because she needed shelter, but she stayed because I was grieving and lonely and needy. It was her arms, with red welts on them, that comforted me that night - the first night I'd slept properly since you'd died. And when she made me dance when I didn't want to and smile when I didn't want to, she was forcing me to feel, for a little while, something other than grief and rage.

And the same is true of you. The smell of lemons alone should have been enough to remind me that you look after me too. I held your hand at Leo's funeral, but you held mine tightly back. And it's you who's got me through the night, Tess, thinking about you and talking to you; you who helped me to breathe.

I can hear a siren, wailing in the distance and getting closer. You're right, it is the sound of a civilised society taking care of its citizens.

As I wait to be rescued I know that I am bereaved but not diminished by your death. Because you are my sister in every fibre of my being. And that fibre is visible - two strands of DNA twisted in a double helix in every cell of my body - proving, visibly, that we are sisters. But there are other strands that link us, that wouldn't be seen by even the strongest of electron microscopes. I think of how we are connected by Leo dying and Dad leaving and lost homework five minutes after we should have left for school; by holidays to Skye and Christmas rituals (ten past five you're allowed to open one present at the top of your stocking, ten to five you're allowed to feel but before that only looking and before midnight not even peeking). We are conjoined by hundreds of thousands of memories that silt down into you and stop being memories and become a part of what you are. And inside me is the girl with caramel hair flying along on a bicycle, burying her rabbit, painting canva.s.ses with explosions of colour and loving her friends and phoning me at awkward times and teasing me and fulfilling completely the sacrament of the present moment and showing me the joy in life and because you are my sister all those things are part of me too and I would do anything for it to be two months ago and for it to be me out there shouting your name, Tess.

It must have been so much colder for you. Did the snow m.u.f.fle the sound of the trees? Was it freezing and silent? Did my coat help keep you warm? I hope that as you died you felt me loving you.

There are footsteps outside and the door is opening.

It's taken hours of dark terror and countless thousand words, but in the end it reduces down to so little.

I'm sorry.

I love you.

I always will.

Bee.

Acknowledgements.

I'm not sure if anyone reads the acknowledgements, but I hope so because without the following people, this novel would never have been written or published.

Firstly, I want to thank my editor, the wonderful Emma Beswetherick, for her creativity, support and for not only having the courage of her convictions but inspiring other people to share them. I have been equally fortunate to have a dream agent, Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown - creative, intelligent and takes the phone calls!

I would also like to thank Kate Cooper and Nick Marston also at Curtis Brown and the rest of the team at Piatkus and Little, Brown.

I want to thank, hugely, Michele Matthews, Kelly Martin, Sandra Leonard, Trixie Rawlinson, Alison Clements, Amanda Jobbins and Livia Giuggioli, who helped in so many practical ways.

Thank you Cosmo and Joe for understanding when I needed to write and for being proud.

Lastly, but most of all, my thanks go to my younger sister Tora Orde-Powlett - the inspiration for the book and a continued blessing.

Sister Reading Guide.

READING GROUP DISCUSSION POINTS.

* How would you compare and contrast Beatrice and Tess?

* Do you think that Beatrice changes throughout the course of the story and, if so, how?

* What are your thoughts on the structure of Sister and how do you think the different tenses and narrative techniques add to the overall effect of the story?

* In what ways does Sister explore fundamental human relations.h.i.+ps? For example: the relations.h.i.+p between two sisters, a mother and a daughter, two lovers, doctor and patient etc.

* What is the central theme of the book and how did it resonate with you?

* Who is your favourite/least favourite character and how true did each of them feel?

* Did you agree with Beatrice in her determination to discover the truth, despite it driving those she loved away from her?

* There is much imagery in this story, such as the colour yellow, the sea etc. Can you explain why imagery is so important in the story and how effective it is?

* There are a number of significant male characters in this story. In what ways did each of them aid or abet Beatrice and how suspicious of each of them were you?

* The ending of the story throws up a shocking twist. Did the ending work for you? How else do you feel the story could have ended?

AUTHOR EXTENDED BIOGRAPHY.

Rosamund Lupton read English Literature at Cambridge University. After a variety of jobs in London, including copywriting and reviewing for the Literary Review, she was a winner of Carlton Television's new writers' compet.i.tion and was selected by the BBC for a place on their new writers' course. She was also invited to join the Royal Court Theatre's writers group. She was a script writer for television and film, writing original screenplays, until her two children were born. She is now a full-time novelist with a second book to be published in 2011.

AUTHOR Q&A.

Q. Have you always wanted to be a writer?

Yes, ever since I can remember. As a child, my best friend's mother was Anthea Joseph (Hastings), a renowned publisher and a lovely woman, who inspired me at six to want to be 'an author' and made it seem achievable. I am sad that I can't thank her for that now.

Q. What is your writing day?

I began writing Sister after my youngest child started at school full time. I drop my two boys at school then race back to the house and write as much as I can by three o'clock. I'm lucky that my children ask 'how many words today, Mum?' rather than 'what's for supper?', as writing has led to domestic chaos. During the holidays family and friends rally round and I write in the evenings, sometimes into the night.

Q. What does it feel like to have your debut novel in print?