Sister: A Novel Part 17

Mum came in and looked at the stacks of your canva.s.ses. 'What on earth did she think she was she going to do with all of these?'

'I'm not sure, but the art college wants to exhibit them at their show. It's in three weeks and they want Tess to have a special display.'

They'd phoned me a couple of days earlier and I'd readily agreed.

'They're not going to pay for them though, are they?' asked Mum. 'I mean, what did she think the point of all of this was, exactly?'

'She wanted to be a painter.'

'You mean like a decorator?' asked Mum, astonished.

'No, it's the word they use for an artist now.'

'It's the PC thing to call it,' you said, teasing me for my outdated vocabulary. 'Pop stars are artists, artists are painters and painters are decorators.'

'Painting pictures all day is what children do at nursery school,' continued Mum. 'I didn't mind so much about the GCSE. I thought it was nice for her to have a break from real subjects, but to call it further education is ridiculous.'

'She was just pursuing her talent.'

Yes, I know. It was a little weak.

'It was infantile,' snapped Mum. 'A waste of all her academic achievements.'

She was so angry with you for dying.

I hadn't told Mum about my arrangements for Xavier to be buried with you, fearful of the confrontation, but I couldn't put it off any longer.

'Mum, I really think that she'd want Xavier-'

Mum interrupted. 'Xavier?'

'Her baby, she would want-'

'She used Leo's name?'

Her voice was horrified; I'm sorry.

She went back into the sitting room and started shoving clothes into a black bin liner.

'Tess wouldn't want it all just thrown away, Mum, she recycled everything.'

'These aren't fit for anyone.'

'She mentioned a textile recycling place once, I'll see-'

But Mum had turned away and was pulling out the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe. She took a tiny cashmere cardigan out of its tissue paper. She turned to me, her voice soft. 'It's beautiful.'

I remembered my astonishment too when I first arrived at finding such exquisite baby things amongst the poverty of the rest of your flat.

'Who gave them to her?' Mum asked.

'I don't know. Amias just said she had a spree.'

'But with what? Did the father give her money?'

I braced myself; she had a right to this information. 'He's married.'

'I know.'

Mum must have seen my confusion; the softness in her voice had gone. 'You asked me if I wanted to "put an A on her coffin for good measure". Tess wasn't married so "the scarlet letter", the badge of adultery, could only mean that the father was.' Her voice tensed further as she noted my surprise. 'You didn't think I understood the reference, did you?'

'I'm sorry. And it was a cruel thing to say.'

'You girls thought that once you got to A levels you left me behind. That all I ever thought about was the menu for a dull supper party three weeks away.'

'I've just never seen you read, that's all.'

She was still holding Xavier's tiny cardigan, her fingers stroking it as she spoke. 'I used to. I'd stay up with my bedside light on while your father wanted to go to sleep. It irritated him but I couldn't stop. It was like a compulsion. Then Leo was ill. I didn't have the time any more. Anyway, I'd realised that books were full of trivia and tripe. Who cares about someone else's love affair, what a sunrise looks like for page after page? Who cares?'

She put down the tiny cardigan and resumed shoving your clothes into a bin liner. She hadn't taken off the wire hangers and the hooks tore the flimsy black plastic. As I watched her clumsily anguished movements I thought of the kiln at school and our trayload of soft clay pots being put inside. They would bake harder and harder until the ones that were imperfectly thrown would break into pieces. Your death had thrown Mum way off centre and I knew, as I watched her tie the bin liner into a knot, that when she finally faced your death grief was a kiln that would shatter her.

An hour later, I drove Mum to the station. When I returned I put your clothes from her frantically crammed bin liners back into your wardrobe; Granny's clock back onto the mantelpiece. Even your toiletries were left untouched in the bathroom cupboard, with mine kept in my washbag on a stool. Who knows, maybe that's the real reason I've stayed in your flat all this time. It's meant I've been able to avoid packing you away.

Then I finished wrapping your paintings. This was just preparing for an exhibition, so I had no problem with it. Finally only four paintings were left. They were the nightmarish canva.s.ses in thick gouache of a masked man bending over a woman, her mouth ripping and bleeding as she screamed. The shape in her arms, the only white in the canvas, I'd realised was a baby. I'd also realised that you'd painted them when you were under the effect of the PCP; that they were a visual record of your tormented trips to h.e.l.l. I saw the marks my tears had made when I first looked at them, the paint streaking down the canvas. Then, tears were the only response open to me, but now I knew that someone had deliberately tortured you and my tears had dried into hatred. I would find him.

The office is overheated, sunshine pouring in through the window warming it further, making me drowsy. I drain my cup of coffee and try to snap awake.

'And then you went to Simon's flat?' Mr Wright asks.

He must be cross-checking what I am telling him with other witness statements, making sure all our time-lines coincide.

'Yes.'

'To question him about the drugs?'

'Yes.'

I rang on Simon's bell and, when a cleaning lady answered, I walked in as if I had every right to be there. I was again struck by the opulence of the place. Having lived in your flat for a while, I had become less dulled to material wealth. Simon was in the kitchen, sitting at a breakfast bar. He looked startled when he saw me and then annoyed. His baby face was still unshaved but I thought that, like the piercings, it was an affectation.

'Did you give Tess money to buy baby things?' I asked. I hadn't even thought of the question until I was inside his flat, but it then seemed so probable.

'What are you doing here, just barging in?'

'Your door was open. I need to ask you some more questions. '

'I didn't give her money. I tried once but she wouldn't take it.' He sounded affronted and therefore credible.

'So do you know who did give her the money?'

'No idea.'

'Was she sleepy that day in the park?'

'Jesus. What is this?'

'I just want to know if she was sleepy when you met her?'

'No. If anything she was jumpy.'

So he'd given you the sedative later, after Simon had left you.

'Was she hallucinating?' I asked.

'I thought you didn't believe that she had post-natal psychosis?' he taunted.

'Was she?'

'You mean apart from seeing a non-existent man in the bushes?'

I didn't reply. His voice was ugly with irony. 'No, apart from that she seemed completely normal.'

'They found sedatives and PCP in her blood. It's also called wack, angel dust-'

He interrupted, his response immediate and with conviction. 'No. That's wrong. Tess was a puritan tight a.r.s.e about drugs.'

'But you take them, don't you?'

'So?'

'So maybe you wanted to give her something to feel better, a drink? With something in it that you thought would help?'

'I didn't spike her drink. I didn't give her money. And I want you to leave now, before this gets out of hand.' He was trying to imitate a man with more authority, his father maybe.

I went into the hall, and pa.s.sed an open doorway to a bedroom. I caught sight of a photo of you on the wall, your hair loose down your back. I went into the bedroom to look at it. It was clearly Simon's room, his clothes neatly folded, his jackets on wooden coat hangers, an obsessively tidy room.

There was a banner in meticulous calligraphy along one wall, The Female of The Species. Underneath it were photos of you, scores of them, Blu-Tacked to the walls. In all of them your back was to the camera. Suddenly Simon was close to me, studying my face.

'You knew I was in love with her.'

But these pictures made me think of Bequia islanders who believe a photograph is the theft of a soul. Simon's tone was boastful. 'They're for my final year portfolio. I chose reportage photography of a single subject. My tutor thinks it's the most original and exciting project of the year group.'

Why hadn't he taken any of your face?

He must have guessed my thoughts. 'I didn't want the project to be about a particular person so I made sure she had no ident.i.ty. I wanted her to be an every woman.'

Or was it so he could watch you, follow you, un.o.bserved?

Simon's tone was still smug. '"The Female of the Species" is the opening of a poem. The next line is "more deadly than the male".'

My mouth felt tinder dry and my words sparked with anger. 'The poem is about mothers protecting their young. That's why the female is more deadly than the male. She has more courage. It's men that Kipling brands as cowards. "At war with conscience".'

Simon was taken aback that I knew the Kipling poem, probably any poem for that matter, and maybe you are too. But I did read English at Cambridge, remember? I was once an arty kind of person. Though being truthful, it was my scientific a.n.a.lysis of structure that got me through rather than insights into the meaning.

I took a photo of you off the wall, then another and another. Simon tried to stop me, but I carried on until there were no photos of you on his wall; until he couldn't look at you again. Then I left his flat, taking the photographs, with Simon furiously protesting that he needed them for his end of year a.s.sessment; that I was a thief and something else that I didn't hear because I'd slammed the door shut behind me.

As I drove home with the photos on my lap I wondered how many times Simon followed you to take photos of you. Did he follow you after you left him in the park that day? I stopped the car and studied the photos. They were all of your back view, with the scenery changing from summer to autumn to winter, and your clothes from T-shirt to jacket to thick coat. He must have been following you for months. But I couldn't find a photo of you in a snowy park.

I remembered that for Bequia islanders a photo can be made part of a voodoo doll and cursed; that a photo is considered as potent as having the victim's hair or blood.

When I arrived home, I saw a new kettle in its box in the kitchen and heard Todd in the bedroom. I went in to see him trying to break one of your 'psychotic paintings', but the canvas was st.u.r.dy and not giving way.

'What on earth are you doing?'

'They won't fit in a bin liner and I could hardly leave them at the dump as they are.' He turned to face me. 'There's no point keeping them, not when they upset you so much.'

'But I have to keep them.'

'Why?'

Because . . .' I trailed off.

'Because, what?'

They were proof she was being mentally tortured, I thought, but didn't say. Because I knew it would lead to an argument about how you died; because that argument would inevitably end in our separation. And because I didn't want to be more alone than I already was.

'Did you tell the police about Simon's photos?' Mr Wright asks.

'No. They were already sceptical, more than sceptical, about Tess being murdered and I didn't think the photos would persuade them otherwise.'

I could hardly mention Bequia islanders and voodoo dolls.

'I knew that Simon would argue that they were for his art degree,' I continue. 'He had an excuse for stalking her.'

Mr Wright checks his watch. 'I need to get to a meeting in ten minutes, so let's end it there.'

He doesn't tell me who the meeting is with but it must be important if it's on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Or maybe he's noticed me looking tired. I feel exhausted most of the time, actually, but in comparison to what you went through I know I have no right to complain.

'Would you mind continuing your statement tomorrow?' he asks. 'If you're feeling up to it.'

'Of course,' I say. But surely it's not normal to work on a Sunday.

He must guess my thoughts. 'Your statement is vitally important to secure a conviction. And I want to get as much down as possible while it's fresh in your mind.'

As if my memory is a fridge with pieces of useful information in danger of rotting in the crisper drawer. But that's not fair. The truth is that Mr Wright has discovered that I am more unwell than he originally thought. And he's astute enough to worry that if I am physically declining then my mind, in particularly my memory, may deteriorate too. He's right to want us to continue apace.

I'm now on a crowded bus, squashed up against the window. There's a transparent patch in the misted-up gla.s.s and through it I glimpse London's buildings lining our route. I never told you that I wished I'd studied architecture instead of English, did I? Three weeks into the course, I knew I'd made a mistake. My mathematical brain and insecure nature needed something more solid than the structure of similes in metaphysical poetry, but I daren't ask if I could swap in case they threw me off the English course and no place was found for me on the architecture one. It was too great a risk. But each time I see a beautiful building I regret I didn't have the courage to take it.