The Good Sister
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PRAISE FOR
The Good Sister
“With fast-paced prose and several unexpected twists, [Gillian McAllister] skillfully weaves a web in which any of the characters might be the guilty party. . . . A suspenseful courtroom drama full of poignant flashbacks and unique insights.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“I was totally swept up—and challenged—by this dark courtroom drama and am still wrestling with the brilliantly written dilemma at its heart.”
—Fiona Barton, author of The Child and The Widow
“The Good Sister is an ingeniously constructed courtroom drama with real flesh-and-blood characters and cliff-hanging suspense.”
—Louise Candlish, author of Our House
“An emotionally charged story about two sisters torn apart by the death of a child, it explores the joys and challenges that come with motherhood with a twist I didn’t see coming.”
—Hollie Overton, author of Baby Doll and The Walls
“Heart-rending and brilliant. Such incredible storytelling.”
—Jill Mansell, author of This Could Change Everything
“I couldn’t put The Good Sister down. An original, beautifully written and moving story about sisters that had me racing through the pages. That ending will stay with me for a long time. Perfect.”
—Claire Douglas, author of Last Seen Alive
“One of the most gripping and moving books I’ve ever read. Gillian McAllister tackles an unbearable situation with scalpel precision and incredible humanity. I read The Good Sister at every opportunity and haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Unmissable.”
—Holly Seddon, author of Try Not to Breathe
“One of the best courtroom dramas I’ve ever read—keeps you guessing right up to the very end.”
—Cara Hunter, author of In the Dark and Close to Home
“Grippy and compelling but also nuanced and insightful and sad.”
—Tamar Cohen, author of The Mistress’s Revenge, War of the Wives, and The Fallout
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2019 by Gillian McAllister
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
First U.S. edition published in 2019 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McAllister, Gillian, author.
Title: The good sister / Gillian McAllister.
Other titles: No further questions
Description: First U.S. edition. | New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2019. | “Originally published as No further questions by Michael Joseph/Penguin UK.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2019003021 | ISBN 9780525539391 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780525539407 (epub)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6113.C28 N6 2019 | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019003021
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Praise for The Good Sister
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1: Martha
2: Becky
Monday: Prosecution3: Martha
4: Bryony Riles
5: Martha
6: Judge Christopher Matthews, QC
Tuesday7: Martha
8: Carol Richards
9: Martha
10: Becky
11: Martha
12: Sophie Cole
13: Martha
14: Martha
15: Becky
16: Martha
17: Martha
18: Jasbinder Kaur
19: Martha
20: Devorah Friedmann
21: Martha
22: Theresa Williams
23: Martha
24: Becky
25: Martha
Wednesday26: Martha
27: Alison Jones
28: Martha
29: Natalie Osbourne
30: Martha
31: Amanda Thompson
32: Martha
33: Detective Sergeant Keysha Johnson
34: Martha
35: Martha
36: Becky
37: Martha
38: Julia Todd
39: Martha
40: Becky
41: Martha
42: Martha
43: Judge Christopher Matthews, QC
Thursday: Defense44: Martha
45: Marc Burrows
46: Martha
47: Becky
48: Martha
49: Francesca Lewis
50: Martha
51: Judge Christopher Matthews, QC
Friday52: Martha
53: Becky
54: Martha
55: Martha
Monday56: Martha
57: Becky
58: Martha
59: Becky
60: Martha
61: Martha
62: Judge Christopher Matthews, QC
Tuesday63: Martha
64: Xander
65: Becky
66: Judge Christopher Matthews, QC
Epilogue: BeckyMartha
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For David
1
Martha
Somebody is lying in this courtroom. I don’t know who, yet, but somebody is: the defense or the prosecution. They cannot both be telling the truth.
The legal jargon seems to swirl around me as I listen to expert after expert being examined, cross-examined, and then reexamined by the barristers. Most of the time, I’m following it. Most of the time, I understand what’s happening.
But sometimes, like right now, I can’t see how we ended up here.
Last August, I gave birth to Layla in the middle of the night. It was dark outside and we were sequestered in a side room at the hospital, Scott sitting on the end of the bed. I don’t remember when they finally handed her to me, but I remember her afterward: a warm weight in my arms, her hand curling surprisingly around my own.
I’d texted my sister, Becky, and only Becky, between contractions, though I hardly remember what I said. When she came to visit, she brought the late summer nighttime chill in with her; I could fee
l her cold cheek against mine as she hugged me. “You did it! Oh, you did it!” she said, celebrating me, and not the baby. It was exactly what I needed at that moment.
My sister.
The woman who used to WhatsApp me first thing, every single day, without fail. The woman whose eyebrows I plucked on the eve of her wedding, both of us laughing as they became more and more uneven. The woman who painted my living room with me one Easter weekend. We didn’t stop chatting for the entire four days.
My sister. My best friend, Becky.
And now: Here we are.
Cot death, the defense says—unexplained.
Murder, the prosecution says.
I look across at my sister in the dock.
The woman accused of murdering my child.
2
Becky
Eleven months earlier
Thursday, September 28
I can’t resist them. My hands shake as I open my handbag and find the packet of cigarettes, their shiny, inviting inner foil unbroken and beautiful.
My breathing has already slowed as I bring the cigarette to my mouth for the first drag in weeks. I blow the clouds of smoke out into the night air and look at the sky above Dalston. I close my eyes in relief as the smoke hits my lungs. Sweet. Jesus. Poisonous joy.
There are no stars, but the moon is slung low and sepia-toned. I stare at it for a few minutes as I smoke and try not to cry. I’m not very good at not crying—classic drama queen—so my cheeks are wet with tears within seconds.
The television people I dress sets for would like a Dalmatian-print chesterfield armchair, and they want it by 9:00 A.M. This is the fourth time this has happened this week: a last-minute request, to be sorted out by me, and only me.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to end up. I was going to be an interior designer. My obsession started with Changing Rooms—God bless those leopard-print walls—but it endured beyond that. I dropped out of design school when I had Xander, my nine-year-old, and spent my twenties languishing on Pinterest, staring at copper lamps and furry throws. I thought set dressing would give me an in, but instead it’s just a dead end, like everything. One day, I tell myself.
My manager, Sandra, pokes her head out of the side door of the studio I am standing next to. “On it?” she says. She is tall and slim and believes—very seriously, and very vociferously—in angels.
“Well, yes,” I say. “But there aren’t any. I’ve tried Craigslist, eBay, and Etsy.”
“No chairs at all?”
“No.”
She sighs, her thin hand tightening on the metal door-handle. As I take my last puff and exhale, the smoke blurs her. “How’s it going to look if we don’t have that chair, Bex?”
Bex. I hate Bex. “Bad,” I say petulantly.
“Have you exhausted every avenue?”
“I thought so.”
“Have another think,” she says, then goes back inside. The door sticks, and she doesn’t pull it to like you’re supposed to. I inch it shut with the toe of my shoe. I look back up at the old paper moon, and find my sister Martha’s number in my phone: She will know what to do.
“Get a chair and some print, then,” she says immediately. She has always been this way: clear-sighted and firm. “It’ll be easy,” she adds nicely. This must be the tenth work problem in a row that I have called her about this week. Inflatable furniture, paddling pools, pug-printed duvet sets. Anything. Everything. She always helps, willingly and immediately.
“What—and cover it?” I say.
“Yes.” I can hear Layla crying in the background. Martha has her plate full, too, failing to take any maternity leave at all from her job—a charity that she set up herself—but here she is, answering my calls over a Dalmatian-print chair.
“Never mind,” I say. “God. Don’t worry about this stuff.”
“It’s fine, Beck,” she says. “Honestly.”
“A chair and print,” I repeat. “I’ll report back.”
We hang up, and I take to Google again. I ring four haberdasheries to see if they can help me, but they don’t answer; they’re closed.
Luckily, there is extortionate Dalmatian-print fabric on eBay, sold for mad people. I send one of the sellers a desperate message, and she responds almost immediately, the app ringing in my hand as I light up my second cigarette. I can get it from Islington before eleven tonight. Great, I think sullenly.
I get the Tube straight there, using the excellent new Tube Wi-Fi to search for a chair on the way. There is an armchair in Balham on Craigslist. The seller’s username is ILoveHarryStyles and I think: Well, don’t we all? I arrange to get it at 11:30 P.M.
The fabric is easy. The woman—short, plump, with a Bristolian accent—hands it to me wordlessly outside the front door of her ground-floor flat. I thank her profusely, and pay her on the eBay app while she watches over my shoulder. She doesn’t move as I put my Verified by Visa account details in—no doubt I will get robbed soon—and then I send a photograph of it to Martha, captioned: One down! She sends a string of applauding hands back, and my mood lifts.
The chair lives ten minutes from Balham Tube station, at 193a Ravenslea Road. I gather the roll of fabric as the Tube pulls in. On the way up the escalator, a man complains at me for blocking the way—calls me a “silly bint”—and I stand the roll of fabric on the stair in front of me and move out of his way. “Don’t bother to thank me,” I say to his back as he strides upward. He turns to look at me.
“I’m sorry,” he says in a broad Essex accent. “I’m in a hurry.”
I walk past him in the foyer as he calls for a taxi. He comes out after me, and I let the door slam on his arm on my way out. He shouts something, but I march onward. Jerk.
A woman wearing an actual negligee answers the door in Balham. I blink as I take in the black fabric, the thin straps across her shoulders, then follow her in anyway. The chair is faded and green, standing in the corner of the room underneath a reading lamp. Behind it are leather-bound classics. It looks like the set of a Victorian murder novel. Well, at least I will die doing what I love. Oh, wait.
I pay her fifty pounds for the chair, the rolled notes dry and papery in my fingers as I part with them. Her brown eyes linger over the fabric I’m holding, but I don’t explain. She doesn’t help me with the chair, and it thuds clumsily against my leg, squeaking along the wood, as I half lift, half drag it across her hallway and down the steps. She stands just inside her living room, arms wrapped around her body, silently watching me, then closes the door.
I’m already out of breath, having moved both items only a few feet, and I stop and survey the dark street. Two men are walking on the other side of the road toward me, and I stare at them as they move past. I could ask for help. But this is London.
I have a small rest instead, thinking about interior design school, and where I might be by now if I’d finished. I think about bloody perfect Martha, juggling being CEO of a charity, having a newborn, and dealing with her errant sister’s search for Dalmatian-print fabric.
At least I have a seat. I perch on it for a few moments, watching the world go by: a madwoman in a green chair on the street in Balham.
* * *
—
I hail a black cab and the chair sits next to me inside it like an obedient, silent animal. I don’t look at it as I try to recall where I last stored my fabric stapler at the house.
As the taxi departs London at just after midnight, I text Martha and ask if she is up.
Of course I am—providing a round-the-clock service to a constantly crying baby, she replies immediately.
I call her and say, “I can’t do this anymore,” as soon as she picks up. My voice sounds thick and self-pitying. I stare at the taxi driver. He’s also working late. Think about it: He’s got to drive you to Brighton, then drive back to London, Martha would admonish me. There is always somebody
worse off, so she says. She is nice like this. I am not. I have always wanted to be more like her, though not enough to actually try, of course.
“You can,” Martha says. “Staple-gun the fabric. It’ll only take twenty minutes. Then bed.”
“And up at six. For another insane request,” I say.
“Is Xander with Marc? After school?”
“Yes. It won’t be long. This job is only a week,” I say.
Martha makes her sympathy noise. A low mmhmmm. “It’s rubbish, Beck,” she says. “It’s so rubbish.” She means it. She must mean it. But I think of her life, caring for always-crying Layla, and juggling work, too, and wonder how she can mean it.
“How’s your To Do list looking, anyway?” I say.
“Oh—it’s just impossible. The phone’s ringing off the hook.”
Martha set up a charity the previous year and hasn’t quite relinquished control. She never does.
“Layla’s crying all the time while I’m trying to bloody hire people.”
“Oh, oh no,” I say.
“I interviewed two childminders but they were rubbish. One didn’t know what baby-led weaning was.”
“You should just get a nanny,” I say. “You need staff, not help.”
“I don’t even have time to hire anybody. That’s how bad it is.”
“I see.”
We don’t say anything for a few seconds.
Until I say, “I want to quit.”
To her credit, she doesn’t sigh.
“I don’t even like dressing sets,” I add.
“Quit, if you want to,” she says. “Life’s too short to staple dead Dalmatians to chairs forever.”
We laugh at that, for a long time, on the way home. The next day, she makes a proposition, and I hand my notice in on the spot.
monday
PROSECUTION
3
Martha