The Good Sister

by Gillian McAllister

  “It was a Tuesday afternoon,” Bryony says. She has a thick northern accent.

  I sit back, watching her. Listening to her story.

  4

  Bryony Riles

  Afternoon, Tuesday, September 12

  Every year, the student nurses got obsessed with that bloody red telephone. Bryony could see two newbies standing next to it now, waiting for it to ring. It signaled trauma, and the juniors hated that.

  The two student nurses moved out of her way as she brushed past them, ready to deal with her next patient.

  The boy’s face was young-looking—plump-featured and sheepish—but his body was more like eleven or twelve. Tall, like the buxom woman standing in the bay next to him, and muscular, too, across the shoulders. He was holding himself cagily. His shoulder, she guessed. She checked the clipboard. Xander Burrows. His mother: Becky.

  “He’s hurt his shoulder,” Becky said.

  Dislocated shoulder was scrawled on the notes. Nine-year-old boy. Mother pulled him out of traffic. Relocation, reset with intranasal diamorph.

  It would need strapping. “Okay,” Bryony said. “Won’t take long.”

  Xander hadn’t said a word yet. Bryony silently noted it.

  She had started attending further study courses a couple of years ago, when everyone she had trained with started going on endless, back-to-back maternity leaves. It gave her something to do to pass the time while her friends were off. The classes were full of overenthusiastic people, but she liked the day away from the hospital and the cups of tea. First was the advanced ulcer prevention course. But after that was the safeguarding course—now, that really had been interesting—and she was soon promoted to be the safeguarding nurse, tasked with referring suspicious admissions upward. As with everything, though, it hadn’t exactly turned out as planned, and she now spent her days spotting pedophiles and abusers and drug addicts and filling in forms about them.

  She looked down at the notes again. Mother pulled boy out of oncoming traffic.

  “Traffic, then?” she said.

  “Nightmare,” the mother said.

  The boy still hadn’t said anything. He was staring down at the floor, chin almost on his chest. He had thick dark hair, black eyelashes, and blue eyes.

  “You really look like my nephew. Though he’s not as big a lad as you.”

  “Right,” Xander said.

  “What are you—ten?” She knew his age from the notes, of course, but she wanted to flatter him. To put him at ease.

  “Nine.”

  “Big school next year?” she said.

  “Year after.”

  Xander darted a nervous look at his mum, then flicked his eyes back down to the floor. Bryony watched, waiting for it again.

  A man arrived in the bay behind her, drawing the curtain back. “Sorry,” he said. “Xander’s dad.” He looked youthful, with blond, boyish hair, tanned skin, and Xander’s blue eyes.

  “All right,” he said, more to Becky than to Xander.

  She started strapping Xander’s shoulder. “This will pull a bit,” she said. She didn’t like to bullshit. “But it’ll be worth it for feeling better.” He met her eyes and she smiled. “My nephew comes over every Wednesday evening,” she said as she tightened the strapping and he winced. “He likes my rabbits.”

  “Rabbits?” Xander said shyly.

  He was coming out of his shell, she could tell. Very slowly.

  “I’ve got two. House rabbits—giant.”

  “Wow,” he said. He smiled. Two dimples, either side of his mouth.

  “Yep. They like to sleep by the fire.”

  “I need to call Martha,” Becky said to Xander’s father, rising from her perch beside her son on the bed. “I was supposed to be meeting her and Layla in the park, and I’ve dashed off.”

  Becky had that artfully messy hair the new nurses were sporting. It drifted around her shoulders as she walked out the door.

  “See you,” the man said easily, sitting down so heavily that Xander bounced on the bed and set his mouth in a grim, straight line. But he didn’t cry out.

  That was unusual, too.

  She concentrated on the strapping. The tape was rough underneath her fingertips. She liked doing a tight, deft strap. This was all nursing used to be. Not a risk assessment form in sight.

  Xander seemed happy enough, sitting on the bed, studying the bedsheets. Not in too much pain if he was still.

  “So you’re Dad,” she said, looking across at the father.

  He was staring at Xander.

  “Marc, yes,” he said. “Pleasure.” He nodded at her.

  “Your son will be right as rain in no time,” she assured him.

  Marc turned to Xander as though she wasn’t there. “So, mate. Climbing frame? A bit of rough-and-tumble?”

  Xander frowned at him, confused, while Bryony watched.

  So he didn’t know. Oh. They were divorced, separated, maybe. “Almost done,” she said to Xander, noticing he hadn’t answered Marc yet.

  The boy lifted his right arm and raked his hair back.

  “No,” he said to his dad eventually.

  “What, then?” There was just the slightest edge to Marc’s tone.

  Xander was quiet.

  “Nothing,” he said after a few moments.

  Bryony’s hands stilled. Xander was staring fixedly at the curtain, as though he was concerned it would be slid across at any moment.

  To Bryony’s annoyance, the father didn’t push him. She carried on strapping, the under/over motion as rhythmical and as natural to her as walking or swimming. Under and then over. Pull it tighter. Under and then over.

  Marc evidently knew his son better than Bryony thought because, eventually, Xander spoke. “She just yanked me,” he said.

  “Mum?” the man said, his blue eyes suddenly even wider.

  Goose bumps appeared all over Bryony’s body.

  Okay. This wasn’t courses. This wasn’t paperwork.

  This was real.

  A woman. It was never a woman. It was almost always the man, they said in the course. She had nodded, feeling vindicated in her single status.

  She finished strapping.

  “Yeah. In the kitchen,” Xander said.

  The hairs on her arms stood up. He was contradicting his mother’s story. One of them was lying.

  She ought to stop and report, refer up to Social Services. Perhaps even direct it to the police. But she couldn’t help herself. She felt a fizzing in her veins, the way laypeople would never understand. Rare cancers, abuse, interesting blood work. They got all the medics going. She had forgotten. She had forgotten how it felt.

  “The kitchen, you say?” she said, trying to make her voice sound friendly but detached. “Our kitchen growing up was full of dangerous things.”

  Xander looked away then, not saying anything more. She was putting the final piece of tape down when Becky reappeared. Xander’s expression dropped, turning sullen.

  Marc looked at Becky. “All right?” he said to her.

  Becky met his eyes and held his gaze for just a moment longer than was usual. “Yeah,” she said.

  That was interesting, too. So they were divorced or separated, but he didn’t accuse her. Still looked at her with warmth, and just a dash of wariness. But no accusation.

  Marc brought his hand across his face and rubbed at his stubble.

  Bryony turned to leave them. “All done,” she said to Becky. She couldn’t let her know. That was one of the rules. Act naturally, then refer. Don’t arouse suspicions.

  She couldn’t help but sneak a look at Becky. Green eyes, nice makeup. Cagey-looking, if she were being critical. Becky’s eyes flicked down toward the corridor, then back to meet Bryony’s gaze again. I know you, Bryony thought. You might be middle-class, in a thigh-length
camel-colored cardigan. You might not be typical. But your son is frightened of you.

  She reported it immediately.

  “Yes, that’s suspicious,” the social worker agreed. “Very. We’ll take it from here.”

  The words rang in her ears just like the red telephone.

  Trauma. Abuse. Poor kid.

  5

  Martha

  Thank you,” Ellen, the prosecution barrister, says to Bryony. She is the barrister for the State, trying to prove Becky’s guilt. Bryony nods back, standing, not saying anything. “And so your suspicion—during the A&E visit—was raised by what, exactly?”

  “Differing accounts of an injury are always a red flag,” Bryony says. “And the way Xander looked at his mother was—it was nervous. He looked nervous.”

  Nervous. Was Xander fearful of Becky? I didn’t think so. He was more likely to be fearful of Marc. Marc had been quite a strict parent, a disciplinarian, which had surprised me. “Oh, Marc has a steely core,” Becky once said when I raised my eyebrows after Marc shouted at Xander at a family barbecue. Later, Xander was sneaking a piece of meringue in the kitchen and said, very seriously to me, “Please don’t tell Dad.” I’d laughed it off, but Xander had simply said it again, his blue eyes holding mine. “Please don’t tell Dad.”

  “And what did you suspect?” Ellen says now.

  “That she had caused the injury.”

  “Thank you,” Ellen says.

  Bryony appears to brace herself.

  Harriet, Becky’s defense lawyer, looks ready, her mouth drawn in a thin, grim line. Her eyes track Ellen as she stands.

  “So, let’s talk this through,” she says to Bryony. “You immediately made this urgent report to your colleague, a social worker, didn’t you?” she says. I am surprised by the sarcasm she has imbued her question with. Like a fierce animal protecting her brood.

  “Yes. That day. She took it over.”

  “And we have the report, here, which has been admitted as agreed evidence. It says—”

  She reaches down to the desk and picks up two pieces of paper. She then picks up the white plastic cup and takes a sip, seemingly not caring who waits for her. I almost smile: She must get on well with Becky, as that’s just the sort of thing my sister would do. The theater of it. I admire it.

  “Paragraph five point three: ‘After a one-to-one meeting with me on twenty-one September, Xander retracted what he told Ms. Riles in Accident and Emergency on twelve September. He had walked into traffic the week before, and his father, Marc, had admonished him. He’d told him he was on his last warning. So, in front of his father, he had fabricated something else. After a long talk, he confirmed the account of the kitchen was fiction, and that his mother had been telling the truth.’ Paragraph nine: ‘During my meeting with Xander, I saw no evidence at all that he was frightened of either parent, beyond what might reasonably be expected, or that he told lies about their treatment of him. His home with Rebecca Blackwater seemed stable and loving and his relationship with both parents healthy and functional.’ Paragraph nineteen: ‘I therefore closed my file on twenty-eight September, having fully investigated matters and having satisfied myself that nothing was amiss.’ Have you read that report?”

  “I—yes,” Bryony says.

  “So, really, not only had the defendant been telling the truth, she had also rescued her son from traffic. Thus making her a good parent. Rather than a bad one.”

  “I only told you what I heard in A&E.”

  “Nothing further.”

  The prosecution lawyer is biting her bottom lip in an exaggerated way, looking thoughtful. How could they do this, day after day? A new case when ours finishes, next week. Another after that.

  Ellen sits back in her chair, seeming to consider the situation. She rises, says, “No reexamination from me,” and then sits again.

  Bryony looks at the judge, who nods at her and says, “You’re free to go, Ms. Riles. Thank you for your time.”

  Becky’s eyes track her as she moves across the courtroom.

  * * *

  —

  We finish at lunchtime. A witness isn’t ready, and will come tomorrow instead. The judge turns to the jury and says, “Now, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for listening so carefully and attentively. In order that you should feel well rested, and not overworked, I would like to finish now and start afresh tomorrow morning at ten.”

  I follow Mum, Dad, Scott, and Ethan out into the heat. The day is sadly only half done. Hours and hours until I can call another day over and go to bed.

  Becky remained in the courtroom, released from the dock by an usher but lingering with her barrister and solicitor. She’s on bail. The court said she wasn’t a risk, that she wasn’t likely to hurt anybody or try to flee the country. And so they bailed her. She is allowed to reside with Mum and Dad. It’s only during the court hearing that she is imprisoned in the dock. It is a strange artifice. Will she walk in through Mum and Dad’s door later?

  What will they talk about?

  The press are still clustered on the steps, a few spread out even farther, on the street, and they swoop down on us as we emerge. “You’re in the public gallery, Martha. Are you supporting your sister or wanting to see justice for your child?”

  I say nothing, but I turn and gape at the reporter asking. She has a mop of curly hair, smile lines around her mouth. Surely she eats breakfast, goes to the cinema, can’t be bothered, maybe, to take her makeup off late at night? And yet, here she is, a human being, asking me the most inhumane of questions. Does she have children? I look closer, for rudimentary evidence—a wedding ring, a telltale tiredness around the eyes, a certain sort of pear shape I’ve come to recognize—but my sight is momentarily blinded by tears. I blink, and our eyes meet, just for a second. She looks wounded.

  Once we are out of the throng, I turn to Scott and say, “Did you know about the social worker?”

  He shakes his head, looking solemnly back at me. “No. It doesn’t sound like it was—”

  “No,” I say. I try not to think of what happened leading up to it, and after it. Had Xander really lied? He was withdrawn sometimes. Thoughtful—he used to ask me the most profound questions, when he was four or five. And, yes, maybe slightly shifty at times, taking a biscuit and lying about it, despite the crumbs around his mouth. But weren’t all children?

  And besides, is it any wonder? I try to go through it logically. I think of Marc again at the barbecue. “Xander, I’m going to count to five,” he had said. Xander had continued to kick his football against the side of the house. “Xander,” Marc had said; then he’d stood up, calling him into the house with him. He’d shut the patio door, and I didn’t hear anything else. When I’d looked over at Becky, her cheeks had been flushed.

  Unless . . . unless Xander hadn’t been lying in A&E. Maybe he had lied to Social Services. Later. After Becky had spoken to him. I can see how it would play out, as though it is happening in front of me. “It’s for the best,” she would tell him. She could be so persuasive. Marc’s temper might be quick to rouse, but Becky was charmingly manipulative. Sometimes.

  No. I can’t think it. The lawyers clearly aren’t. Or, at least, they have never raised it.

  I try to reverse my thoughts. They’re traitorous. Would Becky be thinking these thoughts, if it was me in the dock, accused, and her in the public gallery? No, she would believe in me wholeheartedly. I know she would.

  She would regard me as innocent until proven guilty, as is right. As is the way it should be.

  * * *

  —

  Scott and I fall behind everybody else. His shoulders look tense; he is not good with stress. He is a developer for an IT firm who walks along the seafront when he has coding problems he cannot figure out. “I know,” he will say, as he walks through the door, his hair blown back by the sea air. “It’s a segmentation fault. Of cours
e.” But this problem, our life, has no solution.

  He takes my hand now. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. Our hands remember how to hold each other: muscle memory that spans the length of our relationship.

  Mum, Dad, and Ethan are up ahead. They never look at Becky or speak to her while we are in the courthouse, I have noticed. Mum and Dad live with Becky but, publicly, they support me. I frown. Is that right? But then—what else could they do? It is an unprecedented situation. I try to imagine Becky, later, in their living room, in her casual guise. Shoes off. Legs tucked up underneath her on the sofa. A cup of tea in her hand. I can’t see it. I haven’t spoken to her for nine months. I think I can remember everything about her, but the truth is that I don’t. Does she take sugar in her tea? I find I have to think twice before landing on the answer: yes, three. “It’s why I am so fat,” Becky had once said, poking her stomach. She was laughing, but there was a bitter edge to it, a mournful expression flitting across her features as she took in my slimmer frame.

  “Bite to eat?” Mum turns and says kindly to me.

  We stop walking. The ground underfoot is hot, and it warms my feet in my ballet flats. I’ve never known an August this warm. Usually, summer seems to die off quietly, like leaving a party without saying good-bye, with rain and blank white skies.

  Dad lifts an arm in a wave to me, up ahead. “Chin up,” he says softly. His eyes linger on mine for a few seconds. “Okay?”

  I nod.

  “I’ll walk home,” he says. He walks everywhere, has to do twelve thousand steps per day. “Even through murder trials, obsession prevails,” Becky would say drily to me. I can hear the wry comment as clearly as if she was standing here, right next to us.

  “I need to go to the office,” Ethan says.

  “Really?” Scott says. “Aren’t you off for the day?”

  They have stopped a few meters in front of us. Scott is rhythmically rising up and down on his feet, his head bobbing. He was doing this the night we met, in the hallway of an acquaintance’s house, though I didn’t then know the significance of the blond man—Scott Andrews, he introduced himself as—standing in the entranceway, unsure where to hang his coat. He was as insignificant as anybody on the street. I sometimes see that same Scott, these days, late at night. That shy, hesitant man.