The Good Sister

by Gillian McAllister

  “It’s like being on a waterbed.” She’d laughed.

  He could still conjure up the entire image of her. Her curved back. Her smiling eyes. They always had the heating up too high—their bills were astronomical—but it was worth it for those hours they spent on top of the duvet.

  “I’ve had a big dinner,” he’d said, and she had laughed even more.

  How had they gone from that to this?

  “Don’t make this your problem,” he said. “It’s a job. If it’s not working for you, then you leave. Not your circus, not your monkeys. Leave, if you want to.”

  There was a long pause before she replied. “No. I know. Don’t be silly. Of course I won’t.”

  He sighed. She wouldn’t leave. He wished she would. He had never liked Scott, in particular. He liked him even less now. Cheeky fuckers. He would sort them out.

  Marc looked at a slight wrinkle in the carpet, from where he had had to stop stretching it suddenly. It would need to be redone, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  “You’ll be all right,” he said. He hoped he was right.

  * * *

  —

  His phone rang again at just gone eight the next morning. He had showered when he got in, little curls of new carpet coming off his arms and hands in the shower. And then he had drunk too much, thinking of Becky and that special tone of voice she had used with him in the past, her curved back on their old shared IKEA bed.

  His head was thumping as he answered the phone.

  She was screaming.

  He sat up in bed, his body lurching forward, elbows on his knees. “Becky? What’s . . . what’s?” The room swam dangerously, as a result of his hangover or shock, he didn’t know.

  “Layla’s . . . I’m pretty sure she’s dead, Marc.”

  A horrified chill moved through him. “Dead?” he said faintly. “Dead?”

  “She died in the night.”

  “Where are you?”

  “There’s paramedics everywhere. They’re here . . . they’re working on her. Oh, Marc. Please come. Please come.”

  46

  Martha

  I think of what Marc said to me on the phone. Nobody came over. Followed by the beep, beep, beep: call failed. His tone was not even angry; it was incredulous.

  “And did you feel concerned when Becky called you that night?” Harriet says. She looks agitated.

  Ellen shifts in her seat, and the judge interjects. “Sorry to stop you,” he says, putting a hand out like he is placating a wild animal or a child in the throes of a tantrum, “but can you please ask that in a way which is non-leading?”

  “How did you feel that night when Becky called you?” Harriet says.

  Marc shrugs. “I just felt bad for her. The baby was crying a lot.” He looks over at Becky in the dock. He has the same solemn expression he wore at their wedding. “I wanted to help her. But I wasn’t . . . concerned. Not exactly.”

  “Well, you put the words in his mouth,” Ellen mutters under her breath.

  Harriet looks at her sharply.

  “I mean I was worried,” Marc adds. “But only because Becky was worried. I wasn’t worried for her. I was worried with her.”

  Harriet pushes her dark hair behind her ear, under her wig. “How did you feel about the content of the text messages?”

  “I just felt sad because she was worried about Layla.”

  I can almost see the thoughts flitting across Marc’s mind. He can’t say that he was worried for her. He can’t say that she was having a hard time. He can’t say that Layla was difficult, that Becky had been blessed by the minimal demands of her own sleepy son, was inexperienced, out of her depth. All he can offer up are these platitudes. He wasn’t concerned, not exactly, he says.

  But then he raises his hand to his forehead, and I see him wipe sweat from his brow. He is nervous. He’s giving evidence. Maybe it’s just normal nerves. But something about his body language is off.

  “I know her well,” he continues. “I was worried that she was in a difficult situation. But I never—if I ever thought something might happen, I would have gone over there.” He swallows. I watch his Adam’s apple bob up and down. “And I didn’t.”

  I look across at Ellen. She is watching him closely.

  “Thank you,” Harriet says. “And how did you feel the next morning?”

  “Complete shock, when she called me.”

  “And finally: Had you previously been irritated when Xander had walked into traffic?”

  “Yes. I had.”

  “And so you can understand why he had reason to lie in A&E.”

  “Yes. I can.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ellen stands up. Her first cross-examination. “Marc,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “You separated from the defendant. About how long ago?”

  I look at Marc, then at Harriet. She’s watching the proceedings, sitting back in her chair, her left arm slung across its back.

  “Eighteen months or so,” he says.

  “And why was that?”

  Marc spreads his arms wide, expansively. “Why does anyone?” he says. “There are loads of reasons.”

  I am struck, suddenly, by how unlikely it would be for Scott to have this broad view of us. If we ever broke up. He would say, nodding seriously, “It all unraveled because I failed to stack the dishwasher one Tuesday.”

  But Marc has always understood that. And Becky, too. They would never become bogged down by details and miss the broad view. “I’ve got a lovely wife and a great kid and the sun is shining,” Marc once said happily at a party before cracking open a can of beer. The big picture. At least, that was how I had always viewed him. Before.

  I close my eyes. Am I mad, suspecting my brother-in-law? People don’t know when they’re going insane, do they? Perhaps I am. Perhaps I have been sent mad with grief.

  “You can’t ask that,” Harriet says, getting to her feet and looking at Ellen. “What relevance is the defendant’s marital breakdown?”

  “Given you have called her ex-husband to give evidence, I’d say it’s very relevant.”

  “I will allow it,” the judge says.

  “Our child, I guess,” Marc says carefully. “Well, no. Not him. Parenthood. No. Just . . . life. That led to our problems.” His eyes look wide and frightened.

  Who can possibly say what has led to the breakdown of their marriage, under oath?

  “Your child?”

  “We had Xander, unplanned, when we were very young, and it was . . . it’s a lot of pressure, and change, for a relationship. We couldn’t have a second. We tried for . . . for ages. We grew apart. And then she was unfaithful.” He says this in a low voice, quieter still.

  He doesn’t look at Becky, but I do. She has a palm on the glass again, like a monkey at the zoo, waiting sadly for escape.

  “I see,” Ellen says. “So she has form for deceit. But you are on good terms with the defendant now?”

  “Yes. We still see quite a lot of each other.” He ignores the dig. Form for deceit.

  He has sidestepped it in that adult way of his, but the jury has taken it in, that unchallenged comment landing like a fact in their laps.

  “How much?”

  “We text most days. It used to be about Xander but it’s more than that, now. Jokes. We sometimes chat. On Friday nights. We get the same takeout. We choose it, from afar, and eat it on the phone. I don’t know.” Marc shakes his head. He’s babbling.

  I want to warn him, my brother-in-law. “Stop giving them this stuff for free,” I want to say, but then I remember the words he used—nobody came over—and how shifty he looked when asked about that night, on the stand, and . . . I want them to catch him out.

  “Why do you do that when you’re separated?”

  “Text?
”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s just . . . you know.” He shrugs again. “We like each other, still. We mean a lot to each other.”

  Becky is staring at Marc, her eyes round. I have seen that look before. She had it on her wedding night. She had it when she brought Marc home to meet all of us at Christmas.

  Despite myself, my eyes fill with tears. To be separated, on the verge of divorce, and to have all your personal history gone through, ransacked, in the witness box. Your poor, blurred boundaries. The weird things you do that you are glad nobody knows about; here they are, looming large in a courtroom for all to see. Projected on the wall just over there. The jury will remember it forever, Marc and Becky’s private business.

  “So you wanted to help her, when she asked. It was natural to you.”

  “Yes. Of course. We don’t fight or anything like that. We just help each other.”

  “She said she was worried about Layla and herself.” Ellen reads from the sheet of paper in front of her, even though the words are surely burned on the brain of everybody in this courtroom. She is building up to it. I can tell. She’s going to ask about his alibi.

  “But she didn’t mean . . . It was just a figure of speech. It was her way. She was . . . she’s, like, quite comedic. She’s very funny. So she was just making a joke, you know? Like, I’m worried about this bloody crying baby and I’m worried about myself, too. In case I . . . but she didn’t mean in case I do anything.”

  Ellen is watching him like he is prey, letting him fill the silence with his prattle. “So what did she mean, then? If not in case I do anything?”

  “She just meant it as a joke.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Burrows. What’s the joke here? Am I missing it?” Ellen’s face relaxes into a friendly smile.

  Harriet crosses and uncrosses her legs, then leans forward, looking at Marc.

  I wince. It is like watching somebody get fired. Like watching a public humiliation. And isn’t it?

  “Well, she was talking about what she might do but it was a joke.”

  “What she might do. As in, harm Layla? That’s the joke?”

  “Yes. But it was just a joke.”

  “A joke, right.” Ellen looks meaningfully at the jury, as though joking in such matters was so abhorrent. But it was before: that text. That silly text. Wouldn’t all of the contents of our iPhones look pretty damning, if read out selectively at a murder trial? I had said this to Scott, a while back, and he had given me a strange look that said: Um, no, mine wouldn’t. And I suppose his wouldn’t. He’s straight up like that. A pragmatist. A simple soul, like Marc but also totally different.

  Ellen pauses, picks a pen up, and clicks it twice. In the silent courtroom, it sounds like the cocking of a gun. Click, click. Click, click. She appraises Marc seriously. This is it. She is going to ask about his alibi.

  Eventually, she speaks. “Are you really saying under oath that you weren’t worried about her?”

  “I wasn’t worried she would do something.”

  “That’s not what I asked. You were the last person to speak to her, Mr. Burrows, before she killed baby Layla. Now answer my question: Were you worried about her?”

  “Yes, I was worried about her.”

  “Because she seemed disturbed during the call?”

  “Not disturbed, exactly, no. Just upset.”

  “Upset. I see. What do you think she was upset about?”

  “Because she couldn’t settle Layla.”

  “Ah, I see. She was upset with Layla.”

  “No, for her.”

  “So,” Ellen says, “why do you think Becky was contacting you that night?”

  “Why?”

  “Yes. You specifically.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ellen pauses again. “You see,” she says. Here it comes. “I would say that, given your closeness, and everything you have told us, Becky would turn to you, out of desperation, if she thought she might be about to do something she would regret. If she was feeling desperate, and frightened, and fearful that she might lose her rag. Do you agree?”

  “No, I . . .”

  “No? Who else would she turn to?”

  “If she was—”

  “Yes. If she was desperate and frightened and angry. Perhaps she couldn’t say as much. Perhaps she couldn’t admit seriously that she was worried about herself. And what she might do. But is there anybody other than you who she might turn to, if she were feeling such things?”

  Marc’s eyes flit toward me, in the public gallery, and then he looks away again. “No,” he says. “Not in those circumstances. It would be me.”

  “Yes. She turns to you in her darkest hour of need. Sends a cry for help. Nothing further.”

  She didn’t ask. She didn’t ask if he was there that night. If he has an alibi. I am deflated, and furious, all at once. It’s not about him, I suppose. He is not on trial: Becky is. She’s the prime suspect, so why would they look to somebody else? I shouldn’t have asked the prosecution. I should have asked the defense lawyer. Harriet would have been more likely to help me than Ellen. Ellen wants to secure a prosecution.

  Marc looks across the courtroom. Not at me, but at Becky. Their eyes seem to meet, and something seems to pass between them.

  I keep staring, watching them. Nobody else seems to be looking. He is conveying a message to her. A slight shake of his head. She nods at him. She looks grateful. He looks . . . what? He looks like he’s done her a favor, that’s what.

  He has lied for her. I am certain of it.

  Any remaining belief in his honesty evaporates, right there in the court. They’re in it together. He’s testified for her because he once loved her. But look! They’re communicating.

  They’re still looking at each other. I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to ask him. I’m going to ask him in person what the fuck went on that night.

  47

  Becky

  7:00 p.m., Thursday, October 26

  Layla, there really is absolutely nothing to be crying about,” I have said about a hundred times. She should be in bed. Xander is out, at a sleepover, no doubt not sleeping. The only one of us who truly wants to be in bed is me.

  We have both had less than two hours’ sleep. I don’t know how she is still crying. We still have one more night together, before Martha and Scott are back.

  She is fed—boy, is she fed, three ounces!—and she isn’t wet, and she doesn’t seem to have any wind and her legs aren’t tucked up in the frog-like newborn way. But she is crying. Crying and crying and crying. The sounds have taken on tones within themselves, like a vast orchestra or—more apt—a heavy metal band. I grit my teeth against the noise. How many hours until Martha is home? Sixteen? I look down at Layla. It will be okay. I’ll take it one hour at a time. No baby ever came to any harm through crying, I tell myself.

  I do another bottle. I google how much is the maximum amount of Calpol she can have, and decide I’ll save that like a trump card. Besides, I know babies. She’s not in pain. Not physically, anyway.

  You’d think you would get used to the noise, but let me tell you, you don’t. Martha and Scott would know the science of it, no doubt. We’re not supposed to get used to it, or something. But Martha and Scott aren’t here. Nope. It’s just Layla and bloody useless Becky.

  I am aware of something hot and volatile inside me. The sort of dart of anger you get when you’re stuck in traffic and are very late, or like last year when the bathroom ceiling caved in, just like that, on a bloody Tuesday night, or when your period arrives for the thirty-sixth time in a row, like the 7:49 to London: often delayed, tantalizingly so, but nevertheless always there in the end. We stopped trying, after four years, and split up soon after that. Xander, conceived so easily one night, was not to have a sibling, no matter how hard we tried.

  I open a bott
le of red. Ah, that satisfying pop as the cork slides out. I’ll have two glasses. No more. Just to take the edge off. As I sip, I think about what Xander said earlier, after school: “She seems very upset.” He was resting his weight on his elbows, on the breakfast bar. He kept lifting himself up on it, like a pull-up.

  “Stop doing that,” I said. “You’ll fall over.”

  “What’s she got to be sad about?” He raised himself up again, the muscles in his arms tensing.

  It was such a simple question that I felt my heart expand in my chest, relieved that I could still feel that warm, hot center within me. That deep well of love for my son. I reached across and ruffled his hair. Such a simplistic thing to say: What’s she got to be sad about? Such a nine-year-old thing to say. But then, maybe it’s not to do with his age. Maybe he got it from Marc. It’s actually totally the sort of thing Marc says. “Why be sad when you can eat a bag of Doritos?” he once said to me, and I really think he meant it. Why indeed? I feel a lurch of pain, remembering that. God, I loved him. I loved him so much. Nothing else compares. I can picture the evenings spent just doing nothing. Mundane things. Television. Ironing. But I always felt so lucky, just so lucky next to him.

  How could I ever have it again? I can’t, that’s the truth. But, actually, isn’t the Marc I know now—the Marc I text constantly now—the exact same Marc I once loved so much?

  I can’t answer that.

  What might’ve saved us? More date nights? Were the clichés really correct? We’d been arrogant, so confident in our relationship that we didn’t even notice it failing. The truth is, they all take work.

  It could still work. No, it couldn’t. I slept with somebody else. Another fuckup in a long list of them. Martha would never cheat. Scott would never cheat. Marc would never cheat. It is just me, always only me, who succumbs to temptation. Who smokes and drinks and sleeps around.

  This is just the nostalgia talking. I am looking after Layla, and the texts with Marc are getting more and more frequent, and it reminds me of those early days with Xander when we had been so happy. That is all.