The Sister's Secret

by Penny Kline

  ‘Ollie?’

  He turned to look at them, his eyelids drooping from lack of sleep.

  ‘I think you should tell the doctor how you feel.’

  ‘It makes no d-difference.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ the doctor began, but Ollie interrupted angrily.

  ‘If I don’t agree I’ll be accused of killing my own child.’

  ‘No, Ollie, it won’t be like that.’ What a liar she was. What a hypocrite. ‘We need to discuss it, talk about what Claudia would have wanted.’

  ‘Claudia’s dead.’

  ‘But we still have to think about the baby. Your baby.’ Emotional blackmail – but what else was left?

  The doctor was looking unperturbed, as though it was a situation he dealt with daily. ‘She carried a donor card,’ Erin said.

  ‘I see.’

  Did he see? Had he taken the trouble to look up the legalities?

  ‘Ollie? If she wanted to donate her organs that means . . .’ But he was not prepared to hear the rest. Pushing past her, he stumbled out of the cubicle, and a moment later the swing doors of the unit creaked open and shut. She considered running after him, catching up with him in the corridor and trying to persuade him to return to Claudia’s bedside. But what good would it do? They were never going to agree.

  And the following day it became clear he had made the only decision he believed left to him. He had disappeared.

  * * *

  In the night her mind created the scene over and over again. Since she had been walking on ahead, with Claudia lagging behind, she had not actually seen the scaffolding pole fall, so much of what she pictured was in her imagination, but no less real. She was tormented by thoughts of what might have been. If only they had reached the shops earlier, or later. If only they had stayed longer in the baby goods shop. If only Claudia had not insisted on buying a jam doughnut to eat on the way home.

  When she thought about Claudia – her lively, go-getting sister – the memories she allowed herself were always good ones. Games in the garden when they were small. Dolls’ tea parties under the walnut tree, riding their bikes up and down the lane, dressing up and acting in improvised plays. But there had been fights too, savage ones that had escalated alarmingly. They were too close in age, their mother claimed, and Claudia’s birth had been “a shock for poor Erin”. Was it her fault if she was jealous of her baby sister? In any case, by the time she was five, Claudia had been bigger than she was, taller and broader, and with an expression on her face that challenged the world to thwart her in any way.

  Later, after the two of them left home, they had tried to establish a different kind of relationship, where the tensions were skated over with plenty of laughter and plenty of alcohol. The premature death of their parents should have strengthened the bond between them, but seemed to have the opposite effect. True to character, Claudia had concentrated on their wills, which left everything to each other or, in the event of them both dying together, advised that their estate should be divided equally between their two daughters.

  When the family home was sold and the money finally came through, Erin had stayed in London to complete her course at Art college, but Claudia had chosen a different route, giving up her job as a trainee buyer in a department store and moving to Bristol, where she could take out a relatively small mortgage on a house where prices were not quite so high.

  Thinking about it, reminded Erin how she ought to contact Claudia’s bank. To tell them what? That her sister was going to die, but not until her baby had been born. That the baby’s father had disappeared. They would advise a solicitor and they would be right. Did Ollie know the name of Claudia’s solicitor? It might be better to find one of her own, but not yet, not when everything was in limbo, although perhaps it was precisely because of the present situation that she needed professional help. Where was Claudia’s phone? Had Ollie got it, and if so why?

  A weak sun crept in through the dormer window. She needed to finish her sketches – she had a deadline to meet – but drawing felt impossible, so today she would concentrate on research. During the time she had worked as an illustrator, it was young children’s picture books she enjoyed the most. In the story she was currently illustrating called The Littlest Guinea Pig, several chipmunks lived together in a cage and made chirping noises that got on the guinea pigs’ nerves. Ignorant of what chipmunks looked like, she checked online and discovered their coats were brown and grey, with contrasting stripes on the sides of their faces and across their backs and tails. And their eyes were set on the sides of their heads. They ate peanuts and sunflower seeds and the bugs that crawled in their cage, and they hid food under the sawdust. She wanted one, or two or three come to that, but imagine how delighted the cat would be.

  There was a mynah bird in the story too but she would find a picture of that later. Carrying on with her work, even though she was only researching online, felt wrong, disloyal to Claudia, but what was the alternative? Sitting staring into space, or going for endless, exhausting walks round the city.

  Downstairs, the letterbox clicked and, pushing aside her drawings, she hurried to check the mail. Most of it was junk, addressed to the occupier, and two envelopes looked like bills she would check later. Pushing open the living room door brought back memories of the first time she had visited the house and been struck by the odd collection of furniture Claudia had acquired. A battered sofa, upholstered in brown velvet and strewn with brightly coloured cushions, two creaky cane chairs and a glass-topped coffee table with one of its wobbly legs propped up with a book about interior décor. The floor had been stripped and sealed and was partly covered by a large Persian rug with several holes in it, and the venetian blinds that had once looked so smart now made the room feel faintly sinister.

  Three of the walls had been painted orange and the fourth was dark blue, half-completed. Had the paint run out or had Claudia changed her mind? She should have asked her, but could imagine how she would have reacted. Honestly, Erin, you’re so organised. I like to experiment, live for the day.

  A face appeared at the window. Claudia’s friend, Jennie, from four doors down. Not now, not today, but it was no good shutting herself away like a hermit. Erin took a couple of deep breaths and went to let her in.

  ‘How are you?’ Jennie hesitated, wondering perhaps if she should give her a hug. Claudia had done a lot of hugging, but Jennie was giving the impression that calling round was something she had been putting off, a duty that had to be carried out, preferably as quickly as possible.

  ‘Come in. I was trying to find Claudia’s phone.’ Absurdly, Erin felt the need to explain what she had been doing in Claudia’s living room. ‘I think Ollie must have it.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘No. He wanted the life support switched off.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jennie frowned, not certain how to respond.

  ‘When I told the doctor I wanted the baby to have a chance, he ran out of the hospital. He hasn’t been back here. I don’t know where he’s gone.’ Should she invite her up to the loft or take her into Claudia’s kitchen? ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘They think they can save the baby?’

  ‘It’s what Claudia would have wanted.’

  Jennie forced a smile, and Erin suspected she agreed with Ollie. Either that, or she thought it was not up to Erin to make the decision. If she had known Jennie better she might have been able to tell, but until now they had only exchanged a few words.

  When she arrived at Claudia’s house, socialising had been the last thing on her mind, but one morning, several weeks back, Jennie had offered to help when her ancient Toyota Yaris had been blocked in by a van that had parked far too close. At the same time, subjecting her to a barrage of questions. Where had she moved from? What kind of work did she do? If she was Claudia’s sister, why did the two of them look so different?

  ‘Do the police know what happened?’ Jennie was pushing back her hair, which was a dark shade of blonde, with darker lowlight
s. ‘Who could have done such a thing?’

  ‘One of the protesters must have unscrewed a pole.’

  ‘So the police have decided it was an accident.’

  What was she suggesting? That someone had deliberately dropped a heavy pole on the head of a passer-by?

  ‘Ben’s shattered.’ Ben was Jennie’s actor partner. ‘He and Claudia . . . He admired her determination, the way she forged ahead with new projects. And she liked his silly showbiz stories. ‘If there’s anything I can do.’ Jennie wanted to leave. ‘We must go for a coffee sometime. When you’re not so busy. Ava’s Place, do you know it?’

  Erin nodded. ‘I went there once with Claudia. She and Ava seemed close.’

  ‘Yes.’ Jennie’s hand clutched at her throat, as though their conversation was making her feel queasy. ‘Anyway, I’ll see you again soon.’ She licked her finger and rubbed at a mark on the dark green top that matched the colour of her nails. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say?’

  ‘It’s all right. No one does.’ Erin showed her out. ‘Thank you for coming round.’

  ‘As I said, anything I can do . . . Claudia was quite a character. You’ll miss her such a lot. We all will.’

  Erin was thinking about Jennie’s off the cuff remark. Who could have done such a thing? So the police have decided it was an accident. Had she heard something? Was that why she had come round? To warn her? To put doubts in her mind? Or had she felt the need to tell her that, while Ben might have found her sister an amusing character, not everyone did.

  As soon as the front door closed, a loud mew heralded the cat’s entrance and Erin scooped it up, turned her back on Claudia’s part of the house, and carried it up to the loft where she hoped to persuade it to settle down on her bed for the rest of the morning. It opened its mouth to protest and its breath smelled of fish, the kind they put in tins of meaty cat food. If Claudia had liked cats so much, she should have had one of her own, instead of luring in someone else’s with bowls of food. Ollie had wanted to give her a kitten, but she had turned down the offer. It wouldn’t be house-trained. Can you imagine? Poo and pee all over the place and it’s impossible to get rid of the smell.

  Wherever she went in the house, she heard Claudia’s voice in her head. Honestly, Erin, that Declan sounds like an arsehole. Why did you let yourself get caught up with him? Followed by an apology. Sorry, take no notice, I’m, just glad you had the guts to get away.

  The loft felt safer than the rest of the house, but not that safe. In the afternoon, she would return to the hospital, and talk to the nurses, and perhaps to a doctor. The whole notion of brain dead was so difficult to take in. A ventilator was keeping Claudia’s heart beating and oxygen circulating through her blood, she was receiving nutrition through a tube and her body was kept at the correct temperature. And she was being given hormone replacement “to prolong gestation”.

  Erin tried to picture the unborn baby – the doctors referred to it as the foetus – and wondered how it would feel when it learned how it had developed in its dead mother’s womb, and planned how she would tell it all about Claudia, plenty of stories that showed her in a good light. But as usual she was jumping ahead. There was no guarantee it would survive.

  Chapter 3

  When she reached the unit and rang the buzzer a nurse appeared and asked if she minded waiting a few minutes.

  ‘Nothing to worry about.’ She gave Erin what she thought was a reassuring smile. ‘There are some procedures we need to carry out. It won’t take long. Later today Claudia will be moved to a different room.’

  What procedures, Erin wanted to ask, and which other room? Was it good she was being moved, or did it mean the baby was not doing well? The nurse had used Claudia’s name, instead of referring to her as “the patient”. That could be a good sign. No, it was only to make her feel better. Or because Claudia was not a patient. Her brain was dead and only the rest of her body was being kept “alive”.

  Sitting on the cold, shiny vinyl seat, Erin stared at the print on the opposite wall. Tropical fish swimming through fronds of stylised underwater plants, bubbles rising, white rocks on a sandy bed. It was a dull, lifeless picture. Even so, it made her long to be by the sea, walking at the water’s edge, taking off her shoes and paddling, feeling the gritty sand between her toes.

  As children, they had spent summer holidays in Wales, staying near a sandy beach with rock pools and seaweed and crabs. They had caught shrimps in nets, not very many as she recalled, but enough to take back to the house and cook in boiling water while their mother buttered slices of bread. Sometimes she missed her mother so much she could barely breathe. As a teenager, she had been closer to her father – they were alike in several ways – but it was her mother she needed now.

  ‘You can come through.’ The nurse’s smiling face appeared and she jumped up, guilty that for a few moments she had forgotten where she was, escaping into a time when she was happy and carefree, surrounded by her family and the Welsh friends they met up with each summer.

  When they entered the cubicle, the nurse began filling in details on a chart. Were they good or bad? Did they refer only to Claudia, or was there a way of monitoring the baby’s condition too? The nurse turned to smile and Erin smiled back, her gaze quickly returning to Claudia. ‘She looks so serene.’

  Serene? Not a word she ever used. Where had it come from? Lately words seemed to spring into her head and it was as though it was her mother talking.

  ‘My name’s Andrea.’ The nurse was attractive, sexy in that slightly overweight way that makes women look like they have been around. Erin guessed she enjoyed evenings in the local clubs – she had no idea why she thought this – and liked her better for it because it made her more human.

  ‘Erin,’ she said, ‘I’m Claudia’s sister. Sorry, you know that already.’

  ‘If there’s anything you want to know I’ll be happy to explain. Please, sit down.’ She pulled out a chair with a red plastic seat and black metal legs.

  ‘Thank you.’ Soft music was playing, classical stuff that sounded familiar and could be Bach. Was it for the medical staff, to make the situation less upsetting, or was it to give the illusion Claudia could hear it?

  ‘Her boyfriend’s gone missing,’ Erin said, ‘and I’m the only one . . . The baby – is it all right?’

  ‘The doctor was a little worried. Your sister developed an infection, but she’s been treated with antibiotics and there’s no immediate cause for alarm.’

  ‘If it had to be delivered now would it die?’

  Andrea put her notes to one side. ‘It would stand a chance, but thirty weeks, or a little more, would be better.’

  ‘The doctor explained about brain death but I’m not sure I understood properly.’ Erin had checked online, read everything she could find, but she liked this nurse, wanted her to be her friend. She had large, expressive eyes, and her hair was similar to her own, the kind that was affected by the weather, good hair days and bad ones.

  ‘Well.’ She smoothed a crease in Claudia’s blanket. ‘The brain stem is connected to the spinal cord and it regulates most of the essential functions of the body, the automatic functions.’

  ‘Like breathing and your heart beating?’

  She nodded. ‘And blood pressure.’

  ‘It’s not the same as… What do they call it? Persistent Vegetative State?’

  ‘No, there’s a slim chance someone can recover from PVS if the brain stem is unaffected.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Erin was ridiculously grateful for the information. She wanted to ask how many cases like Claudia she had nursed, if any. Instead, she said the whole thing felt unreal.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  They sat together in relatively comfortable silence. Relatively, because who could sit beside their brain dead sister and feel relaxed? Although it never ceased to amaze her what you could get used to. A little over a week ago, she and Claudia had been laughing, talking, making plans for the birth of her baby. It felt like anot
her lifetime. Where was Ollie? Staying with a friend, another postgrad student? The police had checked the bedsit where he lived before he moved in with Claudia, but it had been taken by a girl who had never met him. Why would she have done, it wasn’t a student let.

  Erin wanted to tell Andrea about the baby shoes she and Claudia had bought and how Claudia had chosen them specially because she thought it was so funny, the way one had a steam engine on it and the other had a carriage, or was it one of those trucks – she thought they were called tenders – where the coal was kept?

  ‘The baby,’ she asked cautiously, ‘it’s a boy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Did no one say?’

  ‘I think Claudia knew. I didn’t ask her but I could tell.’

  ‘It’s a little girl.’

  ‘A girl? Is it? Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘The father’s called Ollie.’ Erin was trying to adjust to this new revelation. Not a boy. A girl. If Ollie had known, might it have made a difference? But why would it? ‘He’s very young. Actually, he can’t be that young because he’s doing research for a PhD. I think he’s twenty-four. He just seems young. Young for his age. He wanted the baby to die.’

  ‘But you wanted her to be given a chance.’

  Erin nodded, looking up at Andrea for approval. ‘I expect he could have overruled me, but he’s disappeared and no one knows where he’s gone. Or if they do,’ she added, ‘they’re not going to tell me. Claudia and I – we weren’t very close and I haven’t been in Bristol very long so I don’t know many of her friends. Only a neighbour, called Jennie, and there’s a woman who runs a café Claudia used to go to, but . . .’

  A doctor had appeared, a woman, nothing like the Scottish doctor. She was younger and brasher with so few social skills Erin wondered what they taught them at medical school. No smile. No introduction. She stood beside Claudia with an expression on her face that reminded Erin of the girl in the building society who had wanted her to tie up her meagre savings for the next five years. For the building society’s benefit, not hers.