The Forgotten Sister

by Nicola Cornick

  ‘Jesus, Lizzie,’ Bill said. ‘We’re talking clinical depression here not feeling a bit low one day. Sometimes it’s hard to like you, you know.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Bill,’ Kat said, putting a comforting hand on Lizzie’s arm. ‘Don’t forget what Lizzie’s been through herself. Can’t you see she’s hurting? She doesn’t mean to sound callous.’

  Lizzie felt Kat’s hand on her sleeve. Kat’s touch was comforting; it said that she understood that Lizzie was miserable, lost in painful memories, and that she wanted to pretend she wasn’t. In that moment Lizzie hated her for knowing. The trouble was that Kat had known her for ever, since she had been a baby. Kat, her mother’s best friend, had stepped in when a car crash had claimed Annie Kingdom at a shockingly young age. She’d taken Lizzie under her wing, attempting to soften the haphazard and destructive parenting methods of Lizzie’s father. She’d been in Lizzie’s life ever since. There could be no secrets from Kat.

  She shook Kat’s hand off. She wasn’t going to show her that it mattered.

  ‘I still don’t see that it’s Dudley’s fault even if Amelia did kill herself,’ she argued. ‘They hadn’t been close for years. They never saw each other; it was as though they were already separated really and Amelia must have known that Duds would want a divorce sooner or later.’

  ‘Amelia’s friends are queuing up to say how unhappy she was.’ Bill was scrolling through his Twitter feed now. ‘Jeez, this is bad. They’re saying she killed herself because Dudley spent all his time with you.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ Lizzie said, through her teeth. ‘And do they know it’s suicide? It might just be an accident.’

  ‘Or murder,’ Kat said. ‘One of the gossip sites is insinuating Dudley might have arranged it.’ Her head was bent; long dark hair falling forward to hide her expression. Lizzie thought she sounded excited. ‘They say he wanted to save on the settlement so he bumped her off.’

  Lizzie felt a clutch of fear. ‘They’re saying Dudley killed her? That’s just…’ She raised her hands in despair. ‘Please stop this, Kat. It’s stupid and you’re scaring me now.’

  Neither Bill nor Kat paid her the slightest notice. They were both too engrossed in the breaking news.

  ‘Didn’t they have a pre-nup agreement?’ Bill was saying. ‘Christ! Doesn’t everyone have one these days?’

  ‘They married so young.’ Kat looked up from her phone. ‘Don’t you remember, Bill? It was very romantic. Love at first sight. Amelia was only about seventeen and Dudley not much more. They married at Oakhangar and there were thrones and a crystal horse-drawn carriage, and they released rare butterflies—’

  ‘Which all died because they couldn’t cope with the British climate,’ Lizzie interrupted. ‘The RSPCA threatened to prosecute Dudley for cruelty.’ The scar in her palm itched sharply. She clenched her fingers over it. She hadn’t thought about Dudley and Amelia’s wedding for years. It hadn’t been a favourite memory.

  Bill made a huffing sound, ‘Cruelty, huh? That seems like a metaphor for the whole marriage.’ He shook his head. ‘Whether it’s murder or suicide, this is a godawful mess.’

  ‘Hello?’ Lizzie waved a hand. ‘Excuse me? Why can’t it just be a simple accident? Horrible, I know—’ she winced, ‘but it doesn’t have to be either sinister or Dudley’s fault.’

  ‘Quite right, babes,’ Kat said in the sort of absent-minded voice that Lizzie knew meant she was paying no attention at all. ‘Although the BBC is saying that the police are investigating.’

  ‘Good,’ Lizzie said. ‘Perhaps that will shut everyone up.’ She sat forward. ‘I’d like my phone back now please, Bill, and I’d also like to be taken to London. I don’t know where we’re going but I need to be back for rehearsals for Stars of the Dance next week.’

  ‘I think that would be a bad idea,’ Bill said slowly. ‘You’ll come in for a lot of flak, especially as Dudley’s taking part too. Perhaps you should lie low for a week or so.’

  Lizzie sat up straighter. ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Dudley’s dropped out of Stars of the Dance,’ Kat interrupted. ‘His people are making an announcement in fifteen minutes.’ She looked at Lizzie. ‘Do you think you should say something too?’

  ‘No!’ Lizzie said, before she could finish. ‘No way! This is absolutely nothing to do with me!’

  ‘I agree,’ Bill said. ‘With any luck they’ll pull this week’s show anyway as a mark of respect since it’s only two days away. A couple of the other contestants were Amelia’s friends, weren’t they?’ He didn’t wait for Lizzie to respond. ‘But then it’s back to business. We don’t want it to look like it was in any way Lizzie’s fault no matter what social media is saying.’

  ‘Lulu Styles is giving a live interview on AListed,’ Kat reported. ‘She says that Amelia was depressed because she thought she could never compete with Lizzie.’ Kat turned up the volume and the tinny sound of Lulu’s voice echoed around the car: ‘Amelia said Lizzie Kingdom already had it all but she wanted Dudley as well.’

  Lizzie shuddered to hear the naked excitement in the interviewer’s voice: ‘You mean Amelia thought they were having an affair?’

  ‘Oh God, no,’ Lulu sounded contemptuous. ‘Lizzie’s kind of sexless, isn’t she? But she and Dudley were so cute together, like they were still six years old. Amelia said she couldn’t compete with that sort of friendship. She never got a look-in.’

  ‘Why are people making this story about me?’ Lizzie locked her fingers together so tightly she heard her bones crack, heard too the thread of hysteria in her voice. ‘Amelia Lester falls down the stairs and I’m somehow to blame? It’s horrible…’ Her words caught on a sob.

  ‘I did tell you,’ Bill said heavily. ‘I did tell you to keep the hell away from Dudley Lester but you wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘Now isn’t the time, Bill,’ Kat said sharply. Her voice became soothing as she turned back to Lizzie. ‘We all know it’s not your fault, honey,’ she said. ‘But you know how it works; the media want to use your name for the publicity, that’s all.’ She rummaged in her bag. ‘Here, have some of these,’ Lizzie heard the rattle of pills, ‘just a little one. You’ll feel much better.’

  ‘I don’t want your fucking pills.’ Tears filled Lizzie’s eyes. She despised herself. Why am I such a child? Why can’t I deal with this? Why did bloody Amelia Lester have to die?

  ‘I want to talk to Dudley,’ she said forlornly. ‘He needs me. There’s no one else he can talk to.’

  ‘The less you have to do with this the better,’ Bill said. ‘Normally I’d be arguing for you to get all the publicity you can but this is toxic, Lizzie. You need to keep out of it for the sake of your career. Anyway, Dudley’s got his family. Let him talk to them.’

  ‘Dudley and I always support each other,’ Lizzie said. ‘It’s what we do.’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you,’ Bill said grimly. ‘That’s the problem.’

  ‘We’re only trying to look after you, honey,’ Kat said. ‘Really we are. Bill’s right; this could ruin everything for you. It’s got to be handled properly.’

  ‘I know,’ Lizzie said. Bill and Kat were right; this whole scandal could ruin her image and her career. She had to be careful. Suddenly she felt exhausted. The need to go to Dudley, to comfort him when so much horrible stuff was swirling around, was deep and instinctive. But it wasn’t stronger than the survival instinct. That was the deepest and most visceral of all. She had worked so hard for everything she had, faced down the scandal of her parents’ disastrous marriage and her sleazy father’s endless affairs. A shiver racked her.

  ‘Lizzie’s kind of sexless, isn’t she?’

  She could still hear the bite in Lulu’s tone. So what if it was true? If she controlled every detail of her life and her image it couldn’t go wrong – or so she had thought until now.

  She needed more than the necklace to ground her now that the world was swinging violently awry. She burrowed into the pocket of he
r coat again. Deep in the corner, next to the empty sweet wrappers, she found the little perfume bottle. The scent had been her mother’s favourite, or so she’d been told, a classic of the nineties, smelling of summer flowers and vanilla. The bottle was long empty but the perfume lingered like the memory of a sweet dream and it was one of the few small mementoes she had.

  She thought of the pitifully small collection of her mother’s belongings that she had salvaged after she had died. She’d been like a child thief, surreptitiously gathering things up when her father’s back was turned, a discarded book here, a T-shirt there, a cheap bracelet, even a battered phone card and a bus ticket. The housekeeper had bundled up all her mother’s gorgeous clothes, bags and shoes and thrown them away in plastic bags; her books had been given to a charity shop. Her jewellery, Lizzie suspected, had been given to her father’s new girlfriend. Harry Kingdom hadn’t been the subtle type. They had only been married for a few years and Lizzie thought it had been easy for him to erase Annie Bowling from his life, burning the photographs, obliterating all evidence that she had existed. The one thing it hadn’t been possible to obliterate was the four-year-old girl with his red hair but Annie’s brown eyes and sharp, curious mind, although Lizzie sometimes thought that if her father could have got rid of her too, he would have done. Consigning her to Kat’s care and then sending her to boarding school had been his way of dealing with her; until he had realised that he could profit from her talent.

  Her fingers rubbed back and forth over the familiar shape of the perfume bottle. She knew all the lines and curves of it by touch alone and usually the contact with one of her mother’s possessions brought her comfort and sometimes more – images of her mother, an echo of her emotions. Not tonight, though. Tonight she felt nothing. There was no comfort. She felt utterly alone. The old scar on the palm of her right hand itched viciously, a reminder of Amelia, and Oakhangar, and the nightmare of the wedding.

  ‘I don’t know where you’re taking me,’ she said, ‘but I want to see Jules. She’ll let me stay for a few days.’

  It was the place she always ran to when she was in trouble. Her cousin Juliet Carey was the only person who treated her as though she was normal. Not that Lizzie knew what normal was any more if she ever had, but Juliet’s chaotic household was the closest to it that she could find.

  She saw Bill and Kat exchange a look and then Kat gave a tiny nod and Bill dove in his pocket and extracted her phone. Lizzie saw him scroll through the numbers and punch in the one for Jules before he handed it to her.

  The number rang and rang. Jules didn’t believe in answering services.

  ‘Didn’t Jules say they were all going to France for a couple of weeks camping?’ Kat said. Both her tone and her expression conveyed her utter bafflement at the thought of spending any time in a tent. For Kat, even the most luxurious glamping would be too primitive.

  ‘Oh yeah…’ With a sigh Lizzie ended the connection. She really was on her own then. Her only close friend was working abroad and there was no one else she would want to turn to at a time like this, no other friends, no family, only a raft of acquaintances who would sell her out to the press as soon as look at her.

  Immediately her phone rang.

  ‘Don’t answer it,’ Bill said. ‘Turn it off.’

  Lizzie thought about ignoring him and calling Dudley but then Kat exclaimed: ‘Dudley’s giving a press conference!’

  Lizzie switched off the phone and stuffed it into her pocket. Kat glanced up at her then back at her screen. Once again, the tinny sound of voices filled the car:

  ‘I’m distraught at the loss of my beautiful wife, Amelia.’ Dudley’s voice sounded blurred by tears. ‘It was a terrible accident. I don’t even want to address the other horrible rumours which have already sprung up and are nothing but hurtful lies. I only ask that my family and I are given respect whilst we grieve.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Bill said, ‘he looks terrible. And he sounds like one of those guys whose wife disappears, and he makes a public plea for her to come home knowing all along that he’s murdered her and hidden the body. Jeez.’

  Kat’s reply was overwhelmed by the cacophony from the phone as reporters scrambled to ask questions.

  ‘Turn it off,’ Lizzie said irritably. ‘Please, Kat. I’m begging you.’ Tears stung her eyelids. She wanted to speak to Dudley, to comfort him and draw comfort from him just as she had when they were growing up together. She wanted to hug him and feel his arms about her. They made each other feel safe. Yet she had a horrible suspicion that everything had changed and they could never be so close, or so happy, ever again. It had all seemed so simple; the two of them against the world. Yet Amelia had always been there even when Lizzie had almost forgotten her. Her shadow had always been cast across them, the figure glimpsed out of the corner of her eye, the spectre.

  Kat finally snapped off the sound on her phone just as Bill’s mobile rang again. He listened in sharp silence.

  ‘There’s been a change of plan,’ he said, as he ended the call. ‘We will be going back to London, after all. The police want to interview you tomorrow, Lizzie.’

  ‘Fine,’ Lizzie said sulkily. ‘Whatever. I don’t know anything anyway.’

  ‘The lawyers will brief you first thing,’ Bill said.

  ‘Fine,’ Lizzie said again with a half shrug.

  ‘This is serious,’ Bill said with a warning note in his voice. ‘They haven’t dismissed the possibility of murder.’

  Lizzie rolled her eyes. ‘Bill, this is ridiculous.’

  ‘Just do what the lawyers tell you,’ Bill said. He settled his shoulders back against the seat and fumbled for a cigar.

  ‘Must you smoke?’ Lizzie said. ‘It’s bad for your health.’

  Bill swore but he put the cigar away. The car took the next motorway exit and headed back the way they had come. Soon there was nothing around Lizzie but the rustle and hum of the car as it sped through the dark, nothing but the endless photos on her phone screen showing her laughing with Dudley on the set of Stars of the Dance, juxtaposed with ones of Amelia looking frail and ill, nothing but the tumbling words of hate mail already flooding into her social media accounts. The images spun a pattern in Lizzie’s head over and over, around and around until she finally slept.

  Chapter 6

  Amy: Sheen Palace, June 1550

  I met her first on my wedding day.

  Robert’s elder brother John had married the day before us, in a great ceremony of pomp and display. The boy King Edward had attended and had taken much pleasure at the masques and banqueting which had surprised me for I’d known him only as a studious youth not much given to laughter. Robert had presented me to him when first I had come to court. I had already divined that he was serious to the point of tedium, which I suppose was all very well for a king but made him a dull companion. Robert told me he was very clever but that did not impress me; intelligence without wit seemed dry to me. He had been flanked by his advisers, Robert’s father Lord Warwick, all elegance and dark intensity, and the Duke of Somerset. The two men seemed to tower over the boy king like tall trees above a sapling, blocking out the light.

  John Dudley had married the eldest of Somerset’s daughters, Anne Seymour, a pale and pious creature who was very aware of her own value. My marriage to Robert was an altogether smaller affair as befitted his status as a younger son and mine as a gentleman’s daughter. There were sore heads and dull eyes from the previous night’s revels but all the nobility was there for this pale echo of a Dudley marriage. It should have been the best day of my life.

  Amongst that congregation of the nobility in St George’s Chapel I saw her at once, the Princess Elizabeth. It was not that she was particularly animated, or brightly dressed or hung with jewels. She was quiet and pale and demure, her skin like fine Chinese porcelain, but her hair blazed like fire and the contrast of that red gold with the dark brown of her eyes was arresting, a physical shock. I knew her immediately: the Princess Elizabeth was half-sister to
the King, daughter of the scandalous Queen Anne Boleyn, her life already mired in bloodshed and treason.

  Robert had spoken of her a little, for they had shared a tutor when young. ‘She is clever,’ he had said. ‘As clever as any man, and witty and sharp as a needle.’

  He had not mentioned that she was beautiful and for some reason this disturbed rather than pleased me. Perhaps Elizabeth’s looks were not of such conventional prettiness as mine but it was a woman’s lot to be prized for her beauty and sweet nature rather than her wit. King Henry had worshipped Anne Boleyn for the quickness of her mind and that had not served her to any great purpose. Yet suddenly I was not so pleased with the portrait that Robert had commissioned of me from the King’s miniaturist as a wedding gift. It seemed that with me he saw only the surface but with the Lady Elizabeth he saw and valued what was beneath.

  Telling myself that I was full of foolish imaginings, I concentrated on the words of the marriage service and on my new husband. He looked gravely handsome; although he smiled at me, on one occasion I saw him glancing over the heads of the congregation as his gaze sought her out. Yet it was nothing, or so I told myself. There were many women present and many of those smiled at Robert. I could not be jealous of them all.

  When the service was concluded my father swept me up into his embrace, kissing me exuberantly on both cheeks. He was pleased with me and very proud, and that warmed me. My mother too; finally, she had relented and given us her blessing although I sensed that beneath the good wishes, she had not changed her opinion of Robert and his reckless ambition. I did not ask her though. I did not want to know the truth and damage the bond between us.

  I was surrounded by friends and family congratulating me; the faces spun about me like a whirling top and in the mêlée I lost sight of Robert. It was odd how even at my own wedding I seemed to get lost in the crowd, overlooked amongst the peacocking crowd of courtiers, and without my husband I felt inconsequential and vulnerable. The King and his attendants swept out to attend the feast. My new father-in-law strode away without a glance in my direction whilst the Seymour girls looked down their aristocratic noses and whispered behind their hands.