Her Sister's Lie

by Debbie Howells

  It was a cheap anglepoise desk lamp, but that wasn’t the point. “S’pose.” He went over and unplugged it.

  Leaving him to it, I went along to Nina’s bedroom. The first thing I noticed was the bloodstain on the carpet, now dried to a dull brown. Trying not to think about how she’d died, I hunted around for the photos that I knew had to be here.

  As I opened it, her wardrobe exuded an unwashed smell. It was crammed with clothes I could remember her wearing at the cottage, and slowly I went through them, their fabric seeming to hold an echo of the music, people, and parties of that time. Glimpsing a brightly patterned Pucci-esque dress I’d always loved, I pulled it out. The last time I’d seen her wear it, she’d twirled around so that its skirt had flared out. She’d been hiding tears behind her brightest smile, but only I had known that. A whisper of her voice came to me.

  Hey, Hannah . . . Get dressed up! The show must go on—never forget that . . .

  Blotting the memory out, I pulled out one or two other dresses. Then in the bottom of the wardrobe, buried at the back behind her shoes, I found what I was looking for.

  My hands were shaking as I withdrew the old shoe box that, years ago, she’d covered in pink paper. The color had faded, but it was still tied with the green ribbon I remembered. Sitting on the floor, I untied the knot and opened it.

  Inside, she’d laid a neatly folded scarf on top, but underneath it was as I’d known it would be, full of letters and photos that dated back to her teens. As I started leafing through them, a wave of nostalgia swept over me. My life was in there too—the part that had existed alongside Nina’s, but here and now, there was too much to take in. Putting the lid back on and tying it up, I placed it on her bed to take home.

  Next, I started on the chest of drawers, finding underwear and a collection of T-shirts in one drawer, her collection of costume jewelry in another. A necklace of multicolored crystal flowers caught my eye. Carefully, I untangled it from others and lifted it out to take with me. It had no monetary value, but to me it symbolized a time when life had been so much simpler.

  In the bottom drawer, I found her rental agreement; then my heart missed a beat as I discovered a diary from 2007. I was shocked.

  Why, Nina? After everything that happened, why couldn’t you let it go?

  Amazed the police hadn’t taken it, I picked it up and started reading, feeling ghosts around me as the events of that year came flooding back. Closing it, I placed it on her bed next to the shoe box. I couldn’t risk leaving it here for anyone else to find. But what I’d read had rattled me. Then the guilt was back, rearing up and flooding over me, that Nina and Abe had been living like this while I’d lived so differently.

  It was too much. I had to get away. Getting up, quickly collecting everything together in the box I’d brought up here, I called to Abe. “Are you done? Can we go?”

  It was premature. I’d planned to go through more of Nina’s stuff, bagging up what needed to be thrown out and salvaging anything worth sending to charity shops, so that there was no need for us to come back, but I couldn’t bear to stay here a minute longer. Hurrying downstairs, I called him again. “Abe? You ready to go?”

  “Yeah.” He was ahead of me, his voice from the bottom of the stairs making me jump.

  “Great.” I found myself breathless. “Are you sure there’s nothing else you want? What about the TV? I thought you might like it for your bedroom.”

  But he shook his head. “It doesn’t work.”

  “Right. Let’s load the car up.” I marched toward the front door, still carrying the box of Nina’s things, fumbling to open it and stumbling outside breathing in gasps of air.

  There are too many ghosts, Nina. Even after all this time, they never left you. They haunted you, didn’t they? Until you escaped into your stoned world, where they couldn’t follow. And now, they’ve come for me.

  After ten years of trying to blot out what was too painful to think about, I couldn’t shake the sense of the past catching up with me. Outside, my legs felt unsteady as I walked toward the car, resting the box on the hood and reaching into my pocket for my keys. Images of Nina and her children flashed through my head, followed by more, of that awful night I wished had never happened. I’m sorry, Summer. You’ll never know how sorry. Glancing around, my eyes searched the street, as I desperately tried to distract myself. Silently counting my breaths, I felt myself calm slightly. I put the box on the back seat, as Abe appeared carrying another box.

  “I’ll help you with the rest.” Closing the car door, I followed him back to the house. After we’d finished loading everything, relief filled me as I locked the door. It was only when we were halfway home that I realized I still had Nina’s key. My heart sank. It meant I’d have to go back.

  9

  Now that I had Nina’s rental agreement, I had no excuse not to notify her landlord. Then, I supposed, I’d have to arrange house clearance, and probably cleaning. I’d forgotten to ask DI Collins if she’d managed to contact Jude.

  It couldn’t be that hard to find him, surely. Preoccupied with Abe, I’d given only passing thought to Jude. He’d be about twenty now. A man, rather than the boy I remembered. A man for whom life had been hard, I had no doubt. Not least because he was the son of an addict.

  In the ten years since I’d seen Nina, the ghosts of the past had left me alone. But the sight of her diary had brought them back in full force. Not for the first time, I was wondering how much Abe knew. Jude too, for that matter. But I couldn’t ask. Before we fell out, Nina had insisted we make a pact. She’d called it the script.

  Nothing will change what happened, Hannah . . . No one must ever know . . .

  She was talking about the secrets we shared, which were buried in the passing of time, in silence. It was where they should stay. It was why it made no sense that she’d kept the diary.

  I helped Abe carry the boxes upstairs, then, whistling to Gibson, I pulled on my boots and jacket, needing to walk, wanting space to clear my head, to be alone. At the back of the house, I climbed the fence and headed for a footpath that skirted the edge of a ploughed field. After London, the peacefulness was all the more noticeable, broken only by the cries of birds and the wind rustling through the trees, sounds that soothed me. Slowly, I felt a tentative optimism filter in. I had to believe it would get easier, surely, for both me and Abe. It couldn’t get much worse.

  * * *

  Now that Abe had collected his things, and I could deal with Nina’s affairs, I was hoping that life would settle down, that Abe would become more communicative. I considered going through some of Nina’s old photos and other keepsakes with him, thinking it might open the door to conversation between us—if he was interested. I wasn’t sure he would be, but it was worth trying. As things stood, I had little to lose.

  The shoe box was still in my bedroom on the floor, where I’d left it. I guessed forensics must have found it and either taken anything relevant or dismissed the contents as of no interest to them. I hadn’t looked inside since bringing it here, but that evening, I sat on the floor and started to go through it, not at all sure what I’d find. Slowly leafing through photos of Nina, taking in how young, pretty, and carefree she looked, I remembered just how young she’d actually been when she moved out of our parents’ house. Just sixteen, and pregnant with Summer.

  Before that . . . I shuddered. They were years I didn’t want to think about, holding memories that were better off forgotten. Younger than Nina, I hadn’t realized for years what she was going through. When you grew up with the brutality and cruelty we’d been exposed to, it became normalized, ceased to shock. Now, looking back, I was horrified. I remembered how Nina had fought back against him as he dragged her up the stairs; how strong he was, how rough; how she always lost. My sister locked in her bedroom, hammering on the door, screaming to be let out, her cries hours later, giving way to sobbing, then dying out. The silence that seemed to last forever, so that I lay in bed unable to sleep, wondering if she was dead.
Her pale, blank face when he let her out, sometimes three, four days later. How after, when I crept into her bed in the middle of the night, it was as though Nina had been anesthetized.

  Although Nina had tried her hardest to hide her pregnancy, he’d found out, but then, he’d never missed anything. I remembered him screaming at her, calling her the most vile names, telling her that unless she had an abortion, she was to get out and never come back. How he never wanted to see her again.

  As I remembered my sister creeping into my bedroom one night, telling me she was leaving, tears were rolling down my cheeks. I wondered whether she’d known what she was leaving me to, but of course she had. She’d lived with it for years but couldn’t take any more.

  It didn’t take long before I was treated to the same abuse, triggered by the smallest infraction of his rules. A grade for a piece of schoolwork, the defiant way I met his eyes, as he put it. They were years that had been unbearable, the most painful of memories, buried all this time. I was unnerved by the intensity of the emotions they unleashed.

  Trying to push them from my head, I pulled out another photo, of me, aged seventeen, with bleached hair and eyes rimmed with black, in the early days of the band, when I’d first gone to live with Nina. Away from my parents, I looked alive, happy and confident. For a while, that’s how I’d felt. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I’d been happy. I was living with my sister. The future had looked incredible. The Cry Babies were one of the fastest-growing success stories of that time. I’d been living the dream.

  There were more photos taken around the same time, of Nina’s friends at one of her impromptu gatherings. When I first went to live there, she’d had a large circle of friends, and with the nearest neighbors two or three miles away, her cottage was the venue for many parties. I remembered loud music drifting through the woods, all afternoon into the evening, stopping only at sunrise the next morning; cooking on fires at the edge of Nina’s garden; the old water trough she used to chill drinks; the vast awning someone had rigged up at one side of the cottage, so that whatever the weather, there was always somewhere for everyone to crash.

  In my naïveté, I’d never stopped to wonder where food had come from. Nina had been off-grid. There’d been no child support, no benefit payments of any kind. Her friends had sometimes brought food with them, and I had a vague memory of boxes of food being left at the back door, but I had no idea by whom.

  I picked up another photo of myself and Nina together, when we were children. As I looked at it, a shiver ran down my spine. To anyone who didn’t know us, we looked like normal, happy children, smiling at the camera. Smiles perfected from years of practice. There was no indication of the fear that was hidden underneath.

  Not surprisingly, she hadn’t any photos of our parents. Then I picked up another, of Jude and Summer, taken before I lived with them, when Jude was a chunky toddler, unsmiling as he stood next to his sister. Summer. She looked about eight, with honey brown skin and long hair lightened at the ends by the sun. She wore a yellow checked sundress, her feet bare, her eyes bright, laughing as she looked into the camera.

  I pulled out more photos of the two of them, some of them with Nina too, studying them, feeling myself frown. I hadn’t noticed before, but it seemed that as Summer blossomed, Nina had faded, almost as though Nina’s own vitality had been drip-feeding into her daughter’s veins. I could remember the terrible arguments that grew progressively worse as Summer got older, lashing out at her mother, venting her frustrations at their way of life. And then, that terrible night.

  Summer’s death had left Nina heartbroken. It had to be the reason she’d kept the diary. Apart from the photos, it was the only other reminder she had of that time, of Summer. Undoubtedly, her guilt over what had happened made her punish herself, reliving the pain as she reread, over and over, what she’d written. But when it could so easily have been avoided, how could she not.

  Part of me wasn’t ready to face the diary—not just yet. The past seemed too real around me, and it was as though the ground under my feet was shifting. But I couldn’t put it out of my mind, and the following evening, after a couple of glasses of wine, I steeled myself to read it.

  In 2007, Summer would have been fourteen, Jude nine, and Abe just four. I flicked through the first few pages, which were empty, then found the next scrawled unmistakably in Nina’s handwriting.

  27th January . . . I’m going mad—Summer argues, Jude’s angry, and Abe says nothing, I don’t know what to do anymore. It gets worse, not better, trying to keep the house warm, the children fed, when I have no money, when all I want is another pill to make it go away. Am I being punished? I wish you were here, Hannah. Why, just for once, can’t someone help me?

  The anguish in her words shocked me. Nina hadn’t told me how she was feeling. But at that time, I’d been dealing with my own problems. The year 2007 began for me with optimism. The Cry Babies had burst onto the scene, playing all over the country, about to sign with a major record label, success within our grasp. By year’s end, it was a dim and distant memory. And in between . . . I remembered hope turning to disbelief, then devastation, when after our single hit record, everything changed and the band fell apart. None of us could believe what had happened.

  Rumors circulated as to why we’d broken up. How we’d fallen out, how we weren’t reliable—none of them true. At the time, I’d been distraught, unable to think about anything else. It was a time when if Nina had been struggling, I wouldn’t have noticed. But nor had she told me, instead welcoming me as she always did, whenever I turned up at her cottage, desperate. Nina knew what it was like to have nowhere to go. She never turned anyone away.

  A week or so later, there was another entry.

  4th February . . . Summer, Summer, Summer . . . Why is she always so angry with me? All I wanted was to give my children freedom, love, peace, the sky, the stars. Everything I never had. What else matters? But it’s not enough for her. Nothing’s ever enough. Whatever I give her, she wants more.

  Jude just glares. Glares and stares and swears. Then he goes out and doesn’t tell me where. Will Abe be the same? Do I deserve this from my children? But I can’t change anything. This is our life. We don’t have anywhere else to go.

  Had she been high when she wrote that? I couldn’t help but wonder if she was exaggerating. But there was no denying the arguments, Summer’s strong will and loudly voiced opinions, Jude’s stubbornness. Naïvely, I’d seen their behavior as indicative of strength of character. Nina’s words on paper were impassioned, but then drugs put a different slant on everything. I imagined her pouring her thoughts onto the pages while she popped another pill. It’s what diaries were, a place to exorcise your darkest emotions, leaving them behind, then moving on.

  And no two people saw things the same way. I thought of Matt. How our two worlds that had been so similar were suddenly poles apart, for reasons I didn’t understand. Maybe that’s how it had been for Nina and Summer. I read on.

  14th February . . . Fucking Valentine’s Day, my life a fucking hell. I have no money, my children fight all the time, there’s no food in the house . . . My sister is as fucked up as I am, but after the childhood we both had, is it any wonder? There is no one to turn to. I can’t bear to ask Sam again, but I have no choice. Other than him, I have no one.

  Summer has another chest infection. I have the last of the antibiotics Lucy left us. Sweet, lovely Lucy, who taught Summer to read when her fucking useless mother failed. Who brought her books. What happens when Summer has her next chest infection? When she’s finished the books? When my children are hungry? When I tell them, there is no food? What do I do then?

  The happy house, which used to be full of people and life, is empty, holds only anger and darkness. No one comes here anymore; there’s no reason for them to. No parties or laughter. Just anger, tears, struggle. If it wasn’t for the children, I’d end it now. But I can’t, so I take my pills, craving the feeling as it spreads through my body and
numbs the pain, as the problems I have no answers for magically fade away, as my thoughts stop tormenting me. Maybe one day I’ll never wake up. Maybe that would be best for everyone.

  29th February . . . Where are you, Hannah? Please come back. I need you. You’re the only person who understands.

  It was though she was sitting next to me, her voice clear in my head. Slamming the diary shut, I put it down, shocked. Not moving, I sat there for a moment, but there was nothing I could do, no point in letting her plea get to me. The time had passed. It was too late.

  But I couldn’t get her words out of my head. The more I thought about Nina’s anguish, the more my discomfort grew. This had been the backdrop to Abe’s life. He was the innocent in all this. None of it could have been easy for him. Suddenly I was compelled to talk to him, even if only a few words.

  Getting up, I walked along the landing toward his room, watching the blue tinge under his door give way to an orange glow as I got closer. I paused outside. “Abe? I just came to say good night. I’m going to bed.”

  The muttered “g’night” took me by surprise. I hadn’t expected it. But as I started walking away, I stopped suddenly, halted by the blue strip of light under his door—the kind of blue that came from an electronic screen, such as the laptop he’d denied all knowledge of.

  Abe

  I’ve seen you in your garden, Hannah. Watched you come through your back door, your eyes flickering around before closing it behind you, pulling on your jacket as you walk down the path, glancing at the sky briefly, then walking toward the footpath across the fields.

  You and your sister, you’re really not so different. Each of you with your own version of what happened, your own spiderweb of lies, but you’ve been lying to yourself for so long, you’ve forgotten what’s true and what isn’t. And there are things you don’t know about the boy, just as there are things you should know about Nina. You’ve hidden yourself away for too long. It’s time you found out the truth.