Sister

by Rosamund Lupton

  “William went to the bathroom, and looked in the cupboard. He found a bottle of pills with a hospital label on them. It was the PCP. It had been there all the time. He said many drugs are illegal on the street but are legally prescribed by doctors for therapeutic reasons.”

  “Did the label give the name of the prescribing doctor?”

  “No, but he said the police could easily trace it to Dr. Nichols through the hospital pharmacy records. I felt so stupid. I’d thought that an illegal drug would be hidden, not openly on show. It had been there all the time.”

  I’m sorry; I’m starting to repeat myself. My mind is losing focus.

  “And then…?” he asks.

  But we’re nearly at the end, so I summon what remains of my mental energy and continue.

  “We left the flat together. William had left his bike chained to the railings on the other side of the road, but it had been stolen, though they’d left the chain. He took that with us, and joked that we could report the theft of his bike at the same time.

  We decided to walk through Hyde Park to the police station, rather than take the ugly road route. At the gates of the park there was a flower stall. William suggested we lay flowers where you’d died and went to buy some.

  As he spoke to the stall holder, I texted Kasia two words: “odcisk palca”—and knew she’d understand that I was finally putting on my own fingerprint of love.

  William turned to me, holding two bunches of daffodils.

  “You told me they were Tess’s favorite flower. Because of the yellow in a daffodil saving children’s sight.”

  I was pleased and surprised that he had remembered.

  He put his arm around me and as we walked into the park together, I thought I heard you teasing me, and I admitted to you that I was a big fat hypocrite. The truth is, I knew that the affair wouldn’t last, that he’d stay married. But I also knew that I wouldn’t be broken by it. I wasn’t proud of myself, but I did feel liberated from the person I no longer was or wanted to be. And as we walked together, I felt small green shoots of hope and decided I would allow them to grow. Because now that I had found out what happened to you, I could look forward and dare to imagine a future without you. I remembered being here almost two months before, when I had sat in the snow and wept for you among the lifeless, leafless trees. But now there were ball games and laughter and picnics and bright new foliage. It was the same place, but the landscape was entirely changed.

  We reached the toilets building and I took the cellophane off the daffodils, wanting them to look homegrown. As I laid them at the door, a memory—or lack of one—tugged its way through, unbidden.

  “But I never told you that she liked daffodils, or the reason.”

  “Of course you did. That’s why I chose them.”

  “No. I talked about it with Amias. And Mum. Not you.”

  I had actually told him very little about you, or me for that matter.

  “Tess must have told you herself.”

  Carrying his bunch of daffodils for you, he came toward me. “Bee—”

  “Stop calling me that.” I backed away from him.

  He came closer, then pushed me hard inside.

  “He shut the door behind us and put a knife against my throat.”

  I break off, shaking from the adrenaline. Yes, his call to DI Haines had been faked. He probably got the idea from a daytime TV soap—they’re on all the time in the wards—I remember that from Leo’s hospital stays. Maybe it was sheer desperation. And maybe I was too distracted to notice anything very much. Mr. Wright is considerate enough not to point out my ludicrous gullibility.

  The teenagers have abandoned their loud game of softball for raucous music. The office workers picnicking have been replaced by mothers with preschool children; their high, barely formed voices quickly turning from shrieks of happiness into tears and back again, a mercurial quicksilver sound. And I want the children to be louder, the laughter more raucous, the music turned up full volume. And I want the park to be crowded with barely a place to sit. And I want the sunshine to be blinding.

  He closed the door of the toilets building and used the bicycle chain to fasten it shut. There had never been a bicycle, had there? Light seeped through the filthy cracked windows and was turned dirty by them, casting the gloom of a nightmare. The sounds of the park outside—children laughing and crying, music from a CD player—were muffled by the damp bricks. Yes, it’s uncanny how similar that day was to today in the park with Mr. Wright, but maybe the sounds of a park remain the same, day to day, give or take. And in that cold, cruel building I also wanted the children to be louder, the laughter more raucous, the music turned up to full volume. Maybe because if I could hear them, then there was a chance they could hear my screams; but no, it couldn’t have been that because I knew if I screamed, he would silence me with a knife. So it must have been simply that I wanted the comfort of hearing life as I died.

  “You killed her, didn’t you?” I asked.

  If I’d been sensible, maybe I would have given him a let-out, made out that I thought he had pushed me in there for some weird sort of sadistic sex; because once I’d accused him, was he ever going to let me go? But he was never going to. Whatever I did or said. I had wild thoughts racing through my head about how you’re meant to make friends with your kidnapper. (Where on earth did that nugget of information come from? And why did anyone think the general population would need to know such a thing?) Remarkably, I did, but I couldn’t make friends with him because he’d been my lover and there was nowhere for us to go.

  “I’m not responsible for Tess’s death.”

  For a moment I thought that he wasn’t, that I’d read him all wrong, that everything would play out the way I’d been so sure of, with us going to the police and Dr. Nichols being arrested. But self-deception isn’t possible with a knife and a chain on the other side of the equation.

  “I didn’t want it to happen. I didn’t plan it. I’m a doctor, for God’s sake. I wasn’t meant to kill anyone. Have you any idea what it feels like? It’s a living hell.”

  “So stop now with me. Please.”

  He was silent. Fear pricked my skin into a hundred thousand goose bumps, a hundred thousand tiny hairs standing to upright attention as they offered their useless protection.

  “You were her doctor?”

  I had to keep him talking—not because I thought anyone was on the way to rescue me, but because a little longer to live, even in this building with this man, was precious.

  And because I needed to know.

  “Yes. I looked after her all through her pregnancy.”

  You’d never mentioned his name, just said “the doctor,” and I hadn’t asked, too busy multitasking with something else.

  “We had a good rapport, liked each other. I was always kind to her.”

  “You delivered Xavier?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I thought of the masked man in your nightmarish paintings, dark with menace in the shadows.

  “She was relieved to see me in the park that day,” William continued. “Smiled at me. I—”

  I interrupted. “But she was terrified of you.”

  “The man who delivered the baby, not me.”

  “But she must have known it was you, surely? Even with a mask, she must have recognized your voice at least. If you’d looked after her for all her pregnancy, surely…”

  He was silent. I hadn’t realized that it was possible to be more appalled by him.

  “You didn’t speak to her. While she was in labor. When she gave birth. Even when her baby was dead. You didn’t speak to her.”

  “I came back and comforted her, twenty minutes or so later. I’ve told you. I was always kind to her.”

  So he’d taken off the mask, switching personas back into the caring man you thought he was, who I’d thought he was.

  “I suggested I phone someone for her,” he continued. “And she gave me your number.”

  You thought I kne
w. All that time, you thought I knew.

  Mr. Wright looks at me with concern. “You look pale.”

  “Yes.”

  I feel pale, inside and out. I think of that expression “paling into insignificance” and think how well it fits me, a pale person in a bright world that turns me invisible.

  Outside I could hear people in the bright afternoon sunshine, but in the toilets building I was invisible to them. He’d taken off his tie and used it to bind my hands behind my back.

  “You called her Tess, the first time I met you.”

  Still keeping him talking—the only way to stay alive. And still needing to know.

  “Yes, it was a stupid blunder,” he replied. “And it shows I’m not good at this, doesn’t it? I’m useless at subterfuge and lies.”

  But he had been good at it. He’d manipulated me from the start, guiding conversations and subtly deflecting questions. From my wanting your notes to asking who was in charge of the CF trial at St. Anne’s, he’d made sure I had no real information. He’d even given an excuse, in case his acting wasn’t convincing.

  “Christ, it makes you talk like, I don’t know, somebody else, somebody off the telly or something.”

  Because that was what he was imitating.

  “I didn’t plan this. A vandal threw a stone through her window, not me; she just thought it was targeted at her.”

  He was using twine to tie my legs together.

  “The lullabies?” I asked.

  “I was panicking, just doing whatever came into my head. The CD was in the postnatal ward. I took it home, not really knowing what I was doing. Not thinking anything through. I never stopped to think she’d record the lullabies onto a tape. Who has an answering machine nowadays with a tape? Everyone’s got voice mail through their telephone provider.”

  He was lurching between the minutiae of the everyday and the large horror of murder. The enormity of what he had done ensnared in small domestic details.

  “You knew Mitch’s notes would be useless, because Kasia would never be believed.”

  “The worst-case scenario was that you’d take her boyfriend’s notes to the police. And make a fool of yourself.”

  “But you needed me to trust you.”

  “It was you who kept on going with this. Making me do this. You left me no other choice.”

  But I’d trusted him before he’d produced Mitch’s notes, long before. And it had been my insecurity that had helped him. I’d thought my suspicion of him was because of my customary anxiety around handsome men, rather than seriously suspecting him of your murder, and so I had dismissed it. He was the one person in all this who’d been about me—not about you.

  But I’d been thinking too long; I couldn’t allow a silence to grow between us.

  “It was you and not Dr. Nichols who was the researcher who found the gene?”

  “Yes. Hugo’s a sweet man. But hardly brilliant.”

  His tale about Dr. Nichols had been a boast as much as a deceit. I realized that he had been framing Dr. Nichols from early on, carefully casting the shadow of guilt onto him so that it wouldn’t fall on himself. The long-term planning was viciously calculated.

  “Imperial College and their absurd ethics committee wouldn’t allow a human trial,” continued William. “They didn’t have the vision. Or the guts to go for it. Imagine it, a gene that increases IQ—think of what that means. Then Chrom-Med approached me. My only requirement was that they run human trials.”

  “Which they did.”

  “No. They lied, let me down. I—”

  “You really believe that? The directors of Chrom-Med are pretty bright. I’ve read their biographies. They’re certainly clever enough to want someone else to do their work for them. To take the rap in case it went wrong.”

  He shook his head, but I could see I’d got to him. An avenue was opening up and I ran hell for leather down it. “Genetic enhancement, that’s where the real money lies, isn’t it? As soon as it becomes legal, it’ll be huge. And Chrom-Med wants to be ahead of the game, ready for it.”

  “But they can’t know.”

  “They’ve been playing you, William.”

  But I’d done it wrong, too scared to be as slick as I’d needed to be; I’d simply dented his ego and released new anger. He’d been holding the knife almost casually; now his fingers tightened around it.

  “Tell me about the human trial; what happened?”

  His fingers were still gripping the knife, but the knuckles were no longer white, so he wasn’t gripping as hard. In his other hand he held a flashlight. He had come equipped for this: knife and flashlight and bicycle chain, a grotesque parody of a Boy Scout trip. I wondered what else he’d thought to bring.

  Mr. Wright holds my hand and I’m again overwhelmingly grateful, not brushing away kindness anymore.

  “He told me that in humans his IQ gene codes for two totally different things. It affects not only memory capacity but also lung function. It meant that the babies couldn’t breathe when they were born.”

  I’m so sorry, Tess.

  “He told me that if the babies are intubated immediately after they’re born, if they’re helped to breathe for a while, they’d be fine. They’d live.”

  He had made me lie on the floor, on my left side; the damp cold of the concrete was seeping into my body. I tried to move, but my limbs were too heavy. He must have drugged me when he gave me the tea. I could only use words to stay alive.

  “But you didn’t help them to breathe, did you? Xavier. Hattie’s baby.”

  “It wasn’t my fault. It’s a rare lung disorder and someone would ask questions. I just needed to be left alone. Then there would be no problems. It’s other people, crowding around me, not giving me space.”

  “So you lied to them about what really killed their babies?”

  “I couldn’t risk people asking questions.”

  “And me? Surely you’re not going to stage my suicide, the way you staged Tess’s? Frame me for my own murder like you did my sister? Because if it happens twice, the police are bound to be suspicious.”

  “Staged? You make it sound so thought out. I didn’t plan it—I told you that. You can see that because of my mistakes, can’t you? My research and my trial I planned in meticulous detail, but not this. I was forced into doing this. I even paid them, for God’s sake, not stopping to think that it might look suspicious. And I never thought they might talk to each other.”

  “So why did you pay them?”

  “It was just kindness, that’s all. I just wanted to make sure they had a decent diet, so the developing fetuses had the optimum conditions. It was meant to be spent on food, not bloody clothes.”

  I didn’t dare ask him if there were others or how many. I didn’t want to die with that knowledge. But there were some things I needed to know.

  “What made you choose Tess? Because she was single? Poor?”

  “And Catholic. Catholic women are far less likely to terminate when they know there’s a problem with their baby.”

  “Hattie is Catholic?”

  “Millions of Filipinos are Catholic. Hattie Sim put it on her form—no father’s name, mind you, but her religion.”

  “Did her baby have cystic fibrosis?”

  “Yes. Whenever I could, I treated the cystic fibrosis and tested my gene out too. But there weren’t enough babies who fitted all the criteria.”

  “Like Xavier?”

  He was silent.

  “Did Tess find out about your trial? Is that why you killed her?”

  He hesitated a moment. His tone was close to self-pitying; I think that he genuinely hoped I would understand.

  “There was another consequence that I hadn’t foreseen. My gene got into the mother’s ovaries. It means there is the same genetic change in every egg, and if the women have more babies, the babies will have the same problem with their lungs.

  “Logistically I couldn’t expect to be there for the next baby, or the next. People move away. Even
tually someone would discover what was going on. That’s why Hattie had to have a hysterectomy. But Tess’s labor was too quick. She arrived at the hospital with the baby’s head already engaged. There wasn’t time to do a caesarean, let alone an emergency hysterectomy.”

  You hadn’t found out anything at all.

  He killed you because your body was living evidence against him.

  Around us people are starting to leave the park, the grass turning from green to gray, the air cooling into evening. My bones ache with cold and I focus on the warmth of Mr. Wright’s hand, holding mine.

  “I asked him what made him do it, suggested it was money. He was furious, told me his motives weren’t avaricious. Impure. He said he wouldn’t be able to sell a gene that hadn’t had a legal trial. Fame wasn’t motivating him either. He couldn’t publish his results.”

  “So did he tell you the reason?”

  “Yes.”

  I’ll tell you what he said out here, in this gray-green park in the cool fresh air. Neither of us need to return to that building to hear him.

  “He said that science has the power that religion once claimed, but it’s real and provable, not superstition and cant. He said that miracles don’t happen in fifteenth-century churches but in research labs and hospitals. He said the dead are brought back to life in intensive care units; the lame walk again after hip replacements; the blind see again because of laser surgery. He told me that in the new millennium there are new deities with real, provable powers and that the deities are scientists who are improving what it is to be human. He said that his gene would one day safely get into the gene pool, and that would mean who we are as humans would be irrevocably changed for the better.”

  His overweening hubris was huge and naked and shocking.

  He was shining his flashlight in my face and I couldn’t see him. I was still trying to move but my body had been too drugged by the spiked tea to respond to my brain’s screamed commands for action.

  “You followed her into the park that day?”

  I dreaded hearing it, but I needed to know how you died.

  “When the boy left, she sat on a bench and started writing a letter, in the snow. Extraordinary thing to do, don’t you think?”