Little Sister

by Isabel Ashdown

  “I was a nanny in Canada for six months,” I said, so convincingly that I almost believed it myself. “They were a lovely family, with a four-year-old and a young baby—the mum said I was a natural! I would’ve stayed if it hadn’t been for my air ticket home.”

  Emily’s face had relaxed into a delighted smile, and I didn’t feel bad about the lie; I knew I’d said the right thing. “Leave it with me,” she said, and her eyes searched the room for James, finding him standing over at the fireplace talking to some of Mum’s elderly neighbors. The trio of white-blond women were animated, clearly entranced by this handsome man who chatted and laughed with ease, including every one of them in his attention. There was something boyish about him, and in the short few hours since I had met him, I could see what the women found so enchanting about him. Already I liked James; he was one of the good ones.

  “Will James be all right with it?” I asked, wondering how he would feel about me—essentially a stranger—moving into his home. I was startled by how anxious I suddenly felt at the idea of this spontaneous plan not becoming a reality.

  Emily cupped her hand beside her mouth, and the conspiratorial gesture was so familiar that I wondered for a moment if I was dreaming. Could I really be here with Emily? Emily with her flawless fair skin and her glinting chestnut eyes, so like my own—Emily with her glossy dark hair and long, manicured nails, still every bit the bigger sister, the grown-up. God, how I had missed her—how I had missed the things that made us so different, the things that made us the same.

  She had smiled deviously. “I’m the boss when it comes to all things childcare—he’ll be fine with it.”

  Of course, it did all work out, and within a fortnight I had packed my meager belongings, sailed across the sparkling Solent waters to the Isle of Wight and moved into Emily’s lovely family home. I must have got better at lying, I think now, because Emily didn’t flush out the fib the way she usually would; either that, or my sister’s inner lie detector had weakened over the years. Or perhaps she had sussed me out straightaway, spotted the lie, but wanted me anyway. Perhaps she needed me in her world again, wanted me entwined in her life as I had been before, when we were young, young enough to forgive each other our differences. Young enough to forgive each other our mistakes.

  4

  Emily

  Emily can hear their voices through the nursery wall; she’s sitting in Daisy’s nursing chair, a small velour cat in her hand, her eyes resting on the shadow of cot bars cast across the carpet by the mid-morning sunlight. On a normal day off, she might have been leaning into the cot right now, putting Daisy down for her first nap, smoothing down her patchwork blanket and twisting the clunky dial of her mobile until the moon and stars begin to turn and play. On a normal day, she might be heading downstairs, to put soup on to warm for lunch as she tidies away Daisy’s scattered toys and James lays the table and pours the wine. On a normal day, her sister wouldn’t be down at the police station making a statement, and Emily wouldn’t be staring at the ink-stained pads of her own fingers, and Chloe wouldn’t be standing in the room next door with a hangover, about to hear the worst thing she’s ever heard. Until this moment, Emily realizes with sudden clarity, she has never really thought much about Chloe’s relationship with Daisy. She knows she loves her, that she thinks she’s adorable, that she cuddles her and plays with her and gently bops her on the nose every time she passes her sitting in the high chair. But it still seems strange to Emily to hear Chloe talk about her “little sister,” when they’re not really sisters, are they—not like Emily and Jess were, not brought up alongside each other since the youngest age, with the same mum and dad, the same grandparents, the same school friends and childhood experiences. The only thing they really share is their dad, but everything else is different. How can they be like real sisters when so much is different, when their lives are so profoundly not the same?

  Chloe’s bedroom is next door. James is in there with her now, breaking the news to her that Daisy is missing. Our baby is missing.

  Emily speaks the words, barely a whisper, “Daisy is gone,” and she wonders why she cannot cry in the way she would like to, in the way she ought to. There’s no doubt that the sensations of shock and grief are fiercely at work within her, and yet Emily now feels incapable of giving life to them, powerless to let them out in either tears or words.

  In contrast, she hears Chloe’s grief exploding next door, the keening shriek of disbelief, the tumble of words and questions, set against the low, soothing tone of James’s voice as he pulls her to him, muffling her cries.

  * * *

  Emily doesn’t remember her little sister arriving, as she wasn’t even a full year old when Jess was born, and so ultimately they grew up more like twins, with Emily reaching every milestone first and Jess trailing slightly behind. It was no wonder Emily was sometimes a bit harsh, a bit bossy with Jess; Jess wasn’t younger enough for her to mother, but neither was she old enough to keep up and match Emily’s pace. It wasn’t Jess’s fault, Emily knew, but it didn’t stop her from feeling irritated at times, held back by Jess’s unsteady feet or hesitant temperament. There were so many differences between them, not only in the physical sense—Emily being fair-skinned and dark-haired to Jess’s golden locks and luminous complexion—but also in the very core of their beings.

  Where Emily joined up to dance class and drama club and choir, Jess would rather seek out solitary pursuits like drawing or tending the garden or walking Victor the poodle for Mrs. Shaw along the road. Jess’s quiet nature was so often the cause of irritation in the outgoing Emily, and only now, when she looks back on her childhood, does she realize it was at the same time one of the qualities she most valued. They were close, of course, and if Emily concentrates hard enough, she can remember the way in which Jess would sometimes mother her, talking her down when she got carried away with an idea, or when she lost her temper with a friend or got herself into bother at school. Jess had a quiet way of calming Emily as no one else ever could, and in her gentle manner, she could be quite forceful.

  Emily recalls a fight with one of the rough lads down the street when she was seven or eight, started when the boy—Connor Drake—threw a stick into the spokes of her bicycle, causing her to be jettisoned onto the grass verge at the edge of their suburban road. Emily had been furious, enraged with embarrassment—and she’d leapt to her feet and taken after him, knocking him to the ground, a knee pinning down each of his puny arms as she pummeled him at close range. She had despised him for humiliating her like that, for hurting her, for mocking her, and in that heart-racing, deafening moment, she had wanted to pound him out of existence. When Jess caught up, his nose was already bloodied, and he was crying for his mother despite being nearly ten years old. Jess had bent close and whispered, “Let’s go home,” but Emily had wanted to carry on, to punish him thoroughly. When she went to throw another punch, Jess caught her fist and drew it back, hooking the fingers of her other hand into the neck of Emily’s shirt and gently reeling her off. “Let’s go,” she whispered again, and before Emily knew what she was doing, she was trotting alongside her younger sister, fetching up her scratched bike and leaving the trouble behind without so much as a backward glance.

  * * *

  “Em?” James is standing in the doorway looking down at her, and she starts with a lurch, ashamed at her ability to sleep at a time like this. “Are you OK?”

  His face looks gray, and she can see the pain written through him, and she envies his ability to display his emotions so openly.

  “I was just resting my eyes,” she replies.

  The shape of Chloe passes on the landing behind him, and James and Emily stare at each other as the muffled tread of her feet descends the carpeted stairs. It’s such a bright and beautiful day outside; the rest of the island will be busy congregating along the beaches and promenades now, for the traditional New Year’s Day walk, as they build up an appetite for lunch, calling a cheery Happy New Year to every group they pass, com
menting on what a wonderful start to the year this is. Such a beautiful day. She thinks of the holiday parks and amusements around the island, now shut down and vacant for the winter months, their Waltzers and Spinning Cups and Lazy Rivers standing idle, gathering moss as the locals reclaim the landscape. She thinks of herself as a local now, she realizes, no longer a visitor. No longer a tourist.

  They had said they’d drop by for a quick drink at Becca’s in the evening; who would phone her friend to say they weren’t coming? Not Emily—how could she even start to form the words? The loopy island swimmers will already have toweled themselves off after the annual Big Swim, and they’ll now be propping themselves up in various local pubs, downing a well-earned pint of lager or a white wine spritzer or, better still, a warming brandy to thaw themselves out. Fleetingly, Emily craves a stiff drink. Who would blame her?

  Her mind rushes over the confrontation she had rehearsed for when James arrived home last night. She’d planned to demand an answer to why he had insisted on staying at the party a little longer, encouraging her to return alone. As she had collected her coat and left the party, she’d scanned the room and its remaining guests and wondered, is she here? Is “A” here? His mystery woman? Is he hanging back for her, waiting for his boring wife to piss off and leave them to it? But it was impossible to work out which one it could be. All the women love him, they all fawn over him as if he’s the sweetest man they’ve ever encountered. Wonderful James! was what Jan had exclaimed when she and Marcus welcomed them in earlier that evening. Wonderful James! If he had just come with her when she wanted to go home last night, if he had just said yes, maybe she wouldn’t be sitting here now; maybe they would have got home together in time to stop this happening—to save Daisy. The ghost of last night’s anger presses against her chest, and she suppresses it; none of that matters now. Nothing but Daisy matters now.

  “What time is it?” she asks James.

  He checks his watch, running his other hand through his hair so that it stands up in crazy peppered peaks. She wants to leap from her chair and straighten it out, to put him back the way he should be, but at the same time she knows she can’t bring herself to touch him. Not now, not with Daisy missing. She can’t imagine touching another human being for her rest of her life if she can’t touch Daisy again.

  “Nearly one,” he says, and Emily struggles to remember what they were talking about. Her eyes linger on the solid bones of him, his wrists, his shoulders, the clearly defined lines of his neck, and she wonders if she knows him at all. Does he know her? How strange to think of the places our choices take us; if she’d never met him all those years ago, she wouldn’t be sitting here now. There would be no Daisy to go missing, no nursery to sit in, no pain to endure.

  “Any news about Jess?” she asks after an awkward beat. She’s been gone six or seven hours now. What are they asking her? It seems incomprehensible that they would think her a suspect, but she’s been away so long. “Why are they keeping her?” These last words come out in a rush, surprising her with their force.

  James shakes his head. “The family liaison officer says it’s just routine—easier to interview her there than here, you know? To spare our feelings, I’d imagine.”

  “Liaison officer? Is he still here?” Emily’s pulse quickens at the thought of someone else in the house. She’d completely forgotten there was anyone else here. “Where is he?”

  “In the kitchen. His name’s DC Cherry. I left him down there with a coffee and some toast.” His voice is weary, dull. “He says he wants to ask us a few more questions when you’re down, to build a picture of our lives. Friends, family, and so on—our routines. He says he’ll be one of our main contacts during the investigation.” James crosses the room and straightens the curtains. He stands at the window, looking out across the drive, over the distant rooftops toward the blue horizon of the sea. The smart gray shirt he donned last night now hangs crumpled and loose. “Chloe’s home,” he says. She nods, and he turns, not hearing her reply. “I went and picked her up outside the Albion—she’d walked there from Beth’s house.”

  “I heard you come in,” she says.

  He looks hard at Emily, impatience creeping into his tone. “I told her.”

  Emily stares at him, wondering what he wants her to say; his expression is hurt.

  He turns back to the window. “She’s devastated,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose and taking a deep, lumbering breath. “I’ve never seen her so distraught. She’s growing up so fast, and just now—well, she reminded me so much of Avril—” His shoulders rise and fall, and again there’s a pause as he waits for some response, but Emily can’t find one. She’s stunned that he should bring his first wife’s name into this. His dead wife’s name. “She adores Daisy, you know? She just kept asking me question after question after question—and Christ, a dad’s meant to have all the answers, isn’t he? But all I could say was, I don’t know, Chloe, I don’t know—and she looked at me like she was waiting for me to say it was all going to be all right—”

  He turns back to face Emily, and she sees disappointment in his eyes. He wants her to reassure him, but she can’t, no more than he can reassure Chloe, and she hates him for wanting it from her, for expecting it from her. As she unflinchingly returns his gaze, Emily senses his warmth draining away, and then suddenly he’s shaking his head, shock-faced, and striding from the room.

  “I’m going down to check on her,” he says, and he’s gone.

  Emily remains in the warmth of Daisy’s room for another hour, maybe two, until the sound of the police car arriving on the gravel drive stirs her, and Jess’s voice floats in through the front door, coaxing her out of her room. She wants to ask Jess if she’ll phone Becca, to explain that they won’t be coming, but at the top of the stairs, she finds herself fixed to the spot. She can see Jess crossing the dining room, her arms outstretched. Chloe steps into her aunt’s embrace and sobs against her shoulder.

  “It’s going to be all right, Chloe,” Jess tells her.

  Across the room is James, leaning up against the sideboard, one hand clasped to his mouth, tears spilling from eyes that are locked on his daughter and Jess. As Emily furtively observes this intimate scene, she wonders, what is it she can see in his expression? Chloe turns from Jess and moves into her father’s arms, and as she does so, Emily reads meaning in the glance that passes between James and Jess. It’s more than just simple gratitude or reassurance; it’s understanding. They understand each other, Emily thinks with detached certainty, and the old suspicions rise up in her like tiny flickering flames.

  5

  Jess

  There is an unreality about returning to the house. Through the open window of the car, I hear gull cries drifting in from the shoreline, and as we pull up on the driveway, the dazzling light of early afternoon spills out across the gravel. Along the roadside outside the gate, there are several cars and vans parked up on the pavement, and the officer driving gives a disgruntled humph noise at the sight of them. DC Piper, his name is, and as he drove me home, he was friendly enough, allowing me to sit in the front seat beside him while he made small talk, acting more like a taxi driver than a man of the law. His beard is dark and full, with a bold streak of silver running through the center of it, like the markings of a badger, and I find myself staring at it, wondering if anyone has ever commented on it before. I’m told he’s one of two family liaison officers assigned to Daisy’s case—two because it’s a major crime, a crime of great urgency and significance. A major crime involving a minor. These phrases fill me with dread, making my head throb with the harsh sounds of their words in my ears. Major crime investigation. Forensics. Witness statements. Abductee—abductor. Victim profile. I feel emptied out after the hours of questions, as DCI Jacobs went over and over the same events, probing me endlessly as if with each repeat I might suddenly remember more than I had the last time. In fact, she had been right, because at some point I had a sudden flash of recollection—of a sound—and whil
e I couldn’t be sure whether it was dreamt or real, I decided to tell her anyway. I was feeling a bit more trusting of her by this point, since she’d just received confirmation that my heart condition was real. The doctor who had checked me out on arrival was kind—spoke to me in the familiar language of blood pressure and capillaries and irregular rhythms. I felt safe as he pressed his two fingers to my wrist, peered studiously into my eyes with his little flashlight, listened carefully to the sounds I created through the earpiece of his stethoscope.

  “Well, I’m happy with your account in the main part, Jess,” DCI Jacobs had said. “I’ve seen your medical records, and I understand that you have a history of this kind of thing—a long-standing condition, I think?”

  “Cardioinhibitory vaso—” I started to say, but I saw the notes in front of her, and I knew that wasn’t what she wanted to hear about. We weren’t there to talk about my health.

  “So I understand that the fainting is a symptom of your condition, and that there can be various triggers to set it off, such as stress—or shock?”

  “Well, yes, but not always.” Stress. The word made it sound so wishy-washy, as if it’s not a real thing. As if I’m just a hypochondriac, or one of those people who passes out at the sight of blood. “It hasn’t happened for a while, but the doctors think I’ll need a pacemaker if it continues—if I start to have more than two episodes a year.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Jess, that’s helpful.” I could see she was just being polite, eager to move on to the real subject. “Now, we’re going to need as much as you can give us. Can you think of anything unusual at all that happened last night? Anything that may have triggered your reaction? Any strange phone calls—visitors—smells or sounds?”

  And it was that word—sounds—that triggered my memory, the flash of it rushing to the front of my mind the very moment she said it. After I’d drifted off on the sofa, I told her, I thought I was roused by the sound of glass, a bit like the sound of bottles clinking against each other in a carrier bag. When I say I thought I was roused, it really was as vague as that, as if I had been dreaming—a frustrating dream about being in a busy pub crowd in which I was pushing and pushing and never quite reaching the bar—and so as I was waking, I just thought the glass sounds were part of that dream, because they stopped as soon as I focused in on them. DCI Jacobs wrote this down, but she looked slightly perplexed, and I wondered if I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. Now, I think maybe it just makes me look even more unreliable than I did before. She asked me again if I’d been drinking at all, and again—that bottle of fizz looming large in my mind—I said no.