Little Sister

by Isabel Ashdown

  And that’s how I found out I was having an abortion. My big sister told me, and that was that.

  * * *

  When the sky has morphed from pink into blue, I leave my hilltop bench and continue along the Tennyson Trail, aiming to reach Carisbrooke by one o’clock, where I can grab a sandwich in town and catch the bus back home. The gulls are flying high, soaring to great heights before bombing down toward the choppy waters, and the great expanse of open grass and gorsey meadow spreads out before me, giving me the sense of being the last person on earth. From here, there are no houses to be seen, no cars, no litter, no noise but for the screech of birds and the rush of wind and ocean, and when I turn in arm-flung circles there is only blue and green stretching out all around me, reaching fingers of rich color toward the white rocks that tether the island to the sea. As I approach the stile, the goats appear, startled and staring on the path ahead. So I’m not alone, I think, and I step up onto the wooden strut and jump over, but the goats aren’t taking any chances, and they bound toward the cliff edge and disappear with a graceful leap. I gasp in shock at their sudden demise, and in a beat I’m after them, racing toward the wire-chained precipice, leaning out as far as I can go without falling, and I see them: two white horny heads huddled together on a narrow ridge not five feet below. I marvel at their nimble art, the way in which they must know this landscape, to leap so fearlessly from the rock face, confident that they will thrive.

  My phone rings in my jacket pocket, the sound of it startling as it breaks through the tranquility of my escape. I don’t recognize the number, but I can’t just let it go, in case it’s something, anything to do with Daisy. “Hello?”

  As soon as I hear her voice, I recognize it as DCI Jacobs. I scrabble to my feet and return to the trodden path, now marching with purpose, as if this might somehow help me to think, help me to answer her questions correctly, to not get it all wrong.

  “Is it a good time to talk, Jess?” she asks.

  A whistle of wind howls past the mouthpiece, and I tug up my collar to shield our conversation. “Yes—yes, it’s just a bit windy. I’m walking.”

  “Well, I won’t keep you too long,” she says, her tone as brisk as ever. Strangely, I realize it’s one of the things I like about her: she is who she is, and that’s reassuring. “There are two things. First, you and your sister, Emily. It’s only just come to my attention that until recently you two had been estranged for many years. Is that correct?”

  “That’s right,” I reply, a knot of nervousness balling up in my gut. “We met again at my mother’s funeral last year.”

  “So I understand. My condolences. And before that, it was sixteen years since you’d last seen each other?”

  “Uh-huh.” I really don’t know what else there is to say.

  “Jess, I’m wondering why neither of you thought to tell me about this estrangement?”

  “Why would we? I don’t see how it—”

  DCI Jacobs interrupts. “Everything is relevant in a case like this, Jess. Everything. Family disputes, disagreements with colleagues, suspicious neighbors—anything that might lead us toward reasons or possible motives for Daisy’s abduction.”

  Abduction. The word is so violent in its simplicity. It conjures up faceless men in the night, cloaked figures who spirit babies away, pied pipers with evil intent. I mustn’t cry, I tell myself, I must stop this constant desire to cry, and pull myself together—for Daisy’s sake, if for no one else’s.

  “Yes, of course,” I reply, trying my best to sound like a good, trustworthy person. “Of course.”

  “So, Jess, can you tell me the reason for your separation from your sister for those sixteen years?”

  I know that she will have already asked Emily the same question, that she will have phoned the house first before trying my mobile phone, and my mind scrambles to find the answer that Emily will have given her. What would she have said? What would Emily do in this situation? She won’t have told them the truth, that much I know. She won’t have told them the real reason for my leaving home—she won’t have told them how she blamed me for everything, how she couldn’t be near me, how we didn’t so much as speak to each other in sixteen years.

  “I guess we just drifted apart,” I say, gaining confidence in my answer as it arrives. “You know how it is—I went off traveling when I was seventeen or eighteen and got wrapped up in that, I suppose. And Emily was always the more academic one, so she stayed on with Mum and Dad, went to uni—and after a while we just stopped writing and got on with our lives. I know it’s a bit of a dull answer, but that’s it really—we simply drifted apart.”

  There’s a pause before DCI Jacobs speaks again. “Yes. That’s pretty much what your sister said. Still, it’s a long time to lose touch, isn’t it?”

  She’s not going to let this go as easily as I hoped. “Well, I suppose we were never that close as kids,” I say. “Not like now.”

  “I understand,” DCI Jacobs replies, but judging by her tone, I’m not sure she’s completely satisfied. “OK, Jess. Thank you.”

  I think she’s about to hang up, but then I remember she said there were two things she wanted to talk to me about. “Oh, yes,” she says, as if it’s an afterthought. “Your brother-in-law, James. Do you know where he was last night? Around seven p.m.?”

  “No,” I answer, knowing he didn’t get home till late. “He got home about nine—he was meeting up with Marcus and some of his team from the office. Why?”

  “Max Fuller was attacked last night. He was given a pretty nasty going-over—he’s in St. Mary’s at the moment. A couple of broken ribs and a lot of bruising. He’s not saying anything, but we’re pretty sure James King is behind it. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  I think of James arriving home last night, looking uncharacteristically unkempt and smelling of beer. Emily was already in bed, and I warmed up a plate of food for him, noticing the purple bruising that had started to snake around the knuckles of his right hand.

  “Jess?” DCI Jacobs repeats.

  “Sorry,” I reply, my eyes fixed on the undulating winter ocean, on the bright liquid sunlight that ices its shifting surface. “The signal dropped off for a second. No, I’m sorry—I don’t know anything about it. James seemed fine when he got home—completely ordinary. And I’m sure he wouldn’t do a thing like that; he’s not capable of that kind of violence.”

  DCI Jacobs releases a small, humorless laugh. “You’d be surprised what the most ordinary of people are capable of.”

  10

  Emily

  There are days when she thinks perhaps she has died, and this place she now inhabits is hell. There are days when she creeps about the house, timing her movements with theirs, occasionally managing to avoid them altogether. Her senses are dulled by the welcome medication, and she strains to listen out for the scrape of chairs on the dining room floor, the weary tread of bare feet on the carpeted stairwell, the clunk of the front door closing behind them. She longs to be alone in her sorrow, yet she never is. Even when the others leave the house, her home is surrounded by photographers, journalists—predators waiting to pounce, to strip the flesh from her scrawny bones. She knows she is growing scrawny; she sees it in those moments alone behind the bathroom door, when she lets her dressing gown slip to the tiles, to stare at her stranger’s nakedness in the reflection of the full-length mirror. There wasn’t much of her to start with; she’d always been so careful to keep a neat figure. And of course, it was torture after Daisy came along, because all she wanted to do was eat. The more Daisy fed off her, the greater Emily’s hunger raged, and the more she longed for all the worst things—sponge cake, biscuits, fatty chips and sauce. But she never gave in to those cravings, instead focusing her energies on tiresome fitness DVDs, pulling on her pristine trainers the moment Daisy went down for her twice-daily naps, sweating it out in the living room before recharging with a fresh smoothie from the Juice-A-Matic she’d invested in a month earlier. It was a
ll in the planning, her return to pre-baby fitness, and the greatest compliment she could receive was, “Gosh, you’d never think you’d just had a baby.” Now, as she sits on the edge of her bed remembering the grueling nature of those days, she flushes as she realizes remarks of that kind meant more to her than “What a beautiful baby” or “Isn’t she just perfect.”

  “There’s no excuse for letting yourself go,” she says aloud now, and she drops her face into her hands. She releases a moan, a deep, guttural cry of disbelief at what she’s so quickly become, at the never-ending misery of her new life. Is this it now, is this her life? Will Daisy never return? Will they have to do that thing that others so callously suggest to the recently bereaved—will they have to move on? It’s only been a week, she reminds herself, as she runs ragged fingers through her lank hair. It’s only a week, and Daisy could be found at any minute. Right now, the police could be snatching her out of the grasp of her kidnapper, preparing to rush her back into the bosom of her family. But what if she’s not found? What if they do find her, but she’s—a shudder comes down, and Emily is on her feet, rushing into the bathroom to run the shower, to deny the worst thoughts that chase after her, snapping at her heels. Unthinkable thoughts. A strange contradiction, for surely you must think these thoughts in order to name them unthinkable. She stands beneath the shower, disappearing into the steam, digging her nails deep into her scalp, and allowing the hot water to scald her pale skin pink.

  * * *

  When Jess first moved in, it was clear she was going to do everything she could to help, to be a useful member of the family. They hadn’t been home for more than an hour when she had said, “You go and have a shower, Ems. I’m happy playing with Daisy for a while, and if I need anything, Chloe will show me—won’t you, Chloe?”

  It’s strange, thinking back, how easily she accepted Jess’s help—so unlike herself, who was normally loath to reach out to others, for fear of displaying weakness. But she had been exhausted, and so grateful for those precious moments to herself, suddenly able to take a long shower instead of a rushed one with Daisy in the bathroom with her, babbling in her play cot like a ticking clock. She supposes she has come to take Jess’s help for granted now, but she knows she couldn’t have managed without her here over these past months. And Chloe—well, Chloe took to her so instantly, it was like a crush of sorts, and Aunt Jess could do no wrong in her eyes. She’s so cool. That was what Chloe had said to Emily on that first night, and she can’t help but admit that it hurt a little. Perhaps I would still be cool, she thought, if I hadn’t given the best years of my life to rearing you, Chloe, to being a good wife and mother—to having Daisy. Maybe if she too had spent the past two decades free of family responsibility or adult commitment—maybe in those circumstances, even Emily would have had time to work on her cool rating. But we make our beds, don’t we? And let’s face it, hers has been a much more comfortable bed than Jess’s, cool or not. After everything, now that Mum and Dad were both gone, Emily was glad to be able to help Jess out. Poor, aimless Jess. She’d made so little of her life—no career, no family, no real place she could call home. What kind of sister wouldn’t want to help, wouldn’t want to open up her arms and welcome her in?

  And James had liked her straightaway, and Emily had been pleased, because Jess was a part of her, and she knows he felt happy that she had let him in a little more, shown him a part of herself that had previously remained hidden away.

  * * *

  When James returns from wherever it is he’s been, Emily is watching from the nursery window. It’s around four and already dark outside, and she stands in the unlit room, hidden behind the curtains, scrutinizing his every movement, trying to decode the expression on his face, his gait as he glances over his shoulder in search of the press vultures. But the reporters have all gone for the day, too lazy to hang about after dark, when a well-earned pint or a family meal calls or a tastier tragedy comes knocking. The police have been on the phone again, asking about James’s whereabouts the night before last, because they suspect him of attacking Chloe’s boyfriend. Did she know anything about it, they’d asked? “No,” she had replied, automatically adopting the tone of offended wife. “That’s a ridiculous idea—did Max say James did it?” The liaison officers were quick to reassure her: no, she really mustn’t worry. Max hadn’t made any kind of allegation—he hadn’t got a good look at his assailant—but they had to ask, “under the circumstances.”

  Of course, it was James, she knows, and it strikes her, with a certain sense of fear, that he has that in him, this hitherto unseen rage. Through the fog of her exhaustion, she recalls the demented way in which he paced the bedroom after DCI Jacobs had been around to interview Chloe about Max, all his fear and horror surrounding Daisy transferred to thoughts of Chloe in the blink of an eye. “I don’t care what she says, there’s no way she’s been staying over at that boy’s house without something more than hand-holding going on.” He had waited for Emily’s response—standing at the foot of the bed, hands on his hips, with her lying back against the pillows, longing for sleep. He had wanted her to disagree with him, to say all the right things and soothe him as she used to. His stubble was now bordering on a beard, she’d observed. Perhaps he should just go with it and see how it suits him.

  “So what?” she’d heard herself say, and she had known he would go crazy.

  “So what?! So—she’s fifteen and he’s nineteen, for fuck’s sake, Emily! She’s a child, and he’s a grown man! There’s no way Chloe would have lied like that without someone pressuring her into it.”

  She’d laughed—she had actually laughed. If he only knew what young people were capable of, what lies they could tell, what secrets they could keep.

  “You haven’t got a clue about kids, have you, James? No idea what they can get up to when left to their own devices.” She wouldn’t open her eyes again, felt protected from his wrath by not looking.

  His voice, after a beat, came out softer. “So you do think they’ve been having sex, then?”

  Emily had dragged her arm across her face. The overhead light was so bright, and all she’d wanted to do was disappear into the darkness of nighttime. “Of course they’re having sex.”

  She had heard the bedroom door slam shut behind him, and she crawled beneath her duvet, muffling the raised voices of her husband and stepdaughter as their hearts broke in fury and regret in the room across the hall. Thank God DC Cherry isn’t staying in their spare room anymore, she’d thought; thank God they were free of that scrutiny in the evenings at least.

  Now, she hears the front door closing behind James as he returns home, the gentle chink of his keys on the hook, the dull sound of his unlaced shoes hitting the carpet, and she sprints back across the hall and slips beneath her bedcovers. She doesn’t want to see him. She doesn’t want to hear where he’s been, what he’s done, how he’s feeling. She just wants to slide into nothing, and she forces herself below the waves of darkness, holding herself down until sleep takes over. Only in the deeply medicated shade of nightfall can Emily shut out the worst of her thoughts: the fear, the anger, the guilt.

  11

  Jess

  Tonight there’s a meeting at the town hall, to mark a week since Daisy went missing. The police are keen to keep her disappearance fresh in people’s minds, and they think bringing the community together might uncover some forgotten detail, some piece of information that will lead us to find her. I’m relieved that they’re doing something tangible, that there’s some active evidence of the search, lest she be forgotten as last week’s story, no longer headline news. For the first few days, Daisy was headline news. Her image, along with a picture of a stuffed toy just like her velvet Ellie, took over front-page spreads across the country, dominating both local and national news, and it was grimly heralded as the latest heinous crime to shake the nation. She headlined radio updates, television news, and, so the police tell us, social media feeds around the world. There was even that hashtag, #findDaisy,
accompanied by a silly little flower emoji, a tiny emblem floating out there in virtual space, fruitlessly willing members of the public to remember something, anything that might bring Daisy home.

  She still makes the news, but in the past couple of days she’s slipped to page two or three, recent developments in the investigation clearly lacking the sensational drama the tabloids favor. The last one of worth to them was a couple of days ago: DAISY’S SISTER’S BOYFRIEND HELD FOR QUESTIONING. The phone rang off the wall that day, and to James’s distress, it seemed the press were more interested in Chloe’s underage relationship with Max than they were in helping to find Daisy.

  As we arrive, I have the feeling that we’re trespassing on the set of some television drama, where anxious locals fill the seats and line the walls, a hubbub of chatter trundling around the place like a train, the sound of it filling the hall to its rafters. Isn’t it awful? Isn’t it awful? Isn’t it awful? When we walk through the open doors, we feel the collective pause as eyes turn upon us, and the chatter is sucked from the room in an instant. DCI Jacobs is on the stage at the front, and she spins to face us, sensing the change in atmosphere. I’m so grateful to her as she raises her hands, beckoning us toward her, causing the crowd to part and let us through, and I’m glad to hear conversations start up again once we’ve passed. She hops off the edge of the stage, and to my surprise, she embraces first Emily and then me, before clasping James’s hand between hers.

  “How are you all feeling?” she asks, and her eyes are sincere, warm. “This is a good turnout. That’s a really good sign that you’ve got the community on your side.”

  James and Emily do their best to look pleased, and we take our reserved seats at the front of the hall, directly facing the stage, with Chloe sitting between James and me, the icy atmosphere between the girl and her parents having temporarily thawed for this public outing. DCI Jacobs steps up onto the stage, along with DC Cherry, DC Piper, and two other officers who have been dealing with the investigation over the past week.