Little Sister

by Isabel Ashdown

  James appears suddenly crestfallen. Emily and James take it in turns to ascend the stairs, to swiftly dress and brush their teeth, to “gather their things.” For Emily, there’s no time for makeup or to brush her hair, and she glances in the mirror as she leaves her bedroom and barely recognizes the rag of a woman who returns her gaze.

  Downstairs, she meets James at the front door, where he’s talking to Jess in quiet tones, instructing her to look after Chloe, to make sure she gets to school OK, make sure she eats properly. Could Jess phone Marcus for him, let him know the situation, get him to reschedule their morning meeting? Chloe sits silently on the bottom step of the stairs, small and pale in her unicorn-print pajamas, studying her own feet. Emily extends a hand toward James, but he shakes his head, before casting his gaze about the room and grabbing his keys and mobile phone, indicating to his police officer that he’s good to go. DCI Jacobs informs them that there are two vehicles on the drive, and that they are to travel separately, Emily with her and DC Piper in the unmarked car, and James with the other officer in the marked police car.

  “The press are really pumped up out there today,” Jacobs says. “So on the count of three, I’m going to open the door, and we will all move directly to the vehicles and get straight in. Minimum fuss, OK?”

  Emily and James nod dumbly, and in the space of a few seconds, the five of them are out through the front door, sprinting across the gravel toward the cars, ducking beneath the baying cries of the gathered press. “Mrs. King! Is it true you lied about your whereabouts on the night Daisy disappeared?” “Mr. King! Can we get a photo?” “Emily! James! Do you know where Daisy is?”

  Their questions are shattering.

  Jess shouts out to Emily from the open doorway—unheard words, not loud enough to make out over the noise of car doors slamming and journalists calling and jostling for a scoop. From her seat in the back of the car, Emily sees Jess hold up her arm, swiveling her hand into a thumbs-up, a look of naïve encouragement on her face.

  Emily turns to her right, to look directly at James through the glass window of the car beside hers. His eyes don’t meet hers. They’re locked on Jess and Chloe in the doorway, and she sees him nod, an expression of gratitude radiating from his face as the engines start and the cars move away. As her vehicle turns on the gravel and passes the front door, Emily sees Jess’s face, a mask of concern. She looks as though she might cry.

  * * *

  At the station, DCI Jacobs keeps Emily waiting for hours, shut in an interview room with a blank-faced PC on duty, with nothing more than a cardboard cup of stewed tea and the promise that they “shouldn’t keep you waiting too long.” She is asked if she would like a solicitor present, and she declines without hesitation. What does she need a solicitor for? She can’t possibly be under real suspicion. They’re just clutching at straws.

  As time ticks by, her initial indignation turns to anxiety. Why are they taking so long? Are they interviewing James yet? Why wouldn’t they be interviewing them simultaneously? They must be getting his version first, so that they can check if their stories match up, and of course they won’t, will they? Emily now knows that James’s reasons for lying were purely practical, and entirely innocent: he was pissed as a fart when he left the party, and after waiting an age for a taxi, he shared the ride with some bloke he’d only met that night. He couldn’t remember this man’s name, or even what time it was when he left Marcus and Jan’s house, and he had panicked, that was all—thought it was less complicated if they said that they’d left the party together, that they’d arrived home at the same time. And, of course, that suited Emily too. No need to explain where she’d been or what she’d been up to if they both said they were together for the whole evening. Even now, James thinks Emily got home at least an hour before he did, but the truth is, it was a matter of minutes, twenty at the most. He’s so mortified about being drunk that night—as though he thinks he could have changed any of this if he had been sober—that he hasn’t questioned Emily’s version of events at all. Why should he? She’s never given him reason to mistrust her. She’s never done anything like this before.

  DCI Jacobs enters the room with another officer, and the interview begins. It’s 3:00 p.m., and she’s been waiting for six hours. Outside it will be starting to get dark again soon; they’ve kept her locked up like a prisoner for the best part of a day. Surely they suspect her? Why else would she still be here?

  “Apologies for the delay,” the inspector says, pushing a packaged cheese sandwich and a coffee across the table.

  “Am I under arrest?” Emily demands, bringing the drink to her mouth, savoring the burn of it against her tongue. “You’ve had me here for hours. Am I under arrest?”

  DCI Jacobs appears perplexed by the question. “No-o-o,” she replies, sounding out the “o” so that it’s long and considered. “We wanted to follow up some of the details of your husband’s statement first. He’s now given us a slightly amended version of events, and we’d like to see if you want to do the same.”

  Emily sits across the table, her focus moving between DCI Jacobs and the young man at her side, and she thinks, I can’t. I can’t ruin it all now. I can’t risk everything I have for a moment of madness. And quickly, she adapts her story to one she believes will work, one she hopes they will accept as true: she left before James, she got waylaid chatting to other guests in the hallway, and then she headed home, alone, arriving to find Jess on the floor of the kitchen and Daisy gone. James, in a taxi, arrived ten, maybe twenty minutes behind her. That should do it, she tells herself. Why wouldn’t they believe me? I’m a respectable mother, a good mother, a law-abiding citizen with a flawless reputation.

  When Emily has finished talking, DCI Jacobs rests her pen on the table between them, takes a sip of her own coffee, and clears her throat. She looks at her watch; it’s getting late. “So, Emily, after you left James at the party on New Year’s Eve, you didn’t go down to Shanklin beach and have sex with Marcus Fairbrother before returning home?”

  “Oh,” Emily sighs, and then she starts to cry.

  * * *

  Emily was so angry at James when she left the party that night, she could feel the rage churning inside her, like a small volcano ready to erupt. She hated him, for not loving her enough to marry her, for asking her to be his wife in everything but law, for the raw emotion he lets slip whenever Avril’s name is raised. Avril, Avril, Avril—she wanted to shout it in his face. She’s dead, you idiot! She’s dead, and we’re all here—me and Chloe and Daisy—we’re all here and you’ve never got over it, have you? You’ve still got one foot in the past. He was stuck in a time that filled him with self-indulgent sadness and seclusion. Did he love his first wife more than he loves her? How much better it would be if he were divorced, if he’d left his wife acrimoniously, so he could now view the woman with a healthy dollop of bitterness and suspicion. So much better than this, because what kind of a person utters harsh words about a dead woman—feels jealous of a dead woman, when there’s no way to compete, no way to be what she will always be: a sainted mother, preserved in memory, robbed of her life too soon.

  As she left the Fairbrothers’ house that night, Emily breathed in the icy night air, taking in the sharp, salted scent of the sea, the sounds of carousing and laughter fading behind her as she walked, weary on high heels, toward their family car, parked beneath the giant palm at the entrance to Marcus’s ostentatious driveway. The moon was just off full in the clear sky, coating the expansive gardens in a luminous film of milky light. Already, frost was settling, and she checked her watch: 12:30 a.m. She was glad to get away early, glad to be sober and heading home without James. Let him have the hangover. Let him struggle to get a taxi home on the busiest night of the year.

  She reached the driver’s-side door and paused a second, fishing around in her bag to locate the car keys, worrying for a moment that she’d have to return to the party, stern-faced, to ask James if he has them in his pocket. But, there!

&n
bsp; Just as she laid her fingers on them, she heard her name spoken, close by, and she looked up to see Marcus standing in the dark shadows of the palm tree, just half of his face exposed by the light, a cigarette held loosely between his fingers.

  “Off so early?” he said, a smile in his voice. “You always used to be the last one standing, Emily.”

  She smiled, pushed her hair from her face. “Well, that was before I got well and truly tied to the kitchen sink.”

  He took a step forward, so that his whole face could be seen. He’s not handsome, not in the way James is, but there’s something unmistakably male about his heavy face, his strong nose strikingly broken, his Cupid’s bow mouth sharp and sensuous. There’s an affluent carelessness about his appearance that is quite captivating.

  “By James?” he asked, surprise in his voice.

  “No!” she laughed, pressing her key fob so the car’s locks popped open. “By Daisy! You know what a new baby is like, Marcus. You’ve had enough of them.” This is a standing joke between James and his business partner, Marcus’s great fertility having spawned not one but six children in the space of the past ten years.

  Marcus took a final deep lungful of smoke, turning his face skyward to exhale a cool white stream before dropping the stub and grinding it out beneath his polished chestnut brogues. He’d left his jacket inside, and his gray linen shirt was rolled halfway up his muscular forearms, revealing winter-tanned skin.

  “Aren’t you cold?” Emily asked, a sudden shiver running through her.

  “Want to look at the beach?” he said in answer, as he took another step closer, casually planting his hands in his pockets. “Shanklin will be quiet, down by the Fisherman’s Cottage. It’s a beautiful view on a moonlit night. We can walk from here if you like?”

  In that moment, standing on that driveway with Marcus beneath the starry, sea-crisp sky, Emily didn’t want to go straight home. She didn’t want to be a mother; she didn’t want to be sensible. She wanted to be the last one standing. She wanted to be wanted.

  17

  Jess

  It’s just after 9:00 p.m. when James is dropped home by DC Cherry. The press clearly think they’re on to a good story here, because there are still a large number of them just beyond the driveway, and I’ve been fielding their phone calls and door-knockings all afternoon.

  After the police took Emily and James first thing, I told Chloe I thought it was a good idea if she stayed home today, and we spent the day baking, and ordered takeaway pizzas to eat on the sofa as we watched old Disney films and pretended that none of this was going on. After supper, I made her a hot chocolate and sent her to bed early, and I could tell by the weary weight of her movements that she was happy to go up, that the poor girl had had enough. Upstairs, I tucked her in, much as you would a child years younger, and she closed her eyes immediately, and I knew how much the care and attention meant to her, how much she needed it. As I switched off the main light, a strong memory jolted me from when we were not much older than Chloe: a memory of Emily tucking me into bed with a hot water bottle, a glass of water by my side. She’d kissed me on the forehead and told me to get some sleep. “It’s all over now,” she told me, smoothing the hair back from my face. “You can get on with your life.” We had just returned from the clinic, my baby aborted, our problem solved.

  As I click Chloe’s door quietly shut, I hear the car on the gravel outside, and lightly I jog downstairs to have the door ajar, ready for Emily and James to bolt through. But James is alone. He slides in through the gap and pushes the door shut with a muffled thud, immediately grabbing me in a tight and unexpected hug.

  “Christ, I’m glad to be back home,” he sighs into my hair, and then he releases me, his arms dropping like anchors as he lets out a long, exhausted sigh. “Got any wine open?”

  We settle on the comfy seats by the open fire in the living room, and as James eats reheated cottage pie and downs a second large glass of wine, he tells me everything. He explains why he lied about returning home with Emily on New Year’s Eve, and it’s so obvious, so heartbreakingly simple that I feel dreadful for having doubted him. He was drunk, more drunk than he liked to admit, and he’d been worried that it wouldn’t look good. He was worried the police would think he was a bad father.

  “So, what did they say about Emily? You said they haven’t finished interviewing her yet?” I think about her, sitting in a cell, growing hungry, tired, and angrier with every passing hour. “Surely, now you’ve cleared up your movements that night, surely they’d just let her go too?”

  James reaches out for the wine bottle, distributing the last of its contents between our two glasses. “That’s what I thought,” he replies, leaving his seat briefly to fetch a second bottle from the wine rack at the far end of the room. He places it on the coffee table with the corkscrew. “But I’m guessing that if our versions still didn’t match up, if Emily was still trying to cover for me, they’ll just keep going at her until they believe she’s telling them the truth. And you know how stubborn she can be, Jess—she’ll stick to her story if she thinks she’s right.”

  James draws one leg up onto the sofa between us, twisting slightly so that his head can rest on the arm, the toes of his socked foot slipping casually beneath my thigh. I reach out and place a friendly hand on his knee, giving it the lightest squeeze. “Are you all right, James?” I ask.

  He lifts his head a little to smile sadly at me, but he doesn’t reply.

  “I worry about you,” I say. “I worry about all of you, but especially you. Everyone’s keeping an eye on Emily, because she’s more obviously—well, you know. She shows it more easily, and we’re all trying desperately hard to keep her head above water. But just because you’re not falling apart, James, it doesn’t mean you’re not feeling it just as much, that you’re not equally devastated by all this, does it?”

  His eyes glint with unspilled tears. “Do you miss your mother?” he asks me, quite out of the blue.

  “I—of course,” I say, because I don’t know how to talk about it, it’s so complex and unspeakable. “What about you? I’ve never heard you talk about yours.”

  He nods, and for a moment, I’m not sure if he will go on. “We fell out—over Avril—and I’ve never got over the guilt of that. We never made up. I just left, the way I always do when the going gets tough.”

  I shake my head. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. These things happen.” God knows, I know that much.

  “But we were always so close, me and my mum. I was quite a mummy’s boy, I’m ashamed to say—the much-celebrated only child.” He smiles, and a tear drops heavily onto his shirt. “She was so critical of the way I dealt with Avril’s illness; she thought I should have been stronger, more there for her. But I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was scared, and barely keeping it together myself. I regret that I left things the way I did with Mum, and I regret that Chloe’s missed out on having her grandmother in her life. Maybe things would’ve been better for Chloe if my mother had been around too.”

  “Have you ever thought of trying to make up with her—you know, it’s never too late? It’s one of my biggest regrets, not sorting things out with my parents when I still had the chance. Maybe you should try to make contact?”

  He looks at me, his expression hard to read. “I don’t think so. I feel so bad about leaving it this long, I wouldn’t know how to begin to put things right. You must think I’m a coward.”

  “I’m hardly in a position to think that,” I say, and I think, we’re the same, James and I. We’re both on the outside looking in.

  We sit quietly for a moment. “You know Chloe’s going to be OK, don’t you?” I say. “She’s got you to talk to, and me. I adore Chloe, and I’ll always be there for her. But I just want you to know that you’ve got me too, if you need to talk, James, or cry, or shout, or rant—or anything!” I feel self-conscious, awkwardly offering up my support in so vocal a way, because really, we don’t know each other that well yet, not like this
.

  James’s phone buzzes in his shirt pocket, and he has it in his hand in a second. “It’s a text,” he says, the disappointment evident in his posture the moment he reads it. “It’s just Marcus. Wants me to call him ASAP. He’ll be chasing me up about that meeting I had to cancel yesterday.”

  “Bit late to be making work calls, isn’t it?” I feel vaguely irritated at Marcus’s insensitivity. Doesn’t he know what James is going through right now? “Let him wait till morning.”

  I’ve forgotten that my palm is still resting on his knee, until he places his hand over mine and the pad of his thumb circles the small bone of my wrist in an oddly intimate gesture. “I know, Jess. Thank you. Just having you here, I can’t tell you the difference it’s made. You must know that. Of course, it’s been hell, and Emily—she—” He halts, dropping his head back against the sofa again. “You know what she’s like. It’s hard. That’s all.” He looks over at the obsolete Christmas tree and sighs. “That evening—when we put the tree up with the girls—thank you for that. I’ve got such good memories of that night—the way you were with Daisy and Chloe, and me—”

  I remembered it all too well, the way Emily came home in a foul mood and refused to help with the decorations, taking herself to bed with a “headache.” At first, I’d thought it was something I’d done, until Chloe told me they’d fallen out over breakfast that morning. “She’s trying to punish me,” Chloe had said. “She knows I was looking forward to putting up the tree tonight.”

  “She does love you,” I say now, gently drawing my hand out from under his. I busy myself opening the second bottle and refill our glasses as James considers his reply.

  “I think so,” he eventually says. “But I don’t know so. She’s so changeable—always has been. It’s sometimes exhausting trying to keep up with her moods.”

  I laugh, a small utterance of comradely understanding. Oh, yes, I think, I understand how that feels. And he’s right—exhausting is the word for it, is exactly what you feel when you’re constantly on the watch for those small shifts in atmosphere, eager to stay on her right side, to please her, to make her happy. I’d never seen it with such clarity, until tonight: the disabling power of her disapproval and the way in which it has, almost single-handedly, marked out the path of my life.