* * *
After the police have gone, James leaves for work and Jess heads off for her beach walk. She pops her head in to ask Emily if she’d like to join her, “to clear her head,” but Emily waves her away, sarcastically explaining that someone ought to be at home when Chloe gets back. She wishes she meant this, but really she just wants to be alone, to pour herself a large glass of cold white wine and stare at her own reflection in the dressing table mirror.
James had eventually managed to get through to Chloe’s phone, and she’d explained she was at Max’s house, telling her dad that she needed a few days to work things out, that she was still reeling from the news that her mother was alive. He couldn’t argue with that, could he? He could hardly go marching around there to drag her out, not when he was responsible for putting her through something as awful as this.
Earlier, when DCI Jacobs arrived, they had drunk yet more coffee and listened patiently to the inspector’s pointless update of leads they’d extinguished and avenues yet to be explored. It had told them nothing, and it certainly brought them no closer to finding Daisy. Emily had hardly been able to contain her frustration as she listened, and found herself desperate to share her own thoughts, her own suggested lines of inquiry. Much to the astonishment of James and Jess, she passed on her theory that Chloe might have traced Avril in the first place—that Chloe might have been the cause of Daisy’s disappearance.
“Do you think this is possible?” DCI Jacobs asked James.
His steepled fingers grew white at the tips. “Absolutely not,” he said through gritted teeth. “Absolutely. Not.”
“I think it is possible, James,” Emily said with affected patience. She gave DCI Jacobs a knowing look. “I know James only wants to think the best of his daughter, but it is possible.”
“Jess?” DCI Jacobs looked to her for an opinion.
“No way. Sorry, Ems, but I think you’ve got this wrong. You saw Chloe’s reaction when we learned Avril was still alive—I’ve never seen a person look so shocked.”
DCI Jacobs turned back to Emily and gave her a sympathetic but unconcerned shake of the head. “I’m inclined to agree with James and Jess—” she began, but was cut off when Emily slapped her hands down violently, causing coffee to spill over the table.
“What is wrong with you people?” she screamed, her serene veneer cracked. “What is wrong with you all?!” She shut herself away in the bedroom until the last of them had left the house.
Somewhere around midday, Emily stops crying and decides it would be a good idea to visit the school where she works, to discuss her return in the next week or two. If James can do it, so can she. It’s not as if Daisy will return any more quickly with her just sitting around here getting more frantic by the day. Work would do her good. Work would set her mind straight. Work would stop her thinking about all the things she’s got wrong in her life, all the bad things she has caused.
At the front desk, Violet looks shocked to see her. “Emily, love! How are you?”
She hates this. Before, people used to say, “How are things?” or “How’s it going, Emily?” Casually, as though she was one of them, the same as everyone else. Now it’s “How are you?” with all the emphasis on the are—as if she’s an invalid, or a child . . . or a grieving mother.
“I’m fine,” she replies, staggering slightly as she misjudges the front step. “I wanted to see Josie, if she’s in?” She leans heavily on the reception desk, wiping the sweat from her upper lip, feeling uneasy as she remembers the man who was parked in her street earlier, the man who took a photograph of her as she dropped her door keys more than once on her way out of the house.
Violet looks concerned and turns to make eye contact with old Mrs. Hilgard in the back, who raises a hesitant wave in Emily’s direction.
“Zat a problem?” Emily asks. She finds her words running together involuntarily, and she wishes she hadn’t had that little drink before she came out.
Violet leaps from her seat, excessively cheery, her tiny hands fluttering at her neckline as she busies around the desk toward Emily. “Of course not! You take a seat out here, love, and I’ll see if I can find her. She’s on class walkabout this morning; otherwise I’d send you straight in.”
Emily sits, thinking she’s in for a long wait, but Violet returns minutes later with a concerned-looking Josie by her side. The head teacher embraces her and ushers her inside her office, where she takes a seat on the far side of the desk, offering Emily the one opposite. Staring at the little wooden block marked “Mrs. Priestly,” Emily feels as though she’s in an interview, and she straightens herself up, smoothing down her disheveled hair, moistening her dry lips with the tip of her tongue.
“I want to come back to work,” she announces. Her heart is thumping, and she focuses on Josie’s thick, jowly neck, noticing the way it presses solidly against her beige, turtleneck sweater.
Josie is clearly taken aback. “When?” she asks, folding and unfolding large pink hands on the desk before her.
“Soon as possible,” Emily replies, but again her words are like sludge in her mouth. She hopes Josie hasn’t noticed.
“Do you think you’re ready, Emily? What with everything you’re going through right now?” She waits for Emily’s answer, and when none comes she asks, “Is there any more information about Daisy yet? We all saw the news about her—her . . .” Josie’s words trail off.
“Her abductor,” Emily says, and then she leans over the arm of her chair and vomits on the head teacher’s floor.
7
Avril
I saw the newspapers on the Coop newsstand last night, and I’m glad I had the forethought to get my hair done before I boarded the ferry from the mainland. It had grown fairly long, but I used to wear it up all the time, and to be honest, it was a pain to look after. Now it’s short, cropped prettily around my ears so that the white whispers coming through at the temple look striking rather than dowdy. The hairdresser said it took years off me, and seeing that awful old photograph they used on the front page of the County Press, I’m inclined to agree.
It’s a wonderfully bright morning, and I know I’m taking a risk walking here in Freshwater Bay, so close to James’s home, but I picked up a baby sling in town yesterday, one which allows me to carry Chloe on my front, where I can keep her warm beneath my large jacket. Of course, up close, it’s obvious I’m carrying a child, but from a distance I could easily be mistaken for an overweight walker in a big coat. I’m doing well at appearing open and friendly to the few people I pass, and I’m sure no one suspects me. I seem so normal, I presume—whatever that means. I’m not so deluded as to think I hold all the answers on that score. A woman in a red puffa jacket strides purposely ahead of me, her legs slim in tight black jeans and walking boots, her head dipped against the biting cold. When she passed me seconds earlier, she turned her head in my direction and nodded a polite hello, before overtaking me, oblivious to the sleeping baby beneath my clothing.
I remember the first time we took Chloe out together, James and I, when she was tiny, perhaps only a week old. James drove us out to Caversham for an ambling riverside walk, not too challenging for me and my still bruised body, a little stroll under crisp blue skies and a light lunch at the waterside café. He was always thoughtful in that way. He’d even called his mother to come and stay, and she was back home cleaning the house from top to bottom, “so you young things can go out and have the good time you deserve.” It’s such a muddle when I think of Alicia—his mother—because there are times when I remember loving her so effortlessly, and others when I remember only fear and confusion. As we walked by the river, James told me how much she loved me, and I cried on hearing that, because it helped to know I was loved. There was a time when he could read my mind, know exactly what I needed. The sling we had was a special one for newborns—a gift from his colleagues at work—and James wore it so that I could walk at his side unencumbered for the first time in months, my hand in his, my eyes roaming res
tlessly between the flow of the river and the soft crown of our sleeping baby’s head. James looked happy; there was no way he could know how I longed to release his hand and step down into the muscular flow of the water. On that idyllic, bright winter morning, how I longed to let myself slip beneath the river’s cool surface, limbs drifting, to be carried out to sea and swallowed up by the dark, expansive ocean.
8
Jess
Kicking off my boots and hanging my jacket on the hook by the front door, I call out Emily’s name. It worries me when I don’t know where she is; she’s so erratic at the moment, I fear for her safety. Before I get a chance to search for her upstairs, I hear tires on the gravel outside and open the door to see Emily being dropped off in a car I don’t recognize. An orderly little woman in her early sixties tiptoes alongside Emily and stops to talk to me in hushed tones as my sister, stinking of stale booze, disappears inside the house without so much as a hello. It seems that, while I’ve been out walking, Emily’s managed to get herself drunk and been in to school, where she’s caused a bit of a scene.
“Tell her not to worry,” Violet says in a whisper. “We all understand, and we all want her to get better. Maybe James could give Josie—Mrs. Priestly—a call sometime? Confidentially, of course.” With that she tiptoes back to her car and drives away, her aura of apology wafting from her exhaust pipe as she goes.
Inside, Emily is slumped on the sofa, and I see the empty bottle of white wine that she must have polished off this morning. She gives me a rare look of regret, and I slide onto the sofa beside her, hooking my arm through hers, feeling alarm at the frailty of her thin body.
“How about this?” I say. “We’ll run you a bath, get you a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, and then you can get your head down for an hour?”
“James would be so ashamed of me, Jess. Look at me. I’m a bloody mess. I’ve ruined everything.” She weeps into her free hand, turning her face from me.
“Forget it!” I say, trying to make out it’s nothing, when I know it is something, it’s the great-big-something of a woman going out of her mind. “James is at work—he doesn’t need to know a thing about this. While you’re having a nap, I’ll get started on supper. You can tell James you cooked it, and I’ll make myself scarce for the evening. Chloe said she’d be staying away for another night, so you can have the place to yourselves. I’ll even help you choose what to wear—just like the old days? How does that sound?”
* * *
It feels as though I’ve spent much of my life hoping for reconciliations with my older sister. After that awful time in our teens, when she convinced all our friends that my fainting episodes were faked, I had worried we would never be close again. I must have spent the best part of a school term isolated from the inner circle, excluded from sitting with them at break times, from walking with them to and from school, from their weekend trips to the town or seaside. Emily simply stopped talking to me. At breakfast, she’d butter her toast across the table from me, her eyes down, focused on the task at hand, and at school she’d go to huge lengths to separate herself from me so that we might never be seen together. To a casual observer, we might appear to be complete strangers, neither friends nor foe. At first I was crushed, but with time I slowly retreated within myself and drew comfort from time spent at home with Mum and Dad, cooking, helping out around the house, sitting up and watching TV with them while Emily was off on some sleepover or another. I thought I was fine without her, until one Saturday morning when I was helping Dad to fix the guttering at the side of the house, and I passed out, causing him to drop the plastic gutter from a great height and me to cut my head open on the rockery as I went down. I came around in the back of the car, my head on Mum’s lap as we sped toward A&E, and all I wanted was Emily. I didn’t want Mum or Dad or anyone else—I wanted my big sister.
After two days of blood tests, tilt tests, ECGs, treadmill workouts, and visits from endless bedside specialists, I was finally diagnosed with a form of cardioinhibitory syndrome. It wasn’t neurological, and it wasn’t heart disease, but a rare condition affecting the heart’s wiring, causing “episodes” of fainting and breathlessness at random times, especially during periods of extreme stress or physical strain. It wasn’t immediately life-threatening, but it was serious, and something that would have to be monitored for the rest of my life. When Mum and Dad left my hospital bedside that afternoon, they were shocked and upset; on the other hand, I was relieved to at last hear confirmation that these “funny turns” of mine were real, and not, as Emily would have it, a figment of my overactive imagination. That evening, they returned with Emily . . . Emily who had barely made eye contact with me in months. She entered the ward clutching an armful of magazines and chocolate, and she stood at the foot of my bed, looking close to timid.
“Can you leave us on our own for a while?” she asked Mum and Dad, and knowing how things had been between us, they slipped away for a coffee in the hospital canteen.
“Mum says you’ve got some kind of heart problem,” she said quietly, carefully lowering her offerings onto the tightly tucked blanket at the foot of my bed.
I shrugged. “So they say. Cardio-something-a-jig.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Do you think they’d let me stay here with you tonight?” she asked in a whisper.
“I bet they would, if I asked,” I replied. “I could tell them I’m really worried, and my heart’s feeling all jumpy, but it’s been better since you got here. If I said that, I bet they would.”
Emily smiled, and I moved over, and she crawled in beside me, and we curled up just as we had on that first hospital visit, all those years ago when I was just nine.
* * *
Emily looks a whole lot better by the time we’ve finished getting her ready. We’ve curled and preened her hair until it shines, exfoliated and buffed her skin, and made up her face so her complexion glows and her eyes sparkle. Together, we’ve picked out an outfit that best flatters her altered figure, one which covers up her hollowed collarbones and sharp wrists, and I’ve left her upstairs to finish up while I dash down to check on the casserole I’ve left simmering.
When James comes in through the door, he drops his briefcase in the archway to the kitchen and lifts his nose to the air, breathing in the cooking smells with approval.
I step away from the oven. “Nothing to do with me!” I say, holding my hands up. “It’s all Emily. She’s been slaving over this all afternoon—wanted to do something nice for you, I think.”
“Really?” James says, scrutinizing me suspiciously. “Are you sure? She didn’t look too much like someone wanting to do something nice for me this morning.”
I remember the way she had slammed her hands down on the table and run from the room. “Well, I think she’s probably had time to calm down now,” I say. “Give her a chance.”
James fetches a glass from the kitchen cupboard and pours himself a large measure of red wine, offering one to me as he knocks his back at speed and pours a second. I decline, telling him I’m going out, and I start laying the table with two place settings, as he leans up against the island unit and watches me, ribbing me as I get the knife and fork the wrong way around in my rush. Emily appears in the doorway, and she stands, facing us, looking tall and slim and glamorous in her tan slacks and black turtleneck, her eyes on James, hopeful for his approval. I’m standing at the table in the space between them, and I go to leave the room, to give them this moment, but James’s mobile rings in his breast pocket, and he turns away, answering the phone, presenting his back to Emily. There’s disappointment in the set of her mouth, and by the time her husband hangs up and turns to face her, it’s been replaced by defiance.
“That was the hospital,” he says, and he sounds like a man at the end of his tether. “It’s Chloe—she’s been taken in with alcohol poisoning.” He claps his hands to his mouth, a gasp of a sob rising up in his chest. “They’re pumping her stomach.”
9
Emily
Here she is again, alone, waiting for the others to come home. Is this the way the future looks for Emily—forever waiting? Forever waiting for news of Daisy, for James to come home? In the midst of this latest drama, James had hardly looked at her, hadn’t taken the time to notice how attractive she looked and the effort she had made. Maybe she didn’t look attractive; maybe he has no interest in her whatsoever. The meal he thinks she cooked will spoil in the oven, because she won’t turn it off or cover it with foil, just so she can make the point when he returns home. The hoped-for ambience Jess has been working on all afternoon has vanished entirely.
The moment James told them about Chloe, Jess had grabbed her coat and keys, directing him to get straight in the car. “You can’t drive, James. You’ve just had a big glass of wine. Will you be OK, Ems? I think you should stay here, in case there’s any news about Daisy.”
Emily had nodded mutely. How could she argue with that?
“Ems? Is that OK? We’ll give you a ring when we get there. Let you know what’s going on.”
Emily noticed the tender way Jess rested her hand on James’s back, urging him out of the door, snatching up his coat and pushing it into his confused paw. Was it possessive, the way Jess touched him? Or was it a mothering motion? It must be the latter, surely, when Jess has gone to so much effort to help Emily today, helping her get ready and setting up this romantic meal, as farcical as it might seem now. She is bewildered; she has no idea what she feels—about James or Jess or any of this. On reflection, it seems odd that Jess hadn’t suggested that she, Emily, might want to join them at the hospital. She is, after all, Chloe’s stepmother. She has more right to be at her bedside than Jess, who’s not been in her life more than five minutes. But maybe Jess only plans to drop James there, to wait in the car while he finds out what’s going on. Maybe she was just being practical, taking control of the situation when James and Emily looked unlikely to do so. Who knows? Emily stares across the room into the silent space of the family kitchen, a room previously unaccustomed to the quiet that inhabits it now. Who the fuck knows?
Little Sister Page 19
