Blood Sisters: The #1 bestselling thriller from the author of My Husband's Wife

by Jane Corry

  The Monster gave another massive kick. Her breasts were feeling really heavy today. And when Fussy Carer had bathed her, little tiny drops of milk had come out of the nipples. ‘Your body is preparing,’ she said. ‘We need to look after you.’ She shook her head. ‘Poor darling, how are you going to manage?’

  Was her body preparing for the machine test? And what did the carer mean about managing? Why did everyone speak in riddles? It was all so frustrating.

  Still, at least she was back in time for the next trip. That was something to look forward to. They were going to the zoo! Wouldn’t that be fun?

  It wasn’t a long drive, said someone. Just over an hour. But Margaret managed to make herself sick before they got there. Kitty knew why. She was still jealous about it being Duncan’s trip.

  ‘Where would you like to go when it’s your turn to choose, Kitty?’ asked the enthusiastic new girl (Kitty had already nicknamed her Bouncy Carer), getting out the picture board. Fat lot of good that thing was. Even when Kitty managed to make her finger touch the picture she wanted, someone always interpreted it the wrong way. Or just didn’t get it.

  ‘A castle?’ There was a smile. ‘Why do you always go for that one, ducks?’

  ‘It’s because I’m really a princess,’ she said. ‘My dad used to call me that.’

  Goodness! Where had that memory come from? The Monster stirred, as if to say, ‘From me!’

  Really? Her father had called her a princess? So why was she so upset every time she saw the flabby-faced man? If, indeed, he really was her father.

  ‘I wish I knew what you were saying, Kitty.’ That smile was fading. ‘It really is unfair. I’ve got a feeling you would say so much more if you could.’

  ‘Of course I bloody well would.’

  After that, she spent most of the time looking out of the window, watching people on the pavement. That girl is pregnant too, Kitty said to herself. I wonder what it would be like to walk with a bump instead of having to sit in a wheelchair with sores on your bottom.

  ‘I’m … hungry,’ declared Margaret.

  ‘We’ll have lunch when we get there, ducks,’ soothed Bouncy Carer.

  But as soon as they parked, Duncan had an ‘accident’. Not the kind with blood. The other sort.

  It took ages to clean him up because someone else was in the disabled toilet. ‘This is only meant … to be … for people with … special needs,’ admonished Margaret when a man came out, walking perfectly normally.

  He glared at her. ‘How do you know I don’t?’

  During lunch, a small boy at the table next to them kept staring. ‘Why has that lady’s chair got wheels?’ he said loudly.

  ‘Shhh,’ said his mother.

  Good question, thought Kitty. Why did she need a chair with wheels? She’d tried asking so many times. But right then, The Monster kicked. And with it came another memory. Something to do with cheese sandwiches and a packed lunch for school.

  Afterwards, they went to look at the elephants. What would happen, wondered Kitty, if an elephant couldn’t walk? It would be too big for a wheelchair, wouldn’t it?

  Then they had to leave early because Duncan had another accident. A stinky kind this time. Right by the chicken house. The little boy from lunch was there. ‘Ugh,’ he said, wrinkling his nose.

  ‘He’s shit … himself,’ crowed Margaret. ‘Disgusting, isn’t … it?’

  The mother put her arm around her little boy. ‘Come on, darling. Let’s get an ice cream.’

  ‘I want one too,’ whined Duncan.

  ‘Not until you’re cleaned up.’

  ‘I … want … an … ice cream as well,’ added Margaret quickly.

  ‘Me too,’ Kitty said.

  ‘Now, now, Kitty. Stop making that noise. Time to go home.’

  There was a lot of traffic on the main road. So, at Bouncy Carer’s suggestion, they went back a different way.

  There were more trees here than the roads near the home.

  ‘Blimey. Look at … that house. Like a … bleeding palace,’ said Margaret.

  The Monster inside began to wriggle, as though it was excited.

  The traffic was slowing down. They were coming to a pedestrian crossing. The hairs on Kitty’s arm began to stand on end. She felt very cold. But hot at the same time. ‘Everything all right, ducks?’ Bouncy Carer was looking at her closely.

  No. It wasn’t all right. But she didn’t know why. Kitty just knew that she had to get out of this place. Fast.

  ‘Don’t hit your head on the side of the van like that, Kitty. You’ll hurt yourself.’

  Here comes the bloody picture board!

  ‘What do you want to tell us, Kitty? Point to the pictures.’

  But she couldn’t. It hurt her head too much. Go away. GO AWAY!

  Kitty swiped the picture board out of her hand and sent it skittling across the floor of the bus. ‘Oi,’ yelled the driver. ‘No disturbances in the back or I’ll stop.’

  They passed a sign. School. Stop. Her eye began to twitch.

  There were schoolkids going past. Kitty watched them. The Monster took a huge leap inside her. Suddenly she knew without doubt that she’d once had a navy blue blazer too. Just like them.

  Bouncy Carer was taking a keen interest. ‘You come from near here, don’t you, ducks?’

  This time, The Monster was quiet. No help there, then.

  ‘Do you recognize anything? Use your head, Kitty. Left and right means no, remember. Up and down means yes.’

  ‘She gets it … wrong,’ sniffed Margaret. ‘You can’t rely … on her.’

  So she did both. Just to cover all her options.

  ‘Kitty seemed to recognize a place that we went through,’ reported Bouncy Carer excitedly, when they got back. ‘According to her notes, she used to live there.’

  Very Thin Carer sighed. ‘I don’t think it helps to raise false hopes. Her in-laws are doing the same with this new research they keep going on about. The truth is that the poor woman’s mind went a long time ago.’

  Hah. That’s what they thought. But what about all those flashbacks? There had to be something there, Kitty told herself, that would explain exactly what had happened to her. All she had to do was to find it.

  58

  July 2017

  Alison

  Every time I drive down to Mum’s, I marvel at the sight which meets my eyes when I round the bend where the road leads sharply down to the coast. After miles of motorway and then narrow B roads with high hedgerows, I always gasp when I see a sea of lights below, indicating the town and then the sea itself, with its glittering, sparkling waves dancing out as far as the eye can see.

  Down the steep hill, towards the lifeboat station and past the elderly couple who have sold fish for as long as I can remember yet still look the same age. ‘Ugh,’ Kitty used to say. Yet she loves fish. Brain damage, we’d been told early on, can even change taste buds. Along the promenade where early evening swimmers are tiptoeing gingerly into the waves, though sometimes the water is surprisingly warm even if it’s a cold day. Snaking down a side street past a cottage I’d always loved as a child with its intricate iron shell decorations on the front. And then another side road towards Mum’s cottage where hollyhocks burst out of the front garden. It’s much smaller than the family home round the corner where I had grown up with Kitty and David and Mum. But I prefer it. It’s cosier. It has our things in it and not David’s. I can almost imagine from the pictures of Kitty and me scattered around the sitting room, that my sister is going to come running in any minute.

  I have a sudden vision of the school bus one day when Vanessa refused to share part of her Creme Egg with Kitty, her so-called best friend. I’d felt upset on my sister’s behalf so told Vanessa that chocolate would give her spots. She hadn’t liked that. If I’d tried to like my sister’s friend a bit more, would that have helped?

  ‘Great timing,’ says Mum when she opens the door. Her arms envelop me. She smells of lavender. Her skin is so
soft that I want to rest my own cheek against it for longer. But I have come here for a reason. Something that can’t be put off any longer.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she says brightly, leading me into the kitchen. ‘I’ve made salmon pie. Your favourite. Sit down. There.’ She points to my place at the kitchen table. I always sat on the left of Mum when we were growing up. Kitty on the right.

  I’d intended to ask her immediately but now it seems churlish when she’s gone to so much trouble over dinner. So we sit and talk over the meal about my work (again I skirt round the prison) and, inevitably, Kitty. ‘I know it can’t have been easy for Jeannie but I do think she could have tried a bit longer. Did I tell you that the home has only agreed to take her back on a trial basis?’

  Before I can say no, she hadn’t, Mum stops. Aware, too late, of having said ‘trial’. The word which is hanging over us all. ‘How is it going?’ she says tentatively.

  I shrug. ‘Robin seems like a competent lawyer.’

  ‘Good.’ She nods, but I can tell her hands are nervous. They are playing with her napkin. ‘I mean, that man – Crispin – is clearly intent on making trouble.’

  I nod. Just as I haven’t told Mum about being suspended, so I haven’t told her the full story about my written confession. It would only worry her.

  ‘Mum,’ I say, putting together my knife and fork neatly on my plate. ‘There’s something I have to ask you.’

  Her face goes rigid. Part of me suddenly feels that she has been waiting all my life for this. Had I really put it off before because other things had been going on? Or was it because I was scared?

  ‘It’s about the man in the prison I mentioned earlier,’ I begin. ‘Stefan. The one who said he was my father.’ I watch her face closely. ‘The man who Martin – or rather Crispin – killed.’

  She shudders. Then again, it might be because she’s sensitive like me. Surely, no decent person likes the thought of someone being murdered, even if the victim was himself a murderer.

  ‘He knew a lot about you,’ I say. Now it’s my turn to twist the napkin. ‘He knew you wear lavender. He knew your name. He knew things about us. The –’

  Mum stands up. ‘I told you before.’ Her voice is sharp. ‘Criminals can be very clever.’

  I stand too. I tower over her. ‘How do you know, Mum?’ I say. ‘Did you meet my paternal grandmother? The one who was tall, like me? Blonde too? And why was my father’s name never on my birth certificate? Was it because you didn’t want to admit you weren’t married or because you didn’t dare to put down the name of someone who was on the run?’

  Suddenly, she crumples. It’s as if I have hit her. I catch her just in time and steer her on to a chair. She puts her head in her hands. Her body begins to shake. I shouldn’t have done this, I tell myself, putting my arm around her. I ought to have let sleeping dogs lie. Haven’t I already given her enough grief?

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say urgently. ‘Forget I asked. Anyway, it can’t really be him. This man said his birthday was on the ninth of December. When I asked you years ago, about Dad’s birthday, you said it was the fourteenth of July.’ I stare at her pleadingly. ‘And I know you wouldn’t lie to me.’

  I will her to confirm this. My father could not be a killer. It went against the lovely warm picture I’d built up over the years. Mum looks away. She can’t meet my look. My chest tightens. I wish now I’d left this well alone.

  ‘But I did lie,’ she blurts out. ‘Not just about the date but about everything. I was frightened you might find him if I told you the truth.’ She looks back at me but her eyes are scared. ‘You have to remember that I was so like Kitty as a young girl. Desperate to get away from home. To paint. To live in the big wide world. I had a keen sense of right and wrong too.’ She laughs hoarsely. ‘At art school, there was this notice asking for volunteers in a homeless centre. I joined up immediately. I’d only been there a few weeks when this amazing man came in.’

  Mum’s face is transformed. It’s glowing with memories. ‘He was called Stefan and he … I don’t know … he just got me immediately.’ She flushes. ‘I don’t mean physically, but mentally. He knew what I was thinking almost before I said it.’

  Like Lead Man, I think.

  ‘And I felt a keen sense of injustice on his behalf. He had escaped from a country where he wasn’t allowed to draw. At least, not what he wanted to.’

  Just what Stefan had said. I think back to the work we did together. The painting of me. Yet this doesn’t mean that everything else he’d told me was true.

  ‘He wanted to paint the scenes that were happening in his country,’ continues my mother. ‘Draw political caricatures too. But it got him into trouble. When he came here, he had nowhere to live – at least that is what he told me originally – and the centre was full. Some of us volunteers occasionally took refugees back to our own flats. I invited Stefan.’ She flushes. ‘And, well, he just stayed.’

  ‘Did you know he had broken the law and was on the run from the British authorities too?’

  She closes her eyes briefly. ‘Not then. Initially, he told me he was a political refugee. You’ve got to remember how angry we were about the situation over there. We were convinced we could do something about it. Naturally, I was horrified by what he’d done but, well … love can be blind. It was only later that he told me the truth.’

  My throat is dry. This is where Mum will corroborate Stefan’s story – or not. I place a comforting hand on her arm but my voice is firm. ‘And what is the truth, Mum?’

  I can see her swallowing as if it is hard for the words to come out. I have a bad feeling about this.

  ‘His father paid for him to get out of the country in a container ship. He was taken to a remand centre where he got into a fight. The other man died and your father was helped by a guard to escape. That’s when we met.’

  So Stefan really had been honest with me. I’m stunned. Still trying to absorb this vision of my radical young mother taking in a man on the run.

  ‘I got pregnant in the first month.’ She reaches out her hand. ‘But …’ her eyes fill with tears. ‘I had the miscarriage. Then I got pregnant again. I can’t tell you how relieved we were when you were born safe and well.’

  ‘What about your art degree?’

  ‘I gave it up.’

  My mother’s advice during my teenage years comes back to me.

  You don’t want to get into trouble and ruin your future. Imagine if all your hard work was wasted.

  ‘Did you regret it?’ I now ask urgently.

  Tears stream down her face. ‘Not at all. We adored you. Your father and I were in love. And we had four amazing years together. We moved from place to place so no one could find us. He took whatever job he could find. My parents were livid – especially when they found out I was pregnant without being married. They said it was your father or them. So I chose love.’

  I butt in. ‘Are they still alive, too? Or did you mislead me about them as well?’

  She flinches at my harsh tone but I can’t help it. Part of me is angry with Mum for being so stupid. Yet part of me also sympathizes with her younger self. Hadn’t I made mistakes too?

  ‘No. It’s like I told you at the time. They died a few years later. It’s one of my biggest regrets.’ She pauses to wipe her face with a sleeve.

  ‘Then, one day, the police came.’ She shivers. ‘It was unexpected. We were so happy that we thought we were invincible by then.’

  ‘But weren’t you scared that you were in love with a murderer?’

  Her head shakes ruefully. ‘Stefan didn’t seem like a killer.’ She laughs out loud as though this is a ridiculous idea. ‘He was kind. Loving. A wonderful father. We desperately wanted to marry but it was too risky to apply for the papers.’

  I think back to my men in the prison who hadn’t always seemed like murderers either. One of them had got married halfway through his sentence.

  ‘When he went to jail, I promised to visit. But every time
I went, you cried and cried so much.’

  ‘You took me to prison?’ I have a mental flash of the babes in arms I’d seen during visiting days queuing up outside the high walls with barbed wire. I’d been one of them?

  She nods. ‘It was horrible. And then … well … There was the other murder.’

  I freeze. ‘What other murder?’

  My mother looks away. ‘Soon after your father went to prison, he got a new cellmate who had it in for him. Kept calling him names and making racist taunts. Your father was a very proud man. He would not stand for insults against anyone he loved. One morning …’

  She stops and I know she’s going to say something awful.

  ‘One morning,’ she continues falteringly, ‘the cellmate started up again in the showers. Your father attacked him with a razor blade.’

  ‘He didn’t …’ I begin.

  ‘Kill him?’ My mother’s voice is flat now. ‘Yes. I’m afraid he did. Even worse, it turned out that your father had bribed a guard to get the blade, which made it look as though the murder was premeditated. So he got life.’

  That explained the length of my father’s sentence! Thirty-odd years is a long time for one murder. I’d learned that much during my own time inside. But another one – especially in a prison – is a different matter.

  ‘And that’s the real reason I broke off contact with him. I could just about understand the first set of circumstances leading to his arrest. But not the second killing.’

  My poor mother. I reach for her hand. She grips mine back. ‘I began to think about your father in a different light.’

  ‘Not surprising,’ I murmur.

  ‘Soon after that, I met David. He was kind. Said he’d be a father to you. And I knew you would have a better chance in life if you didn’t know your father was a prisoner.’

  Finally, it’s all beginning to make sense.

  ‘David made me happy. I wanted you to have a proper family. I was so thrilled when Kitty was born. I didn’t want you to be an only child like me.’